City Council - workshop

I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is a duly noticed workshop meeting of Hudson City Council held in accordance with the sunshine laws of the state of Ohio, section one twenty one point two two, and the city of Hudson Charter article three section 3.02 for Tuesday, 04/28/2026. It is 07:30PM. Per ordinance 220.031 titled workshop meetings and item C. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Council President Byrd so as to continue through the remaining workshop agenda items. Council President Byrd, the floor and workshop meeting is yours.

Okay, thank you Mayor Enzo Vino. Next up is correspondence and council comments. If any council members have anything to share, let me know. Dan?

Thanks. Last Friday, city staff President Byrd and Senator Weinstein joined me for a meeting with FirstEnergy. We discussed the necessity of improvements to FirstEnergy customers within Hudson. So we're working towards a solution that's going to resolve the majority of those issues that have plagued residents for years. The first area that should be tackled is Bridgewater. FirstEnergy did commit to us that would get resolved by June 1. I also attended the Hudson Library annual meeting on Sunday. Basil Musniff, Sam Barnett, and Beverly Dorsen were all reelected to their seats on the board. Basil, was elected president, and Sam Barnett was elected vice president. Congrats to all three. Thank you.

I just wanna say congratulations to the girl scouts in Hudson. The Hudson service unit, organized a bridging ceremony, so all of the girls who are bridging to the next level had that ceremony today. And I just wanted to say congratulations to them and thank them for all their hard work and the service that they do.

I wanna thank the board staff, Doctor. Bird, all the members of the Architectural Historic Review Board, the Planning Commission, and the BCBA for a successful meeting last night about board orientation, and we hope that we will do more of this as time goes on.

Thank you, Council President Bird. Just a few things from me. I do wanna say congratulations again to Hudson Fire Department Lieutenant Stein and Zarges. They were promoted to lieutenant recently, and it was my honor to perform their official oath yesterday at the fire station. We'll also be performing the oath tomorrow evening for several additional members.

And with that and while at the fire station, I was able to take a tour of the renovations and the progress there. As many know, the dorms that are there at the fire station currently house the two EMS crews that occupy the station 20 fourseven. And these renovations are required to provide additional space for an overnight four person fire engine crew. The electrical and HVAC work is nearly complete. All of the studs are up and chief Farnes said that drywall should be going in I believe next week. So those renovations are well on their way. And mister Sheridan, the the timing for those renovations of the fire station to be complete? Labor. Labor date time frame. So we are moving right along.

A reminder to the community as well that lemonade day is this coming weekend on both Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3. The city will once again be making a stop on our annual road tour on Saturday, and I encourage residents to visit and support these young entrepreneurs this coming weekend. There will be eight booths around town. Several of them will be down in the 1st And Main And Main Street area. There are a handful over in the Acme Plaza and there will also be one here at the Visitor Center.

I also want to say again congratulations to Hudson High School Drama Club. They were recently nominated for the DAZZLE Awards, which happens every spring summertime. And Hudson was nominated for best student orchestra, best supporting actor, best supporting actress, and best actor, all for their recent spring musical of Legally Blonde. So congratulations to the students, Jack, Mira, and Joey. And last, I want to say congratulations again to Brooks, Noah, Ben, August, and Charlie for breaking some long standing Hudson Middle School track and field records.

The boys four by 100 relay record was from 1998 and the girls 400 meter record was three decades ago from 1996. So I've seen these young students run and obviously they are very fast. But they've got great form and I look forward to seeing what they accomplish next. Thank you.

Thank you. I would just like to echo Petra's comments about the training session last night. I thought it went very well. We got some good feedback and I really appreciate the members of those three boards taking time out of their busy days to devote a couple hours to that. And like we said, there'll be more of those in the future.

Last Thursday was the Tinker Creek Watershed survey result presentation that was done at the high school. Several improvements were identified and they'll be prioritized at a later time by council for approval. And I won't say anything more about that because I'm sure that Brad will tell us a lot more detail about it in the future. And then lastly, at your seats, councilors and mayor is a photo of a new layout that we're gonna be trying beginning May 12, at the May 12 workshop. A table setting around the table that's gonna be a little bit more kind of facilitate better dialogue, better discussion in a in a formal setting.

It'll be right here. There will still be plenty of room for guests in the audience. That's gonna be starting at the next workshop. Okay. Moving on. Discussion item 3A260Dash0032. Discussion update of the West Streetsboro Street State Route 303 safety improvements.

Yes. Good evening, council. So tonight, I wanted to provide an update on some of the ongoing safety improvements we have programmed on West Streetsboro Street. As the city manager noted, the total footprint of improvements is Boston Mills Road up to State Route 91. We have a project ongoing right now, which we presented last year to council, and that is largely restriping between Boston Mills Road and the railroad tracks, and that's the image you see on the screen right now. I did not include that in your agenda packet. I apologize for that. I should have. But this project is ongoing right now. You'll see they have some of the curb ramp work in front of Chipotle taking place right now.

The striping efforts out here that you see on the screen right now, that's supposed to take place next week. We're verifying with the contractor if that's still their work. Project also includes some pedestrian signal upgrades there at the crosswalks near Morse Road. Majority of what I wanted to hit on tonight was kind of a two phase approach on some of the other improvements between the railroad tracks and State Route 91. Back in 2020, ODOT did a safety study of this corridor, and they identified a number of improvements, some that we're implementing right now, and some other recommendations that I'll walk through here.

Think pavement markings, driveway upgrades, crosswalk upgrades, that sort of thing. So to get yourself oriented on the screen right now, the two vertical lines here, that's the railroad tracks. So on the left hand side of the screen is Chipotle. Going east, sorry, there's a cut off in this, but that's Library Street. So this would be the crosswalk at Giannito's Pizza right there.

And then going further along here, there's Library Street, there's 1st Street, and then at the right hand side at the bottom of the page is State Route 91. So improvements that we're recommending this year to get implemented is the removal of this crosswalk at the south side of the Library Street and 303 Intersection. It's really a crosswalk to nowhere. The study identified it as being confusing to users, relatively low cost. We removed the ADA ramps, the actual crosswalk striping and the two pedestrian signal heads that are there as well.

Other improvements we're looking at doing yet this year. This is the Lager and Vine restaurant, Number 60, West Streetsboro Street. They have the really large drive apron there. We're looking at potential to reduce that driveway apron, make it a little more line up with the actual parking lot usage there. I'll be meeting with that property owner here in the coming weeks.

And then also looking at some striping upgrades here. This is just East of 1st Street. As you tour as you approach North Main Street, right now, left turn vehicles, as they're approaching 91, if there's enough of them there, they can kind of stack up so far that the through movement or right turn movement can't give you access. So what we're doing with this improvement here is providing some additional eastbound left turn movement storage. We wanted to be mindful of not cutting off access for westbound travelers trying to get to the Lager and Vine restaurant or the Burton D.

Morgan there. So we're still keeping that turn lane into those two commercial properties there. We're shortening a little bit. And by doing that, we're gaining about 50 feet of extra storage for eastbound State Route 91. So those improvements at the Gianninos Crosswalk and then the driveway improvements here and then the striping upgrades are programmed to take place this summer.

Future improvements without a date established are the biggest one that you see here on the screen right now. This is under the railroad tracks. Right now, that sidewalk is kind of crowded. It can be uncomfortable maybe in foul weather, in winter weather. The railing is there.

What you see on the screen right now is an attempt to show this would be similar to the underpass up at 91 that was done as part of the ODOT Bridge project two years ago. A widened sidewalk through there, maybe eliminate, when I say widened, eight to 10 feet wide through there. It would feel a lot more comfortable. We could potentially get rid of the railing, which is a maintenance issue for our public work staff. To do it, we would be eliminating the turn lane into the storage facility that's between the two railroad tracks right now.

Staff has sent letters out to that property owner asking them to come and talk to us about it. Sorry for the sunlight, Mr. Ramo, in your eyes. So we have reached out to that property owner to start conversations with them. They're not based out of Ohio as far as we could tell, so we're awaiting a response to them to see if we could do that.

Once we get buy in from the property owner, that driveway, their commercial driveway would go to right in, right out only, and would allow us to eliminate that turn lane and then widen the sidewalk. So with some cooperation from that property owner, we would put that in a future budget cycle to be constructed. The other improvements we're looking at here, this is the Shell station at the corner. They have three driveways right now. And the traffic study suggested, as a whole, where possible, removing driveways or driveway widths.

So we would look at removing that driveway apron closest to the intersection. We did some evaluation of circulation in the parking lot. We watched we took some video and watched for deliveries of the gas. We think they would be able to accommodate it. Same thing, we've reached out to Shell to facilitate that conversation and see if they would buy in for us. And if they do, we would put that in a future concrete program.

Brad, so is a safety issue or a flow Yes,

safety issue there. I don't have the accidents mapped on the screen right now, but if we did, you'd see a cluster of them right there at that intersection. There are some other I didn't draw them on the map, but there are some improvements to some site distance at driveways that we'd also like to investigate with some commercial signage that's out there. But largely, that's the next probably year or so's approach to some improvements we want to start implementing along this leg. And with that, I'll answer some questions.

Questions for Brenda? Patricia?

This might cause more of a backup, but I know before we had talked about the problem with trucks turning from 91 going west, and cars, even when they are parked where the line is, the truck has difficulty. So we had some discussion, could we move that line back, but then that would make that line of traffic even longer.

It would. So, what I think Doctor. Goetz is alluding to, if I'm in a big truck and I'm heading south on 91 and I want to turn and go west out towards, yeah, out towards 3 To 3, towards Route 8, Is there an ability to move this stop bar back or a couple of these stop bars back? And the answer is yes, we would be accommodating truck traffic, but we would be sacrificing that storage, which I'm trying to improve here. That's a yin and a yang.

There's only so much footprint there. We can look at that again and talk about moving those stop bars back. But at this point, I think I'd recommend let's do the improvements that I showed here under this Phase one this year. If we want to do more than in next year's, if we think we've improved some of the stacking issues that I was talking about, then we can look at edging those stop bars back a

little bit.

As far as the safety issue, have any trucks come close to tipping?

Not to my knowledge, no.

Sometimes it looks that way, but that's just They rock

a little bit, but I haven't seen them. Not close to tipping.

When

you were referring to widening that area, we have to speak to the people that own the storage area. I mean, I assume we have to get their approval to be able to do that or no. We just would like their blessing.

I think I think we'd wanna get their blessing on that. Yeah. I in my experience, I have not it's not gone well to force an

owner to convert there. For that, when were you thinking about within the year on that or next year you were

I think it would be next year. And the reason I say that is the work that we did with ODOT on '91 under that railroad bridge, that was around 225,000 when we were done. So, it's certainly a budget item we'd have to incorporate and sit down with council and review a little bit more.

Don't know that I necessarily have a question, although it would be very useful for me. Could you go down to the 1st Street picture a little lower there, and then you toggled over to the current so this is the current right here. Correct?

Yeah. That's yeah. The aerial photo is current.

Thank you. So that left hand turn lane that goes into there's Lager And Vine. Okay. And then next to Lager And Vine. So that's going to be eliminated a bit there. So can you can you toggle to the elimination now? Oh, thank you.

That one?

Yes. Yep. That's perfect. So that I think that's like the Hudson Financial parking lot that's Yes. Right here. So they are they going to kinda lose the ability to queue up to left hand turn when going westbound at the seems?

Yeah, that's a good question, good observation. This is 60 foot. It could be shortened to 50. We left it at 60, so you can still get a normal sized vehicle in the entrance to that turn lane there and get out of that through traffic and still make that turn into

Okay.

I mean, I don't know how perfectly to scale this is, but to me there, it doesn't look like you can really get into the left hand turn lane and still be able to turn left into that driveway.

It's certainly shortened. We can manipulate the numbers just a little bit more. We did look at some options where we turned this into a two way turn left lane. My concern with this was if cars are stacked all the way maybe through 1st Street or all the way through here to turn left and go on the 91, then if you're turning into the La Garn Vine restaurant or the commercial building that's right here, you'll have to wait in the through lane, in the westbound through lane, and then we've

really I mean it's congested area with two driveways very tight to each other. The answer and I can't imagine there's any realistic opportunity for a combined driveway there?

