City Council - workshop

It's nineteen thirty. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Mayor Anzavino is out tonight, so, I'm filling in for him. This is a duly noticed workshop of Hudson City Council heading accordance with the Sunshine Laws of the State of Ohio, Section 121.22 and the City of Hudson Charter, Article III, Section 3.02 for Tuesday, 04/14/2026. I'd like to take a moment to welcome everyone here who is in attendance tonight, as well as those who may be watching remotely via the HCTV feed.

And we thank the HCTV team for being here tonight. So moving on to the next section, correspondence and counsel comments. Anybody have any comments or concerns they want to share that hasn't already been shared? Patricia.

Last Wednesday at the Architectural Review Board, they did approve the addition to the dental office on East Main Street here. There had been some controversy about that, but they approved it. The architecture that was put together was very nice, and they're using not a garage door in the back, but French doors, and most of the neighbors around the area seemed pleased with what they were going to do. But I thought that especially those in Ward 1 should know that that is taking place.

Planning Commission met yesterday, and just a couple things I know I mentioned to you, but just wanna let everyone know. So they would like an update on the issue with retirement facilities and EMS that was brought up a while back. So I also let the chair know that if they ever want a specific update from council, that they can talk with city staff and have it added to their schedule, and then I can, know, I or the appropriate person can give them an update as long as I know kind of what the update is and who to get the update from. They also discussed District 11 last night, and specifically related to the comprehensive plan in District 11. I don't wanna like steal anyone's thunder here.

I know we have you all here tonight. It was a great discussion last night of how the comprehensive plan, links to, potential rezoning of District 11 and kind of where it matches up and where it might not match up, which I know we're gonna discuss tonight. And that was planning commission.

Yes. I did receive an email from a resident who requested it be read into the record. So I'd like to take this opportunity to do so, and it is in regards to District 11. So keep rolling with that. On, by my count, page nine titled Complementing Downtown, the paragraph titled Square Footage Limitations highlight retail size restrictions of up to 1,000 square feet as a use by right and up to 20,000 square feet as a conditional use.

Then goes on to state, Generally, the creation of a new shopping district requires a large anchor tenant, typically a national brand or big box retailer, to make it viable. For comparison, at Pinecrest, the anchors REI and Whole Foods are 27,045 square feet respectively. It then asserts the proposed size limitations on retail use within D 11 help safeguard that retail uses will not become the primary drivers of foot traffic and activity within the district. Only two pages later under the title Grocery Illustrations, the presentation offers an illustrative view of the IRG property showing a 40,000 square foot grocery, Whole Foods stores range between twenty five and fifty five sorry, twenty five and fifty thousand square feet according to Google AI, next to a 20,000 square foot retail conditional use, slightly smaller than the typical REI, but according to Google, well within the typical size range of a Gap, Banana Republic, Lululemon, Williams Sonoma, etcetera. Does anyone really believe there would be a significant difference between a 45,000 square foot Whole Foods next to a 27,000 square foot REI at Pinecrest and a potential 40,000 square foot Whole Foods next to a 20,000 square foot national chain retailer in D 11.

Council needs to put some adult supervision on this D 11 proposal, bring it back in alignment with the comprehensive plan, which the charter defines as the operative growth management policy for the municipality, and conduct a review to understand how city staff and two of your current colleagues who, along with the former council president, were on the D 11 subcommittee brought forward a proposal so disconnected from the municipality's operative growth management policy. And with such blatant flaws in their supporting logic, Hudson leadership needs to learn from this and develop improved controls and processes to prevent similar governance and logic failures in the future. Thank you, Tom Mayer. That is all. That is all.

Anybody else?

So I just have a couple things to make people aware of. So early voting for the library board has begun. So this is a change from previous years where it happened on a Sunday at the April or May. This is now several weeks of voting. You don't have to attend the annual meeting if you cannot attend.

So go to library and vote for the library board. Also, early voting for the May election has started down in Summit County Board of Elections, so check their website if you want to go down for early voting at the Summit County Board of Elections. I always forget my RETA tax reform, and if you're new to Hudson especially, you might not be used to filing local income taxes. We have that here, where you have to do a whole separate local income tax form. So make sure that you do that.

And then if I could ask the city staff to send out some information contact numbers for Kinetic. They are tearing up a lot of World War four right now. And I anticipate a number of complaints or concerns when it's not put back the way it was when they were tearing it up, before they started tearing it up. So hopefully they'll do a great job, but it's hard to get all that dirt back together looking nice. So I think if we have somebody that a number that they can reach that the public can reach that will be very helpful.

Okay. Next is discussion items and we have the District eleven discussion.

So let me

just start off a couple introductory comments that I would like to thank all of you who are attending tonight and sharing your perspective. I'd like us to start with the assumption. I know it's risky to make assumptions, but I'd like us to start with the assumption that we are all here because we want the best for Hudson. I know all all of us or most of us have raised or are raising our children and grandchildren here in Hudson and many of us grew up here and we all want Hudson to be the best it can be. I appreciate this opportunity to share information and become better informed together.

I'm sorry, other council comments before we turn it over to the comprehensive plan team. So do you guys have a set order that you're gonna go to?

Yeah, Jesse and I are gonna walk through some slides. But I'd preface it with feel free to ask us questions along the way.

Okay, I think what we'll try to do is if there's sort of just in time clarifying questions, don't hesitate to speak up, ask question. If at the end we can give responses after we've heard everybody. But certainly like you're saying, it's good if we specific questions we should arrow.

Yeah. And just by way of introduction, I'm Rebecca Leiter and I was the chair of the committee.

Jesse Obert, vice chair. Important nonetheless.

Todziedak, wanna be chair.

Bob Karl, never thought about being a chair.

Okay. Yeah, so I wanted to just talk a little bit about the committee itself for a minute. Minute. So the steering committee was made up of 18 residents that were appointed by the council. Of the 18 residents, 13 were general residents.

Some of those were specifically appointed by individual council members. And then there were the other members were residents who served on different boards and commissions for the city. So that was the group, 18 people. And as you can imagine, with 18 people, you have a wide variety of views. And so, you know, our approach in general was to try to take input from everyone and try to incorporate it and be inclusive and come to consensus on items.

But we did spend a considerable amount of time debating as you will see in the timeline. Yeah, so that's just kind of a general, and we met from starting in November 2022 and we went through May 2024. And then Skyler Sutton was also our council liaison. And then we had several staff members, Tom and Greg and Nick

And Emily.

And Emily, that sat in our meetings as well. And we also had OHM consultants who was our advisor on the plan. So that's just a general who was in the committee. So we can go, I'm not gonna obviously read all of this, but I think that on that first page, Jesse, the thing I wanted to point out was the green box there. Other yeah.

I'm sorry. So the 2024 comprehensive plan is a vital community input blueprint that sets the direction for where and how the city should evolve over the next ten years. With this broader goal, there are a number of community wide objectives the plan identifies in the areas of land use, housing, community services, communication and collaboration, economic development and growth, and community arts and culture. And I guess the other thing that I was gonna point out on this slide is the scope of the plan does not include anything related to the Hudson City School District. So the plan inputs are the three, the Venn diagram there.

We looked at the existing conditions and that was things like the demographics, current employment, current zoning, existing land use and things like that were in the existing commissions. And then we gathered a lot of community input and I'll talk about that a little bit more. And then we also talked through best practices and that's where OHM advisors gave us a lot of assistance in the best practices area. As far as the purpose of the plan, again, it's to guide the community in evaluating proposed public, private, or joint projects, inform current and prospective property owners and developers about desirable growth patterns, and then measure the progress and effectiveness of projects in Hudson to ensure that they strengthen the community as a whole. So that's the plan's purpose.

I'm gonna kind of maybe skip over this slide, but this is kind of what the process the committee went through, investigate, inform, engage, develop, and implement. On the next page, it's a little bit easier to follow here. So this is the timeline. So the investigate phase, I think we had 26 total just regular meetings and then a bunch of other subcommittees and workshops that we did with the community. A lot of meetings.

But in the investigate part of the project timeline, we were doing the kickoff and assembling the committee and kind of grounding ourselves in what the process is. In the next phase, the inform phase, that's where we looked at the existing conditions of the city. We had some site visits with the consultant. And then we had a couple subcommittee meetings and a steering committee meeting in the forum. And we were looking at the demographics, like I said, and the existing zoning and land use.

And then we were so I can't remember to say, sorry. But anyway, yeah, that's basically what we were doing in the informed phase. Oh, we were also looking at prior plans. That's what I was trying to think of. So we had a 2015 plan, we had a 1995 plan, yeah, we're kind of getting the lay of the land.

So in the next phase, that's when we started to get into engaging the community. And again, I'll talk about each of these things a little bit more, but we had the survey that we did. We did a community workshop at Hudson High School. We did some pop up engagements, which were like going to the farmer's market or going to Earth Day at City Hall. And then we had some focus group meetings.

And there were seven of those. After we went through that, then we went into the development phase and that's where we specifically focused on certain areas and our vision for the land use and yeah, the focus area concepts. And, you know, yeah, and that's kind of what we did in that phase. And in that phase, you can see that went from August 2023 through February 2024. So that's really the time when the committee was having some debate and went back and looked at the focus areas several times.

Some of them we tabled and then we went back to later on. We spent a significant amount of time.

That was when we evaluated what the survey results were as well. So we had gotten the survey results back, so now what do we do with it? So OHM was integral to saying, this is what they actually mean, this is what the responses are, and this is what your community is telling you. So that was the bulk of our work was there, was taking those survey responses then and then coming up with ways to implement what the public wanted. Okay,

and then we went into the implementation phase and that's part

of

the plan is just devoted to the implementation phase and kind of how you measure your progress against your goals. As far as how the plan is laid out, it's really set in there are four areas. There's a plan overview, the community insights which is the survey results, the plan framework with the focus areas, which I think we've seen pieces of that, and then the implementation. And that's kind of how the plan is laid out. As far as you, yeah, I think I'm done with that one.

Okay. And then as far as how and who will use the plan, the comprehensive plan is a living document which should be reviewed and updated annually as directed by the city leadership and elected appointed officials. It's intended to cover a ten year period. And as far as who uses the plan, the plan is intended to be used by a variety of audiences. Citizens, residents, business owners can use the plan to submit development proposals.

The city council can use it as a guide for policy decisions like land use, zoning, and development proposals. The Planning Commission and the Board of Zoning and Building Appeals and other city organizations appointed by council can use the plan to provide policy recommendations. And I have just a part from the Hudson Charter Section 9.03 as it relates to how the Planning Commission should be used. The comprehensive plan in effect should be the operative growth management policy for the municipality and as such should guide council in taking action with respect to the physical development of the municipality and expenditures for capital improvements. And then the staff can use the plan to communicate with the public and develop community priority initiatives.

And that bottom green part just kind of reiterates what I just said. So then on to the community engagement, as I said we did a community survey. We actually did two. So one was a statistically valid survey where we had a random sample of residents that matched the demographics and that was sent out in the mail along with directions and the intent of how it was going to be used. And they actually expected to have around 400 responses and we got six fourteen.

So really strong response on that. And then we had a general survey that was available online. And the idea is that you have the statistically valid one and you have the online. And if you get a healthy response, those two should pretty much match, and that's what happened. So the general survey, we got six fifty two responses.

And as I said, we had some pop up engagements where we got more than 150 comments. Those were like the Farmers Market and Earth Day at City Hall. We had Let's Talk Hudson where we had an online engagement and that had over 100 comments. And then we had a community workshop out at the library at Hudson High School. And we had very good attendance.

We got more than 600 comments from that community workshop. And then the other thing we did was to have focus groups. And the focus groups, we had seven sessions. Some of them were with downtown merchants. We had small businesses, we had large businesses.

We even did one with Hudson Youth where we got some feedback from some of the students at Western Reserve Academy, was very And then non profits. And then we had a community open house where we had four fifty, more than four fifty comments. I'm gonna pass it over to Jesse.

Any questions about that on how the survey was handled or anything like that so far? Okay, so Todd loves this. So if he gets excited, just don't encourage him, okay? So the first couple questions that I wanted to review were about what the citizens responded to in terms of what they value most or what they appreciate the most about the city. So I said the word value and that's the keyword for Todd.

