City Council - Regular Meeting

It is 7.30. We're going to go ahead and get started. I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is a duly noticed regular meeting of Hudson City Council held in accordance with the Sunshine Laws of the State of Ohio, Section 121.22 and the City of Hudson Charter, Article 3, Section 3.02 for Tuesday, July 14th, 2026. It is 7.30 p.m. We will move on to section two in our agenda, the Pledge of Allegiance. Will you please stand and join me? Thank you, everyone. We'll move on to Section 3 in our agenda, which is roll call. Mrs. Wheeler, will you please call the roll?

Dr. Byrd?

Here.

Mr. Brezevik? Here. Mr. Rameau? Here. Dr. Getz? Here. Mr. Sutton? Here. Dr. Weinstein? Here. Mr. White?

Here. Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. We do have a quorum tonight with all seven members of council present. We will close section three and move on to section four, approval of the minutes. Item A is number 26-0051. This will include the June 16th, 2026 council meeting minutes and the June 23rd, 2026 council workshop minutes. Therefore, do we have a motion from council to accept the minutes as provided?

Move to accept the minutes as provided.

Thank you, Councillor Brezovic. Is there a second? Thank you, Councillor Goetz. Is there any discussion or comments on the minutes as provided? Seeing none, Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote on the approval of the motion to accept the minutes as provided? Dr. Byrd?

Yes. Mr. Brzezinski? Yes. Mr. Rameau? Yes. Dr. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? Yes. Dr. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White?

Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The approval of the minutes does pass unanimously by a vote of seven in favor, two zero against. We will close section four and move on to section five tonight, which is an honorary resolution. It is item A, excuse me, number 26-100. I will read that in its entirety. Resolution number 26-100, a resolution honoring and thanking Eric Hutchinson for his service to the city of Hudson. Whereas Eric began his service with the city of Hudson on June 1st, 1990, initially hired as a high school seasonal worker. And whereas Eric joined the city full-time in 1996, was promoted in 2000 to Parks Maintenance Supervisor, again in 2005 to Parks Superintendent, and once more in 2015 to Assistant Public Works Director. And whereas over the course of his career, Eric oversaw the development of Barlow Farm Park, Maple Grove Park, Veterans Way Park, skate parks, lighting of fields, snow clearing, and the senior snow plow program, the renovations of City Hall, and improvements to trails. And whereas under Eric's leadership, the Summit Disc Golf Association named Hudson Springs Park their home course and worked in partnership with the city to elevate it to championship level. And whereas Eric has worked with seven park board chairs, many members of council, mayors, city managers, and countless volunteers. And whereas Eric's vision, skill, and unwavering dedication have left a lasting legacy on Hudson's Park systems and public spaces, creating places that will be enjoyed by families, visitors, and generations to come. And now therefore, be it resolved that the Council of the City of Hudson, Ohio expresses its thanks and gratitude to Eric Hutchinson for over 35 years of dedicated service with the City of Hudson. Do we have any comments from council on honorary resolution tonight? Councilor Gatz?

I want to thank you for all that you've done to make Hudson the wonderful town that it is, the beautiful town that it is. With the parks and all of that, really appreciate it. And the fact that you have worked here so long, that doesn't happen with a lot of people, that they work in one place. So I really appreciate your dedication and thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Gatz. Additional comment from Councillor Sutton?

Eric, I just want to thank you and wish you a happy retirement. I'll miss your late-night emails from the snowplow crew, but I wanted to thank you. I always enjoyed the attitude that you brought to the position. I think you did a great job, and thanks.

Thank you, Councillor Sutton. Councillor President Burr, did you have your hand up?

Yeah, I think there's a syndrome, Eric, called post-snowplow organizer syndrome where, as Skylar said, we're going to miss your emails, but I think what's going to happen in January when you see that snow flying, you're going to wake up at 2.30 a.m. in a cold sweat and go, oh my gosh, I've got to make phone calls. There's 12 drivers I've got to let know. and I got to get that email out. So hopefully you'll adjust to that quickly and just be able to sleep through the night in the wintertime. But thank you very much for your service.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Additional comment from council? Councilor Weinstein?

I'll just echo what they said. Thank you for your service, and I'm glad we sent you out with a year with a lot of snow to, like, remember all of the work that you did. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Weinstein. Additional comments from any other council members? Any comments from staff?

Yes. Thank you, mayor. Um, Eric was probably one of the first department managers I met when I came here as city engineer. And his attitude has always been the even keel and the best that I could ask for anybody. I'm very proud to have been a manager overseeing him for part of his time here. He's left this city better than it was when he got here. His work in public works and in parks will always be a legacy to him and his family. And he can always look back and see all the things that he did, which I think is leaving your mark on this earth is one of the best things you can do. He'll be missed by all of our staff, and I mean that sincerely, and we wish him all the best in his retirement and the next chapter of his life, and thank him for everything he did for this city. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Sheridan. Additional comments from any staff members or council members who haven't spoken? Thank you, I will just add real quickly, Eric, you've always been super responsive. Even when I called up and I said, hey Eric, the faucet's dripping in the bathroom down at the visitor center and town hall, so can you figure out how to get that fixed so we're not wasting water? But the snow emails and all your work there and the building maintenance and everything that you've done has proven the resolution tonight. Thank you, you've been great to work with and I've enjoyed our interactions. So thank you, sir. Are there any additional comments before we move to a vote on the honorary resolution? Seeing none, Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote on the passage of, oh, yes. I'm sorry. Let me back up. Do we have a motion to pass honorary resolution 26-100?

Move to pass 26-100.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Councilor White. Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote on the passage of honorary resolution number 26-100?

Mr. Brzezinski? Yes. Mr. Rameau? Yes. Dr. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? Yes. Dr. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Dr. Byrd?

Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. Honorary Resolution No. 26-100 passes unanimously by a vote of seven in favor, two zero against. And I will now read that last sentence on the resolution. Now, be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be presented to Eric Hutchinson. We wish him luck on a retirement so well deserved, adopted this 14th day of July, 2026. Sir, it would be my pleasure if you would come forward to accept your Honorary Resolution. Almost got you out of here without a vote. It's been a couple weeks though. Thank you again. Congratulations.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Thank you all very much. Good evening, mayor and city council members. Thank you very much for the kind words this evening and the resolution. I sincerely appreciate it. Um, I would like to share with you that my favorite thing that I'm already missing about working for the city of Hudson are my coworkers. Um, there are a lot of them here tonight and I'm extremely happy to see all of them there. When Trent and Kevin and I went to the Public Works Department, the three of us were kind of plopped on an island together, and I really appreciated working with both of them on a regular basis. While the three of us were quite similar, we all had different strengths and weaknesses, and the three of us figured out a way to get it done for that and for them and their assistance. I'm eternally grateful. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you and congratulations again. We'll close section five and move on to section six on our agenda. This is a proclamation. Item A is number 26-0052. It is a special recognition of the 25th anniversary of Peggs Foundation. I will read that in its entirety. Proclamation, special recognition of the Peggs Foundation 25th anniversary. Whereas Peg's foundation namesake, Margaret Peg Clark Morgan, was born on September 5th, 1918 in Kent, Ohio. And whereas Peg was the great-great-granddaughter of Owen Brown, father of abolitionist John Brown. And whereas Peg graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School as valedictorian and pursued a degree in business from Miami University at a time when few women pursued a college degree. And whereas in 1939, Peg began working at Goodrich and Akron, where she met Burton D. Morgan, and together they built a family and life rooted in entrepreneurship. And whereas in 2001, the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation was established in Peg's honor, and she focused on improving the lives of people with serious mental illness. And whereas 25 years of impact, a gallery on view through September 5th, 2026, traces the evolution of a vision first imagined by Peg Morgan and carried forward by those who believe in the power of giving to change lives. Now, therefore, I, Jeffrey L. Anzovino, Mayor of the City of Hudson, Ohio, do hereby recognize PEG Foundation's 25th anniversary in the City of Hudson, and I urge residents to recognize this observance and visit the gallery in honor of its celebration. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and clause the seal of the City of Hudson to be affixed on this 14th day of July, 2026. With that, do we have any comments from council on the proclamation tonight? Councilor Gantz?