Not with this project. Yeah.

Okay. But you got some other ideas somewhere else? Is that what you're alluding to?

My experience has been generally owners don't want to consolidate and remove driveways.

Yeah. No. I'm I'm sure that is the case. Okay. My final comment would just be that as far as the gas station goes, would love to eliminate that apron next to the intersection that is like you said, there's a lot of accidents there. It's very confusing as a motorist and as a pedestrian, in my opinion. That would improve things greatly. Nice work. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Brad, very much. Next up is 3B26-thirty3.

Kevin Powell is here

to talk about Hudson Public Works department overview.

Good evening. Thank you for having me. If you recall on the March 17 workshop, I was here and I talked a little bit about Hudson Public Power. Tonight, I'm gonna continue that discussion talking about the remainder of public works. Public works as a whole is is basically 12 operations, So I'm gonna talk about 11 of them this evening. I'm gonna start off with Public Works Administration. These folks are located on our Georgetown Road facility. We got two full time, two part time employees there. And over the course of the year, they'll handle between twenty and thirty service contracts, another 10 to 15 contracts for capital improvement projects. They handle incoming calls.

In over 2025, they handled 4,700 incoming calls. They made 3,500 outbound calls. And this does not include any electric outage calls as those are handled by another resource we have. They assist in developing and administering the annual operation and capital budgets. They process and prepare invoices for finance, receive, enter, and assign over eight fifty work orders throughout the course of the year.

In addition to these eight fifty, there's another three fifty that come in through our C Click Fix application. The folks in the public works admin, they also do additional support to the other public works operations, whether it be contacting residents for main breaks, tree trimming letters, mailbox programs, and any things that residents call in for. They also administer the driveway, residential driveway program, animal collection calls. In the same office, have the arborist. The arborist is an operation of one employee, although for the first time we do have two additional employees with their ISA certifications, is the International Society of Arboculture.

Those folks are in our water and electric division. The arborist's main duties maintains they maintain the the city's urban tree canopy, street maintenance, pruning, removals of trees along the Residential consultations, visits to assess trees, give guidance on maintenance and other types of maintenance to the trees. TUV receives approximately 120 work orders annually. Our cemeteries, we've got five cemeteries with two full time and two seasonal staff employees. In 2025, we had 68 internments.

We had a couple active no. We we have our annual Memorial Day operation or ceremony at the Markelley Cemetery. And then we had a park board cemetery board burial meeting there. Currently 1,933 grave plots available in our cemeteries. And of those 1,933, 1,310 are located in the memorial portion of Markelly.

Our golf operation, we have five full time, 10 part time, and a seasonal staff of 75. It's an 18 hole course situated on 163 acres. In 2025, we built our new clubhouse which has four golf simulators, full kitchen, an array of inside outside dining options, a pro shop. The old clubhouse has been remodeled to hold tournaments and events that was previously held in the pavilion. Total rounds played in 2025 was 51,000 rounds of golf.

If you compare that to the standard of municipal course in Northeast Ohio, they consider a high performing course having 38,000 to 45,000 rounds. So we exceeded high performing, which I thought was pretty impressive. Our simulators have been active for six months. And in those six months, we've hosted 2,500 rounds. In 2025, we had 35 tournaments and hosted 20 parties in our new facility.

Parks division, we've got four full time, two part time employees and a seasonal staff of 15. We've got our 20 parks covering 1,100 acres. Of the 20 parks, seven of those parks have playground equipment. The other eight parks have trail systems. And then we've got five undeveloped parks. Additional amenities, we've got 10 pavilions. We've facilities for baseball, soccer, pickleball, skating. We had 22 community events that was in conjunction with Friends of Hudson Parks. We had four baseball tournaments for outside league play. We had three soccer tournaments.

We had two cross country meets. And then we host the fourth of July fireworks at Barlow Farm Park and then the winter fireworks at Veterans Way. And we had the fishing derby. Onto our service division, we've got Streets, which has five full time employees and they maintain 350 lane miles of road. For this maintenance, they repair potholes, street sweeping, general right of way, mowing and highway mowing, and then just in general maintenance.

We perform the leaf collection program. They utilize the service staff and we also utilize other departments within the public works for that operation. That's a six plus week program. Historically we collect around 18,000 cubic yards of leaves. In 2025 we collected 15,500 cubic yards of leaves but we had the early onset of winter, which impacted that a bit.

The twenty twenty five-twenty six snow season, We distributed 12,000 tons of salt. A normal winter is about 9,000 tons of salt. I thought this was an interesting statistic. In applying that 12,000 tons of salt, our salt trucks traveled 62,000 miles within the city of Hudson. That's a lot of driving.

The streets department, they handle about 350 work orders a year. Another part of our streets is our sign shop. We have two full time employees in our sign shop. They maintain 5,400 signs citywide. They handle any of our road closures, special events, and other scheduled needs. They get about six forty work orders annually. Our storm water staff, we have eight full time employees. We do our annual ditch program, construction and maintenance of catch basins, waterways, and repair and pipe systems. They receive about three eighty work orders annually. We televise and clean storm systems, visiting residents, addressing storm water concerns.

Our fleet department is another operation within service. Three full time mechanics in our fleet department. We maintain a 186 pieces of equipment and another 146 vehicles, which is 322 items in total. One of the challenging seasons for our our fleet is gonna be the combination of the leaf and, snow seasons. The trucks that are pulling the leaf equipment are the same trucks that are out plowing snow.

So their challenges are keeping these things maintained when they're on the road so much through this course of the year. Our vehicle replacement program, we have a ten to twelve year rotation on equipment. That's our standard rolling equipment. We have pieces of equipment that don't get used as often and we can stretch those out to, in some cases, our last vac truck, had seventeen, eighteen years on that piece of equipment. We've got some other pieces in electric that are over twenty years old.

Our public properties, we've got two full time and in '25 we had one part time employee there. They perform routine maintenance on six buildings, totaling over a 107,000 square feet of of inside space. 10 capital projects completed a 100 I'm sorry. Completed 1,642 normal maintenance tasks, and that's generated through a maintenance program that we have. And then in addition to that, they completed another 108 work orders.

They maintain 74,000 square foot parking terrace and then numerous parking lots. They set up for various events and community space. And we've got our clock tower tours. Water plant and water distribution. In total between the two operations, we got eight full time, one part time employee. Water plant is staffed three hundred and sixty five days a year with two and a half full time and a part time employee. Plant's rated at a 2,000,000 gallon a day, capacity. We use five ground wells,

and

that feeds water into six greensand filters for zeolite softeners. Our zeolite softeners are regenerated. We used to regenerate our softeners with salt that was brought in with dump trucks from a mine, you know, the the cargo mines up in in Cleveland. In twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, we installed a brine well at the water plant. It's a well case and it goes down 3,000 feet.

We inject water down there, dissolve salt, and bring brine up out of the ground. So we're we're self supporting on our our salt supply. The water plant produced 386,000,000 gallons of water in 2025. Our distribution staff, we got 500 or we got five and a half employees, full time employees in our distribution staff and they maintain just under 80 miles of water lines. We average about 14 main breaks a year.

And one of their biggest programs is our hydrant flushing program. We flush hydrants on the April and the October. The April flushing, typically flush the West Side Of 91. The fall, we flush the East Side Of 91. Then we've got main lines on both sides that we flush both seasons.

I think

that wraps up my overview of Public Works.

Thank you. We've had some discussion I believe previously about a potential spring cleanup. Has there been any movement on that? I know there wasn't enough time this year

to implement such a thing. We would have to look at the resources needed to do to a project like that. We've done some cleanup programs in the past, and we've we've borrowed some equipment from neighboring communities just for the to make it more efficient and to to make sure we can get this done in a effective amount of time.

Is that because the resources that we use for the leaf cleanup wouldn't be sufficient for a spring?

Yeah. So so the leaf acts that's a good question. The leaf acts are designed to pick up smaller, lighter items, leaves. If you start pulling sticks and and, you know, residents will typically put anything out there. As you you start pulling that stuff through the machine, there it goes to past the fan, and it starts tearing up the fan.

I guess I should've been more I didn't mean to use the exact but it would be the trucks, and do we not we just don't have, like, a wood chipping type of attachment.

Correct. So what what we had borrowed in the past was a a grapple truck, if you will. So it's a truck with more of a clamshell type apparatus on it, and you could pick up larger piles of debris and and put those into dump trucks, and the dump trucks can move on and and a new truck comes up and you can start loading that. Okay.

So that's not something we're currently not staffed, but, we don't currently have the correct tools for that.

We just need some additional resources. Yeah.

Understood. You touched on the golf courses. The employees at the golf courses, my understanding them being if you can help me understand this, they are city employees and they're unable to accept tips or what is exactly the tipping situation?

Do not, and help me out here, Chad, if you would, we do not have the means to set up for tipping at this point in time.

So if you're someone waiting tables at our new golf club.

We were still working on that internally, and there's been some discussion back there.

Yeah, there's been issues with their software software that we're working through, and they wanna convert to a new software program. So before we switch over or start bringing on the tipping capability, we wanna make sure that that program is up and functioning properly. Because the tipping, it's a little more complicated. That's something that we don't do in terms of, and I say complicated in terms of it has to be tracked. It has to be turned into payroll.

Has to it's w it's taxable, all those all those things. And it it can be done. But the and just to add to that, the the employees are not what they're paid is not what you would be paid at a restaurant as as a server. Servers are typically paid a much lower rate with the assumption they're gonna make up for it in tips. In this case, they are not paid that lower rate.

In this case, we're picking up their

tips. Effectively, that's what's happening.

I wanna put a sign on the door that says your tips have been picked up by the city. Because technically they are. We looked at the salaries of the people in town and as Jeff said, it was like well we're gonna elevate them up because we're government, we really can't have tipping and everything Jeff just went through. But basically it was just that. It's like, hey, the city's got your tip. I

think that's great. I think for patrons it would be good to know that, right? You go in there. To anyone who's just going in there, think you're just going out to a restaurant and you wanna tip your waitstaff.

We were

even thinking of like a donation, you know, kettle or something that we could give to one of the food banks or something in town. So Interesting. Okay.

And then my final question was on the snow program. You mentioned the, you know, the amount of miles driven, the amount of additional salt used over average. And maybe if Jeff can help on this, do we know what does that equate to cost wise, the additional fuel, the additional salt, etcetera, that we spent this year over average years?

I I could get you that information. I I could run some calculations and and derive those numbers.

That that'd be great. And then my corollary to that would be, and then how does that compare to other cities in the area from this past year? Thank you.

Any comments or questions? Patricia?

Just wanna say, Kevin, you have an incredible amount of responsibility and people that work under you, so thank you very much for everything that you do.

Just a quick comment. Agree, there's so many things that you're in charge of and the staff does that a lot of the residents don't see. So I appreciate all that information. It's impressive what gets accomplished. One quick question about the golf simulators. Have you extrapolated out what that revenue and maybe an ROI is based on having I get

this for you.

Okay. When

I've been in there, know they've been heavily used. I can't remember what it's a relatively small fee I believe to reserve and rent those for use. So there's some revenue coming in. I'm just curious what that is since we put that amenity in there, which is super popular.

I thought you were gonna ask if they're really that accurate. Oh, no.

Only if my shots, you know, are off.

Know? Dispute over a shot.

Right Kevin, appreciate the overview. Lots of information and lots of work that you guys do.

Have a great team.

Appreciate the staff. I know that most of us here, when you get the next big snowstorm, we're gonna show up at three a. And cook them breakfast, okay? So let us know when that's We'll and appreciate that.

And I'll get you guys, I'll send all the counsel their information as Thank

you.

Okay, next is 3C, TMPDash8528, an ordinance amending chapter eight seven six short term rental operations. Greg.

Yes. Good evening. I just wanna give a brief introduction, but then, of course, glad to help with any questions council might have. A brief summary to the memo that's before you. Council had a preliminary discussion regarding our short term rental program at the March 10 meeting.

Based on that discussion, staff did some further review and offered the following information. Before you is two minor administrative amendments being proposed and are attached. Those are to incorporate a bed tax and to adjust her current permit fee as that has not been adjusted since the program was first started a good number of years ago. Additionally, did reach out to and confirm with Western Reserve Academy that short term rentals are not a critical part of their operations or concern. And then also, we researched three additional topics which are before you in the memo here, three additional considerations.