So these questions, question two, I'm gonna just scroll through quickly, question three, and then question six. I should point out that the survey asks similar questions that kind of overlap each other, and the whole point was to get a broader picture, to be able to combine the questions and interpret from different angles, so that we could get a really complete picture from anybody who completed the survey. Whether it was the statistically valid survey, or just the general survey that was available to everyone. So those three questions in my opinion, I would assume the rest of the commission would feel the same way. That really set up the values of the community and in no particular order was protecting downtown schools and overall safety.

Those are the top three repeated things that we saw as priorities. And the biggest issue, which was this question down here, I'm sorry, was six, was traffic overwhelmingly was the biggest concern for people. So it is my understanding that there's budget coming up, discussions for next year about potentially doing that citywide traffic study and traffic planning, which was something in the comprehensive plan that was suggested. In fact, I wanna say that's one of the first couple of things as a priority from comprehensive plan that city staff is gonna be working on to work forward towards the comprehensive plan. Any questions about these couple of questions or priorities from residents?

I'll just clarify, that survey had a list of things to choose from, right? These weren't just

It was not fill in the blank.

It was not fill in blank.

No, so this question, the aspects of life that will have the most impact on your decision to stay, these were the options. And they were allowed to choose three choices, their top three. And then we prioritized, oh man, I don't know how to make that go away. Okay, there we go. Then it was prioritized by their first, second and third choice, so kind of like a run off. And in fact, I think that was one of Mr. Sutton's suggestion at the time, how do we prioritize that to get the most out of the question, right? We couldn't ask nine eighty five questions or people would be, they would drop off and we wouldn't get a response. So we had to critically think about how we ask questions to get the most out of them and make those questions work to get the answer. This is how we did this well.

I just add too that OHM really helped us with the survey. They have a lot of experience with other communities. So this is kind of something that they have honed over time just with the other work that they do.

Could you define more about the second one under traffic, which was affordability? What did that mean? What was the definition?

You're seeing exactly what was asked of the respondents and the options that were given to them.

But what did you as a comprehensive plan take that to mean? And did you delve into it? Did you take a deeper dive?

We did. We took a lot of deep dive into housing, and I'm gonna get into that specifically later based on some questions that I've had with some council members about housing specifically. We're going to get deeper into housing, but this was more, this particular question I pulled out really to identify the outlier traffic as being the number one concern. I thought, show you the good things that people want to prioritize, and then show you the things that are their biggest concern. So that's where we were with these.

But that's, I mean, it's a good question because it it's also why you ask things multiple ways, like Jesse was saying, is to try to ferret out what people are mean by what they but yeah. Mhmm.

Didn't we have some questions that were fill in the blanks for options?

I think we had two Yeah. That were that

Which turned out to not be very helpful because people wrote every random thing you can imagine. But but It was not the case that we were somehow manner. We did it because you had to be getting the pen down. So

Todd, if you don't push the button and just talk, it'll it'll click on for you.

You

turned it off

when you held it, sorry. That's okay. Anything else?

Okay.

So I wanted to go over just the maps. So the last time that I came to council to present to you on behalf of Planning Commission, we talked a lot about the differences between the comprehensive plan map and the map for District 11 that staff has provided. So this is the map directly out of the comprehensive plan. This is the focus area that we labeled the Darrow Road corridor. You'll notice Stony Hill as being the northern point of this map, and it goes all the way down to Norton Road.

One of these times I'm gonna not go down that far so that box doesn't come up. So this map directly out of Comprehensive plan was the visual representation of the intent of the commission for this focus area. You'll see that the area of District 11 is actually light purple, and that in the menu is described as light industrial flex. So in regards to the conversation for District 11, we discussed ad nauseam what happens if JoAnn's leaves, being a top employer. They had already were in the process of filing bankruptcy and going through that at the time.

So we were aware, it was discussed, and what do we do? The commission came up with really the point of this focus area was making this area look and feel a lot more Hudson. It is the southern gateway, so if you're coming from Stowe and you enter Hudson in '91, it doesn't look and feel like the rest of town. So we focus a lot about that. If you wanted to jump to the comprehensive plan page 68.

Will that jump for me? No. Okay, just kidding. Thank you. The text is on the page 68 above the map in the comprehensive plan, if I do that. So we talked about this. I know Doctor. Gads brought up mixed use. This text is describing the entire area of that 91 corridor from Stony Hill down to Norton Road. And we're talking about mixed use in there because that's what it currently exists.

And the focus area again for the map was including all of this mixed use of concept, and the colors on the map described and indicated by the commission for those particular areas. We called out these front red boxes on 91, so that they would look and feel more like the retail corridor that exists north of Terex, that the front lots of those parcels could be again additional retail space like we have the daycare that's there now. But the rest of it would remain income generating for the city of Hudson and follow that light industrial flex space.

Is that District 8, all the colors there?

The colors do not indicate regulations whatsoever. We're actually showing multiple zoning districts here.

Okay, thank you.

Uh-huh. Can I just add to the reason why we had that as a light industrial and we did talk about other uses for it is the question was asked of the consultant? If you have residential, retail, commercial, like industrial and industrial, which ones are a net revenue positive for the city? So and what they we they told us was that residential, retail, and, like, restaurant type commercial stuff is is brings in revenue, but it also brings increased demand for services. So that they that you can be a net zero on those because you have revenue coming in, but you also have expenses associated with it.

Where light industrial brings in revenue and doesn't have as much expense associated with it. And so we were thinking about, you know, we had comments in the plan about people wanting a rec center, wanting swimming pool. And so we were thinking about

Hockey rings.

Right. So we were thinking about ways that we could bring in revenue without having also increased expenses. Expenses. So that was the logic.

So this second map is the map that staff provided that is the carve out for the proposed District 11. Again, this is a part of the Southern Road corridor, but not what was referred to in the comprehensive plan as a mixed use development. That was never the intent to reiterate what Rebecca said. We discussed this particular area if Joann's left, what could happen there, and residential was overwhelmingly not preferred by, I don't think anyone on the commission said, yes, let's put housing there. I think we all felt that given what is there already, for it to remain income generating for the city and commercial with that carve out of the front areas being potential restaurant or retail would be the best way to move forward.

Which is why, again, on the future land use map of the comp plan, you see the colors change based on what's indicated. The recommendations for this whole map again was about streetscape, beautification, and making this whole area look and feel more like the rest of Hudson. All the way down toward to increasing signage at the southernmost corridor there at Norton Road, so that as you enter Hudson, you see a Welcome to Hudson sign and all of that. Okay?

I just was a little bit confused. You said you wanted that area to look like the area from Barlow to Stony Hill, which I don't think really looks like Hudson.

Yeah, so when we were talking about the frontage of the Joanne property, we were talking about putting the buildings up, you know, if there were restaurants or retail in there on that frontage, that it would be up to the street with the parking in the rear to be more like

Dropping the street lights. Currently, they're like a highway height down there in front of Terex, dropping the street lights

to But wouldn't be like from Barlow to Stony Hill. No. We wanna improve

that. Right.

Right. Right. Change all of that to look and feel more like the rest of the of town.

Okay. Well, that's some of it. That's not what you said at first. You said you wanted it to look like the rest from Barlow to Stony Hill.

We want the area. I said what we wanted, what the commission wanted was that from Stony Hill down to Norton Road to look and feel consistently like the rest of town.

And was expectation that that part in Red South Of Terex would be developed by the owner of Joanne's?

By the time Joanne still owned that parcel. So it was suggested, and I think we even talked about it that Joanne's could offer up to parcel off some of those for future development. And now, I mean, I wanna go so far as to say that we even said because they were struggling, maybe that would help keep them going if they sold off those front parcels. And they could derive income from that. Does that sound familiar?

Yeah. So what do you think? How would it happen now?

Well, IRG owns it, so

it would be up

to the property owner to decide. Any questions about the difference of those two maps? I know there was confusion about that with the text within the comprehensive plan. So I just wanna make sure we understand that this map was the comprehensive plan map, and the next map was the proposed District 11. Yes.

Since you posed the question, any confusion between the two maps, was gonna save this question for later. But Jesse, I think you can uniquely answer this question. If this District 11 proposal, many people feel that does not match the comprehensive plan, why, and yourself as the PC co chair, assistant chair, why did the Planning Commission plan seem to so greatly diverge from the comprehensive plan? Sorry, the District 11 proposal so greatly diverged from the comprehensive plan?

I don't think it did. Our recommendations did not go off of the comprehensive plan.

What recommendations?

The planning commission's recommendations attempted to follow the comprehensive plan.

Do you feel that the original submission by the Planning Commission did follow the comprehensive plan?

I'm not sure which submission you're referring to.

At the end of the one hundred and twenty days when you submitted the plan to counsel. I know you requested an additional one hundred and twenty, I think, to address some plan development specifics, but that version of the plan, do you feel it matches the comprehensive plan?

Not entirely, but we also have outstanding items that we've been looking for response as Ms. Weinstein said earlier, I'm sorry, Doctor. Weinstein said earlier regarding some other changes, regards to land development code and things that we wanted to implement. We still have not finished our density discussions, which in our opinion, my opinion, this District 11, we needed to get some of those, let's call them foundation pieces done before we could complete our discussions on District 11. And we had intended to do that during the moratorium that got repealed.

So we kinda got stuck in a hard place in Planning Commission terms that, well let me back up. As you all know this building locks at midnight when the alarm goes off. So we are often restricted by how much time we have. So if we have a couple of applications and our business at the end of the night would be discussing District 11 or maybe it's the density discussion is at the end of our agenda. So obviously applications get the priority.

Many times we run out of time. Last night was an early night, we were done about a little after eleven. We got lucky. Many times that other business such as discussions like District 11 get pushed to the following meeting, simply because we don't have the time and the ability to do it. So while we had a running clock of that one hundred and twenty days, it's not that we worked on it and discussed it at each meeting that we had during that time. Which is why we had asked for a moratorium so that we could do some of those foundational discussions on Planning Commission, so that we could dive deeper into unfortunately we ran out of time.

How about this? Is there anything prohibiting a higher frequency of meetings?

That I have no idea. I don't have an answer for that. Okay,

I think I have a good enough answer for my question now. Will save the rest of this.

Sure, just so I don't know, I know it takes everybody time, but after our meeting last night, as Doctor. Weinstein said, we do have further recommendations from last night's meeting that I'm sure staff will get to as soon as they're able for your next viewing and discussions.

Thank you.

Okay, all right. So the next thought was to give time and opportunity to review any of the feedback that people have seen or heard from the open house or Let's Talk Hudson. Just again, trying to keep the conversation going to, for us to be here to help you in terms of what you've heard and how to interpret that against the comprehensive plan.

I would like to make one comment. Go ahead. Before we do that, is know, while I appreciate having an open house and all that, I feel like the research that we and I know we've got three doctors here, so I know that you appreciate solid research. And I feel like the research that we did in the comprehensive plan is pretty robust because we reached out to people where they are. And sometimes when you have, you know, people have to come to somewhere, they don't show up.

And you know, and you don't get as robust, you know, broad comment on what you're talking about.

I In regards to open house.

Yes. Yeah. If that made any sense. Hopefully, that made

sense. I wanted to make a comment and ask a question for clarity from you guys because I'm sure you'll remember the details. There was some concern that perhaps the Country Club of Hudson might not make it. And what is that property zoned as now? Like, under it's it's Grandfrauded in to be a country club. Right? But isn't it zoned commercial?

No. Residential. I think

it was residential. So that if I think the discussions that we had then was if something happened, unfortunately, to the Hudson, a developer could potentially buy that and make it a neighborhood.

Which we've, I think, collectively sort of felt was a would be bad because the people who purchased homes around there wouldn't want another development next to their house. They were buying something next to a to a country club. And so our recommendation was that that property be rezoned park or open space or something to that effect. And that's part of a big part for me of what we were doing was trying to direct and guide future activities such that the community remained robust and people were treated fairly and, you know, didn't buy a home next to a forest and then find out there's a factory going up next door. So that's some of the kind of stuff that that we did.