As a child psychiatrist, I have really appreciated all the things that PECS Foundation has done for children in Northeast Ohio, and thank you very, very much for that.

Thank you, Councillor Gatz. Additional comment? Councillor Doramo?

I just want to say thank you to this foundation and what a gem this is to have in our city, and we're so lucky to have you guys here and celebrate another 25 more.

Thank you, Councillor Doramo. Additional comments from council tonight? Council President Byrd?

So I actually got to personally witness the work that PEGS Foundation did on a regular basis working 30 years at part-time in Akron Children's Emergency Department. And about 20 years ago, PEGS Foundation donated over a million dollars so that we could create what is called a pediatric intake response center So 24 hours a day, there was somebody with mental health expertise in the emergency department, which was just virtually unheard of back then. And then additionally, four years later, they gave additional funds so that we could build a special pediatric psychiatric emergency department that kept the kids safe, that protected them, that created an environment where they could get evaluated and treated in a way, again, that was unlike any hospital that ever had before. So thank you so much for that dedication and devotion to pediatric mental health.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Was there additional comment down here? Councilor Weinstein?

I'll just say thank you for what you do. I appreciate having you in Hudson and appreciate your mission. I have enjoyed the art galleries. I've enjoyed the space recently. It's a lovely location and appreciate what you all do for mental health. And it is close to my heart and appreciate all that you do.

Thank you, Councilor Weinstein. Additional comment from other council members? Any comments from staff?

Yes, I'd like to say happy 25th anniversary to Peg's Foundation. It has been my joy to work with the staff at Peg's Foundation over the years. I got to meet Peg when I first came here back a long time ago when I was city engineer, and I didn't realize the lasting impression that that would have on me over the years. This institution has helped the city many times over, and I just want to say thank you to all of them there. So that's all, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sheridan. I will just add from my side, in the role prior to me being the mayor, I was on the Hudson Architectural and Historic Board of Review, and your new building was one of the last things I worked on. I believe the vote came right after I left, so I can't take credit for pushing it over the finish line, but I remember going through those plans, and we were making changes, trying to to fit it within the community. And that process was very collaborative and I thought that worked out well. The building is a great testament to everything that you've done. And my last comment is just thank you for the collaboration. I know we've started working on a few programs together and it's been great. And I appreciate the eagerness to collaborate with the city and help more than what you do as your mission, but just for the general community. So thank you. Are there any additional comments from council or staff? Mr. Keller, it'd be my pleasure if you would officially come forward to accept the proclamation.

I always like to think like, Hey, say something smart, something funny and, and, and get off the mic. Uh, I just, first of all, Dr. Bird, I, I, that second round when we did a ribbon cutting a month later, I never dreamed, but my youngest daughter was in that facility. Children's hospitals are phenomenal. partner and, uh, an amazing asset, uh, kid from a kid that grew up here in town. It was cool. I know Eric had to go, but it's fun to see somebody that, you know, could spend that much time in a city and, um, to be from here, but I don't currently live here, but certainly I'm invested in the community. As you all know, never dreamed I'd be back here at city council and, uh, and then the job that I am in, but I do want to say that, um, we're honored to the partnership we have with the city to do the development that happened. the restoration of the balden bus house and then added some flair with a little bit more modern building but the partnership with the city folks sometimes fear and oh hudson's difficult to work in and and you know there's always challenges in every project you do you do that's complex but that was not our experience and anyone from outside or inside the town that winds or complains i'm one of the first to say that's not 100 true um And so I've always been grateful for the partnership we had with all the committees and council and previous folks in the jobs that you all are in now, as well as you all. And then I also want to say there's nothing, there's been no greater honor in my life than to have been here and been from this town and had the opportunity I had as being a public school district kid to come back and put on behalf of our founder, Peg, mental health, arts and education at a facility that's philanthropic driven for community service to make this community better, as well as the surrounding region, the state, and the nation. And on behalf of our founder, Peg Morgan, I know she would be proud of the work that we did in partnership with you all. And on behalf of my board, I just say thank you for this recognition. It's wonderful. Thanks, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Congratulations.

Thank you. We will close section six and move on to section seven, which is public comments. Council and myself value and respect comments from the public aligned with the city of Hudson codified ordinance two to 0.03 titled rules item G subtitled decorum. I'm kindly asking everyone in attendance to remain respectful. of the process and display courtesy, professionalism, and order at all times. Please mute your electronic devices if you have not already done so. If you must leave the room prior to the completion of our meeting, please do so as quietly as possible. Also, per Ordinance 220.03 and sub-item G, public comments are to be kept within five minutes. There is a device on the lectern that will turn green when that five minutes has begun. It will turn yellow orange at one minute and it'll start flashing at 20 seconds and then turn red when that five minutes has concluded. Therefore, per the city of Hudson charter article three, section 3.02, if there is any resident of the municipality here tonight who would like to speak to city council regarding any topic that's relevant to the city of Hudson, kindly raise your hand, gain my attention. And as you are verbally called upon, please approach the lectern. State your name and address and council will hear your remarks. Is there anyone here tonight who would like to speak to council? Sir? If you'd please come forward. Just state your name and address for us, please.

My name is Robert Pappas and I live at 553 West Streetsboro Street. uh... that is of course on the west side of hudson and i'm here to as consular or whoever may have the authority to do so to lower the speed limit to thirty five miles an hour all the way to the boston heights hudson boundary because in my observation of the traffic that's there you know i think it certainly would warrant lowering the speed limit. I can give you some examples that I've observed more than once. And one is that it seems like that 45 mile an hour speed limit or suggested speed means maybe 55 or 65 and my observation of what I call two adult children on high performance motorcycles riding two abreast, if they can see their selves clear to make a pass, one bike will pass over the yellow line and the other one will use the bike line to make a pass. And invariably, It's kind of comical that the person being passed, their brake lights go on because they probably can't figure out what the heck went on. So that's one reason. It seems like the only people or the only drivers that observe the speed limit are the over-road semis. And that could possibly be because most of those drivers can read English. So I would like you to consider lowering that speed limit. I see on 91, it's going to be reduced. And in my observation, where I live, I think the traffic is more heavy at specific times particularly during rush hours which is between seven and nine and between four thirty and six thirty i might say the only time i see sensible driving on that strip and by the way to give you an idea where i live i live across the street from the water plant and the only time i see sensible driving I don't even have to look anymore but there's a police car sitting in the driveway of the water plant and that's when I see some sensible driving. I realize in the profession I had it's hard to control traffic with radar or lasers because a police officer or a police car trying to pull out in that heavy traffic to go after a violator is probably causing more damage to or danger to traffic than if just to leave them go. So that is my purpose for being here tonight, and I'd appreciate any consideration you give me.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Is there any additional public comment tonight? Mr. Zedak?