One I wanted to note was there was discussion about renting out only a portion of an owner occupied home instead of a full house. In some cities look at reduced standards or processes. Within Hudson that would only apply to a very limited number of properties. And we kind of felt that from looking at some other cities as well. The challenges administering that for such a small group may not be beneficial.

The next item was as many cities do to look at some type of cap or limit whether that's per ward or per zoning district or dimensional setbacks between properties or short term rentals. Those are certainly items that could be considered and we've given you some examples from other cities. We do see that there could be some challenges with administering that code. Peninsula for example has to maintain a waiting list once caps are hit per district. So they've got a perpetual requirement to maintain that.

Also we would anticipate as we do with some zoning regulations, some residents being frustrated or concerned that they're just inside or outside some dimensional requirements such as a 500 foot separation. One additional item that we looked at that I think may have come from council was should we require short term rentals to be owned by a resident of the City Of Hudson? Looking at other cities, we did not see that as something that was captured in other ordinances. But that is something that might speak to a lot of the concerns that council's been talking about. Currently seven of the 18 units, 18 short term rental units are property owners that reside in Hudson.

So instituting something of that nature would cut the number of properties in half and maybe would speak to that responsiveness, personal ownership, ability to understand who is operating that short term rental in the community. So while we have not seen that in other cities, that may be something that is worth consideration. That's some orientations notes, I'm glad to answer any questions.

Questions or comments for Greg?

Some of the cities require that the owner be occupied, be there when so that you only rent out part of your house. How many cities have that and how effective is it?

I have seen references to that. I did not check to find communities that only allow partial rentals. I think we noted in Hudson three of the 18 fit that. But I'm not aware offhand of a community where they permit the partial rentals.

So didn't Peninsula doesn't?

Believe Peninsula had opportunities for both.

For both. Mr. Sutton had mentioned that when this first came up in 2021, there had been some discussion about it not we can't ban it from what you've said before because it's a business, but there was some talk about making something with land development coal, Mr. Sutton.

The

discussion at the time was whether we wanted to make it a conditional use which would require planning commission approval versus just a codified ordinance which is administratively managed.

What would you feel the advantage of that would be?

Residents have no input under the existing, or I should say neighboring residents have no input under the existing framework. A conditional approval would at the Planning Commission.

Would you be able to limit the number?

Conceivably, you could limit the number in either approach.

Is that anything that you've researched, Greg?

I I have not researched that in detail. I believe of the comparison city chart that was reviewed last meeting is attached. I'm checking my reminders here. I believe it was only Medina was the one city that had it as a conditional use. We reviewed eight peer cities. So that is something that could be considered from what I remember when this was first established. Is that they thought there would be a benefit to having to a business license because it would be easier to revoke. Someone cannot ask for a variance. You couldn't go to the BCBA for one of the conditions of these regulations because there would not be that opportunity. There may be things that we could look to craft at within Lane Development Code.

But it might get that property owner a little bit more of a vested right rather than a business license. And I do think it would be a fairly confrontational application process, but maybe that would be beneficial as Mr. Sutton notes to make sure that those neighbors get a chance to engage on that.

Is there any way with the current system where it's a business that the neighbors could have some say so? Now you put up a sign but it doesn't make any Yeah,

it's just notification. A neighbor can notify us if they see a violation to the operations and that we can utilize that from an enforcement basis. But a neighbor can't just say that, a neighbor can't say I saw a sign in my neighborhood and I'm not supportive. Can only give us something that might be relevant to compliance.

So there couldn't be anything in the ordinance that would say majority of the neighbors need to agree?

Oh, could we revise the current ordinance to something like that?

Is that too sticky? I mean, it's kinda sticky, but

It feels challenging to administer. We could certainly look at that, but I have not seen other cities that have that. That.

Because I've gotten some feedback from people who don't want it at all. I've got other feedback where people are okay with it, so, you know, it goes back and forth.

And and that's certainly not an option. Right? This This business license program does not have to continue.

I thought there was something because it was a business we couldn't outright ban them. No?

I could check on that. I know there's been some consideration of changes at the state level, but I believe at this time we still could prohibit them.

I thought it was Mr. Pitchford who made some

Patricia's sorry, if Doctor. Gantz is okay. I think my general stance would be we don't want this to become a large overhead to maintain and to check-in on and to the process of applying for. I think having it very cut and dry either you do meet the criteria to have this be an Airbnb or whatever it be, or you don't. So if it's going to go into the LDR, and it's a permit process, and people can come to a public hearing, They can say, Okay, I don't like this, but what's the merit of the discussion being had, whether they don't like it or they don't?

So if it stays in the current administrative process, we go with the approach having the owner needs to be a Hudson resident.

If we

want to limit a certain number per zoning district, fine. But have it all be varied by the numbers, very cut and dry, minimal overhead to maintain the program. And I think, as Mr. Hannan said, if we went with the Hudson resident idea, which I generally like, so long as it's legally enforceable, that cuts us in half. I mean, more than, I think.

So, I guess the question, are we, is the goal to have a Hudson resident owning it? Is it, It's safer, it's better, it's less parting or does it just decrease the numbers? Because we don't have any data to suggest that ownership, outside city ownership, those places that are owned by residents outside the city have more problems. Right? I

don't have any debt on that. And what I just put is some considerations within the memo about if short term rentals could be limited to owned by a Hudson resident, It would reduce the overall number. It would resolve the concern of partial or full home rentals as at least I would think could speak to that because some of that concern is less supervision of a property, at least this way the property owners nearby supervision. It would ease concerns of short term rental concentration within one ward or district as this amendment would appreciably reduce the total number. And it would reduce any concerns with out of town investors or large scale operations.

Another comment, and I don't know if I discussed this with you or someone else, but we're talking about the numbers getting growing. Some people express concerns about, obviously they moved into a neighborhood. They don't want to be surrounded by four houses that are owned by somebody from out of town and it's just Airbnb all the time. Some people expressed concerns about, you know, that there's parties and stuff like that. Now there are noise detectors that are in lots of Airbnb's now.

I think that would be like a, at least one thing that we could begin to require. They're relatively like $10 a month. That would be a good way to make people some comfort that dizziness and loud noises are going to be detected. I know they're in lots of Airbnbs right now.

Doctor. Bird, can

I

just ask a question to Greg? We did have a half hour rule that they can't they have to be there within a half an hour.

Yeah. Actually, I'll have to pull it up. It might even might even be less response time than that.

So the the key was I think with the previous agenda that we had on short term rentals was is that they wanted somebody to be able to get here within a short period of time to check out the site or whatever if somebody had, like, had called them. And then Pittsburgh just had the NFL draft, and I was telling Doctor. Goetz today on the phone that they actually talked about those detectors in most Vrbo and Airbnb's, the noise detectors. So that was something that they brought up because people were worried about big parties in their neighborhood because people were celebrating or whatever from out of town. I thought that was an interesting thing that you brought it up too.

I like the bed tax and reading the permit fee, and it seems like there's not a big administrative burden. It's just kind of a simple, just raise the fee and put on the tax. I think if we wanted to think about ownership, I'd love to see some data as Mr. Bird suggested of is there a difference in ownership? Do we see a difference in maintenance?

If we do, that might be a reason to do it. If we don't see any difference in ownership, noise complaints or maintenance, then there might not be a reason. Or another thing we could consider if we're worried about ownership would be to have a different permit fee. So you could have a potentially lower permit fee kind of a benefit if you are a Hudson resident, get a lower permit fee. And if you're an out of city or not a Hudson resident, have a higher permit fee, could be something we can consider too.

My opinion remains, I think we should limit short term rentals to partial house rentals, rooms only, not full structures. We have an LDC concept of a bed and breakfast already in the LDC. There's already zoning districts for it. If you wanna operate a full fledged bed and breakfast, it's there for that.

Tim.

Regarding Western Reserve, you said they don't need a lot of short term or they didn't have much to say about it. What were you referencing?

They just acknowledged that if there were change considered by City Council, they were not of concern. It's not Having accessibility short term rentals is not seen as a critical part of what they need for accommodating students and families.

Doctor. Bird, Doctor. Goetz.

My only other comment about Hudson ownership is that there would be more pride in the property because they're a part of Hudson, and people would know that they live in Hudson and they're a part of Hudson, so I would think they would pay better attention to the property and what goes on there. That was my thought about why Hudson ownership made a good idea.

Greg can you just, I'm sorry, could you just reiterate, wanted to limit it just based on numbers and based on districts. Think that, you said that that's kind of a heavy lift you think for the city kind of logistics lead to do that?

I think it would certainly be feasible to limit certain numbers per district. I just, not that it can't be done. Anticipate frustration from residents being that one that's just off the cap. And then do we keep a waiting list or not? When it's mid year and one goes away is it just first come first serve or how do we equitably let that next person apply?

Just if to Amanda's point, to Patricia's point, if we have these ideas that Hudson ownership makes it better, if we don't have data that supports that, but we want to limit the numbers.

Sorry for the second comment. I may have missed it, but I didn't see it in your draft ordinance, the idea of a setback between units could potentially limit the number of units.

It certainly could. I think I noted that briefly in the memo as I think a city or two have a setback standard. So we could certainly administer that. I think we may have a little bit of the same challenges of is there some relief that they can apply for or not? Can they get a variance or not if they're just below that setback? But that could also be implemented.

Greg, do any of the ones currently have just part of the house, as Mr. Sutton said, just partial rentals?

I think three of the 18 are currently partial home. And if the thought is the Hudson residents may not be quite the right fit, certainly restricting this to only partial homes would also speak to a lot of those same benefits. Another tool to consider.

So that would be, again, more oversight of of the property.

If we're restricting this to partial homes, how is that functionally different from just going with Mr. Sutton's route of folding this into Airbnb's or, excuse me, BNB's in the LDR? I mean, guess it's the administrative versus public hearing is really the only difference at that point.

I think it would be worth looking at that point just to see how close those codes might already be and if there is any benefit in merging those in some way. Currently, I believe bed and breakfasts are just permitted in a couple of the zoning districts.

I think I think sorry. I think there's merit into I mean, these think these concepts are obviously extremely similar. So I think there's merit to cleaning up if it's gonna go the LDR route to cleaning that up and just making this one thing. Though I do lean towards preferring just making it very cut and dry by the numbers administrative that you qualify or you don't, and keeping the overhead on this very minimal.

Yeah,

like the minimal overhead. I would also say I know that this

is

a nice pathway, especially if a Hudson resident wanted to start with an Airbnb, and then they add more kind of amenities into it. If they get good reviews, eventually it could become a bed and breakfast, which has happened with some of these sites, so it's a nice kind of on ramp towards an official bed and breakfast business that could happen. I don't know if it would, but it does provide an easier way than just going from nothing to a full blown bed and breakfast business. So I do like that kind of on ramping that this gives us.

It would be a fairly straightforward implementation if we took generally the same business license program and just restricted it to partial houses. We already have an existing ordinance and we have existing program operating. So that would be a fairly small piece to implement that change.

Would the existing ones be grandfathered? I'd have to check.

I don't believe so since they're business licenses. They're not zoning. So we'd have to find an appropriate end date. Maybe it's at the calendar year. Maybe it's at the 2026 that a change like that might take effect.

So a lot of I things

was just going say,

but it's nice

to have like the informality of like, I can list my house, can just start off and test it, like test the waters without actually having to go through a process of like a business application. Or go ahead.

So times like this where we talked about 25 different things, I just I have to have a summary or staff's gonna leave here and look at me tomorrow and go, what are we doing? So is it I heard the bed tax. We like that. We wanna keep that. That's a good change. One thing I wanted to ask Greg is we haven't really had any issues with these, have we? The short term rentals?

No, think we know that last time as a whole it's been very few.

Yeah. And I think the people that we talked to, because that was the reason I went with Doctor. Goetz, is that we had never heard from anybody really, and the Elm Street people came out, was limiting these somewhere in the city. And I thought, well, not knowing exactly at the time how many we had, and now we have 18, If that is something we wanna see done limiting or going to the partials only, I think those are the key takeaways I have here today. I mean, everything else sounded like it could be just minor things that we deal with. Okay. Well, we'll get back to you guys. We we have this on legislation, so we have

First reading.