I mean, case in case in point of that last night, we heard, on planning commission, an application for the corner of Terex And 303. Directly next to that is a neighborhood street of Martin Drive. Martin Drive historically has been zoned commercial light industrial. So the homeowners that live on that street are unable to make additions or change their house or do anything significant because it's no longer residential. So during the comprehensive plan, this committee would also remember that we suggested to staff that that street go back to residential.

So that those homeowners are not restricted in their use moving forward because of a zoning law that never came into play. That street never changed, it never became a commercial business hub. However, the economic team planned for that across the street and was effective in doing so. So to Todd's point, we were anticipating and looking for opportunities to protect the residents, and the what ifs. Joann's was one of them.

Any comments, concerns from the open house or let's talk that we could help answer any questions about?

Thank you. At this point in time, we've gotten a good amount of feedback. We still have the opportunity for more. I know you can't speak for the entirety of Planning Commission, but what do you feel are the major, you know, I'm seeing residential, grocery store, and then retail as far as conflicting with downtown. Are there maybe two to three major changes that you would identify with the current proposal that would bring it more in line with the comprehensive plan?

I think the discussions last night in Planning Commission were about the regulations involved in plan development and the lacking information that we have and definitions within our code currently that the work needs to start there.

So you're suggesting that just an amendment to the current legislation removing one or two items wouldn't be sufficient. It has to go back to changing plan developments.

I'm saying I believe Mr. Hannon mentioned this last night. Hudson has only ever had one plan development in the past. This is the only the second time a plan development has come or has even come up for discussion. In our land development code, development is two pages.

There are verbiage in there that don't necessarily make sense and they leave a lot of questions. There's vague words and descriptions that leave us as Planning Commission, as the City of Hudson, open to interpretation. Which as mentioned last night in Planning Commission, does that open the city up for legal issues if we interpret it one way, council maybe interprets it differently, and a developer comes in and has a third opinion. How do we handle that? What are the recourses that we can to protect the assets of the community when we do not have clear and definitive guidelines within Land Development Code for planned developments. That's part of our concern.

So set aside District 11 and simply addressing the needs of the plan development in our code, what does that undertaking look like? What do you suppose time wise, effort wise it would take just to address the plan developments?

I

mean, I don't know how to answer that.

Think there's no planning commission last evening did request assistance from OHM advisors who we have used in limited basis to assist with co drafting. Something of that nature could be done in two to three months. Up to private applications how often PC might meet.

We also discussed doing a subcommittee for that if we need to that could meet more frequently. Those are all options.

And and what I'm going at with this line of questioning is, in theory, if council had decided to send back, the District 11 proposal to planning commission, you get an additional hundred and twenty days, and that's the last time I believe you're legally allowed to ask for it back. And then you spent the majority of, if not all of that time addressing specifically planned development, if you even get to making changes to District 11 with about the time running out again and then you can't request it back?

I mean, I think that if that's the opportunity, then we were gonna have to either do additional meetings, have a subcommittee that meets simultaneously. Of course, if we're gonna bring OHM in here to advise on some of the typical and standard language that makes sense for the code, we're gonna be beholden to some of their schedule as well. But I think the plan would be to again, work on those foundations. Currently in our code, There is only one area that is not open for a planned development in all of Hudson. To Todd's point, if something happened to CCH and somebody bought that land, they could essentially apply for a planned development there.

That's not something that I don't think anybody wants in this community. And it's not that again, Planning Commission doesn't wanna see this space be filled or be redeveloped, but let's do it with the mindset of protecting what the assets that Hudson has and the interest of the community. And to do that, we need to work on the foundations and work on the plan development language in our land development code.

So you would be in favor of plan development if the language has been changed in that narrow corridor that you've shown on the comprehensive plan?

I am in favor of working on the plan development language to fix it so that we can come up with what makes sense for the city of Hudson. I can't say that I'm in favor of somebody's planned development when I don't know what that

In plan general, if it can be cleaned up, that it's a concept that has some merit. Me personally,

I don't have a problem with development, no. I'm okay with that. But again, it's not up to me, that's up to Planning Commission as a whole.

Curious from, I wanna go back to the comprehensive plan. What did you, right now it's district date, So if nothing happens, it remains District 8. And so you talk about in the purple area, in the focus on light industry. So right now District 8, my understanding allows as a conditional use, heavy industry. So did you hear, like what did you hear residents specifically say they would not prefer in that area that is currently allowed?

For example, heavy industry is currently allowed as a conditional use, and if it instead goes more towards light industry, for example, is that something that you heard residents would want to go toward? Or, you know, yes or no, or or what did you hear residents want now that's not currently allowed there, or not currently there? There? Anybody have thoughts?

I don't think anybody said, boy, if only we could have different things that are there in the purple area than we have today, we'd be really great. So the committee simply said, basically, the purple area is industrial ish and should remain so. And not as there was no comment, groundswell of support or groundswell of participants who said, oh, wait. Oh, hold on a second. The last thing we need is more industry.

We need any other thing. Just nobody said it. It it looks industrial. It's outside of town. It's been industrial for sixty years I've lived here, and there was not a single comment about if only we could somehow tweak. No.

I think the the changing it to light industrial was really, we were thinking about the truck traffic and trying to reduce the truck traffic.

Got it. So did that come from residents or was that thinking about the idea that residents don't want traffic, and so that would help deal

with the traffic? Yeah.

Was the implications from the other survey questions as to what people do or do not want. Got it. And remaining income generating for the city.

And the red area there is already zoned for retail. Right?

Retail is already permitted in that district. Yes.

So that's not even a change. We're just simply calling it out for attention. FYI, retail could go here.

Right. Miss Benke has explained previously, and I know she's been heavily involved in this discussions here. This is her area of expertise that in District 8, do have some permissions for larger retail as opposed to something smaller, which is being proposed in District 11. And some of those things are good, but that's one piece of the whole puzzle. Again, we can't say yes, we like this piece but not this piece and not work on each piece to make it a whole complete plan, if that makes sense, right?

So what's your response? The focused area, there's a page 72 talks about concepts shown in this section are only conceptual and do not represent a specific development proposal or fixed plan for redevelopment. They are intended to communicate a vision for how the area may develop in the future.

Are you talking about page 72, the comprehensive plan?

Yes. Yes. Okay.

So this is all additional text about that Darrowville Southern Gateway. Darrowville is that last, I don't know, half mile, if you will, of 91 before you approach Stowe.

Between like Georgetown and Norton.

Correct. So that's specifically, there are some historical buildings there. The boulevard starts be just north of Georgetown Road, so we talked about adding trees and landscaping in that that median between the lanes and the boulevard there. Again, the street lights. I'm not sure exactly what specific question you have, but that this paragraph specifically is to the Darrowville neighborhood.

It's 82. 82?

Yeah. Oh, I thought he said page 72.

Is. Got

it. Okay. Yeah.

That's why I'm

so good. That

makes sense.

That helps. That helps.

Yeah. And

I think we were intentionally not trying to be overly specific regarding exactly whether a McDonald's could go there or Zanarby's or only soft serve ice cream. I mean, we weren't trying to define exactly what it was. We were trying to capture the spirit and the essence of the movement of making the entire town more coordinated and more attractive and, more appealing. That was the that was the point. So in Darrowville, that last bit before Stowe was actually historically was its own little town.

It had a little post office there actually. And so while it's historical, I think we were we some debate about how much value there was even though it was old and it was part of our history. It's, you know, it's not it's not Ellsworth Hall. It's, you know, it's not the Clock Tower. So

Yeah. I guess my my point was more just overall with the land use maps is that it's saying here they're conceptually do not represent a specific development proposal or fixed plan communicative vision for how the area may be developed in the future. So it just I think we're making it sound like these were written in stone and I don't think that's what it says there.

It was actually more so with regards to that we didn't want somebody to hold it to us that this particular picture was going to replicate a particular development. There was a lot of discussion on the pictures that were gonna be utilized in this. Thank you. Yep. And so it was more so of what's like the most kind of generic representation without saying this is what we're going to put exactly because people will hold you to that so to speak. We wanted to say that this was just more a broad example of what we were hoping to look so that way you know we don't want a 10 story apartment building right there. I mean, again, the comprehensive plan

is a 30,000 feet above look. Right? Right. Just like even with a change to District 11, we don't ultimately get to decide who the tenants are that occupy these spaces, which is why we have the land development code to dictate those conditional uses, etcetera, to have some control and guidance over what happens. But ultimately, whether it's a Wendy's or a McDonald's, we don't get to choose.

And thank you very much for bringing up the pictures. We saw probably 10 different varieties of streetscapes. Sidewalks of different widths, planters, no planters, awnings, no awnings, three stories with rolling up windows, casement windows. I mean, was very, very different. And they all looked and felt different. And as if you've walked around developments, you can see that, you can feel that. And we did not wanna be prescriptive and say, oh, yeah, that's what we really like. Because as you can imagine, half of us like the wide sidewalks and the other half like the narrow sidewalks. We both said, well, it's not for us to decide anyway. So that's that's why it was left open for interpretation and and design.

Thanks for bringing that up. Forgot that.

So, and I agree. I mean, I think that's, it's a 30,000 foot level. And we're dealing with moving parts and maybe we'd like ideally that that red part becomes red and doesn't stay empty like it is now, but maybe it's not going to just develop on its own. And that's why there were discussions a year ago around District 11. And two council members who were intimately aware of the comprehensive plan proposed these changes in August 2025 proposing D11 acknowledging that the perfect state would be a new employer comes in and fills all 1,400,000 square feet and boom, we're back in our and we're generating income taxes like we were in 2023.

Yeah, but will they be you know, expenses associated with it?

No, I'm saying that the perfect thing is Joann's two point zero goes in there. Oh, I see. Okay. But there was an acknowledgment that maybe that wasn't going to happen. And that maybe employers need more than just an empty building to attract employees and to attract employers.

And so in August '25, we put forward this piece and there was not a word mentioned about it not aligning with the comprehensive plan. There was mention of the comprehensive plan, but there was nothing about that this does not align with it. So that's I think a challenge for us.

Which piece at that point, or what was being studied at that point, To what extent was being considered? I guess that's what I don't understand since none of us were a part of those discussions. I don't know who was there. I assume it was a subcommittee. So were other plans submitted or presented? We don't know, I have no idea. This didn't come to Planning Commission, this didn't come to the rest of these folks here that were formerly on the conference of plan until recently. So I don't know how we can prescribe or talk about something that was not a part of

Yeah, and I think

Well, I'm not suggesting that you should have known more or something like that. I'm suggesting that two people that were intimately aware of the comprehensive plan and participated in it, participated in the creation of D11. And it's kind of an oxymoron or something to because these folks were as aware of the comprehensive plan as as you guys were?

I I mean, all I can say is that the the legislation is in front of a voting body now. I don't know who saw what then or what was discussed then, but the legislation is now. So here we are talking about what's in front of you as a council body, and we're here to discuss the comprehensive plan tonight and answer any questions that we can so that you can make the best decision for the community.

Could I

ask on that? Is it possible for us to bring up the comparison of uses in District 8 and District 11?

That was my next subject.

Oh, perfect. I

let you write it. I mean, I would love to hear from you all. You know, there's you know, left hand side is, the things that are the same. Cool. They're the same. Doesn't matter. Right? Mean, not that it doesn't matter. They're the same. But on the right hand side are the things that are no longer allowed or things that are additionally allowed. So I would really love to hear from

Which are you looking at? Or It's it's Or something that So we can all follow you. Sorry.

Greg, is that something you can

I don't know if someone can pull it up?

Is it in here?

Is it in the pamphlet that was passed out Thursday?

Yes.

I think so.

Definitely a page that has that. Yes. Yes.

Water plan. Yes. I'm just so it's got on the top right. So once we pull it up, it's got kind of additional restrictions. So there are a number of restrictions and things that are no longer allowed. And I would love to hear on kind of those ones. Does that match the comprehensive plan and what you were hearing for residents? And then additions

allowed

that weren't before. Does that match?

Could you say that one more time? I know. Sorry, Greg. It's the Greg's got it. You wanna look at the permitted uses first? Yeah. Okay.