My name is Todd Zedak. I live at 16 Hudson Common. Firstly, I wanted to thank Greg for his efforts regarding our fight about the existence of this district 11 he has been responsive kyle came to a chat which i appreciate your time it was thoughtfully conducted and i still firmly believe that the way in which it was handled was absolutely incorrect it wasn't fair it wasn't right and it was done in a rush in an effort to appease a developer There are some rationale being proffered now that perhaps the only way to address a limitation of heavy industry zoning was to break that out as a separate piece, which may in fact be logical and right. However, it was not done appropriately in my opinion and the opinion of a number of other people. The. embarrassment that i felt sitting in this room watching the crazy antics of this board minus mr sutton if there's something you'd like to share i'm really looking forward to hearing it please continue mr zedek this is the kind of disrespect that is absolutely horrifying. Nicole Kowalski was censured for good reason, and Mr. Sutton suggested that all of you who don't know the reason, or shouldn't, go back and actually look at the evidence, which all of you fought not to do. And the idea that the removal of the censure was being rewritten in real time, it's unbelievable. It was horrifying. And I expect more and I hope for more. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Zedek. Additional comment from the public tonight? Mr. Revita?

Anthony Revita, 1746 Edgar Drive. I've been in construction for 45 years, and for the most part, when people talk, really doesn't mean much. When I was in business, I had 12 salesmen, and basically they said the customer said this, or the salesman said that, and I said, you have to put everything in writing. So in saying that, I want you to know that everything I've given you into those brochures or that literature I gave you, it's all proof. I can say anything that I want, it doesn't mean anything. Mr. Sheridan can say anything he wants, it really doesn't mean anything. It has to be on paper. It has to mean something. It has to be by law. On April 8th, Mr. Foster said, but it became personal and pulled public records and started looking at my home construction. That was a complete lie. And then a few days later, he, uh, made a police report of the same thing. Um, Mr. Pittsburgh. doesn't handle anything for Mr. Foster or anybody else that he doesn't believe, so it's a two-tier system. Justice is subordinate to power. I want the city of Hudson, the council, and the mayor to listen closely. This is not an isolated situation.

Correction and a statement that was made tonight. The driveway in front of Mr. Foster's property on Wolters Road was due to a sinkhole within the right of way. The city does not hold permits for our own work. So you're not going to find a permit for that. It's our own work in our right of way.

We do not hold permits.

So I've played that a number of times and it doesn't get old to me because it's telling you that he lied eight times in 39 seconds from Mr. Foster. He made the whole story up. There was no sinkhole. I went to the city and pulled all the information. He actually threw in that the engineering department was there. Um, and there was a, uh, inspector there the whole time. Those are all lies. Nobody's holding him accountable for this. Um, When you, Mr. Sheridan, know that you will not be held accountable for your blatant disregard for the truth or Mr. Hannon for his changing and producing and deleting legal files and tampering, those are breaking sunshine laws. And if everybody wants to ignore that, I just don't understand it. These guys are breaking the law. Mr. Byrd, I'm a little disappointed that you are my councilman. You know the truth. All the paperwork has showed you that this has been a past offense as far as the permit. And you continue to sit there and allow these lies to go unchecked. These narratives are full of untruths. Yet every week, Mr. Sheridan shares this rubbish to the city council and the mayor and the city of Hudson. This search for the new city solicitor was an exercise in futility. No qualified, competent legal firms were interviewed or considered. Mr. Bird said they have a tool. I believe they do have a tool, and the tool is in their pocket. This guy will do anything that they tell him to do instead of the law. The law and order should be, the justice should be set at a high degree, not a tool.

You have one minute, Mr. Revita.

Thank you. Mr. Pitchford has become a legal weapon, and he uses that against the citizens of Hudson, which to me is an absolute shame. Nicole Kowalski can say that. To me, Pitchford has subverted and weaponized Hudson and gets paid $600,000 to do it. I have shown you guys some of this brochure. This is my fencing company. He's a five-star fencing company. Some of you know him. Some of you know him personally. He put my fence up. He followed the directions of the city. This certificate tells you that he has to follow whatever the paperwork is. So whatever that paperwork is that was approved, he had to follow that by law. It even says it on this permit that you have.

Mr. Revita, your time is up, but I'll let you finish your last statement.

This is the site plan. It was approved. This is the fence that he put up. which was approved. It was sent and approved. This is the inspection report. Mr. Bellis passed it. Now, the only thing against all these different things that were done by the city is Mr. Sheridan's word, and we all know what that's worth. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Revita. And I believe we do have copies of the documents from tonight. Mrs. Wheeler, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Revita. Is there any additional public comment tonight? Seeing none or no more, we will close section seven and move on to section eight, which is correspondence and council comments. If any council member has correspondence that has not already been generally distributed and or council comments, we will hear those now. Please gain my attention and allow me to verbally recognize you and assign you the floor. Are there any comments from council tonight? Council Deremo?

A few comments. First, I wanted to acknowledge Mr. Zedlak. I appreciate your ongoing concern regarding District 11, but I'll not sit here and continue to be chastised by you as if I committed a crime. I do not appreciate you threatening this council. This is not the first time you did it, and I have sat here respectfully and listened to your public comments. There's a reason why we were elected to council. We all have differences of opinion, and that is collectively how we came to our decision months ago regarding this. Moving forward, I just wanted to acknowledge several different significant public safety incidents that occurred during our council recess. As many of you know, that includes the explosion in Twinsburg, the severe weather that impacted our July 3rd celebration, and the police pursuit that ended in Stowe. These are all extremely serious events, and I will continue to keep our residents informed as additional information becomes available through the respective investigations. Although July 3rd did not go how we planned, it was still an amazing event the city put on, and I wanted to thank everyone for that. We're always evaluating how we can do better for these types of events, and I think better communication moving forward will be imperative. That's kind of why I wanted to segue into Mr. Sharon, if you could give us some insight on the tools that we currently have, including the Notify Me and Code Red, and maybe how we can better use those to serve our residents. That's all. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Duramo. Additional comments from Council? Councilor Weinstein?

Yeah, I'll just add to that I think It would be nice to have an overview of the tools we have to keep residents informed when they need to be informed right away of something if what tools we have are there different tools if Your city staff could kind of think about that or communications. How might we better? Communicate, you know fireworks display happening sooner if it's possible Understand that weather events happen and some things can't happen. We want good information first and foremost over speed necessarily. Also maybe consider a Facebook page for police and fire so that if people want to keep up to date specifically on things related to police or fire that they have that as a resource to go and find those communications. I also went to the planning commission meeting yesterday on the 13th. They considered two applications. One was a dentist office on Norton Road, and the other was a conditional use request for a gymnastics gym on Hudson Drive. And they also talked a little bit about we will have a joint council meeting on August 10th that we'll talk a little bit more about later on today. Okay.

Thank you, Councillor Weinstein. Additional comments from council members? Councillor Brezovic?

Thank you.