Several readings.

Scheduled for next week. But just to clarify then, is council interested in just a partial home? Or are you looking for something some amendment but not that impactful?

I would be interested in the partial. I

don't think they're a problem now. Think they're worried about them becoming the future, either because there's too many or too many and they're next to somebody's house. So I don't have strong feelings about individual, like, actual home ownership. Amanda?

I like what you have with the bed tax and raising the permit fee, and because we haven't had any issues, if we start with this and kind of check-in a year and see if any issues come up and clearly like, monitor the numbers if they're getting bigger and continue to grow. But it seems like we haven't had significant issues and raise a tax, raise a permit fee, and then let's check on it in a year or something.

I think the issue though is in Ward 1 there's 12 or 13, and that's not quite fair. You know, in Ward 1, we really like the sense of neighborhood, especially in the historic district, and I understand why there's more there, because it's close to downtown and why people would want it, but for the property owners that are there and the neighbors, is it fair to them?

So you're saying for Ward 1, it's getting to a level level where they're already feeling that it's too many. So then it might be time to consider something like, I think someone suggested like a setback, right? How many, right? So if you have one, how much, No, is that

it would

be, if we didn't go to the partial, it would be, I would think five would be an adequate number.

We can come back with metrics on what is an adequate number or whatever based on density.

Yeah, and maybe a little bit more about the challenges to limiting it geographically? Like, something like that.

Or if it's easier just to do Hudson owned, is that an easier way to

don't know.

We can give you some further information.

Sorry, we weren't more definitive tonight. Next up, Katie.

Great, thank you. We'd like to give some update on the District 11 Code Amendments. Katie and I are both here available to help with any discussion or questions that you might have. I do want to give some orientation notes. And just as some brief orientation reminder of kind of the framework of this amendment.

So the proposal to consider this new zoning for District 11 is part of the city's proactive effort to determine the future uses for the corridor that will be desired by the community. And this is an initiative that was kicked off by Hudson City Council in February 2025. And kind of as a reminder, this amendment would not be a development plan. The city doesn't own or control the land and we are not soliciting specific users. We're only sitting the menu of options available to the land owner.

And this project to date has not been developer led. The developer reviewed the zoning proposal aligned by the City Council Subcommittee after they had established their framework. But this effort was not guided by the developer. I want to give a brief reminder of some of the recent community engagement since council postponed this to have more feedback with the community. City Council hosted the community open house on Thursday, April 9.

There were over 100 attendees and over 50 written comments related to that event. We've also had the Let's Talk Hudson online engagement that's been active for several weeks with the opportunity to review the fact sheets that were available at the open house and also leave written comment. And then as counsel knows, you hosted several members with the comprehensive plan subcommittee at the April 14 meeting to discuss the draft amendments and the comprehensive plan. I also wanted to briefly orient you to some of the attachments within legislation. I know at this point there's quite a few attachments within there.

A few key ones. The public comments to date are captured in the transcripts of community feedback. There's a first file that is up to and through the open house event. There's a second file which captures the online comments from April 9 to the twenty first leading up to tonight's meeting. And feedback can still be submitted up to April 30.

So you'll see a third file with any final comments which will be uploaded prior to your upcoming public hearing. Brief orientation to some of the important Planning Commission files. There's Planning Commission's review included a recommendation from January 20, which is attached. Also Planning Commission provided further recommendation on February 9 at Council's request regarding a few specific items. Of note, that correspondence referenced Planning Commission's recommendation for residential density of 15 units per acre.

There's also the file titled Text and Map Regulations as amended February 25. This is the most recent amendment version within those files. It incorporates the Planning Commission comments from February. However, it does still maintain the previous density consideration of 20 units per acre. Additionally, the Planning Commission discussed the amendments at their March and April meetings and have forwarded written communication to counsel which are also attached.

And in summary, Planning Commission touched on challenges with the residential uses, a suggestion that planned developments should be conditional use, A note regarding further traffic analysis being preferred and that retail and service uses should be limited. And in summary, based on the collective feedback that council's been pursuing in recent weeks, staff has put together here four revisions that Council may wish to consider in some manner if you wish to pursue some further amendment before final consideration of the amendments. And those four items are consideration of removing the specialty grocery store, reducing the size allowance for retail restaurant and service use, reducing the allowed location of those restaurant retail and service uses and consideration of removing residential. That's some brief orientation and then Katie and I are both here for any question.

So this, the last part that you just did, memo. I think you did a great job of capturing I think the key issues and this is a nice list of things for us to consider for amendments when we vote on May 9. Yeah.

So I just want to start thanking the staff for all of the work on the town hall and all of the feedback that you let happen on Let's Talk Hudson. I think it's been really helpful to talk with a lot of residents and also talk with the comprehensive plan that you organized. And there's been a lot of thoughtful conversation from the community at times. I'm sure difficult. I know community members disagree about aspects of this zoning and that's okay.

And I think a lot of the wrestling has been about kind of some of the trade offs that we might see especially around housing with, I've heard a wide range of feedback, a lot of residents saying that they do not want any housing there and some saying that they do. Might take a little bit more saying that they don't, but also it seems everybody does want to see this space filled with an employer. And I think this is where a lot of the trade off comes from and I think what counsel and what others are wrestling with is we really wanna see either a large employer or a lot of employers there. And I think what we're all wrestling with is how do we do that? Right?

How do we think about kind of what residents want in this space, which residents do wanna see an employer there, and kind of current market conditions in Northeast Ohio and beyond. And even within Hudson with employers saying that they want more amenities for their workers and a lot and making a space essentially competitive. And so I know we see a lot out there, reports researched by different folks saying, yep, a lot of employers do wanna see more amenities in the area. And I know we've even heard from some of our own employers saying that we need amenities in the area. And I think we've got a little bit of time too where we could consider kind of removing the housing and saying okay, let's remove the housing and then let's see how it does.

And then we can return to this in a year or whatever time frame we want to and see how the space is going, see if it's still vacant, see if they filled it or not. And so I think we have some space right now to potentially kind of make some compromises understanding that there is a trade off and so it would add some kind of constraints in that space. I know there's also been some worries with competing downtown and having Highlands moving. So I think also getting rid of some of those worries a little bit could help and create a space that reflects the community feedback while still adding some flexibility, hoping to fill that space with a large employer, a number of employers, light industry and office.

Comments? Dan? I think it

was Ms. Obert when she spoke to us brought up how the plan development is vague within the land development code and there was discussion about kind of shoring that up a bit and there's a process that takes like I think six weeks to maybe longer. Have we started that process or does Planning Commission handle that?

Planning Commission is scheduled to discuss more formally planned developments at their next meeting. And they have engaged with OHM advisors who has assisted on a couple specific zoning topics in recent months. We've met with OHM to have them help give some industry insight onto any considerations we might need to do for planned developments.

And if I could also add, the reason or the large difference of going for a planned development versus a normal application process would be to get some of those uses that are only allowed in a plan development, which are retail in this or I'm sorry, residential in the specialty grocer. So if those things are possibly coming off the table, it's also, I think, less of an urgent concern because those things that would drive an application towards the plan development process may no longer be part of the zoning proposal.

So they could still tighten up the language, but there's no urgency to get it done if we stripped those for now?

The like the likeliness of planned development being applied for would be greatly reduced.

There probably is a need to tighten up that language anyway.

It's a worthy conversation. As I think we've said previously, the city has only received or only processed one planned development in thirty years. So it may not necessarily see another one. And without these new uses that are only permitted within the plan development, without that motivation, it's unlikely that we would see an application in the coming months.

Sam?

I was just going say that these revisions I personally think are aligning with what the residents want, what the comprehensive plan was kind of looking to capture. And I think these are very thoughtful and I appreciate this revision.

Any other major categories that I'll let Patricia go, but think about any other major categories that was not included in this memo. We'll ask Greg after Patricia.

So is the hotel still included or would that have to be in a planned development?

No, that would still be, it's permitted under today's zoning and it would be permitted under the proposed zoning.

And in the area along Darrow Road that we wanna have some retail, some restaurants, that could be done with what we're doing currently?

If council were to pursue these proposed revisions, the restaurant retail service uses would be allowed in that frontage of the Joynes Acreage. And that's the only area that those additional allowances would be permitted. So it would align just as is guided by the comprehensive plan.

So it would improve that corridor?

It would still give more flexibility to that frontage.

Thank you. I

think the only thing I'm really seeing right now that might not have been addressed In the PC's memo to us they mention traffic analysis should be conducted prior to the advancement of District 11. This seems to tell me that at this point no traffic analysis has been done to go alongside of these changes. Is that true? Do we have

We have started some initial trip generation just on a very basic level to get appreciation if there is full build out of that frontage. So that is something that we could get to counsel within the next couple of weeks before you get towards decision. Certainly, along the frontage is going to increase traffic. That's a given. The Land Development Code has requirements where any project has to mitigate those impacts and they had to maintain certain levels of function for the surrounding intersections.

So the city still has regulatory control to make sure that those traffic issues are addressed. But we can get counsel some further information possibly even by next week.

So I mean I believe the vote for this is scheduled in seven days, correct?

The public hearing is now. Public hearing is That's

right, sorry. May 19. That's right. The public hearing that we have. Consideration. Thank you.

Okay. What's the timeline on the traffic trip generation? It's May, right?

Yeah. Well, we have in the trip generation. I just need to prepare some summary and we need to see if there's anything additional that we'd like from the consultants.

Okay. Yeah. That would help a lot. I think that's one of the few items I'm seeing that isn't necessarily addressed by these amendments that Planning Commission has raised and obviously a large item in our comprehensive plan. That's all.

Then can can you remind us in the the current state where zoned right now, what the size of retail that could be built there now?

The current District 8 would allow up to 40,000 square feet per parcel because of the it's set on a ratios or percentages of the existing building because the building is so large and it's currently on two parcels. That site could currently have up to 80,000 square feet in the existing building.

Any other questions or comments for Greg or Katie?

Just to piggyback on. And then the new zoning would limit it. So you could not do 80,000. Right? So it would limit down to 20,000 10,000 or 20,000 based on perimeter conditional. Okay.

Go ahead.

No. This this proposal before you references reducing the size allowances. The current amendment is a use by right up to 10,000 square feet and then a conditional use for 10,000 to 20,000 square foot uses. This proposes removing that allowance for the conditional. So the uses will be capped at 10,000 square feet. So any individual retail service or restaurant use will be capped at 10,000 square feet.

If I could just add on to that too because I do think the way the two codes are written are a little bit apples and oranges. So I think this one has been a little bit confusing to the public in general. So under the the current code, you can develop up to that floor area ratio of 40,000 square feet, and there's not a limit on any individual user. So one block of 40,000 could go up on each of those two parcels, so 80,000 in total. The proposed language is not a limit on the total retail, although we do say it has to be a predominance of commercial and industrial, so it would have to pass that language in the purpose statement.

But each individual user would be limited to 10,000 square feet by right or 20,000 conditional, but you could theoretically add those boxes up to get to 40,000 or, you know, as long as it met that predominance clause in the purpose statement. So they're just written two very different ways, so it is hard to walk through that comparison.

With these proposed changes and taking into account the job leads pipeline that you talked about a few weeks ago, can you speak to the impact you feel losing these options would have on the leads that we're seeing, the interest that we're seeing in properties like ours?

And you mean going from the proposed text to kind of the revised proposed text? Is that the

Right. So going from our current to these amendments that are proposed?

Yeah. You know, I think, as it's already been discussed, this desire to have amenities around your property is something that we hear as part of that. It's not necessarily on that first RFI or lead template that you're filling out, but it does come as part of a secondary conversation. It's part of what makes a site attractive during the site visit and where business feels like they may want to set up. So I would like to see some amenities.

I think this still gives us a pathway to do some of those, you know, maybe a lunch option or some things like the coffee shop, things like that that would support the daytime workers at the site. Residential is desired by employers in that area. I understand if that's a challenge for the community at large, and I think that goes into to weighing what we think the cost benefit is there. But

Are you saying that current employers would like residential there now? Interesting.