So first I would say that the Comprehensive Plan Committee did not get into conditional use. Again, we were looking at 30,000 feet above, not what was specifically going to be used or which store was gonna house what. So we never got into conditional uses in that regard.

Oh yeah, I get that. So but I'm just wondering, for the current proposed District 11, right? And so I hear it doesn't match the comprehensive plan. I would love to know the specifics. Like when we say heavy industry is no longer a conditional use, does that match the comprehensive plan or not, right? Does that have the feel of what you all think from the comprehensive plan, right? When it says we're no longer gonna allow a boarding kennel, right? Does that are there specific things that are either no longer allowed or are now allowed that do not match the comprehensive plan? I'm I'm asking like the specifics, where is it out of line with the comprehensive plan? Or where is it might some interpret it as being out of line with the comprehensive

So I think overall, it's in reference to making a new development that is of mixed use that has significant functions in retail or residential. It's the overall use of the space, not the specifics of whether it's a bank or a restaurant. If looked at the future land use map, it was a small percentage of that area being designated to something other than light industrial use. So the comprehensive plan would have never got into this much of specific, but the intent was to say the Joann's fabrics building would stay and remain income producing, but there's opportunities to improve the streetscape and add some minimal retail office space in the front.

Got it. So it's more the yeah. So it's more the it's not the uses, this, that, but what you're saying is a little more the map. Where? It's the where Yeah. Not necessarily the it's this and that.

And and what the overall parcel or that overall picture would be. I mean, the District 11 map includes more than just Joanne's. Right? It goes across the street as well.

Yep.

And the comprehensive plan, again, was focused on if we were going to make improvements to the streetscape and we were going to make this area from Stony Hill to Norton Road look and feel like Hudson, a way to do that would be to increase some retail restaurant small business in the front of Joann's to change the streetscape. It wasn't a picture or a discussion of, let's create a whole new zoning district, and let's put mixed use here. That was not what we were doing. That was not a discussion. And when it came to any consideration of adding residential in that particular area, I believe the entire commission would say, we all felt that that was not an appropriate place.

So the conditional uses between this would be a matter of our opinions today based on what we've heard or what we think, not things that were necessarily discussed then.

So can I say on the residential, I mean, so if you look at the feel of Hudson, right, even like the downtown feel, you have in historic downtown, you have the bottom, like, commercial, and above it, historically, you have residential? Right? I think we only have two

apartments above downtown.

Right. But historically, right, that's kind of what the look and feel of it is, and that's how it was built. Right? It was built for, you know, retail commercial on the bottom, some residential on top. Is that and I know on the Darrow Road side of the zoning, it's saying like potentially you could have that. You could have commercial retail on the bottom. You could have residential above it, but not on the 1st Floor along that Road. So are you saying that in your view that would not fit with the rest of Hudson?

I don't know that your premise is correct actually.

I mean, might not be.

That's fine. No, I don't know that, I mean, as I being on the as I think about the businesses that are on Main Street that were there. Historically, the people that own them did not live up above.

And I don't think our vision was to replicate Downtown Hudson in front of Joanne Fabrics.

It most certainly was not. Right.

Right. The fact that the buildings Downtown Hudson and in and in 1st And Main have room up above for living or other retail, whatever or offices, whatever its purpose it is, it was I don't think it was anybody's idea that we could just copy cookie cutter that and drop it in front of Joanne's, we'd all be great. That was never the idea. Was

No. Never the We're like fit. Right? So we're looking at does it does that road have kind of the fit and feel of the rest of Hudson?

Today? More yeah. Today, it's our

convention that

it does not. Yeah.

It's more about bringing the buildings to the the street and having the parking in the rear is what we're really focusing on as far as the streetscape goes. And then, yeah, beautifying the median, know, on tariffs.

Put it this way. If the Ace Hardware building, something happened to it, and they needed to rebuild that building, it would have been the comprehensive plan committee's interpretation that if that building needed to be rebuilt, if that plaza over there needed to be rebuilt, it would be rebuilt in a way that the building would be closer to the street with parking in the back. That was that was the intent of that future land use map.

Got it. So it's like a I mean, think the ACME. Right? So ACME has it's huge. It has this huge parking lot, but it does have buildings up front on the street so that you don't necessarily see the parking quite as easily. Correct. Yeah.

Correct. So the Joann's Building could stay as it is, but you could beautify the streetscape with smaller individual buildings or maybe a small plaza that had two or three, you know, individual units to it that are street focused with parking behind.

And if that area, with the streetscapes and nice looking everything, if that had housing, how would that not be consistent with the plan, with the comprehensive plan?

Because we never intended to have any housing in that area.

A lot of it is driven by the feedback on the survey. Know that apartments, for example, were not a popular thing. I know that here we talk about 31% of people wanting them. We would maybe not agree with that 30% number. It's more like 20. But 80% of the people said they don't want that. You know, so focusing on that little part and you know, most of the people did not want that. So that's why we didn't think of that because people weren't asking for it. So

I guess I don't see some of those things as like a a binary decision. So 37% of the people said that

So I think

affordability was a big thing. And then 55% said that we should try to have housing that covers all stages of life. I guess I'm just

Yeah, think if there was anything that in the survey results that was something that we could act on with housing was the concept of first floor living. Ranch homes, you know, that's what people did express that we could use more.

Jossi, thanks for everything. This has been very helpful to me and clarified a lot. My only question is, kind of just based off of that, I agree with a lot of things you're saying and it makes a lot of sense to me, but when you think about interpreting things and when some of the first pictures you guys showed us were some of the things that people wanted, and I do know we need different housing options, and I think in the comprehensive plan, I would say this could potentially, based off the comprehensive plan, have some options for different type of housing just from me looking on the as an outsider, looking in, right, and and trying to understand it. I like the concept bringing it to the street and beautifying it. I think that's that's great, But I guess that would probably be my only thing where I guess I can kind of see though, if we do need some different styles of housing, maybe that could play into it from just someone that's not very knowledgeable on the comprehensive plan in general.

Like, I was not in the beginning.

Well, the so the the free market reigns. And when people are trying to sell their house, they love it that there's not many houses for sale. And you know when they get really excited? When they wanna buy the other house. Oh, jeez. What? Right? So all these first Floor master houses that everybody wanted, they could have them. There's no rule about a developer putting buying property and putting them up. And they wanted to do it for 700, $800,000. You could have all the 1st floor masters you wanted. But the developer said, well, that would screw us financially. Uh-huh. Yep. Sure would.

And the people selling the big houses don't wanna spend all that money on such a small place. We have all this big right? So we, you, you can't control exactly what gets built. That's what the market does. Yeah. The market controls that stuff. So there's and and and I've said as I've said frequently, and unfortunately, no one's really corrected me, I need to lose some weight, and I love the cheesy bacon fries at yours truly. I have both of those things in my head at the same time. Okay? People people so what people do.

We have the survey. That's what happened. We want more open space and we need more stuff on this. Right? It happens all the time.

But to your point, if it if it's the market, it'll do it. So if you look at the the challenges, right, absolutely traffic is number one, hands down. But then if you look at housing affordability, which is 37%, variety of housing, which is 33%, if you like, just look at those two housing, that's 70%. That then outweighs traffic. If you look at just those two housing concerns, outweighs the traffic concern is housing affordability and variety of housing.

You're adding the two together?

And what what housing? What was the other one? Sorry.

For the challenges in Hudson.

You can't add the two together.

Adding

You add them the all up that's over 300%. Right? I mean

But if you're looking at like two of the if you look fine. If you just look at the top four challenges. Uh-huh. Traffic, housing affordability, infrastructure, variety of housing are the top four. Right?

Right.

Right. So two of the top four are in hands up, traffic number one. Two of the top four are related to housing.

Right. Because they wanna they wanna sell, they wanna get in. But we we and you don't control what a builder wants to do with their property.

With the zoning. Right now, we're trying to control whether or not you're allowed to put any housing or not. That is absolutely controlling. That's not the market. That's us controlling. Right now, we're trying to figure so it's not the market.

So you would you would could imagine zoning a 10 acre parcel so you can only have first floor master buildings here.

No. I'm not but what I'm saying is you can't zone it to not allow something and say, well, that's market.

So on can we look at this and talk about which quest which one are you looking at?

Over the challenges.

No. Which question were you looking at?

I was gonna ask. So when you look at the when you look at when people ask about the challenges and the number one was traffic. Oh, question six? Six, okay. So we have, you'll get the number two and number four. So two of the top are related to housing. Right? And and I absolutely and I completely agree with what you said. In the congressman plan, it does not say put housing here. I agree with you. It does not say that.

And it doesn't say make cheaper

housing. Nor should it.

No. But so but then my question is, right, when I'm thinking about, you know, when housing affordability and variety of housing and when I have people who do say they want 1st Floor Masters or they just want a variety or they want townhomes, so then my question is

then this let's go to the other question housing questions.

This question, could pick three. So the same person could have picked both of

them. Absolutely, they could have. Yeah. Okay. But just in general, so like the number two housing affordability. Right? So if I'm thinking about, alright, if housing is an issue, and I will just say from what I heard from people, right, out and, you know, not I did hear concerns about housing and wanting more variety of housing and people wanting to downsize into that and people wanting the potential for their kid to move here. Right? Is that possible or not? I don't know. But I did hear people say that, which to me matches, you know, some of what you're seeing here. Right? So then and I completely agree with you where no one said they wanted housing here, but then kind of the mismatch for me in my mind is there's a lot of things people want. As you said, there's a lot of things people want, and not all of not all of them are possible. Right.

If some of them are consistent. Right. If some of them are, then my then now what I'm thinking about is, well, then where does that exist? Right? So if we are gonna address some of the housing, right, not all of it, if we're gonna address some of it, the question is where does it go?

Okay. So I think I think there's a lot to unpack there. First, I I wanna say that, during the comprehensive plan and we were working on this, we talked a lot about what types of housing is, and how does that go about, right? And since that is my career of choice, is residential real estate, I'm very familiar. And unfortunately, most people don't understand that if you want a ranch, they don't understand that it costs more.

Your roof and your foundation are the most expensive pieces of your build. So if you only do one story, it costs a lot more to build that 1,500 square foot footprint, because of the cost of the roof and the foundation. And that doesn't change when you add a second floor. Okay? So the overall costs are still there, but I can get more house if I add a second floor.

So from a builder's point of view, why would they sell a smaller house for less money when it doesn't cost them double to add a second floor that I can sell for more money? Okay. So there's some building factors there that play. So that when somebody says I really want a ranch, are they willing to pay the cost to get it? Because a builder or a developer isn't gonna sell something cheaper because somebody wants to buy it at that price.

They're gonna take whatever they can get for it. That is business. They're doing it to make money, not faulting for it, that's just what it is. But in terms of this question, this was one question of many. So if you wanna dive into the housing specifics, we jump down to the other questions and just like I said before, you can't just look at one question and derive one answer for from it.

Yeah. There's a lot of

Staff heard from me last Thursday as much as they are tired of hearing from me about some of the statistics that went into the boards and the flyer that went out Thursday. Because I didn't think that some of the numbers they chose were reflective of what the commission came up with. So let's go over that. So there are several questions about housing. The key ones are questions ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen.

The first one talks about growth. So this includes restaurant and housing and industrial too, right? But here at the bottom is residential. If we go to the key, you'll see that overwhelmingly people feel that the amount of growth that we have in residential is just right. And if you have been paying attention to residential growth in Hudson for the last ten years, it has been very little.

We could get numbers from staff over the last ten years of building residential, a small neighborhood here, a single house there, one street there. It's been very minimal. Okay. So if we hold that our finger on that and say, overall, people are happy with very minimal residential development, right? If we go down to the next one that says, how much more of the following types of developments would you like to see?

Let's jump down again to residential development, which is here in the middle and the key at the bottom. So it says no more, no more, a little more, and I can't see the thing every time. No more, a little more, more or far more. So if we infer from above that people liked the amount that we have been doing for the last several years, which was not a lot, And this one confirms that. That 40, is that a five?