First off, Robert, thank you for your comments today. I apologize in advance for some of this information you're already aware of. Just to give a synopsis of 91, the speed change there. The city has limited capacity to change speed limits. It's generally... That's generally the purview of ODOT. It requires a speed study for us to make a change there. We had attempted to change that speed limit on 91 for some time. The speed studies did not successfully give us that ability. What we did end up doing with Route 91 was we were able to designate the area as an urban district. DIFFERENT PIECE OF THE OHIO REVISED CODE, REQUIRES CERTAIN DISTANCES BETWEEN, I CAN'T RECALL IF IT'S THE PARCELS OR THE BUILDINGS, BUT AFTER TALKING WITH ODOT AND THE RELEVANT PARTIES, WE DID FEEL THAT WE COULD DESIGNATE THAT IN URBAN DISTRICT, AND SO THAT'S WHAT WE DID THERE, AND THAT'S WHAT ALLOWED US TO LOWER THE SPEED LIMIT TO 35. If the city manager could give me, going forward, some sort of synopsis of the efforts that have been made so far on Route 303 in that position, and I'd love to get back to you on what we may be able to do there. I don't have any further information at this time. Mr. Revita, everybody on this dais took an oath to defend a number of things and one of them being the city charter and ordinances. I know you don't want to keep coming to these meetings and I don't think any of us want you to have to keep coming to them. I'd like to reach a resolution here. I think an option has been provided that could get us to a situation where your fence stays exactly where it is. but you do have to make some concessions. Otherwise, unfortunately, it has to stay in the courts, and I don't really want to comment on that, and that'll be where it is. I want this to end, and we will continue to extend a branch, and I hope you will take it. That's all I have on that. Finally, on the fiber, as some of the other council members have mentioned, we had the explosion in Twinsburg Township. The city manager made the decision and we supported the hold on directional drilling at that time. We had a meeting, Dr. Bird and I, today with city staff on additional specifications we plan on putting in place for all directional drilling, be it velocity, broadband, kinetic, or any other work being done in the right-of-ways and easements. We hope to have those changes available for us to the full council on the 11th. Additionally, we are investigating creating a new fiber to the home subcommittee so that we can more rapidly make changes, have information about the fiber project as it goes on for the coming years. VERY STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT THIS PAUSE AND THE RAMIFICATIONS OF IT WILL CAUSE SOME CHANGES TO THE PROPOSED VELOCITY BROADBAND TIMELINE. THAT IS ONE OF MY KEY POINTS OF MY CAMPAIGN IS VELOCITY IS FIBER TO EVERY HOME. WE WILL CONTINUE TO WORK TOWARDS THAT AND WE WILL CONTINUE TO COMMUNICATE AS SOON AS WE HAVE MORE INFORMATION ON IT. THAT IS ALL.

THANK YOU, COUNCILOR BREZEVIK. ADDITIONAL COMMENTS FROM COUNCIL TONIGHT? COUNCILOR WHITE? Thanks.

I attended the EAC meeting last Monday. But first, I'd like to first recognize the members of the EAC city staff for the quick actions during a small fire in this very building their quick response was helped clear the building extinguish the fire and ensure the situation was handled safely and without incident i also would like to thank the fire department for coming so quickly to make sure everything was cleared out and good to go we were stable still able to have the meeting but we had at the newly opened bandstand so the meeting was not recorded but minutes should be posted online Some of the things we discussed were making progress on their priorities, such as exploring community initiatives with composting, cooking oil recycling, and outreach to the schools. The EAC also spoke to having a successful presence at the Ice Cream Social and a recent farmer's market where they were able to engage with many residents and continue promoting awareness. That is all.

Thank you, Councillor White. Additional comments from council members who have not spoken? Councillor Byrd?

So I won't repeat everything that Kyle talked about as far as fiber goes. A nice summary from Kyle. One thing I do want to mention is that this happened in Twinsburg Township, but just south of there is a neighborhood called the Fairways, which is in Hudson, and several of those residents... had significant damage to their home and were left with uninhabitable homes. And that neighborhood, that HOA came together, the leadership really took charge and helped these residents find housing. make sure that they got all the necessary food and shelter and connections and communications and resources to get their condominiums fixed. So just a shout out to the Fairways HOA for really responding well.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Additional comment from Councillor Sutton or Councillor Gatz? Any additional comment? Councillor Weinstein?

I just want to say thank you to staff. I know there was a lot of work that went into the fireworks display and all of the things that happened with the bounce house and the band and everything. Also, the new bandstand that's out there. So we've had a lot of great events, and I appreciate all the work that the staff does on these events. And I've heard a lot of great feedback on the bandstand and the events that we put on for our city, and everyone appreciates that. So thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Weinstein. Additional comments from any other council members? Thank you. I will add a few things from my side. We did hold a ribbon cutting ceremony earlier today for a new business, Ivory and Birch, which is located in our first and main shopping area at 96 First Street. So congratulations again to DeLoren and her family. Second, we also held a ribbon cutting ceremony for Daisy Pop's new Cake Pop Kiosk. That was the prior week, which this kiosk, if you have not seen it, it has not been in use for about eight years, but it is located between Talbots and Chico's and right off of the sidewalk there, right down the way from Ivory and Birch. So if you're down in the first and main area, please take a look at those two businesses. Briefly mentioned here as well, this past week we also had a dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony for the renovated bandstand and gazebo on our downtown green. All repairs and updates are complete and this landmark is now open again for public use. The ADA lift is still something that is BEING LOOKED AT. MR. SHERIDAN, I BELIEVE, ARE WE LOOKING FOR BIDS STILL? IS IT STILL IN THE BID PROCESS? OKAY. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU FOR THAT CLARIFICATION. A COUPLE OTHER QUICK THINGS. THE HUDSON SIDEWALK SALE IS THIS COMING WEEKEND, JULY 17th AND 18th IN DOWNTOWN. AND THIS INCLUDES THE HISTORIC MAIN STREET AREA. the adjacent first and main shopping area, as well as the evaporator works, which is just south off of the Ravenna Street downtown green. It'll be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both of those days. TWO OTHER QUICK THINGS. THE BIRDSONG PROJECT IS BACK HERE IN HUDSON. YESTERDAY SEVERAL HUNDRED SMALL BIRDS WERE INSTALLED IN THE TREES SURROUNDING MELODY WHICH IS RIGHT OUT HERE ON THE PARK LANE GREEN. THIS PROJECT WILL BE HERE IN HUDSON AGAIN FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS AND THIS WILL BE THE FINAL STOP FOR THOSE SMALL BIRDS ON THEIR ALMOST THREE-YEAR TOUR. THEY'VE BEEN TO SEVERAL PLACES IN NORTHEAST OHIO. They have now come back home and they're on the park lane green for anyone who wants to go see those and visit the structure of Melody and then go to a lot of those new businesses I mentioned. On a final note, I do want to publicly thank Mrs. Emily Nagel as the recipient of my latest kindness challenge for the month of June. Emily was nominated by her friend, Victoria, who said that Hudson is a better place with Emily here. And I could not agree more. So congratulations, Emily. That's all I had. Is there any other comments from council members? Seeing none, we will close section eight and move on to section nine report of the city manager. I'd like to turn the floor over to Mr. Sheridan. If you have any updates for council, I do.