Yeah. So I I'll hear, specifically on that piece of feedback. It's it's hard to hire entry level staff, so young professionals coming out of college because they aren't living in Hudson because there's not really a housing type that meets their phase of life. They're not ready to take out a mortgage. They're not looking for a four bedroom home. And so having something that was, a high end condo might be appealing to that demographic, and it may help them with their entry level recruiting. Because right now, they feel like and this is just through conversation in our BREs. I don't have, like, a hard data or number piece on this, but they do feel that they're trying to pull from Downtown Cleveland or areas further north, and it's a longer commute to get here. There's a lot of other opportunities between here and Cleveland.

This is probably a hard question to answer right now out of the blue, but to what degree does Stowe fill that apartment? You know Stowe's right there on the border of this District 11 and to what they my belief is they have a good bit number more of apartments than we do And is that not filling the need?

All I know is the feedback they gave me is that it it they don't there's nothing in Hudson that meets the entry level staff. So I don't know. I could we could certainly try and get some data on that of where are your entry level staff coming from. Are you really pulling from Cleveland? Are you pulling from Stowe or others?

It's just and the reason I ask this is just because, you know, if if we were to allow for some apartment, you know in this District 11 to fulfill kind of what these employers are asking for but the fact is that that already existed in Stowe and it's actually just that young people aren't particularly interested in living in Hudson and Stowe regardless of whether there's apartments or not. You know I don't want us to put the zoning in. You can make the argument that the market will decide that but obviously residents have been pretty vehemently against residential in that area. I have one more train of thought, but I lost it there. Okay.

This that's all I got right now. Thanks.

Okay. Well, thanks a lot. Appreciate your time. Said, you guys did a nice job of summarizing all the the key things for us.

And just a brief summary, the public hearing is scheduled for next week. So I anticipate then there would be workshop council workshop discussion two weeks from this evening. And at this time, council is not requesting any of these to be drafted into an amendment, but may give staff further direction in two weeks along with the traffic information. Okay, thank you.

I said, sorry. I yeah. I just wanna, like, sit down and make sure, know, zoning, right, it gives the possibility of a thing happening. So another thing just to think about with the zoning is it doesn't mean it will happen, so it also makes the traffic, I know, a little bit more challenging and coming back with when you don't know what will be there. There I know there's gotta be different options of, what they could fill it with, and that changes the traffic implications based on what they do.

So I just want people to recognize that this complicated and it's just it's allowing for possibility, but doesn't mean it could happen. And so it makes it even like the traffic question challenging, which if we do have, if they do want to redevelop it and they have a plan development, they will have to do a traffic study because they will have a specific use for each thing. And we will get to have a lot more details if they choose to develop it, which they could choose not to do anything for the next decade if they wanted to. But should they choose at some point to redevelop it, they will have to have a traffic study and people will get to see what exactly is gonna go where.

Alright. Moving on to E 26 Dash 0034 Hudson Innovation Park update. Katie and Greg.

Again. So for this, I'm just gonna give a brief little bit of site overview because I know many of these projects and initiatives kicked off, quite a while ago. So we do have a 91 acre site along Heinz Hill Road that's available for sale as a developable developable commercial parcel. This site was operated from nineteen o three to 2008 by Cuyahoga County as a juvenile reform program. So for a hundred years, that's what it was in the service, that it completed.

And when that program closed is when the city of Hudson, Western Reserve Land Conservancy, and Summit County Metro Parks came together to buy the site and put northern portion and some of the larger acreage into a conservation easement. That leaves us now with the 91 acres we're talking about. Since that time in 2009, there has been a continued effort by many city councils before before you all to, move this site towards a commercial site. So in 2013, council directed all of the prior structures to be demolished,

so all of

the school buildings, classrooms, dormitories, etcetera. In 2015, a comp plan was adopted that included this space under category that was called flex, which was open to the future needs of the community and market forces to determine what the ultimate end use of the site should be. In 2018, council voted unanimously to rezone the parcel from District 2, which was is rural residential to District 6, Hudson Western Hudson Gateway, which is our commercial industrial district. And in 2024, the comp plan was adopted and recommends that this site, be held until a transformative income generating user is identified. And then most recently, we've, accomplished getting the site JobsOhio site certified.

It was authenticated. They've changed their branding, so now we're certified. And that announcement went out earlier this year. That's been really exciting for us. We've already gotten some developer inquiries, starting to work towards some things that look like they could turn into proposals, and it felt like it was really important now to have a touch base with this group about some of the key decisions that need to be made, some of them to discuss here, and some of them possibly that may be appropriate for executive session discussion in the future. There's really four key topics that I'd like to discuss today. The first one is the salt dome relocation. Brian, if you wouldn't mind pulling up the memo. There's an aerial of that. I appreciate it.

Thank you. So as you know, our auxiliary salt salt dome is located on this site in one of the most developable pads. It's a nice big flat area. And so prior to being able to sell this parcel, we need to find a new location for that infrastructure. Staff and, city manager have really done a quite an exhaustive search.

It's highlighted there in orange. Thanks. To to try and find the best alternative location for that, we've looked at North Of Heinz Hill Road. We've looked at places to the east and west, talked with other neighboring communities, talked with Western Reserve Land Conservancy about land swaps. And, really, I think the clearest and, best result is a parcel that's gonna be just the the east of the site, South Of Hines Hill Road.

No real discussion for you on that tonight other than to make you aware you're going to start to see discussion of that Salt Barn relocation coming up, and it more information will be available in your next round of appropriations for consideration. Just wanting to be clear. The driver behind that is if we wanna list this for sale, we've gotta get our salt barn out of there. Timeline on that, the salt delivery for the season will happen in August, so we do need to be moving on this if we wanna get it done in 2026. K.

Item number two is property tax abatement. So there are quite a few different tools you can leverage to get a property tax abatement for a developer. On a new construction site, it's relatively common that they would hope to have some sort of incentive or assistance in the financials developing a project. For those that have been involved in the process before, we do debate those pretty seriously, and you'll find other communities that list, this is our abatement zone. You get a 100% abatement just for building here.

Ours are much more of a negotiated structure, very involved with our schools. More typically, we'll see something in the 50 to 75% range for abatement, on our programs. There are a few different tools that we can use to offer that. What we've historically used in other areas of the community is called a community reinvestment area or a CRA. That's a program through the Ohio revised code.

However, this isn't within one of our existing districts, and it seems like it might be a challenge to meet the parameters of that state program. You have to demonstrate that there are, you know, homes or other structures that have not been maintained, and we just really don't have evidence of that in the surrounding properties, thankfully. Happy to say that. But it didn't feel that we were a clean fit to create a new CRA zone or expand an existing CRA zone into this area. The next type of program I researched was enterprise zone.

This is a similar tool that allows for property tax abatement, but, focuses on some distress conditions, and some of the things include dilapidated industrial structures or sites that have remained vacant for a long time. We know we've been trying to land a user in this site for a long time. We've had some preliminary conversations with Summit County, and they would be supportive of helping us develop an application under those parameters for an enterprise zone if it's something we were interested in. Tax increment financing is a tool that's used to build out infrastructure and then pay it back through the increased tax value property tax valuation. This site is, fortunate to be well served by utilities.

That's part of the criteria to get that JobsOhio certification. So I don't see a huge demand for offsets to utilities here. So I don't think this is gonna be our best tool in the toolbox, and I wouldn't advocate necessarily to to have that as our our lead incentive on this site. And then lastly, there's another tool called, an undeveloped property tax abatement. That really has more to do with spec or partial building, and it really isn't, it's an abatement that you can use on the land or the site before it's occupied.

And then once they get a certificate of occupancy, the abatement is discontinued. So not really the model we're looking for here. Our goal is to get this occupied as quickly as possible and not give tax incentives for it to be vacant. So given, those options, we felt that if council wanted to look at what an incentive could be on this site or would be available at this site, we would be looking for an enterprise zone, and that would be an application that we run through Summit County and their council as well, and then ultimately goes to the state. So, essentially, just looking for some discussion here on whether that's something that you would like us to continue to explore and and bring a more formal document back on that.

Topic three. Topic three is the ongoing kind of ownership structure that we would like to have here. Right now, the property is city owned. It could be outright sold to a developer, and then a developer would be engaged in citing the end users and coming up with all the development proposals. We could retain it as city owned and try to cite those users ourselves or some sort of public private partnership as a third option.

There's positives and negatives to both. Of course, if we keep it as a city owned property, you will have as much control as you possibly can have all the way to the end of the process, but that also means that we bear the risk. Right? So we if I use Hudson Crossings as an example, that was a a private led development by Premier Development Partners. They still have those front two parcels closest to 303, vacant and undeveloped. If we, the city, were the developer, we'd still be trying to sell those and recoup our money. So I think there is something to be said for an outright sale where you know what you're getting for the full 91 acres, and then it becomes the private market's risk to bear on filling out all of those spaces. And then of course you

I just interrupt for a second. So can you then explain how in that scenario you just described, we can ensure that we are getting employers with lots of employees and income tax base.

Well paid employees.

Rather than just they come in, they build a big building.

Absolutely. So we have a few safeguards against that. The first is just our zoning. Right? So we don't allow heavy manufacturing, for example. So the zoning will already limit what is allowed or not allowed there. Self storage, for example, would not be allowed at that site. And then the second thing is in addition to what's already in our zoning, in order to get certified, we had to put in additional covenants on the deed that further restricted the uses to the site. They got into really specific things that weren't even in our zoning code, like slaughterhouses and all kinds of very specific uses, but things that you would not want to encourage within your community. So we have that additional protection beyond what our zoning code has.

And then the third is our incentive. So we we get to choose you all get to choose what we incentivize. So a developer is likely to want an incentive on the site, and I think we can say no. Right? I I and so I think that there's some opportunity there as well.

But, yes, that is to some extent, that is some of the control that you'd be giving up. So I think that's that's really the decision point. And I'm trying to think of it. Any other last points on ownership style? Then I was just also mentioned, and this kind of leads into the next point as well.

Some of the benefits of having a developer engaged on the site to any degree are they obviously have a bit of a wider network when it comes to who may be looking for large buildings. Somebody who needs a huge industrial site may be more likely to pick up a phone and call a developer that they already know and trust and have relationship with as opposed to specifically calling Katie at the city hall office in Hudson. Right? Like, you need a building, you don't think of calling. May think of calling me first. That's my goal. But if you're not already familiar with the community, don't have a relationship in Hudson, you may call a developer.

And if we pick

a great developer, they may have a network that they can help bring us leads through. And then the last topic to discuss is whether we would like to seek the involvement of a real estate broker for many of the same reasons. You've got somebody who's got an established network. It would give us the opportunity to have professional marketing and branding of the site. One of the things I'm finding so if you happen to drive by this site, there is a for sale sign that rings to my desk line.

So I get a lot of the initial inquiries for the site today, and it's a lot of, oh, I see the city owns this. Are you willing to just give up part of it? Or, you know, we get a lot of, can I just have it for free because it's the cities? And don't worry. I'm gonna do something great for the community here, which may or may not be true.

But I think if you put a more typical commercial branded real estate sign out there, you kind of weed some of those requests out that we're not spending time on. But, of course, that would come at a cost. And just in doing some quick research, that's for this type of industrial land, vacant land, that'd be anywhere from, like, four to 5% if it's just our broker. If there was a broker on the other side of the deal, we'd be looking to pay between 78% of the deal. So, of course, there is a cost to, engaging somebody on the project.

So I know that was a sprint through those four topics, and they are big topics. But as I mentioned, we are really starting to get some some activity generation, based on the announcement that we got certified. So I'm excited to get into this with all of you. And if there's anything I can answer, I'm more than happy to.

Are we gonna get I know we're going on our tour on Saturday. Are we gonna get to see this piece of land on our tour? I might be throwing a wrench in the tour. I don't know.

Yes, yes.

Questions for Greg. Hey, Dan.

How soon are you gonna need to know on the Salt Dome? Like, direction on that.

We worked out a timeline, from a staff perspective, and we would like to be in a place where in July, we could be working in construction of the new site, which means that we've gotta be getting to planning commission in June. So we've got a team working on that, knowing that your appropriations approval would come during that process. So before we started construction, of course, but we're gonna have the plans running through planning commission just to ensure we can make that timeline.