45% say they don't want to see more residential development. And even more so, 39 say they wanna see a little more. So the statistics that were presented last Thursday made it sound like a lot of people want residential apartments, but this says people don't want residential development hardly at all. Doesn't that

say 55% do want? No.

This says 45 of people want no more residential development.

Right. But then how how many people want any more do want more? Do?

Three and twelve.

That's 15%.

One five.

But we also 39 want

a little 39 want some more. A a little more.

Right. A

little more. But but but

you can't add those numbers together. Why not? Because that's

I mean, I mean, it depends on how you cut it. Right? Are you are you cutting it who wants more and who wants less? Right?

I'm say I'm saying again, this is one question and that one set of set of responses. If already, if we combine the previous question in this one, you are on track to say that the community as a whole does not want a lot of residential development. Let's go on to the next one. Question 12. I'm sorry.

Oh, yeah. I agree with you. Support not want a lot. A 100%. I agree you.

Support for the follow want some.

Sure. A lot. No. I would yeah. I would agree with yeah.

Support for the following actions that the city of Hudson can take can take to address housing priorities. So if we say encouraging senior housing options, encourage development of new condos, encourage development of apartment rentals. So, here's our things. Let's just look at the bottom two, which is I believe this is where staff had the 31% was combining a couple of these numbers, which fine, let's just ignore that total that they came up with. But let's just say, okay, I wanna first point out we had multiple arguments over Discussion.

The I'm sorry, discussion. Definitions of what a condo is and what is an apartment. So we have to take some assumption here that not everybody answering these has the same definitions as everybody else in this room. But again, if we're asking people the question was, how much support do you have for taking the following actions as a priority? 58% of people say they are not supportive of new apartment rentals.

58, that's a significant amount which supports the last two questions that we just said. Not a whole lot of people want new residential. If you go to the one above and include condos, you're still at 32. I understand that 31% say they are somewhat supportive of doing some, But again, that's one answer or one section of three questions now where really the overwhelming response is we don't want a lot of residential development. Let's move on to the next one. Question 13, how residents feel about the availability of the housing types here in Hudson already? So this is what's existing.

But can you go back? Can you back to sorry. Can you go back to the condos?

The one above the question above?

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean I I mean I see your point where right. So you have 32% said not supportive. 24%, you know, neutral. You know, they're neither for against whatever. You have 30% 31% supportive, but then you have 14% very supportive. So you have 31% and the 14% are all people who are supportive, varying degrees of support. So you actually have more in support.

Which I think is critical to point out though is that it's not like, I feel like with not supportive, they're not saying that they're even a little supportive. They're just saying not supportive period. And I also kind of feel like when we're trying to add these, it might be just splitting hairs at this point because I kind of feel that when we're doing the 30,000 foot view, it's you know, that we're just taking the red section in this scenario of that they're just not supportive. And so I think that having a little support is saying that, okay, it's good if we see a house come up here or there or you know, condos or whatever, but overwhelmingly it was we don't wanna see anything more.

I think the general feeling was that the population is happy with the rate of growth that we have, which we already established as a minimal amount of residential growth. So if we're going to talk about District 11 with a potential of 200 apartment units, that's a significant increase from what we've seen in that particular subset of housing in the last ten years. That's a significant increase. So again, I'm trying to encourage that we as all intelligent people here, don't just look at one answer of one question and pull one number out or combine two numbers because it looks pretty. I'm encouraging that we look at all of these things as a whole and logically derive an answer that makes sense by looking at all of them.

If again, if we go back to the initial, calm down Todd, values of the of what we derive from all of the questions that we asked, the priorities were protecting downtown, our quality of schools, and the safety. The changes to district eleven offer nothing to those items. They do it does, however, if we're talking about housing specifically, 200 apartment units in District 11 does increase the the number one negative feeling for all residents, which is traffic. So I have and I would think the rest of the complaint committee is going to say the same thing. How do we balance the values of what people prioritize and take the thing that they are most afraid of, if traffic is their primary concern, and promote a change that is not supported by their priorities and only increases what they're they're most concerned of.

And I'm specifically talking about residential. And if we go through these questions that talk about residential, I think you will all agree that limited to very little increase in housing is what all of these questions are. Can we say that people really want first floor housing or a ranch? Yeah, there are significant people. If you gave me 60 of them, could probably sell them all to clients in a week. However, that is not responsible to do that when the plan overall and all of the people are saying we don't want a ton of development. Hello? Our biggest concern is traffic. Our biggest concern is traffic. Our biggest concern is traffic.

So we have to address that elephant in the room before we go adding to the problem, which housing will do.

I think we're also missing another important point, and maybe staff can address this. We're talking about a big area that we hope will be filled by some kind of business. But in this day and age, it's really hard to attract businesses anywhere, light Absolutely. Light industrial, whether it's a dental office, whether it's and so what I would ask staff is what they have found nationally, statewide, locally. What do you need to do to make yourself different to attract them?

And I think that we have to look at that too. We have to balance. Are we gonna let that? Right now there's not, I mean they're working really hard, the owners, but we have to make something to differentiate it from all the other places around. Maybe Katie you can address any of that.

I just wanna say, are they? Is IRG working really hard to change their building to encourage something? I haven't seen anything. I'm asking a legitimate question.

Yeah, and also just to add on to that. I mean, they knew what they were buying. They're a big company.

Right, but do

we want it to stay I know, yeah.

With nothing. And I think again, if we can come up with some innovative ideas, but maybe Katie, you could address that.

I mean, I think everybody wants to see progress happen in that those spaces are backfilled. And my conversations with missus Banke have been right on on with that and asking her how do we if this was Katie Banky's world, what goes there and how do we attract them? Right? But again, we have to lay the foundation work and fix the things that we need to fix so that we can manage that and protect the citizens first. Sorry IRG, I really don't care what their bottom line is. I care about the community the things that have been put in place by our residents. And I know she's working really hard. I've had far too many conversations and taking up her time in doing that and I absolutely would love for her to give us our expertise.

Hi. I think of just a couple of things I think that were responsive to that but if there's more specific detail you want me to get into I certainly can. So I brought up with me Team NEO who is the regional economic development agency for the Northeast Ohio area under JobsOhio provides a report each year, this is the developing opportunities guide. They came and actually spoke to the city council subcommittee that was working on drafting the District 11 proposal and this is one of the materials that they presented on. So I'll give a couple quick statistics from here that were used to inform some of the work.

So we did have in the Northeast Ohio region, had a great year in 2025 for the number of leads or RFIs that were coming into the pipeline. In 2025, 70% of the searches requested an existing facility. So as I've talked with many of you, that's great we have an existing building. The reason that sits behind that is new construction is very expensive right now. So we've got a building so that puts us checking a box for 70% of those leads.

However of those, 21% requested a standalone facility. Now technically we have one standalone building but we're kind of looking for that unicorn tenant if we're trying to fill the 1,400,000 square feet with one tenant. So we are more likely than not going to be in a multi tenant situation. And so that does put us a little bit, know, it takes 20% of those leads out of our pipeline coming into the JoAnn.

20% of the 70% whom want a standalone tenant?

Correct. Okay.

And then for the average size range, so leads are asking for between 62,098 square feet. So we obviously have way more than that and if you were to take our building and even subdivide it down to those sizes, you'd be looking at quite a few tenants. So as I've spoken with many of you, that means that we don't have to win just one site selection search, we have to win a whole handful of them. Right? Our building has to be compelling to many users that will commit to the site over time.

I will share that the proposed demolition or not demolition, demising plan to turn the building into a multi tenant situation looks at sizes that are about 200 to 250,000 square feet. So we are above the average and the reason for that, it's not that IRG doesn't know the market or you know anything like that, the reason for that is where there are structural walls, building height and ceiling heights change that just make logical breaks from a construction and demising standpoint. Another question that was raised was around what is IRG doing to work to refill the site? There are some things that I'm able to share, they work actively, they have a broker, they use CBRE for the office industrial space, they came up with an entire kind of marketing plan, branding for it, Hudson Industrial District which you've probably seen on the signs as you drive by. A group between CBRE, the ownership, myself and the county work to submit the building to those RFI leads as they come in.

So we're probably submitting the building you know several times a month if we check enough of the boxes as far as matches. For those that were able to attend the broker open house, you saw that they've invested without a tenant on the line to white big white box some of the industrial space. What that means is they've taken out the inefficient and older infrastructure inside of the building, they upgraded to LED lights, they put a fresh coat of paint on which doesn't sound like a lot but you know what a difference that can make in a space just to make it look more modern. They took the Joann lime green out so that it could be visualized as kind of more an empty blank canvas and a business could see themselves moving in. So they have taken some of those steps to kind of make it show ready and more appealing to prospective leads and they are actively showing it.

You know, I can't share a lot but there have been preliminary conversations with some interested parties, don't think there's anybody like you know, moving in by any means but they are actively working on the site and we have been engaged in that process. And then I you know, I think one of the things we've talked about is with whatever the zoning ends up being here at this site, I think comprehensive plan, we kind of touched on it earlier, there's heavy industrial allowed at the site today and moving down to the slight industrial flex feels a little bit more in line with the community character but we're taking uses out there, right? And so just thinking about balancing that need with refilling the income tax, Do we want to narrow the options or keep them more open or so I think that's the juggling act that we're all working on. Was there anything else in that set of questions that I missed?

Are there any other things that would make it more innovative that would attract?

Yeah, yes. I think you know velocity broadband definitely has a great reputation and people are excited to hear that those things are available. Our cell service in that area of town needs improvement. I hear that from the area employers. I know you've experienced it, Councilman Presovic. You know, I think that seems like a small thing but if you're looking to site 200 employees there and come for your building tour and your phone doesn't work the whole time you're there, you notice that, right? You notice that. So I think that's a challenge but the other infrastructure is very strong. Know it was built for an industrial user so we've got great water, we've got great electric, it is not an HPP customer, it's FirstEnergy but those things are all working in our favor.

So

I Katie and think we kind of have come complete full circle and we have a good understanding of sort of why we're here. So if, like I think we, as we talked about in the beginning, if that space was filled by an employer yesterday, we'd

be

done with council meeting tonight. I'll be going home. But it's not. And the reason why the initial subcommittee was formed a year ago and presented its results in August was that we talk about values, but safety, parks, sidewalks take money. And yeah, are we still fiscally doing great thanks to Knoblok's work and Tom and Brian and the city staff, yes.

But there are things that we will not be able to do as fast as quickly with regards to safety services, with regards to parks, with regards to sidewalks. So do we want to sell our soul for that? No. But maybe there's what we were exploring was changes to the code that could make it more attractive to employers and to employees so that that place isn't sitting empty and a year or two from now, it is being filled and being used. So that's the challenge that we're dealing with right now.

And those decisions are that we're trying to make. We really want to get that space filled. And maybe there's and that's why the plan development piece was thrown out in that not thrown out, was put in there because it would, yeah, we would have to do some additional things would be allowed, but it would have a whole lot more scrutiny much more closely watched and evaluated before that could go into place. But so I don't know if we have any more people that would need to share information. Jesse, do you wanna?

Well, just wanna say that's part of Planning Commission's concern is that the review process for planned development is non existent. So to say that the planned development would allow for more scrutiny, no. The conditional uses, you could limit conditional uses there with some of these changes. But the scrutiny by Planning Commission and Council, there is no additional limitations there, and that was part of our concern. With the plan development, that's some of the language that needs to be corrected.

I'd like to make a comment about the cell service. I don't I've not noticed that. And I could imagine that we could say the additional cell tower to be installed in that area would be expensive and unsightly and not really fit into the whole feng shui of the town. But if getting really great phone service enabled us to rent that space, by all means, we should investigate that and trying to get that done like right now for sure, which is a totally different thing than putting in 200 apartments. Completely different.

So I do not believe that anybody on the commission was so resolute that there was no room for moderation of things that made sense that were super compelling. But 200 apartments in a town where we where the vast majority of people from various sources don't want it is not success. And I'm glad you mentioned that not selling our souls. Absolutely right. I'm only here for the soul of the town. That's the only reason I'm participating because I care about the place. I love the place. And absolutely right. Tax revenue be damned.

I have something to say.

Let's say we get rid of the housing.