Welcome back from recess, everybody. It was a long recess for us. But a lot of things happened and a lot of good things, too. One was the bandstand dedication, which I thought was fantastic. And, Mayor, just to answer the question formally, yes, the bids are out for the ADA lift, and we hope to get those in in the coming week and review those. update on the dream playground over on oak grove park that should be coming to completion here by the end of this week at the latest early next week depending on weather we're just tying up some seams on the uh the surface over there and it'll be ready for a ribbon cutting and to have the kids play the speed report uh i'll look at the 45 mile an hour on 303 and we'll take a look at that in more detail i believe we did one eight years ago but We'll work with the city engineer on getting back to that on the State Route 303 that Mr. Pappas asked about. Communication-wise, one thing I want to add that came up over the recess, which I thought was a great idea, was we begin a lot of these incidents in town, and we tell you the roads are closed, the water lines broke, or whatever, the power's out. But we don't do a good enough job of getting back to everyone and saying the road is open and the power is back on and everything. So we're working on that. One of the things on communication, too, and I'm happy to give a report in August on all the communications and the incidents that we had over the recess. But like, for example, the electric when it's out, First Energy has a map and they show you like where all the areas are. And that's actually very helpful. And I've asked staff to take a look at that and see if we can maybe utilize some AMP money, which is where we're a part of the AMP group, that we're able to use for that. And I think that would be very helpful to our constituents when we have power outages in HPP. A couple of council members brought up the directional drilling and the unfortunate incident that happened up in Twinsburg on June 25th. I just wanted to state to everyone in the public, including council and the mayor, since the incident, the city staff have been reviewing current contracts. state and government specifications, including project guidelines to make sure all work meets the highest safety standards for this type of excavation in Hudson. I have personally been involved in this. Many weekends I've been working with the city engineer and getting our specs and asking questions and everything. So I think our goal here is one, to not have fire department go out on any more of these in the future. is my main goal and my statement to that fire department that we have and then the second goal is is that you know we want to make sure that we have the best standards and I know a number of communities I think are waiting for the work that we're doing because we were one of the first that asked you know to hold on these directional drillings so that makes me kind of proud that you know people are looking to us to help and I'd like to help them because this can happen anywhere and just one quick side note We were sitting in a meeting, the city solicitor and myself, with a representative from Enbridge, and he mentioned a house explosion on April 30th of this year. My cousin happens to be the mayor of that town. in Girard, Ohio, and I called them up and said, what can you tell me about this? They're still waiting for the state fire marshal report and the PUCO report. So that was good information for me to get from that city. And knowing that and bring it back to our staff to say, I think our standards and everything that we're doing, I think we should be bringing that to council in case we don't get these reports by the end of the month. And we are allowing a few of the projects that are servicing houses. These are gas lines, and people have asked about the moratorium, and electric lines that are being replacements. Those two agencies are PUCO regulated, and we feel comfortable looking at them and making sure that they do everything correctly, which we know they will. They're not part of the fiber group that kind of comes in and just pulls a lot of permits and everything. So we want to get those people's houses, uh, electricity, you know, obviously this week with the hot temperatures that are out there and then the gas lines, uh, hot water, you know, is a hot water tanks are run on a gas. and then also hopefully way before winter. So those are certain things that we're doing, and we hope to start to ramp this back up with these new specifications after we bring them to council for your approval as part of the engineering standards. I think I covered everything, Mayor, that I had, so I have nothing else to add. If you're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Sheridan. Are there any comments or questions for Mr. Sheridan from council? Council President Byrd?

So, Tom, that... We've discussed this before, but I think you feel pretty confident that the standards that we develop and determine can be expectations of other companies as well, and that we won't have two standards of care kind of service, basically, right?

Correct, and with the help of the legal counsel, the city solicitor and assistant solicitor, we can implement those things as long as we don't go against state and federal regulations or PUCO regulations, we can implement those on private easements as some of these fiber people were doing behind the sidewalk in certain neighborhoods. We will be able to enforce those there and those standards would be applied to them.

But there is a challenge with regards to trying to limit multiple laying fiber at the same time.

There is from a mark-out point. From our standpoint, we can control permitting. So we can control how many permits we put out for them. And again, I'm not trying to squander that. I don't think it's been an issue to date.

Well, there were folks in certain neighborhoods that had kinetic move through, tear up the yards, and then go, and then velocity came through, did the same thing. So if there's ways that we can explore that we can limit that, that would be great.

And I would apply it to the same things like when we do... Before we resurface a road, for example, if culverts need to be replaced and a water service might be leaking, those are the things we want to get the underground stuff done ahead of resurfacing so that at least we keep it pristine for as long as we can. But... we can't always say what happens. I mean, a gas line could break or what underneath that pavement, and you have to go and tear it up, and it's just part of construction. But in this case, if we can do a better job of coordinating with these other agencies and working on the restorations of the properties, we'll be happy to do that.

Thanks. Thank you, Council President Byrd. Additional questions for Mr. Sheridan from Council? Councilor Durema?

Just to clarify, Mr. Sheridan. So you are just going to review all the tools that we have for the community communication for the residents in present in August of kind of what we can do with them.

Correct. We'll be able to give you, you know, I'm looking at a tiered system to the safety forces. Don't want to use code red for any, it can be used for anything, but they would like to keep that as, uh, any major incidents in town and use code red for that purpose. So people, when they see it, they know it's a major issue. seek shelter, tornadoes, things like that. Um, the other system that we have is notify me and we want to do a better job of advertising that out to people. Uh, we want to look at the specifics between now and next month of, can we kind of put a territory? So can we do a neighborhood that maybe is being affected by a water main break or something? Could we put that out just to them and something that's isolated right now, code red will do that. Uh, we just don't want to use code red for just, Hey, the fireworks have been canceled and they're being, you know, re reshot on Sunday or whatever. So we want to keep it on a high level emergency incidents.

And one last thing, Mayor, sorry, I forgot.

Regarding the fiber, I know a lot of residents, and I know Dr. Byrd has asked about the flags and everything. So we're hopefully going to get an answer to that with the current projects that we have out to bid. We would like to finish the ones that are very close to being completed, where they're just actually putting in the fiber, which is not going to destruct any gas lines or anything. The conduit that they put in first phase is what could disrupt another utility. those flags and things I know are becoming a hindrance to people and cutting their grass and everything. So we're well aware of that, and that will be one of our top priorities about getting those removed. And that is the contractors in the contract, the contractor has to remove those. And we recommend that the contractor do that because you never know who's been marking the areas, and we don't want markings that are for something else to be taken out. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Sheridan. Thank you, Councillor Duramo. Additional questions for Mr. Sheridan from council members? Mr. Sheridan, I did have one thing that was reminded here during some of this discussion. The connectivity project that is on Boston Mills Road is coming along quite nicely. If people have not seen it, they're putting down a lot of the base. I believe the gravel trail back through that kind of goes out to the lake forest on that north side is complete and grassed and seeded. So two questions. I was trying to look at the project scope today and I didn't call Brad in engineering, but the Boston Mills Park. Do you know is that slated to be paved and would that have parking spaces actually striped in there? Do you have an update? Do you know what that is in the project details?

I can call up the city engineer for that. I know he'll have the answer. Did you have a part two to your question?

Part two was on the two pedestrian bridges. I know we missed some windows early on when they were doing that work on the rebar for the largest one there across the biggest part of that span. Do we have an update on that timing because it Looks like the crews are going to be done not that long from now with regards to the trail. And then it will be down to for using that from the residents. It'll be down to those two pedestrian bridges. So I didn't know if there are additional delays or additional timings that we need to to coincide with with that contractor, because I know we were delayed earlier on both those questions.

I'll ask the city engineer to respond.

The parking lot is scheduled to be resurfaced and striped as part of the project. Regarding the two pedestrian bridges, we did miss the window to get that the bridge pier setting there. The window that we missed was de-energizing the power lines that sit above where that bridge is going to be. We don't want to do that in the middle of the hot, hot time when air conditioning is running. So we've got to wait until fall when we're confirmed, not even a warm fall. We want to have cool fall, and then we can de-energize those lines so they can come in and move, set those piers. That makes perfect sense. So there could be a gap in between, hey, the nice, shiny, new paved trail is in. but we're missing some of the main bridge crossing there.

I drive it every day, multiple times, so they will be done soon unless something abnormal happens, so I imagine there'll be a gap, but residents are asking who are looking to use that for a safe way to get to downtown.

We're working with communications on getting an update together for that, and we're also working with getting Windstream back on site to finish the little section of sidewalk that's missing on Lake Forest.

Yes, thank you for reminding me of that as well. That's right at that one corner of the first connector street that goes to the right. Yes, okay. Any more detail on that? Because that was something that was brought up from another resident. We're working with Windstream to come out. Is that where the delay is with something that they need to relocate?