Pretty quickly?

Yeah. Pretty quickly.

Those plans are in house Yes. With engineering. So

Is there another option for the Salt Dome, or is it

there Boy, if you got one, I'm all for that.

Let's try.

Because I've been all over Northeast Ohio trying to make deals with everybody, including ODOT at Chittenden Road. We've asked everybody. This is the best location. Again, think it's the noise. It comes down to residential homes. There's no real residential homes in that area.

This will be on the piece of land that's not able to be developed, correct?

That's not part of the green area on the right side of that. It's probably that blue cyan. Is that true, Katie?

Yeah, it's right over there.

It's right at the very edge, that light blue color in that area. That's where the salt barn would be. And then the bridge will be built, and they have to keep that driveway open because there's this county pump station down there and multiple cell towers. So the driveway has to be maintained. And then Kevin and his staff, they need to get that thing filled with salt in the fall. So we need to, as we just heard, we need to get this through Planning Commission, get it approved and then get it constructed and then be able to bring the SALT to that site.

I know three and four are gonna take some discussion with everyone, but is there any reason we wouldn't do two to pursue the enterprise zone?

There's not a downside from my perspective. Just because we have an enterprise zone, it doesn't mean you have to award an abatement. It's just an option that's out there. And that approval process would still be with counsel for every single application that comes in. So I'm happy to just gather more information and and start the conversation with Summit County if the group would feel that that's appropriate.

Seems like an easy one. Yeah.

And then what about the other, what about three and four? Timeline, is there any additional information that you could share with us?

Yeah. I think part of it too comes down to timeline in general. It would be helpful for us all to have a discussion, I think, on are we looking to just sort of passively have this for sale and evaluate things as they come in? Or do we want to say put out there and I'm throwing out a number as an example, but necessarily have to do this. But for the next six months, we're gonna be open for proposals.

And at the conclusion of the six months, we would make a decision on an offer, assuming that something meets at least our minimum criteria. Are we I have already gotten that question from some developers of, am I just supposed to submit an offer, or is there gonna be some sort of a bid process or a timeline that's associated with this? So I think that also speaks to, well, are we trying to sell it to a developer? Are we trying to cite end users? So it's really control question, I think, of how how long does are you all wanting pull the site and be involved in some of the decisions?

I know.

I would just say if we do wanna continue that conversation down that road, we might wanna talk to the solicitor about going into executive session.

Yeah. I think we need to understand this the developer relationship a little bit better.

Definitely look to schedule that then. So I'll get to work on number two. Everybody feels comfortable with Saltbarn and knowing more Saltbarn information is coming, and that's kind of the context behind it. I'll get more information at Enterprise Zone, get that in front of you all as soon as I can, and we'll look to schedule executive session about kind of the mechanics of how we might want to ultimately sell this land.

Real quick, and I'm sure I could find this if I took the time, but you guys probably know faster. Is moving of the salt dome in the budget already? No. Okay. Do we have a general estimate?

We're working with the county. We ask them if they can help us, the county engineer's office. And again, Kevin's been doing the heavy lifting on that part of it. He's been very successful about they're hopefully gonna help us to move all the big blocks and everything over. Currently, they're not asking for anything for that.

We did offer this is a northern salt facility for them, And they do have townships, Twinsburg Township, for example, up north that they would instead of going all the way down to Akron, and that was the reason we kind of reached out to them originally was, hey, could we partner with you guys on this and would it benefit you guys? And it will. So that's the things we're doing. More than likely, we would have to take this out of the excess carryover. Ballpark wise, it could be as high as half 1,000,000, it could be 300,000 depending on how much labor and equipment we get from Summit County.

And this being movement of our salt dome, very important to our infrastructure. I gotta imagine that would meet our criteria there.

Yeah. And also, you know, like Kevin said, and I didn't know that until tonight that, whatever that number was, 66,000 miles they drove. You know, again, if they have to drive all the way back down to Cabernet, which is down on Hudson Drive, all the way from the North End. Keep in mind, and I always like to remind everybody, is the turnpike was put on the fringe of the snow belt. And back in the fifties, they realized, hey, we don't wanna go too far north because there's gonna be a lot more storms, the Geauga County areas.

So they decided to find out where that kind of average was, and that's where they put it where it is. North Of Our Turnpike in our town, we do see more snow than, you know, we see South Of The Turnpike. So it's as you mentioned earlier, you'd like to know some metrics of the other communities. I can tell you right now that, in another community south of us that I was a service director for, we didn't have the snowstorms that Northern Hudson and the Auroras and all them get, just because of the snow belt and that fringe that they're getting. Interesting.

Okay, Amanda.

Alright, so here's my question on the enterprise zones. I know that some of the research on this suggests that they can move activity. So especially thinking about the District 11 Joanne space we're just talking about and this space, how are we thinking about this space and the Joanne space, right? So if we now have this shiny, easy enterprise zone, does that make it harder to actually fill? Regardless of what we do, does it make it harder to fill that space? Like, how do we think of those spaces?

Yeah. I think they're gonna be two different users. I think right now, we're in a position where the cost of new construction is so expensive that we're seeing a strong preference preference towards existing building right now in the market. And so I think we have that at the Joann we've got more than that at the Joann site. Right? As long as somebody's willing to accept a multitenant position, we've got the existing building, and that also meets somebody who wants to go wants to move in quickly. Right? If they're on an accelerated timeline, Joanne site is ready and available. I think what we have in Hines Hill Road is something that's gonna be maybe more of a headquarters feel, a little bit more of a dedicated campus for the opportunity to create single user buildings in a campus environment. So I think they're gonna be two different environments.

I think they're gonna meet two different rent price points is my hope.

Thanks. Thank you.

Hey, next is. TMP dash 8620 resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with the Hudson Community Foundation regarding a senior transportation program and accepting a donation for the passenger van.

Thank you, doctor Byrd. I will handle this for tonight. I did wanna, you know, have a couple of call outs to the staff that have put a lot of work and effort into this over the last six months or so. Jeff Knobloch has done a lot of work for finance Susan Chapman, who is our liaison to the senior network and Jenna Stasick, who's in our CD department who helps with grants. This project origins were initiated back in 2025.

The Hudson Senior Network and Hudson Community Foundation came to the city and brought this plan of maybe getting a senior van following in what Twinsburg has done for many years. When I talked to them earlier this week, they were saying that they've been using this van service for about over twenty two years, closer to twenty five years when, Mayor Prokop was up in, in, Twinsburg. The donation, Hudson Senior Network and HCF are asking council to accept a $58,000 donation to cover the full purchase price of a passenger van via state bid, which is how we get most of our vehicles, we would do the purchasing of the vehicle and use the donation for that payment for the senior transportation van. The van would be owned and operated by the city going forward. We would title it and put our city plates on it, obviously equip it with any radios and other things that we have and safety devices we have in our vehicles.

The city's role in this would be the vehicle is being donated. City would take over the long term administration, scheduling, staffing, maintenance, and insurance of the van. Who it will serve? Hudson residents 65 years and older who are able to ambulate independently to the van. This service is not a wheelchair van and not a taxi service.

All trips need to be scheduled. Summit County SCAT, S C A T, stands for Senior Citizen Area Transit from Metro RTA, offers a similar service for disabled residents throughout Summit County. The graphic limit on this, there is a ten year limit radius up in Twinsburg. That's how far their vans go. So out, they can go out 10 miles for doctor's visits, and I believe it's five miles for other visits that they perform.

We're recommending, after we looked at a map with the Hudson Senior Network last week or the week before, six miles should cover the majority of the commercial areas in Cuyahoga Falls. And just to give you all some kind of limits on where six miles from 303 And 91 are, to the North, it would be north just North of 82 in Twinsburg. To the East, it would be about 43 in Streetsboro, over by that Giant Eagle in the Lowe's area. To the South, it would be at 59 in Stowe. And then to the West, it would encompass a good portion of Cuyahoga Falls' main commercial areas where and doctors are.

So we felt the six mile radius. I know it doesn't sound like why would you pick six, but that was the reason for the six. Five was a little too less, and more than that was taking us into areas that we probably didn't need to go to. The trip types, Twinsburg uses it for medical appointments, pharmacies, grocery shopping, and any other events. They can also go to the senior center in Twinsburg, and they can go to any fitness centers in Twinsburg.

All of them have to be scheduled appointments. We're recommending in this plan would be to have medical appointments, pharmacies, grocery shopping, and then any of the Hudson Senior Network events at City Hall. And then lastly, just kind of a coverall for everything is or any other City Manager approved trips. So over time but we'd like to start off and I think the Senior Network would like to start off with this other just kind of smaller scale plan than what Twinsburg is doing. Scheduling.

To manage staff and demands, residents must book trips at least two weeks in advance through the Public Works Recreation Management System. Kevin's department has that for any time you want to get any of the rooms reserved at Barlow Community Center and what have you. So we looked into that system. The license will be able to handle this. So scheduling software, we don't have to buy anything for that.

We already have all those in our arsenal of different software packages. This is a safe and reliable curb to curb service designed to support independence for our senior population. One of the things I was hoping that we could do is you see deliveries, you see a lot of Amazon, they have a lot of white vans, they don't just have the Amazon vans. It would be good to wrap this in something unique that the seniors would be able to see if we do go ahead with this process. And we built that cost in here for a wrap for the van.

The cost of this in 2026, if we get approval for this, we would put it out get the state bid. It would take several months to get the van in. And we were just looking at if we started in September and went through the end of the year, we'd be paying operating cost, I believe, around $11,000 in 2027. And these are based on three days a week. We weren't looking at doing five.

We were looking at doing like a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In 2027, the cost would be around $34,000 a year. And then it's about $200,000 approximately over five years. And that information is attached in one of the attachments that I provided to counsel. A few more things here, and then I'll turn it over to questions. This would be funded out of the general fund if we were to go ahead with it. It is not budgeted. For 2026. I would recommend that we would use again the excess carryover of the $11,000 for this year. We did have legal and our insurance company review this all thoroughly, and both of them gave a thumbs up.

Legal had a few questions about the waiver, and, you know, we can easily incorporate those in. The next steps, if council approves of this resolution, after three readings, allowing the city manager to formalize the agreement with the foundation and proceed with vehicle procurement. Just last but not least here, we have seven items attached. We came up with program guidelines, which I think are very detailed. One of the things I recommend that we do different than what Twinsburg was doing is have an annual, background check on all drivers.

Also, have an annual physical on all drivers so that we know, that they're in good health. We mentioned we have the six mile radius map in there. The application, draft is in there. The waiver form is in there. There was an informal poll sent out to five forty seniors.

I believe the, Hudson Senior Network worked with our IT department and used these emails. It's an informal poll, but 139 people responded to it, and they said that they would use this service. According to the Hudson Senior Network, it is probably their number one service that they would like to see for the seniors in our community. And then last but not least is the legislation. I did reach out to Summit County Community Development Block Grants, and those go on all year. And they wouldn't pay for a new van, but they would help pay for salaries for a year if it were to help seniors. So we are going to apply for that. More than likely, we would apply for the twenty '27. And that's it. That's all I have.

Happy to answer any questions and go into any detail or pull up any of the attachments.

Thank you. That was a very nice summary, nice presentation. Jeff, I know you did a lot of work on this. If you could if you wanna add any additional comment.

Yeah. Just to add, gosh, we started talking about this almost a year ago, probably 2025, several meetings that we kicked off at City Hall. And there were several stakeholders involved there so that we can make sure we were looking at every possible angle and idea, questions on a lot of the things that mister Sheridan had covered. So I feel like in that time and the the due diligence to talk to surrounding communities that have this program and what we wanted with the senior network and getting their feedback so that they were intimately involved in what they wanted the service to be. We've done our homework and staff's done a lot of that work on their side and a lot of great work.

So I feel like we have done everything and minimized this to the minimal amount that we would need, which I've always said the biggest thing is gonna be the labor cost of the driver. And having the software that we could utilize in house just takes care of not having that additional expense. So again, think we've done our work to make sure this is done at the most minimal cost to provide the proper service that the senior network is looking for. I've been involved a bit from the beginning and I fully support this and happy to answer any other questions from my side as well. Any

and I like the idea of starting up small, three days a week, testing it, see what the demand is, see if we're satisfying that, and then continue to kind of reevaluate it as we're going along. Patricia. You

had told me this before, but you didn't say it tonight. There's no income limits on this, correct?