That too. I came here tonight prepared with prepared remarks to deal with questions 10 to 14, but it's already been dealt with so I don't have to spend my time or or your more precious time to deal with the same issue. I do wanna say a couple of things. Could you go up to the page? There's the page after that one. I'm on question 14. Yeah. That one. That's a very interesting question because what it says is if you were gonna move in the next five or

ten

years, where would you would you go? I mean, what what kind of housing do you want? And, could you pull it up a little further? Rental apartments, 2%. Townhomes, 4%.

And then first floor living, 32%. So so you could see that the the market in this town for rental apartments and townhomes is tiny compared to the other the other options. So when we're talking about, well, let's put some apartments in, I don't think that's realistic because it's not gonna happen. And except it's gonna make us look uglier. That's my that's my conclusion personally. And and the the data that they've already gone through shows that.

What what the within people the town.

What the people want is they want 1st floor living. There was a majority of slight majority that said they wanted 1st floor living so they kept ranch houses. And as as Jesse pointed out, that's hard to do, but gee whiz, if if you had a space that you could tell some developer, you can go in here if you put in one floor one floor plans. I'll bet you somebody would do that. And, of course, it would be more expensive than what some people want, but you can't get cheap housing in Hudson.

That's the problem. And we had big debates about that at the comprehensive plan steering committee. We had a discussion about that. And we decided we decided collectively that we can't do anything about the high cost of living in Hudson. We can't do anything about it. The market controls that.

Right.

And and we just can't go and say, okay. Well, we want cheap housing because it won't happen. Right. I guess that's that's all I that's all I have to add to what's already been said.

Any other comments?

Mr. Ramo,

had I a

was just gonna say, let's say we eliminated the housing. I think from most of us up here, our standpoint is to try to be fiscally responsible to get something in there that we're not missing opportunities. Personally didn't feel like we were rushing to get this done. I just feel like it is a very big property, and it is a really important piece for economic development within our city, and from just my few years of learning more about our finances, we need this revenue to be able to continue to do things, like Doctor. Bird said it perfectly, that we want to do.

So that was my only, I guess, rush is I do want to see someone come in and fulfill this and to provide us things, all the nice things that we wanna continue to do within our city. So I definitely hear everyone's suggestions and really what they don't want, and so I think this has been very helpful. And hopefully we can thoughtfully come up with something that we can all align with.

Okay. This is

kind of our closing remarks. Take

us home, Kyle.

I don't know about that, but Jesse and everybody, thank you so much for this time. It's been very enlightening. It's been very informative. I think this is a conversation that really needed to happen. There's obviously been a lot of passionate discussion about this over the past month, month and a half, and I think this has helped everybody involved. What I'd ultimately like to see is this not be a council versus planning commission type of discussion, but planning commission comprehensive plan council discussion that gets us to a solution that everybody is happy with. And I think today's talk really helps us get to that path.

Excellent. That was excellent. Yes. Yeah. Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you. Thank you.

Appreciate it. You guys get to leave now and we'll stay.

But you don't have to.

I mean, you don't have to.

I was here last night till eleven.

I know you were.

Wow. One item done.

So that was 203, District 11 discussion. I might have missed saying that in the beginning. And then next is 3B26-twenty4, fire and EMS department overviews. Chief Barnes.

Good evening, everyone.

Good evening. Anybody

that knows me knows that I can speak forever about FireEMS, and I promise that's not gonna be

tonight. Okay. Awesome.

So I'll be as quickly through this as I can. I believe all of you got the information that I sent, and so I'm not gonna really read any of it. I'm gonna touch on a couple of highlights that I know were hot topics. The response numbers, I think, was a big thing that was important to people. So I wanted to talk about that.

We'll start with the EMS response numbers. NFPA, which is standard that is a goal for us, it's not a requirement for EMS. They don't separate nighttime and daytime, but sixty seconds is the time that is a goal nationally to try to get out the door from the time of call till that the wheels are rolling, as they like to say. And so we're at sixty four seconds is our average for 2025. And the only thing I can say about that, things, things are different depending on who keys the mic, if the vehicle started before by the person, or is it that person has to run to the restroom or, you know, all those things can change.

So sixty four seconds, I'm fine with. The nighttime generally accepted across the country is between fire chiefs is anywhere between ninety and one hundred and twenty seconds, and we're at ninety three, so I'm fine with that. Total calls for service went back three years. Twenty six fifteen is where we were, and we're on pace for 3,000 this year. So we're already increasing.

Further down in there, I wanted to just show you the number of personnel that we have, how they break down with the full time, part time volunteers. I was asked to give, some of the alternate certifications to show that everybody what we have. So we have just a plethora of people, that have certifications in everything that you can have from instructors to SWAT medics to, nurses and everything else. And that just brings me to say, and this is the topic that I could talk forever tonight, but everything about Bullfire and EMS is the people. It's just amazing.

The dedicated people that we have, the qualified people that we have, the diversity of people that we have in their certifications, their knowledge, their dedication. And I've just got to stop there because I could just go on forever about it. But it's just phenomenal. And that's not even all of the certifications. I just wanted to highlight some of the more unique and special ones that we have.

So you can read those on your own, and I won't spend any more time on that. But it's just phenomenal, all of the special things that our people can do. And I'm just so proud of that. On the next page for EMS personnel, a lot of people talk about the differences between fire and EMS. I wanted to show some people say, Oh, it's kind of revolving door at EMS and how many people come in and come out.

And you can make numbers, say whatever you want, but I wanted to go back three years and show, yes, we did have 12 EMTs resign or retire and 19 medics resign or retire in the last three years. So that's a total of 31 people. But we also hired eight EMTs and 17 medics. So you bring in 25, 31 leave, I don't think that's a revolving door, knowing that we are a training facility. We are bringing people in for the purpose of training them to be be able to go out and get another job somewhere.

And so in today's world, the idea is you get them young, they come in, you train them, and they are immediately looking for that full time career somewhere else. We're not that full time career location at this point. We will be someday, but reality is we are a part time service that we're one of the only part time services that you don't have to be a firefighter to be on our EMS. That's one of the unique things we have at Hudson EMS. So they're coming in.

They're getting their EMT certification, and they're looking around. And those those young people are looking for, where can I go and then get my fire certification and then be a fire medic somewhere? We will pay to train them, then they'll go out, and then they'll get that full time job. So we're a unique place. EMS is different.

You don't have to live in Hudson to be on EMS, and that's what's different. It's not that family oriented, gotta live in Hudson, be here forever kind of a place. And that's the difference between Hudson EMS and Hudson Fire. And I did wanna put in there the that was a request that I was asked for how many people are cross trained and working on EMS and fire, so I wanted to show some of those certifications. And then I was asked what criteria does it take to be an EMT and a paramedic.

So those are the state certifications that every EMT and every paramedic in the state of Ohio, we are held to those same standards and what does it take, what the number of hours to get it, and then what do you have to do to become recertified and stay certified. So I listed all those out. Don't have to go in anymore unless anybody has any questions about any of those. And for the sake of brevity, I'll just stop there and move on unless anybody has any other questions. Move on to the fire personnel.

Here's the big difference as I talked about. This is a group of people that they all must live in Hudson, so far. The new hires that we're gonna be bringing on, they won't have to live in Hudson because they're gonna be, for lack of a better term, kind of the hires that come in, they work a shift, and then they leave. So they won't be required to live in town. So, well, currently, everybody must live because they're responding in to come to fire. But the new hires that we're gonna be bringing on won't have to do that. But our response time, the NFPA standard is a minute and twenty seconds. We're currently in a minute fifty eight. I didn't put it on here, but there's one big reason for that. We're in our construction mode.

Our gear, you put it on and you have to run outside, go outside the building, come around, open the key code to the door, come back inside, then get on the truck, and then go to the call. Because we don't have a place where we can store our gear and then be inside because of construction. So that's a little bit of a delay, that's gonna change as soon as construction's done, and we'll be able to be back in. So we did wanna call that out. And then our non staff response time when we are at home and you have to drive into the call, you see that difference in time.

And that's where we were before, and you can see the big difference. So vast improvement on when we're staffed on station versus when we're not. So I wanted to call those out for you. Our calls for service, we're at five ninety. I think we're gonna be much closer to about 700, seven twenty five this year when we're done. So we're moving higher on that list. Go down to the personnel, you show the number of people that we have. Then get down to the certifications, just like I called out for there. The vast majority of very unique certifications that we have. We have nurses.

We have every technician, every version of weapons of mass destruction technicians, rail car specialists, rope technicians, everything that you have there, all the NIMS training that we have. On to the next page. As you see, far less resignations, far less retirements, and far more hirings of the firefighters over the last three years compared to EMS because this is that family atmosphere, that group that has to live in Hudson. And it's just a total different mindset of that group because these are people that I went to high school with. They were ushers at my wedding.

These are people that we socialize in a whole different version of people. So it's a different group looking at coming up with our hiring process. We've already vetted, and we're gonna be hiring people sometime in the next couple weeks. We've got those 12 people that are gonna help us fill that nighttime outfitting that will be in place to be able to be working those shifts as soon as the construction is done, which may be as soon as August, but promised will be in by September, Labor Day, as soon as that construction is completed. So we've got 12 people that are in the process of completing that hiring process, and we're gonna have that swearing in ceremony by the April.

We've got those 12 new. We're all gonna be required to be Ohio Firefighter II trained. They won't have to be a paramedic, but we're offering currently, as we have been, any EMT or firefighter on Hudson, we will pay to send them to paramedic or EMT school if they would like to, and vice versa for EMS. Anybody that is on Hudson EMS, we will pay to send them to firefighter school if they would like to do that. So that's a perk of being on Hudson EMS or Hudson Fire.

So they're gonna be prepared. And down the road, when that day comes, that merger that is eventually going to be happening, they will have had the opportunity to get that accreditation so they could be part of that merged service when that day does come. You can see also at the request, if somebody wants to know how many we have that cross training capability. Those are the numbers of people that are working for EMS but have accreditation and those that not working for EMS. Further down on there, this is one of the things that I'm probably most proud of is you see in the state of Ohio, you're required by state law, if you're a firefighter in the state, you're required to have thirty six hours of continuing education every three years.

So if you divide it by three, that's twelve hours of continuing ed for a firefighter per year. And the very bottom line there, in '20 well, not at the bottom. The bottom of that list under 2025, we averaged over our 43 firefighters firefighters ninety nine hours of training per firefighter in 2025. So if you're required to add twelve, we had ninety nine per firefighter. And then that very bottom paragraph there, over that those last three years, we averaged eighty hours per firefighter per year with a total of not over nine thousand hours of training that was was completed by our firefighters.

That's a huge amount of training. If you think about it, because that was before we went to that part time model, and almost all of those were volunteer firefighters doing that. It's a huge amount of training. Monster amount of training. So very, very proud proud of that. So proud of our EMS and firefighters, the EMTs, paramedics, volunteer, part time, whatever you wanna call it. It's all about our people, and I'm very proud of that. I did include, you saw it, the chart. Thank you. The flow chart.

My goodness. Having a brain shutdown there. Shown that. Everybody has saw that. If anybody has any questions about those org charts for the people, it very clearly shows what we have, the number of people that we have there. And if anybody has any questions about those, if not, I'll keep moving on. I didn't include, obviously, we're in the middle of the remodel. It's going amazingly well. The the the contractor is doing a great job. We're on track.

We're in the middle of that process. It's a little tight on quarters, but we're going ahead and we're doing everything that we can. We got a great group of people working there and, it's on track. I did include that. The last sheet that I included on there, was you guys wanna go into this tonight, I included the study that I did on the senior care facilities.

And I know that was a hot topic. And I gave you I didn't include names, so I didn't want to embarrass any of the care facilities there. So I just gave them numbers. But I thought, one of the most important numbers, the very bottom number on the right hand side, In 2025, the number of our EMS transports that we had, 46% of our transports were from a senior care facility. Facility.

Of Of all all of of our our transports, transports, of 46 of the time, they were coming from a senior care facility in Hudson. That to me is such a telling number. You guys are talking and debating about what to do about our senior care facilities. For all of those transports, the 1,819 transports, you sit there and you think about that, 46% of those came from the senior cares. And we're talking about building more, we're talking about do we want to try to limit where they're located to try to keep them closer?