Yes, they were notified a while ago of the need to move that, yes.

What is our process then? I mean, how often do we follow up or? Every week. Okay. That gives me what I need to know to get back to that resident. Thank you, Brad. Thank you, Mr. Sheridan at any additional comments or questions for Mr. Sheridan from council. Counselor Weinstein just clarify.

I think I might, I might've missed it. You might've already said this. So if we don't get a report on the Twinsburg explosion, do we have a date? We plan to kind of restart everything.

We would be bringing back the specifications that we've been working on that we feel comfortable with on. August 11th, which is a dual meeting after that week recess at the beginning of August. And then we would be asking council to hopefully move forward with approving that and consent so that we can put that back out there and have all the utility companies, as Dr. Byrd mentioned, held to that same standard.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councillor Weinstein. Additional questions for Mr. Sheridan? Seeing none, we will close Section 9, Report to the Manager, and move on to Section 10 for Appointments. Council President Byrd, do we have any appointments tonight or comments on appointments?

We have no appointments tonight, but we anticipate some next week.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. We'll close Section 10 and move on to Section 11 for the consent agenda. Council members, if there are items on the consent agenda that you wish to have considered separately, please allow me to read the item, gain my attention, and state your wishes. ITEM A ON CONSENT IS 26-101. THIS IS A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING THE CITY MANAGER TO ENTER INTO A RENEWAL CONTRACT WITH BLUE BIRD MIDWEST LLC FOR DEDICATED INTERNET SERVICES AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY. ITEM B ON CONSENT IS 26-102. This is a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a police services agreement with the Hudson City School District for police presence in its schools for the safety of staff, students, and visitors. Item C on consent is number 26-103. A resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a stormwater easement agreement at 2095 Ravenna Street, parcel number 30-01761. Item D on consent is number 26-104, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a professional services contract with TMS Engineers Incorporated for a traffic impact study for the proposed Clinton Crossing project. Moving on to item E on consent is number 26-105, This is a resolution amending resolution two five dash one eight two and authorizing the city manager to increase an existing purchase order for an actual. Accused net golf equipment and declaring an emergency. Moving on to item F on consent is 26-106. This is a resolution amending resolution 25-159, authorizing the city manager to enter into an emergency agreement with Magnitech Industrial Services Incorporated for the repair of a 12.47 KV transformer at the city's South Main Street substation. Moving on to item G on consent is 26-107, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a contract with Summit County Public Health for NPDES permitted outfall inspection, monitoring, and sampling services. The last item on consent, is item H, number 26-108. This is a resolution declaring a six month stay on the filing, consideration, review and or approval of all new applications for data centers and related activities in the city of Hudson and declaring an emergency. Those are the items on consent. Therefore, does Council wish to enter a motion to suspend the rules to consider passage of the items on the consent agenda?

Move to suspend the rules on the consent agenda.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Do we have a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councillor Duramo. Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call the vote on the suspension of the rules for the consent agenda?

Ms. Duramo? Yes. Dr. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? Yes. Dr. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Dr. Byrd? Yes. Mr. Brezevik? Yes.

Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The rules are so suspended by a vote of seven in favor to zero against. Does council wish to enter a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move to approve the consent agenda. Thank you, Councillor Brezovic. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councillor White. Are there any comments on the consent agenda? Councillor Weinstein?

I would just like to comment on the last issue regarding the state on data centers. The Planning Commission did talk a little bit about this last night and there was less concern because data centers aren't specifically described in our land development code. I just want to say I have some concerns that there is no specific data center use category for this code. which leaves it potentially up to should Hudson get an application for a data center, there's not one currently, but should they get an application because there's no clear classification in the code, it could potentially fit into a different classification like light industry or warehousing. There are other communities where they have been classified as such. So this, which is permitted by right in some areas in Hudson. So I think it would be in this time period, it gives us six months, where we and Planning Commission could consider clearly defining what a data center is, also consider things like the scale of the data center, and also consider additional concerns that aren't laid out in the Land Development Code, such as the impact of utility capacity, specifically the data center's impact on the power grid and water systems, and also noise standards. So this time gives us a good space, I think, for Planning Commission us to think about how we might address this in our codes. And we also have the flexibility to make it longer should we need more time to deal with this. That's it.

Thank you, Councillor Weinstein. Any additional comments? Seeing none, Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote on the approval of the consent agenda?

Dr. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? Yes. Dr. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Dr. Byrd? Yes. Mr. Brozovic? Yes. Mr. Remo? Yes.

Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The consent agenda has been approved by a vote of seven in favor, two zero against. We will close section 11 and move on to section 12, which is legislation. Item A is number 26-96. This is a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a lease agreement with North Star Towers 2 LLC. This is a third reading and actionable tonight by council. Therefore, does council wish to enter a motion on legislation 26-96?

I moved to pass to six dash nine, six.

Thank you. Counselor Brezovic. Do we have a second second? Thank you. Council president bird. Is there any discussion on the motion to pass legislation to six dash nine, six councilor Weinstein?

I'll just say, I'm happy to have this tower provide some additional cell service in an area of town in the south southern part of town where it's needed.

Thank you. Counselor Weinstein. Additional comments from council. Seeing none, Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote on the motion to pass legislation 26-96? Mr. Sutton? Yes.

Dr. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Dr. Byrd? Yes. Mr. Brezevik? Yes. Mr. Rameau? Yes. Dr. Goetz? Yes.

Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. Legislation 26-96 does pass unanimously by a vote of seven in favor to zero against. We move on to the second and last item on the legislative agenda. It's item B, number 26-99. This is an ordinance authorizing all actions necessary to affect a governmental natural gas aggregation program. with opt-out provisions pursuant to section 4929-26 of the Ohio Revised Code and directing the Summit County Board of Elections to submit a ballot question to the electors and declaring an emergency. This is a second reading of three on this item. That will conclude our legislative agenda. We will move on to section 13 for adjournment. We will be continuing later this evening after a short recess with a city council workshop tonight. Therefore, do we have a motion from council to adjourn our regular city council meeting?

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Do we have a second?

Thank you, Councillor Duramo. All in favor of adjourning our regular council meeting, please say aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, this regular City Council meeting is so adjourned at 8.37 p.m. on July 14th. Thank you. And again, taking a short recess and continuing with a workshop meeting. Okay, we do have all of council back at the dais. We will resume with our workshop meeting. 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 three point zero two for tuesday july fourteenth two thousand and twenty six it is eight forty six p m Per ordinance two to 0.03, one titled workshop meetings and item C would now like to turn the meeting over to council president bird. So as it continued through the remaining workshop agenda items, council president bird, the floor and workshop meeting is yours. All right. Thank you very much, mayor.

Um, next is correspondence and council comments. I think we just had a number of those an hour ago. Anybody have any new comments to make? No? Okay. Next is discussion items. And A26-0053 is planning commission recommendations to consider land development code amendments relative to density regulations and plan development. And we have chair of the planning commission here, Sarah Noman. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Dr. Berg.

I do not know if you expect me to start or not. I will be happy to if you'd like, or we can jump into things. I will maybe give just a general summary of where I see our conversation going tonight, if that's helpful.

Perfect.