Correct.

So that piece is great. And the second is the block grant, if we get it one year, can you keep applying for it, or is it only a one year kind of thing?

No, we can't. And we haven't had a block grant since, I believe, the ramp at City Hall. We did get the handicap ramp in front of City Hall constructed. That wasn't part of the original Pasco Building. But being a public building, we wanted to make sure we had that. That was the last major block grant that we got from CDBG. And by the way, I did run the five days a week, and it would be an operating cost of about $55,000 so about $20,000 more for the extra two days, eight hours a day.

Tyler.

Yeah, question for whoever knows, Jeff, staff. What does this solve that Metro SCAT does not solve? Metro SCAT is a point to point service offered by Metro RTA for residents who are 62 or over. It does bag loading and wheelchairs. And even if the city wanted to do something like pay for Metro SCAT fares, we could pay for 16,000 trips for the cost of one driver.

It is an option that SCAT offers to the communities in Summit County.

Can I ask a question on that, maybe help aid counselor Sutton's question? Have we talked and asked that type of question to the surrounding communities that have their own van? Have we asked them what was their justification of doing that with their own in house van, if you will, versus utilizing MetroScat as Councillor Sutton stated? They had to have had some reason and justification that they felt that it was better to be controlled internally.

Again, Mayor Prokop in Twinsburg, they're the only city that has a van. Now, others have buses that take them to different locations, but they're the only city that I know of that has the van service. And they actually have four vehicles if they get the need that they can use. I believe two of them are probably older vehicles. But it was the familiarity of the drivers and the city providing that service and not having a different type of a driver every day coming in.

Uber was another one and Lyft that was brought up in the initial. We asked, well, if you needed to go to the grocery store, but I believe the seniors were feeling just more comfortable with knowing that the city driver was there and it was a service that the city was providing. But SCAT does, Uber does, but you have to pay for each one of them, and I know SCAT's a nominal fee. But again, SN and HCF are here if they wanna come up and answer any of those questions from the seniors.

Having lived in Pittsburgh a while back, and with I don't know how reliable the services are here, but I know in general, buses are late, buses don't come, you miss appointments, that would be my concern. You know, maybe they are reliable, but generally, as Heidi's saying no back there, generally it's a problem. And especially if you're talking about doctor's visits, if it doesn't show you're in bad shape to get another appointment. Sometimes it can take you six months to get an appointment.

And that was why I wanted to have two part time drivers, just in case one of them got sick. And these are doctor's appointments people are going for. We wanna make sure that we had a backup driver that we can they're not both working. It's just one would work, say, on Monday, the other one works on Wednesday, whatever. Basically, they can back each other up.

Just wanna add to that conversation about Metroscat. I don't wanna speculate, but I assume their pool and their area is much larger. Is that a I'm not completely familiar with that program.

It's Metro RTA.

What's their

range? Summit County.

Okay, so again, not wanting to speculate, I would think that Hudson senior residents would maybe have more of a challenge of getting that scheduled or getting the flexibility that they may need with that larger, broader range than what they would with this local project program that would be then within six mile radius. So again, not speculating, but I would think of this project would be much easier and timely for the residents within Hudson.

Doctor. Burke, could we ask to see you now?

Yeah, could you ladies come up to give us your input?

I wanna address SCAT first. It's a good service, but it's considered very unreliable. We have a few disabled seniors from some of the local residential places who will take it to come to Hudson Senior Network events and programs. They often arrive very early, because that's the schedule of SCAT that day. They wait sometimes after we've even cleaned up and the room is empty, they're waiting for the bus to return.

It's a great service, I'm sure, but it's not one that is going to be able to say, Doctor. Bird, I'm gonna pick you up at 10:00 in the morning, I'm gonna take you to your 11:00 doctor's office visit, and I will be picking you up at noon. It is not that. And that is what we're looking for. A way that we can support seniors who live alone, who can't rely on their family, if they have one, and who need to get to some vital things.

We're not taking them to get their nails done. We are taking them to doctor's offices, physical therapy, dialysis in some cases. Pharmacies, grocery stores will be perhaps once a week. But those are things that especially when the weather is bad, it's very hard and scary for the seniors to get out. Seniors don't like Uber.

They're scared of getting in a car with some stranger driving. It doesn't matter whether you can tell them it's safe. Nobody is excited about taking an Uber, at least those 70. So we truly looked into this, actually for more than a year, I think we began talking about it. Because when we look at our seniors' needs and what they've said they want, and we know so many of them live alone, and they don't have the kid to come and take them to the doctor's office, We were applauded by the group when this was brought up to them after the survey results.

Questions?

I just have a statement. Kind of piggybacking off what you said, when I see patients in my office that are using similar type services, they have waited hours. So I think that would be the benefit of offering this. Since we don't have a specific senior center for our members with our growing population, I mean, I think it's the least that we can do to, you know, start with this. I I had more questions for you, Tom, or based off of, like, I assume the service is gonna be tracking the calls, how many calls we're getting, how many requesting, the time of day, that type of thing, where they're coming from, where they're going.

I would assume the software does that. Yes. Is there any I don't know, maybe this is really far fetched. Is there any way, like, even just for this calendar year to consider if anyone that is qualified would be a senior volunteer to drive the van?

Typically, we want drivers just to pass basic tests. And if they're able to pass it, that's fine. If we can get volunteers to do it, the problem with, though, having volunteers is you want somebody who's gonna be reliable. And I have found you need to pay them and you need to have them set on a certain schedule, make them an employee, and then they will show up to work. And if they don't, we can go through the disciplinary action of moving them out and getting another driver in.

And there's gonna be like a backup, is that what you said? Like what if there was a call off?

Correct. It's two part time people, but they won't both be working at the same time. It'll just be one, like the shift is 9AM or 08:30AM to 4PM. One driver would be working that and basically the other one would be at home. And then if that one's sick or goes on vacation, the other driver could fill in for them.

And then if both of them were sick, we would probably have to look to Kevin and his staff, to see if somebody was able to drive and pitch it for us. That's exactly what Twinsburg does. They have a full time driver, a backup driver, as a part time person, and then the director of the senior, as you mentioned, they have a senior center and a senior program. The director of the senior program is able to drive. One of the things I did wanna mention we didn't talk about, but just like medical trips, that does not include procedures involving anesthesia.

So they have that in there. But again, these are all in the guidelines. We pretty much followed what Twinsburg had. Again, it's been in place twenty five years, but we did make a few changes to it because it's just the Hudson thing, the way we do stuff.

Question, is SCEP based off of income or disability or no? It is really only based off of an age and that you live in Summit County to qualify, do you know?

To be eligible for MetroScat, passengers must live in Summit County and meet one of the following requirements: 62 years of age or older, have a temporary or permanent disability that prohibits the passenger from using fixed route services. So those are the two main things that they

do. We won't

have a wheelchair accessible van. This is not that. SCAT does. So I haven't seen them being used with a wheelchair that seniors had come to our events at least, but they do have that capability.

And the fire chief and EMS director wanted to add in there too, and I believe Twinsburg had it, this is, the vehicle is not an ambulance. We're not taking people the hospital in the vehicle. It's scheduled appointments. So in advance. One trip a day. So they can have one trip a day.

I'll just add, I was at the Hudson Community Foundation event where the fundraiser where we where they where you all raise funds for this, and I got a chance to talk with some senior citizens there just as well as in my travels, and I've heard a lot of excitement about this as a very nice service that they would appreciate in the city. So I have heard only excitement about this. You

mentioned one trip a day, and looking through this, trying to understand from a scheduling model, I I first assumed they would need to schedule both their trip to and trip back?

No. One like one trip. Sorry. One trip to the doctor, which would be a return trip. That's one trip.

Interesting. So does the driver stay and wait the entire time?

It depends. When I asked Twinsburg this, they typically, if they have two passengers, like say somebody has a 09:30 appointment and another person has a 10:30 appointment, And they look at the schedule ahead of time, that's why it's helpful to have the schedule ahead of time. They look to see, okay, we can take this person and drop them off and then take the other person to their appointment and then go back and get the first person take them home and the second person and pick them up. It's scheduling and they also ask these questions. Where are you going?

Give an address. And how long do you anticipate being there? Because a lot of them are doing routine appointments and they know their doctors are gonna have, they'll be there for like an hour. So if that is the case, then the driver would wait. Heidi, do you wanna add here?

The driver will also have a cell phone so that if I'm at the doctor's office and the doctor is late and then they need an x-ray and something else, and I know I'm going to have a prolonged visit, I can call the the driver and say, hey, I'm not gonna be done until 01:00 this afternoon, so can you, I'll keep you abreast of that, but let's plan on a 01:00 pickup.

So we're trying to stay flexible with this? Yes. Okay. My next question is, you mentioned it'll be one driver with a backup working a full whatever it was 08:30 to four, etcetera. That driver needs to take a lunch, I assume? So are we just going to have a permanent blackout during lunchtime? Correct.

Okay. And grocery stores, just to piggyback on that, grocery stores would be a standard day. For example, Drug Mart, the first Monday, I believe, of the month is senior day, senior citizen day. There's discounts. So if you're doing a Drug Mart run, would do that day. You can do Giant Eagle, Acme, Hynens, whatever. They can have scheduled days of the week when they go to the store. I think Twinsburg is every Giant Eagle is once a week in Twinsburg at least. A lot of them put their pharmacy there.

Yeah.

And Hynens is once a week. They do Twinsburg, but they're five days a week. So they rotate through the grocery stores there.

So those are blacked out too, just to piggyback on your statement about different things like breaks and what have you. Right. The

pharmacies often also close for lunch, so probably generally aligning those with the pharmacies in the area or the pharmacies that are getting frequented by this service would probably make a lot of sense.

And I asked Twinsburg that question. Like if I go to the doctor, they usually, if they have to give me a prescription, they're like, Where do you want to go? And I tell them my pharmacy, Well, I could pick it up on the way home. Well, that's not a trip. That's another trip. So basically, they'll go to the doctor, say on a Thursday, if they know Giant Eagle is a grocery store trip on Friday, then they'll do the doctor, and then the next day they go do their trip for their grocery and they pick up their pharmacy. So, can't drive by the pharmacy. Now, Twinsburg said if they can and there's no other appointments that afternoon, as I heard Jeff say, is flexibility in that they'll try to be flexible if they need to get that prescription. They try to work with the riders.

Okay, any other questions or comments?

I have one more. Just one more comment I forgot earlier. Also, just from my experience, there's older adults that refuse to even go out in the winter period because of the snow, and so they'll either delay being seen or, you know, wait until they're really sick. So having this would be an opportunity for them to feel comfortable to get out to the appointment because somebody's driving them.

I will

Thank you very much, Heidi. You.

Thank you. I will add more information on the SCAT and attach it for everyone. So I didn't include that in here, but I'm happy to do that.

It does say, and you read it, the criteria have a temporary or permanent disability. So that really wouldn't cover most of our seniors.

It's one or the other.

Yeah, one or the other. Yeah, it could be 62 or older, the first line there. But again, I'll get all that information. Sorry, mayor.

I just wanted to say, think the lights are out in the hallway before anybody else goes out.

They're out?

Well, maybe the switch was just off because it was so sunny when we started our meeting. I just didn't want anybody

Okay.

Leaving and not being able to see down the steps.

Thanks, Greg.

Okay. Thank you.

Next is 4A t m p dash 8556, a resolution accepting the recommendations of the tax incentive review council to continue community reinvestment area agreements and job creation grant program agreements with the city of Hudson. Katie.

Yeah. So just a quick overview for this group. There's an annual meeting required to review any active property tax abatements, and the makeup of this group is all prescribed through the Ohio revised code fifty seven zero nine eighty five. In Hudson, we also apply this to our job creation grant, which is an income tax based grant just for good oversight and good diligence. This group meets once a year, typically the first week in March.