Are we talking about trying to put a moratorium on them? What are we trying to do? We have a lot of them. We are an aging community that we have more seniors. That's a topic that's above my pay grade, but it is something that's very, very important to be aware of. Until I did this study, I knew that we we had a lot of senior care runs, but I had no idea that 40 per 646% of our transports, all of our transports, were senior care facilities.

We know how many total people are in all these facilities?

I don't have that number with me, but I can easily get that. Sure.

So that was a that's

a good point

because Kyle, did you raise your hand before I started to speak? Yes. Okay, Kyle, go ahead.

If you could go back to the first page you showed on the EMS that had similarly because you can see here 2003, 2004, 2005, the percentage stayed pretty consistent. It was between 4650%. Here, have and you said I thought you said you were on track to closer to 3,000. So you're talking in two years nearly a 50% increase. But if the percentage of calls being from aging care facilities has stayed consistent, what is causing this large increase over the last two years?

It's it's really just the, a, an aging community, but, b, people are calling, and this is a nationwide thing, people are calling EMS more. It's just one of those things that all of our neighbors, the calls are increasing. And you hate to say it, but in in our world, we talk up they're they're Band Aid calls. They are lift assist calls. Doctor Bird, we you talked about that with doctor Carter.

These are calls that in the past, my father would have been mortified to call it ambulance because it was I cut my finger and it's bleeding and I need somebody to come bandage it. That never would have happened back in the day. But people are calling more often for less significant calls. And it is a more litigious society. Care facilities of every kind.

And that was a discussion that you also had with Doctor. Carter. We have reduced it in certain facilities. And I'll give the and one of these, you can see the reduced numbers over the years, one of our facilities, we had a very prolonged conversation with their medical director that if a patient slips out of their motorized scooter and falls on the ground, they are not required to be transported to the hospital just because they're on a blood thinner. And if they didn't hit their head, they are cognizant and aware, and they're saying, I'm fine.

They don't need to be transported to the hospital. But of the other eight, six of them, their policy is they must go to the hospital. No exceptions. Because their medical director, who may or may not be located in California, has a policy that says, oh, they're on Coumadin. They must go to the hospital because they could have a bleed and they have to go there and get checked out. But that patient slid on their rear end out of their scooter onto the ground and says, I'm fine. I didn't hit my head. I'm not Lee. I'm fine. No.

The policy is you must go to that. That has increased exponentially and our call volume goes up. And they are in a facility with 11 RNs there in the facility. They're still sitting on the ground when we get there.

But that increase has been going on for far longer than the past two years. Oh, yeah. Because those numbers show that over the past two, three, whatever it is, years, it's been consistently between 4750%.

It's going up.

But the total number of calls cumulatively Nationally. Right.

It's it's just getting worse and worse and worse. Interesting. And and across the board, we're just getting people who are calling more frequently. And as as you know, just in the medical field today, people are just not as willing and capable to take care of themselves, and so they're coming in more often for less significant injuries. And so that's what we're dealing with. It's just something that happens. And and, unfortunately, our call volume is going up, And we are getting closer and closer to the day that we're gonna have to staff three ambulances instead of the two with the third call being on to a third crew call in. But we're we're not there yet. We're we're getting closer.

I have a million questions.

I have

a million questions.

I'm done.

You're going.

You had a question. No, you were going. I wanted to start first with you said we're paying for the EMS program for them to go to school, but they're not staying? Why are we wasting our money paying for them when we are not even keeping them?

When you say we're not keeping them, we're offering that?

Because it Right, gives you said they're coming in young, we're getting them, they're getting their school, and then they're going on to something else.

It's an incentive to try to get them to stay, and we do get people stay. It's not I'm not saying that we're not, but it's an incentive to try to get them to stay. As an example, we pay to have people that go through EMT class. And if they stay after EMT class and we get them to stay for a year, we will reimburse them for the cost of that EMT class. And we hope during that year's time that we've hooked them, we've got them very desirous to wanna stay with that.

So we've got a year of them volunteering, and we hope that we've hooked them and got them to stay. And if we do, then we'll give them a check to pay for that EMT class, the cost of the EMT class that we taught. And the goal is during that year's time, we want them to stay. Some of them do, some of them don't. It's an incentive tool that we use. And it sounds bad, but it's the numbers aren't you hire 25, you lose 31 over a three year period. That's not a terrible number, but it is a loss. You're bringing in 25, you're losing 30

to

able that. But we are still we're continuing to do hire. As And you see, we have more people. We have nine people in the hiring process actively, and the goal is to keep more people than we lose, but it is a training facility.

On page the four zero four, it says, firefighters currently in the hiring process. HFD does not require an EMT or paramedic certificate to be hired. I was under the impression all of our new firefighters will be cross trained. Is that stating that they are not cross trained currently?

Define what you mean by cross trained.

So they're not just a firefighter. They are either EMS certified or paramedic certified.

That is absolutely not true. No, they are not required to be paramedics. They're offered to be able to be sent to paramedic school. They are coming in, and they are all firefighter two trained for the state of Ohio, which does not mean that they're paramedics. But they're coming in, and they are going to be firefighter two trained, and they're gonna be offered to be able to go to paramedic school. But it is they're being hired to be on the fire department, not to be on EMS.

Okay. I was told I was under the impression that we were everyone is it is that is the nor the new norm. New firefighters are cross trained period. It's more fiscally responsible, we need to get rid of our volunteer program, and we have cross trained personnel both sides. All new firefighters coming in. Why are we not doing that?

There are a number of reasons that we're not doing that. Cannot be on EMS unless you are a paramedic or an EMT. We are hiring people that are not paramedics and EMTs because you have to pay a fire medic a lot more money than you're paying a firefighter. You have to be working hours at EMS, and we're hiring people to work on fire, only on fire.

So you're saying you your stance right now is to keep them completely separate?

That's we are. We are completely separate. Yeah. And what we were doing with the hybrid model is we are staffing department and we're hiring people to work on the fire department. We are staffed on EMS 20 fourseven. We are staffed currently on fire for the twelve day, twelve hours during the day, and we are hiring people to staff the nighttime twelve, and then we will be staffed twenty four seven fire and EMS. And we are that's what the hybrid model is.

So where do you see this the model for our city in the next three to five years?

The what what I was directed to do was to fill that model so we have fire and EMS staffed twenty four seven, but they are two separate models. That day will come where that merger has to happen, and they are a merged fire and EMS department, one department. But currently, they are two separate departments, and that's what we are staffing is two separate departments. They are there is the ability, and we are moving towards right now, people on the fire department are not working under doctor Carter as fire and or under as paramedics or EMTs. They have that ability to be trained in a emergency to be able to go and assist EMS.

We are actively moving forward to do that. And if there's a paramedic on duty or an EMT on duty at fire that has that training, doctor Carter can authorize them to do certain things. That training is occurring right now and that procedure is in place and we're working towards being able to work under Doctor. Carter's license. But that has never been the policy. And that cross training that you're talking about, you have to work a certain number of hours at EMS to be cross trained to be able to do that. That process is happening. But they're not gonna be working at EMS. They're not gonna be working on EMS. They'll be at fire.

And if everybody at EMS is out and there's another call, the fire department fire truck can go out and, be there with the patient until the mutual aid ambulance comes in because the fire truck can't transport the that patient.

No. I definitely I see what you're saying, but with the amount of volume of EMS calls we get in a year, why are we not utilizing the people that are qualified on the fire side? It doesn't it, like, doesn't make sense in my head. I mean, there's tenfold the amount of calls for emergency services than there are for fire.

Right. But we have people there that are staffed to do

the But they're gonna get their hours is what I'm saying.

Yeah. But they're no. They're not. They're there to staff the fire truck. And if they're out on a EMS call, there's no one there to staff the fire truck.

So how many are sitting in a fire then at all times? Four. In the station?

In the station. And if they are out on an EMS going able to do do And And not to we're that. Fire. And in other departments, as an example, at a merged department, if you have 12 people on duty and you have three people per ambulance as example. And you have those EMS calls and you have a bunch of them.

There's no one left to staff the fire truck. Where here, we have two separated departments and you have people dedicated to the ambulance, and then you have a dedicated people for a fire. If you need more ambulances, you call mutual aid. They come in. Our fire truck can go stabilize that fire that EMS person, but they're available to go to the fire call.

That's the difference. We our ambulance crew, they're available to go mutual aid to somewhere. If there's a fire call and they need an ambulance, our ambulance can go there and help them. But they're not abandoning Hudson, and there's now no one to be there for the fire. And so there is a plus and a minus to a hybrid model. We are benefiting of the pluses, and that was the model that was determined that council wanted to move ahead with, and that's what we're filling. And that's what we're hiring is we're cross training the people that we have, and we're able to now move them ahead and work under Doctor. Carter's license.

Sorry to interrupt you, Jerry. With Doctor. Carter, this will be my last question because I know maybe other people have questions. I guess I didn't realize Doctor. Carter was just for the EMS side, right?

He's not. He's the medical director for fire, EMS, and police.

Okay. It is for everyone. Okay. Okay. That was it then.

But just to piggyback on one of your previous questions, Jerry, how many of the external firefighters are coming into the city that have, not talking about Doctor. Carter, that are paramedics and firemen out of the 12 that you are hiring, how many of those have the dual licenses? Do you

know? I don't have the exact number, but off the top of my head I believe more than half of them are either paramedics or EMTs already.

Sam They're

not required, but they are. They're working somewhere else already.

So it's almost like one of those, this is the minimum requirement and this is what we prefer, but they're all getting that training in other communities. So to kinda answer your question, they are coming in with that dual certification. And if anybody doesn't have it, then we are offering them to get that training in this case. But not mandating it. Just offering it.

Not mandating. Correct.

Correct. But if we go to full time one day, it they'll need it. So that's why I told the chief and EMS assistant chief that you have to get these people trained if they ever wanna be considered if we do go full time.

So it's not a surprise to them that, you know, whether that day is five years, ten years, two years, whenever that day is, then they've been made aware that you won't have a position here. There won't be this oh, you grandfather, do

not have

a chief. Gotcha. Yeah.

Other questions?

So I I I like the idea of Patricia had about adding in the census of these places.

Oh, yeah.

How many So that we can see

total in the senior care facilities what the census is? Yeah. We can easily get that.

So we can see how well they're doing. We can talk to Marshall about this, but I don't really have a concern with identifying these institutions. And because there's going to be ones that are high performing, ones that are lower.

I have the information. I'm happy to identify it to you. Yeah. Tom and I spoke and thought this public information going out. We thought that might not be a good thing to do.

I'm put saying

on the public record.

I'm saying it's probably Okay to do it publicly because this thing just sort of screams of the need for a community quality improvement kind of project. I'd love to see these people get, all of them getting in the room, sharing best practices.

Somebody about my opinion. Since I'm allowed to do that, I'm happy to change one through eight. The names of the people there. But I thought starting here, I agreed with Tom.

And Yeah. So we need to we need to really start start working with these folks.

And and And we we are

and helping them.

Training coordinator has a goal for this year

Yeah.

To go meet the other six that are not reducing their numbers to meet there and see if we can do what we did at the one that reduced it really well and the other that reduced it for a year and then bounced back to being not so good.

And so I have a conflict. I can't vote on any moratorium. But I think that if we find out that it is as difficult as I think it is to reduce these numbers, numbers. We're going to try. But then maybe all that's left is that at least we stop the growth.

And secondly, as we've discussed, the 97% of the time involved in one of these calls, 98%, 99%, is not the transport to the destination. It is taking care of the patient, taking him down to the hospital, sitting around while you wait, coming back. So a geographical area really doesn't save you much time at all.

It's that waiting on the wall at the hospital.

But there's other Delivery, yeah. That's Other things that we need to think about as far as do we limit the patient population if it turns out that we cannot fix this anymore. Because we don't we care about our seniors, but we also don't want the 60 year old having a big one and somebody's doing a lift assist when I need a shock to my heart kind of thing. So that's what we're trying to prevent.