All right. We put density, well, we asked for density and plan development to be on the list. The density recommendations have been a long process that the Planning Commission first, I think I should have brought cake, because I think tomorrow is the birthday of this topic. It turns one year old. But that conversation began when the proposal was made and passed to remove a particularly dense type of housing style, which were town homes, from almost all of the districts that are in Hudson. And the issue that I raised was that while we had taken care of a particularly dense housing style, we were leaving available similarly dense, and in some cases, extremely more dense housing styles that were available. So in the course of getting testimony from OHM, which has been our consultant, primarily because they helped with the comprehensive plan, we were able to get some new numbers for that, and we can talk about that issue tonight. Um, and the second idea or topic to refer to is the plan development. So, um, as you know, we've had a lot of conversation about this in the conversations related to district 11, that was a fair place to begin the conversation. but that opened up an entire Pandora's box since we allow planned developments in the entire city of Hudson with one exception and conditional use in one district. And so that going forward on that, we looked at the actual text of the legislation in the land development code that the planning commission would have to implement in a planned development. We have had one, which is first in Maine. And so there are a lot of topics on that to discuss. We can talk about them in any order you want. In some ways, the density is the foundational topic to discuss. It pertains to things like senior housing. It pertains to things like mixed use developments. It pertains to things like higher density housing. And that's really a foundational topic for us to address. And we would be encouraging council to adopt our new numbers. So there's my starting point.

Um, Mr. Hannon, do you want to give any other commentary to that as well?

Um, I can just note on the density changes. Those are before you and playing commissions recommendations. Um, glad to walk through those of helpful as noted there, um, several minor items spread across multiple different districts. As a reminder, this is a recommendation to city council. THE CITY COUNCIL WISHES TO CONSIDER THIS, YOU COULD COMMENCE A CODE AMENDMENT PROCESS AND FORMALLY REFER THIS TO THE PLANNING COMMISSION FOR PUBLIC HEARING AND THEIR FORMAL RECOMMENDATION. THE OTHER ONE ON THE PLAN DEVELOPMENT, THERE IS ANNOTATED NOTES BEFORE YOU THAT INVOLVE LISTING OF MULTIPLE DIFFERENT ITEMS, A MIX OF SOME CLARIFICATIONS OR LACK OF DEFINITIONS IN THE CODE AS WELL AS SOME POLICY DETERMINATIONS WHICH WOULD NEED TO BE MADE BY CITY COUNCIL. THAT PLAN DEVELOPMENT REVIEW DOES REQUIRE FURTHER STUDY AND there is not yet a formal draft for your reaction. Plan development may be relevant in the coming months. The Clinton Crossing project could be reviewed as a plan development. I don't know as we're to that point yet based on what the project might be and what type of developer might be proposed. But that I do feel would be a relevant topic for the upcoming joint session of Council and Planning Commission.

Dr. Byrd, I failed to mention that we have a subcommittee from the Planning Commission that is planning to meet on planned development. So we're meeting on Thursday this week, and it's their first meeting. So don't expect any answers immediately from that.

So questions for Chair Norman. Amanda.

Sorry, I just wanted to start with saying I am the planning commission liaison and I appreciate all the work that you do on the board. And I've gotten to hear the very thoughtful discussions that the planning commission had with OHM advisors that you mentioned. And I appreciate the work that they and you all do, especially with, I love the comparisons that they do comparing Hudson to other peer communities. It's really helpful for me to put it in context and to see where we're out of line, where we could approach things differently, or just think about options that are out there. So I just wanted to start off by saying I appreciate all of that. One thing that I remember on the density discussion and from THE CONSULTANT'S REPORT IS THEY TALKED A LOT ABOUT DENSITY, HAVING A VERY KIND OF THOUGHTFUL APPROACH TO DENSITY OF WHERE IT'S MORE APPROPRIATE AND WHERE IT'S LESS APPROPRIATE. AND ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THEY TALKED ABOUT IS WHERE IT MIGHT BE MORE APPROPRIATE ALONG SPECIFIC CORRIDORS IN DIFFERENT CITIES. AND THEY NAMED SOME OF OUR CORRIDORS HERE, ONE BEING ALONG DURO ROAD FOR EXAMPLE WOULD BE A CORRIDOR WHERE WE MIGHT CONSIDER HAVING DENSITY. or higher density so that we can have kind of more density there and less in other areas. Did you, in these recommendations, are you specifically thinking about those corridors and differentiating those corridors from other areas so that we have potentially the flexibility for higher density along those corridors so that we can leave other areas less dense.

I would not say that that entered specifically into our considerations, and part of the reason is that it really would fall upon the Council, although Planning Commission could make this recommendation to you, to create, I'll give the example of District 7, an overlay zone where special treatment is given inside of a district that otherwise has uniform rules. So we could create, for example, in District 11, There might be an appropriate use for an overlay district along 91 in order to allow more density there if that was our desire and what we wished to do, but that was not part of our consideration in revising the numbers. Revising the numbers began first with OHM letting us know that we didn't just have big numbers, we had wildly outlying numbers from our peer cities. And our peer cities are not people that we necessarily want to be, but based on land use and population we're similar to. We're peers, okay? So first we found out that our numbers were completely out of whack. We asked staff to give us legislative history on where these numbers came from. There was none. So I wouldn't go so far as to say they were completely made up. They had to come from somewhere. But they came from somewhere prior to 1996. And those numbers might have felt reasonable in 1950 if it was the village or 1990 if it was the township, or even in 1996 when our land development code was passed as a unified document. We had reason to question if those were still reasonable now. So that was the second level of our inquiry with staff, which was to ask about the levels of density that Hudson presently has. because we're pretty much happy with that. So looking at how our community has developed over time and those densities that exist, could they inform the choices we would make about the numbers? And so that's how we came up with those changes in numbers. The most drastic one was in District 5 for multifamily houses. We were allowing 30 units per acre, which was very high.

I'm glad you brought that up. I wrote that one down. Is that just, it just seemed, you know, it's such a big jump from 30 to 15. Is that because you're saying we were way too dense in that spot and that's why it's such a 50% decrease?

It's permitted. We have no development developed at a density in multifamily of 30 units an acre. We don't have one. So it's obviously not actually something we're aspiring to because in the last 30 years, we have not created that. So we felt it was reasonable to reduce it to a number that would make sense. And I think, Greg, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this. I believe it's Hudson Commons that came in around 16 units per acre. That's directly across from Acme. And that, if you tour that development, it's beautiful on the inside, It's shockingly quaint and park-like, even though it's a fairly intense development. And we sort of felt like if that was something to aspire to as far as the density, the traffic level goes, the demand on services, that sort of a thing.

So that's 15?

Correct. Yeah, it's around, yeah, that.

And then I guess the same with D8 multifamily, the same concept, I assume.

Right. And so, and so just for comparison sake, I have my old, my old chart here. Um, previously we had eliminated townhomes in DA overlay, which were at eight per acre, but we left the multifamily in at 12 per acre. And that makes no sense. If eight per acre is the problem, then 12 most certainly is. So that is how that change came about.

I'm just confused. If you can explain the map, I, this is just me not understanding. like the nine and eight in the overlay rezone. So is that overlay part of nine right now? And we're saying to rezone to district eight? It's on that district eight overlay.

Could someone on staff just pull up the zoning map so we can refer to it? Yeah, the map that you have in your packet. is part of district eight not district nine district nine is darrowville it's a very small district and honestly it's probably our next historic district because we haven't torn down most of the historic buildings there but that's a side side note so district 8 is what we carved district 11 out of further to the north right right and district 8 covers both sides of 91. Oh, Mr. Hannon, you'll have to help me out with when this happened. I think it was 2009 or 10. They created an overlay district for the development of the Redwood Apartments. And that overlay district that you see pictured on the map has mostly been built out. There's no more space to build more. And according to staff, because of the terrain and this area that is currently zoned as the overlay, it was never going to be developed. And so staff suggests we just tack it onto this for the ease of correcting it. So it's really not related to density, but it's an amendment. So we tacked it onto that. Gotcha.