We are required then to complete reporting with the state of Ohio on any community reinvestment area, incentives, And the group conducts a fifteen minute meeting with each business that has an active incentive, understands what their current employment levels are, any large changes in strategy that might be relevant to investigating or understanding the incentive, and then makes a recommendation. And they can, for each incentive, recommend, to either continue, modify, or terminate the agreement, and then that recommendation comes to you all as city council. So this will happen annually. And, like I said, the makeup of that group is dictated by Ohio ORC, but the representative for city council is currently doctor Bird, so he participated in the meeting with us this year.

We

received 12 incentives, and all but one of them is meeting their current payroll commitment. That entity noted that they had several leadership positions that were vacant during the majority of 2025, and those roles have been filled. So they feel that they have a clear path back to, meeting their payroll commitments, and they also had a history of in prior years had been meeting their payroll commitments as well. So it it seemed as a a blip. The Turk group recommended continuation of all 12 incentives, and that'll be with you for you on the consent agenda next meeting. Are there any questions about how that group functions?

As you as you mentioned, there was expect everybody to be meeting them. But if there's some extenuating circumstances and they describe kind of a path forward where they are going to improve and this time voted to continue there. So I think that that, like you said, all of them met those criteria. Questions or comments? Okay, Thank you.

Next is four b TMP dash eight six one zero resolution authorizing the city manager to allow door to art to install on the city greens, a birdsong art installation 2026.

I will take this one, since I've been working on this intimately. If members of council remember, oh gosh, this was three years ago that the small birds were placed in the trees on the clock tower, the gazebo green, and the Ravenna Street green. And that's where the Birdsong Project kicked off. Those birds have since moved to the Akron Art Museum downtown Cuaga Falls, the Summit County Library, and I believe they are currently in the botanical gardens. So Adriana from door to art, she would like to have those birds returned to Hudson for their final stop, that is this request here.

And if council also remembers a few months back, we did present this. I had a pretty lengthy memo that I had attached with all of the details and some of the history. So that's what this TMP8610 is to do, is to allow a smaller subset of those small birds to come to the Parklane Green. I believe it's for a two month period of July through October. Excuse me.

That's in the description there. And again, that would be the final stop. And the Parklane Green was selected because that's where Melody resides currently. So the thought was to have these smaller birds, a small subset of them, not the full quantity, to be on the Park Lane Green hanging in those trees to surround Melody for their final stop, and then they would be retired. So can you answer any questions?

Had some discussion about could we have them permanently?

Counselor White, myself and Adriana are talking about options of can we extend the concept of the Birdsong project and have that filter into additional activities within the city. Councilor White, I'm not sure if you'd like to add any of the other detail. We haven't had that meeting yet, but Councillor White has met with Adriana and we're having a follow-up meeting scheduled soon.

Yes, I had breakfast with Adriana to talk about some ideas of ways to make it more of a permanent piece of Hudson. So we have a lot of ideas. I don't think we can implement all of them, at least initially. And so we're gonna be having an additional breakfast with the mayor to kind of figure out a move forward plan, and we'll present it to the group and see work with city staff to see if any of that is agreeable.

And the only thing I'll add there too is when we had the smaller birds here, the residents I think very much enjoyed them. Kids loved seeing them and finding them. And there was a whole project wrapped around it. You could go on the website and look at a map of the birds. The merchants started getting involved in having bird related type themed products in their stores to kind of help tie in and to maybe draw people into some of the shops. So the project was really well received in the past and we're trying to continue that.

Call them to the parks maybe. Get people out to the parks and scavenger hunt type things.

Let me just segue into the next one and then we can continue if there's any more discussion. TMP 8,609, an ordinance authorizing the city manager to accept the donation of Melody from door to art.

Correct. So I'll give a little bit of background on that. When Melody was originally installed, there was a defined period. I believe it was one year. We had since twice now extended resolutions to continue to allow her to remain where she is. It is the door art's property, so this ordinance or TMP 8,609 is door to art officially wanting to gift this to the city to then continue under the city's purview and direction as required and necessary. So this is that official paperwork to do that so the city could receive that as a donation free of charge as a public art installation.

Any comments or questions about any of those those two? Alright, thank you. Next is DTMP-eight 601, resolution authorizing senior manager and a new professional services contract with the Impact Group for marketing services for the fiber to the home project exceed 54,000.

I'll take this one. So this is we issued an RFP for marketing services and after reviewing the proposals that were given back to us, we met with two of the firms. This is for marketing, branding, and public engagement services for Fiber to the Home. And the recommendation is to contract with the Impact Group. Given the size and scope of the fiber to the home project, we felt that going firm with to do this marketing for it, to assist us with this marketing was a better way to go.

We've been using pivot marketing to assist us over the years with primarily commercial, the commercialbusiness side of the marketing of fiber of of fiber velocity broadband, excuse me. With the size and the scope of fiber to the home, we felt that a firm it was more appropriate to hire a larger firm who has more has, the experience, the staff, the depth and so forth and capacity that we need for the fiber to the home project.

Did you mention that? Yeah,

they're Hudson based, they're right on 91 here, Have a lot of local knowledge. The staff that is there are are Hudson some of them are Hudson residents. They they know the community. They they they're very familiar with it. They've done a lot of work in and around Hudson with local governments. And so that's we felt that they were the that was the best way

to go.

Questions for Jeff?

This cost $54,000 would that over what period of time would this marketing

entail? Year. Okay. Yeah. So it's three hundred and sixty hours at, believe it's $4,500 a month.

Obviously, you market something to get additional subscribers beyond what you think you would be able to get without marketing this. You know, you at $68 a month for the service, twelve months, I mean, you'd need 60 some additional subscribers for a full year, and that's just, you know, $68 straight profit. That's obviously not the case. Not saying we don't do this. I'm just curious.

How much data do we have on how much additional marketing goes beyond just, you know, we do the construction, we put up the signs, people see that this is there. I guess I'm just a little worried that we're spending marketing on something we don't know if we need to market yet.

No, that's a good question. Wrestled with that ourselves and what we will do with staff is supplement as much as we can. We're looking for direction for messaging and those sorts of things. And it is hard to it's not something completely tangible, but we want to

have a

uniform message that we're getting out to the community and to folks. One of the things that's unique, as you know, we're with Velocity Broadband, we are in direct competition with the wind streams of the world and spectrum and so forth. And so we want to make sure that we have that the messaging that we're putting out there is professional and timely and that's what we're looking to them. It's a not to exceed amount. It's not to say that we're going spend all this. And so that's really what we're looking as much for the guidance and the messaging and

the So you don't anticipate this to be an ongoing marketing contract?

No. No. Is I think what a year, it may go longer than a year possibly, depending on how it goes. But no, this would help us kind of frame everything up for us. And then on a go forward basis, we would take it over ourselves.

Okay. That makes a lot more sense to me. Okay. Thank you. Sure.

Okay. Thank you, Jeff. Next is five proposed legislation for the May. A is 26 dash six four, ordinance amending the codified ordinances to allow for the correction of scrivener's errors by the clerk. This is scheduled for a third reading on May 5.

B 26 dash seven zero, ordinance to repeal chapter two two six of the codified ordinances related to campaign finance limits and regulations. This is scheduled for a second reading on May 5. C 26 dash seven one ordinance amending sections two two zero point zero three two two zero point zero three one and two two zero point zero six of the codified ordinances to allow the introduction of ordinances and resolutions on regular and special city council agendas after consideration at the workshop. There was a some edits that were made in the last week that you can see on 04/2826. There was also a email that Marshall sent late this afternoon.

It was like might have been like after five. Pardon? It was at 06:20. 06:20. So so many of us might not have read that before this meeting. So make sure you take a look at that because I think it there was some questions about wording of the language and were there too many something struck out or not. I think he explained it a little more completely, get a little bit more clarity from him next week if we have questions. Yeah,

he kind of put it to me simply, any council member can bring anything to a workshop. You know, any ideas that you have. You know, you let Mr. Sheridan know about it and we can bring it. What this would do is we would discuss it, and then if we decide, we don't want to do it, or we don't want it to go to a council meeting, if two people, one person says no, I want it to go, and they get a second, then it would go.

So that's what it does, is that basically it streamlines that, and we were gonna put in in in it that it could be the mayor as one of the people. It doesn't have to be all council people.

If I could just add on to that last comment. You know, prior to the ordinance that is in place now, anybody, mayor, council, or staff could put something on the legislative agenda. It did not even correct me if I'm wrong, mister Sherding and mister Sutton, given your seniority. It didn't even have to be introduced at a workshop. Believe it could just the council member or the mayor could say or even staff could say, I'm gonna put this on the legislative agenda and legislative agenda or the full agenda comes out on a Friday and, you know, if people didn't read it over the weekend or on Monday or Tuesday morning, then something showed up and counsel and staff, you know, had limited amount of time to prepare and read that.

So the ordinance a few years ago made things be introduced at the workshop. I believe it's worded that it had to have four members general agreement to move to a regular or special city council meeting so that things would be discussed and validated. And I do feel that we should align this ordinance with the charter in regards to the role of the mayor. And I'll just read a small section from, the charter on 4.01 for the mayor. It does say that the mayor shall have the right to introduce ordinances, resolutions, and motions, and the right to participate in and receive information on all matters coming before the council.

So again, three years ago or so, the mayor could have put something on the legislative agenda. So I believe we should align this ordinance with the same wording, that was previously and obviously with the charter to allow the mayor to have that voice to continue something, from a workshop to, a legislative agenda on a regular special city council meeting. I do feel that if we didn't have that alignment, we could potentially be in violation of the charter. And, Charter does trump, ordinances and resolutions, codified ordinances out there. So, I would like to have that ability.

As we just talked about with Melody and some of the other things, I have brought things, to counsel for consideration. I would like to continue to have that voice to consider in a workshop now with this ordinance that was put in place three years ago as well as revisions to it now. We have the chance to align with the charter to allow me to continue to have that voice to move it to a regular or special city council meeting. And I say myself, mean the role of mayor. So thank you.

Because because someday you will not be mayor. That's a long time. Other questions or comments? Skyler?

Yeah. I have no objections to the mayor's recommendation, and and I agree that it aligns with the charter. My objection still remains with the change that would give the city manager the power to add legislation. I've gone back through the powers and duties section of the city manager in the charter. It does not give him the authority to introduce legislation, only to recommend the adoption. Recommend is very different from introduce. Recommend is advocate. It is not legislate.

So noted. We'll follow-up with, solicitor on that comment.

Just a quick question. Mister Sutton, Marshall didn't get in touch with you last week on that? Like, when Thursday?

Because There's a memo that came out. It was sent privileged, so we can't discuss the specifics of the memo.

Okay. K. Next is five d, 26 dash seven two, an ordinance amending part two of the codified ordinances of the city of Hudson to create chapter two one six public records. This is scheduled for a second reading next week. Next is e 26 dash seven three, resolution authorizing city manager to adopt and implement a policy on accepting funds from nonprofit organizations for public projects. This is scheduled for a second reading, 05/05/2026.

Okay. Yes. Okay. I'll stay on that. I worked with Marshall on some amendments to it.

I just wanna give people heads up. And basically the amendments that we're working on for that are to, I think, better align with Ohio ethics laws and also just ensure that we're, you know, saying to a donor that we're doing the city will do the best they can to do what the donation is intended to do. And then also the flexibility should something happen, make the policy clear if should something happen, it's not possible to work with the donor to either spend it on something else or to give the remaining funds back. So we've just kind of hammered out some of those details, but just wanted to give people heads up. And we'll have the we'll have the exact wording and changes by the time we vote on it.

Alright. Next is e 26 dash seven three resolution oh, wait. Sorry. Just did that. Okay. F t m p dash eight five two eight ordinance amending chapters eight seventy six, short term rental operations. On Is or do we need more time to work or?

I would leave it on and if, again, we have another workshop on Okay. The

So that's just the first reading next week. G TMPDash862 zero. Resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into agreement with Hudson Community Foundation regarding a senior transportation program and accepting donation for a passenger van. That's what we just discussed. That's first reading next week.

Six items for future agendas. Public hearing is is next week on '20 five dash one four six proposed District 11. And there is also a poppy days proclamation. Any other proclamations

next week? No. I do not believe so.

Else? Any other items? Yes. Tom.

I will be asking for an executive session to discuss a, employee contract with the city, and executive session next week.

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

I move to adjourn. Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Okay,

we are adjourned at twenty two point zero seven.