One other minor component to this, and that is many, many times we're called for a transport that a private ambulance shoulda, coulda, woulda taken. But it's the nurse that's an agency nurse that's working that night that was either cognizant of the policy that said you're supposed to call a private ambulance to do that, or they disregarded it, or they called for a private, couldn't get anybody, and then it's like, oh, well, okay, I'm gonna call us.

Yeah. Other options that we need to yeah.

Yeah. And because the private ambulance services sometimes are challenging to get. And so if you call one, don't get anybody. Instead of calling 23, call Hudson EMS for the abnormal lab that's been sitting on the desk for three days. And now they call us instead of waiting for somebody else. So that's the other side of the coin that we deal with. We are emergency medical service, not three d old abnormal lab Right. Medical

One other thing is in the past we were looking into this was some type of attacks. If we if you don't do a moratorium, but if we do add any more, like a bed tax that communities do with hotels. Is is there a way we can have a tax per room if they do build these? And I'd like the solicitor to move forward with looking into those options, too, that if we do want to use for whatever reason, if you don't want to do a moratorium, but at least let's get some compensation back for the EMS department and the number of calls that you're doing these type of facilities.

I think Doctor. Carter may have mentioned to you that there's a study or an attempt, and I think it's happening on the West Coast, that they're trying these facilities that have the mandate that says you've to transport the fall that's not injured. They're now trying to say we're going to build a facility instead of the patient. If it's determined that they're not injured and they really didn't need to be transported, now we're going to build that

nine zero one whatever

to the facility instead of the patient's insurance company to try to force a change to this. So if that starts to fly either out west or out east, that may flood into the rest of the country. And we believe that's going to stop these from occurring at a policy level instead of a reality level. So that's actively happening west and east. And when that happens, usually within months, makes it to the rest of the world. So we'll see. Yeah.

I'm just curious. What are I

mean, you mentioned the the bid what are the implications right now of these calls on on on funding?

How much is this? Do you a Funding mean how much do we get?

Yeah. Like, like what is it yeah. What is this issue costing us?

Yeah. What what it's costing us, as an example, if they're a Medicare patient, we can bill upwards of $900 to $1,000 for that call, and Medicare will pay us about $200 And then if they are a City Of Hudson resident, we soft bill so we don't get the rest. So, yeah, it's it can be costing us $7.08, $900 some sometimes. If there is not a Hudson resident, then we bill them for the balance and may or may not see that depending on the patient's ability to pay. The Hudson residents typically in the Hudson area, some of those care facilities, the insurance house and other places where they may not be a Hudson resident, we do have the ability to go after that patient for it.

After Medicare or their insurance company, what they don't pay, we can go after the patient for it.

Finance director just looked it up that it's about 800,000 a year we're getting revenue from the calls, charges.

Charges or we actually get the money?

I didn't hear you.

What is the charge and then what's the actual money we get?

I don't know what the amount of the write off is off the top of my head.

We're collecting 800.

Well, we're bringing in about 800. Okay. Not As a chief talk

that we're charging, but yeah, no, don't mind that.

Okay. Any other comments or questions? So chief will be in touch and we'll do more work to be done.

We have a number of items there that we'll make sure we get back to counsel on.

Okay so page two. See TMP-eight567.

Thank you, doctor Byrd. This item came up several years ago. We were trying we we had a number of, nonprofits that were bringing us money for different various improvements across the city, and we never really had an agreement. So about mid year last year, one of the council members, the solicitor, and then I put some notes to this, basically came up with a policy. And now that we're moving into this year, I wanted to get this, kinda brought back up because it got postponed, last year and it never went anywhere.

So it was something that our parks department and the administration has wanted for many years just because we have had recent donors that have donated stuff. They didn't have it in writing and they just said, well, we want this particular improvement, and they didn't have the details to it. And then when we got down the road with, say, a design, they were like, well, that's not what I wanted. I wanted this improvement. So we felt that putting a policy together would help that.

And again, I can just go over the policy that we have written here real quick, but the purpose and the scope is all stated there. It was a requirement for nonprofit organizations. I don't know of anyone to date that I've used that is an individual, for example. They're all nonprofit. So if that's not clear in here, but most of them come from the Kiwanis Foundation which is a five zero one(three), the Kiwanis do have a five zero one(four), but we would be accepting those applications from the five zero one(three).

They like that. That's the charitable five zero one, if you wanna call it that. The requirements in Section D here of the policy were put in to lower the risk to the city. We didn't want any political organizations, so we didn't want any of the other five zero one Cs. We could tolerate a C4, but we were just hoping to get a C3 on that.

Those items were brought up by the solicitor and the council. Going back to the next page on the policy, like I said, all the projects that I've done in the city in my eighteen years have been through nonprofits like Hudson Community Foundation, Peggs Foundation, the Kiwanis. Those are the top three that I've used and seen brought in funding. So that was the reason for that. The use of the funds under number three, the nonprofit must understand and acknowledge in writing that the city retains full control over the project execution and fund allocations.

So if people want to donate to these projects, we're very happy about that. But the city has to run these projects. We had a discussion this morning, and again, we have to have these things run under our city terms mainly to protect the city, to fall under our insurance umbrellas, to follow our rules and regulations on how we bid things out. It's just a lot easier for us to follow the city rules. We appreciate the funding they give us, but we wanna make sure that we're following all our rules. The rest of the policy kinda goes into some acknowledgement. It's not that long. It's a simple policy. And then the form that we created is also attached in there. So I'm happy to answer any questions.

We put this up for discussion tonight. Sorry it's been a long meeting. Happy to answer any questions. We can postpone this to another meeting if you'd like, if you have any major comments. This is gonna be up for three readings. I wanna hear counsel's input on it. And again, this was just something we had started last year and we decided to bring it up and give it to counsel and see if you had any major comments. And if you do, we can go ahead and make those changes over the six weeks.

Tom, you and I talked about this. I wonder if you could include in the language that if a organization is utilizing a five zero one(three) like Hudson Community Foundation that they would count. You know, for example, the Hudson Inclusive Playground is not a five zero one c three, but they did it through their donations through Hudson Community Foundation. So I think if you made that clear here, because some people might read this and say, well, like the pickleball people, well we can't do this because we're not a five zero one c three, and if you've ever looked into becoming one, it's a lot of work.

And under that, I appreciate that. We'll look at that language. That did come up, the group that you're talking about did come together as a group and we kind of steered them to Hudson Community Foundation to run through them because they're so good at doing this and they understand, but they even would wanna see this policy because it would make their jobs a lot easier.

Overall, love the policy, and I think it's a great idea. I wonder if you could walk me through example wise. And in my mind, easiest to use is the pickleball courts. It's the most recent and pretty simple. At what point in the conversations and it becoming an actual project do they have to sign this documentation and then we take control of the money? Is it we talk, we do all the planning, we specify exactly where the polls are going to go, then we get the money? Is it we say, okay, we can do this project. Give us the money and then we'll plan it out. How does that work exactly?

Well, in that case, if there was a design, for example, so you have a design and a construction, and we wouldn't proceed with the design until we had enough money. They have to pay for the design. So they'd have to pay for that. As soon as they had enough money for the design, we can work on the design. It's usually gonna take on average say three months about design, something small.

And then basically that's what had happened in that circumstance is we wanted a specific improvement, but we didn't talk about a certain really standard detailed specific improvement and that became a problem and it was in the design. So I hate to say it, but some of this stuff you kind of have to start back over, so you kind of wasted your money. I don't want to see anybody spending their money on that. I want to make sure we're all on the same page and that's why we ask for these details. So they would fill all this out at the beginning and then we would say go get the money and say for example the engineering was going to cost $50,000 okay?

As soon as you get $50,000 we would have that set. We set that amount on our information we have. You get the 50,000, now we can go start the design, but you gotta give us the check for the 50,000. We give it to finance and basically start the design. Keep getting your money and then basically this is about what by the time they get, whether collecting their money and getting funding for this, they're gonna find out what the exact amount is on the construction.

And then we're gonna say okay, now we need $250,000 for construction and as soon as you raise that, we followed what you wanted here, and then as soon as you raise that, then we'll go ahead and go to counsel and get this agreement more or less passed for them to pay for the it's above 25,000 for example. They end up paying for that and then that's exactly what just happened with the pickleball court. It was 100 and some thousand dollars I think I recall. So we had to come to counsel and now we're moving forward with it.

Okay, so this allows for multiple instances of payments? Yeah, stages. Okay. Fantastic. Okay. That clears it up.

That just keeps it on a good timeline on any standard project.

Right. I was worried

It's a great question, though.

Do all the design, and they'd be afraid to sign that documentation, right, because that's like all the money, I this makes much more sense. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? I think it's good, Dom.

Thank you. Well, like I said, we have it up for three readings. If you have any other comments, we're happy to bring it back up in any workshop coming up.

Okay. Sorry. I've got a question. Oh, sorry. So I know on the policy, it talks about how like, once Citi has the funds and it's a Citi project, they need to have full control. But is it I'm wondering if it's clear enough on steps as if before you get the funds, if the funds are by donating it for a specific purpose, before we could accept the funds, it has to be used for that purpose. Right? So if it's like, you know, in the if it's funds for a swing, you can't use it for a bathroom.

It says that. Can't. That's what's stated in the policy. It has to be used specifically for that. And then there's almost an affidavit they have to sign off on. They agreed to all this and all of our rules and regulations.

My other concern is historically on the Hudson Community Foundation, didn't they use I don't think they do anymore. Didn't at one point they had a council member that would be on their board historically? I don't know. Or no? They never had a council member that'd be on their board.

I know an ex mayor's on the board. I believe still is on the board. Okay. Thank you.

Thanks. Alright. Next is the proposed consent agenda for 04/21/2026 council meeting for a TMP dash eight thousand five and ninety two motion to acknowledge the timely receipt of the March 2026 monthly financial report. Now Block, any highlights you want to share?

Sure, real quick. You'll notice on the box on the cover page, we're 5.6% below estimate year to date through March. February, we're at 8.6% we just received the second settlement for April and we're down to 2.7%. So we're trending in the right direction in terms of how we're doing versus budget. We're also the Fed hasn't cut interest rates or interest income continues to offset the shortfall in the income tax.

So as I mentioned a couple of times, we'll know better by the middle of the year how things are how we expect to look for the rest of the year. So right now as of now we're as I mentioned the interest income that we're earning is more than offset the below estimate on the income taxes. So we're still in good shape. The one thing I wanted to mention on the report I added a page that's at the very end, it's the general fund excess carryover. We've talked about that.

We talked about it during the retreat. And so to keep you all appraised or up to date on that in the report you'll see the excess balances coming into 2026 was about 3,300,000 We backed out what's in the appropriations legislation for the general fund share of the inclusive playground and then the additional appropriations that we had that are listed in the appropriations legislation. After that, taking those out, we're down to about 2.5, almost 2,600,000 in excess carry over balance. And just as a reminder, we passed that ordinance that requires that we spend or at least 50% of the carry over is designated for infrastructure. So this was just a schedule we added in here to keep track of that, keep that front of mind.

One other thing to piggyback on, again, last year we didn't really kind of have that and I felt that we wanted every month for council to see that is we are eating into that carryover from last year. I don't wanna get into the summertime and you guys go, where is all the money? And I know you approve all this, but you got a lot of numbers in front of you, so I just wanna be upfront and transparent as much as possible. But we're also seeing all of construction projects are coming in below budget, so that's another good sign. So I'm happy to report that. Happy to answer any questions, as Jeff said.

Does solar count as infrastructure?

Solar panels?

Yeah, for like on the Public Works Building. Does that count as infrastructure?

I wouldn't count it as

infrastructure, no.

If that's something I would just say if anybody wanted to entertain that at the end of that project, if we have contingency left over, that's where I would spend. We would come back to council and say we would like to do that. But just to piggyback on what doctor gets asked, the Public Works Building is gonna have divided up electrical circuits that we very easily can take to solar if we want to and have those on the roof or anywhere on the property too, where there's not a lot of trees, obviously. All right. Thank you. Sorry. The

expenditures on the gazebo over the originally budgeted, I want to say was $68,000 Is that going to be coming from the excess?