Could we just back up a little bit and talk about, I just, using the word density as if it's like a bad word.

No, oh no, it's, yeah.

So what, yeah, so what is, what are we trying to accomplish by going from, you know, five to four, or 20 to 15, or what's the problem that we want to solve?

The issue is that we now know that the numbers that we have lived with for 30-some years are not actually numbers we are either aspiring to build, because we haven't built at those levels, nor are they realistic. When we look at our peer cities who have been developing, they're not developing at those levels either. So we would be allowing an exceptionally high level of density. And again, it's not a bad word. Your point is fair on that. It's a hot topic for sure, but it's not a bad thing. It's just a fact. The density of how many housing units we're going to allow, depending on the intensity of that development. So when you have a single family home, it usually requires a yard around it. Of course, if you're in the historic district, it's a very small yard. And if you're out in the rural residential, it's a very large yard, two and a half acres. You're allowed to build a more dense housing unit, which just means you have more per acre in most of the other districts, especially the residential ones. But the question is, how dense are we going to make them? And what planning commission really felt was that our numbers across the board needed to align. We needed to not have outliers. like the townhomes, at being eliminated at eight per acre, but then leaving multifamily at 12 per acre. I mean, this is ripe for a lawsuit if someone comes in and wants to build an apartment building with 12 units per acre, and we say, oh my gosh, it's way too dense, and the townhomes have been eliminated at eight per acre, and now we don't have a way to challenge that or to fix it. And 12 per acre is... That's, again, Mr. Hannon, I'm working from memory. I believe the townhomes by Heinen's come out around 12. or 13 units per acre, just for your conceptualizing of it, okay?

That's correct. Okay, thank you.

And again, they're beautiful. No slight on townhomes. No slight on the density. It's appropriate in a downtown area because everything is much more compact and the yard requirements are so much smaller. But that density, try and imagine that being put out on Stowe Road at the corner of Ravenna and Stowe, just take that, that sticks out in a weird way, nevermind the issues of running utilities to it and all that. But that density of development is strange to be in a rural residential area. So it doesn't make sense to have that level of density. So that's sort of where those numbers come from. Density is not a dirty word. We're really trying to correct Hudson's numbers for what we have been doing and what has proven to be born on the market. They could have built more next to Heinen's legally. They could have built more. They built what the market would bear, and that number is much smaller than what we presently allow.

I'll just say I also agree with your framing of this in terms of the numbers not always aligning and that there are some adjustments that are needed. I think there's some differences of opinion on interpreting kind of the report that was out, which I think is fair. So I think the report says something like Hudson's District 1, 2, and 3 housing densities are fairly comparable to peer cities with similar residential zones, with the exception of Medina, and Medina's allowances are actually higher than what is outlined. And I do think we do see some spots where the density is higher than other places. I think largely, to my read of it, which I welcome anyone else's differing read of it, is that Hudson is largely comparable to pure cities, but there are some spots where it could be adjusted, which I think is fair. I worry a bit that we aren't taking some of the other insights from the report, like thinking more carefully about corridors, maybe allowing some higher density corridors, allowing it to be less dense as it moves out from the corridors, or thinking about you know, what do we think about ADUs? And I don't think that you had any recommendations on, you know, ADUs, but what do we think about ADUs, especially as we're talking about increasingly housing that fits multi-generational families, potentially ADUs as a potential way to accommodate kind of how families are living today. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on also ADUs.

No, and the other important thing to point out, sort of related to this and also related to the senior living thing, is we're missing some key residential formats. I agree. That aren't even included in density at all. And those would be the institutional residential uses, the continuing care retirement facility. and and those have no density restrictions at all so so now legally okay when i put my legal hat on we will allow any of those facilities to continue to expand and build without limiting their density their number of dwellings or dwelling units those are both defined in our code. We have a dwelling and a dwelling unit. The dwelling unit counts the kitchen and the bathroom. But I'm going to submit to you that every assisted living, continuing care retirement center, and institutional residential use has a flushing toilet for every person who lives there. And that represents a drain and a density of living that does not deserve to be outside of the purview of density. We're not considering that tonight. I'm just throwing it out there that we're not at all being comprehensive here. I don't think that's a fault. I think that's a place to go forward in the future. So I do think there's room for us to talk about corridors. bring it to us, we'll be happy to talk about that. And especially to the extent it might be beneficial to keep that kind of high density focused on an existing thoroughfare as opposed to placing it out at, and I'm gonna pick on Stowe and Ravenna, but out in D2, Stowe and Ravenna.

So in light of, just to follow up, like the District 2 in the report being pretty similar to other communities, so what is the rationale in eliminating some of the density and eliminating, I think, duplexes and attached housing entirely if Hudson was similar to other communities in that respect? Is this one of the changes that's just because it's not currently in that district? Is that the justification there? Partially.

One of the great things about having peer cities to review is it makes you love home a lot and while we are similar in some metrics we are also radically dissimilar i believe it's medina that creates the planned development special districts wherever they get asked for. They don't put them in a particular district. It's like when you want to build a planned development, well, we bring the legislation and we just plop it right there. And then we've got one over here and we've got one over there. I would not care for that kind of development of my city. Medina has exploded. It might make sense in Medina. I've only been there a few times. That may make sense for them. I don't see that Medina's model making sense for Hudson. One of the things about Hudson we as the Planning Commission really have to work to protect is that just abstract, abstract charm of Hudson. of Hudson. What is that? What is that? Is it just the historic buildings in the old historic district? Or is it something about the pattern of development as you approach the center of town that you know you're coming through a rural area because there isn't a Dollar General at the corner of Middleton and 91? Or is it something in addition to that related to the pattern of development that you can see as you approach from some of the non-arterial streets? So we're trying to protect that abstract concept in a way that Medina clearly is not. Twinsburg lost it a long time ago. And Hudson was different at that time from Twinsburg because we had the housing lottery, the growth management allocation. Twinsburg did not. And so Twinsburg and Hudson would remain peer cities in a very palpably visible way if we had not had that different protection from them. So Hudson is different as much as we may have peers in the area.

Oh, I agree, and I completely agree with you, and I think residents would agree that we, and what you were trying to work toward maintaining this character, is integral in this discussion that you're having. I'm curious how you think about, when you think historically about historic downtown, if you look at Lucy's house, historically it was a seamstress where she lived in that house, and many of them lived above their shops. So are we also allowing that to occur in other places in Hudson, which was very historical and very part of it, where you could have a shop below And housing above, and just on that exact point.

I did question staff about removing the dwelling spaces above. Businesses down in the Darrylville district 9. For that exact reason, historically, it would have been appropriate if you feel differently and we should reintroduce that. we can absolutely examine that question. I want to encourage council to not feel like this decision is going to be chiseled into stone and will never be able to be changed. We need to see if this is going to work. Do our developers complain about the fact that they can't build as many units as they want? Do our economics support these numbers Do we have a call for higher density housing? I mean, having participated in the charrettes for Clinton crossing, there were a lot of people in different groups, not my group who were calling for very dense housing. This is not going to be affordable housing for people in no stretch of the imagination. It will be dense. It will be dense, it will be expensive, dense housing because Hudson is that desirable, that that is the kind of development that's going to go in.

Sam?

This is my, the one note, you also brought that up. The D9, the recommending removing the stacked dwellings, was that a recommendation by ODM or are we just for?

That came from Seth. Greg, you'll have to answer that one, sorry.

I can just note within District 9, it currently says dwelling units stacked above or mixed with office or other commercial space. Whereas the other residential district, it simply states single family detached, single family attached, duplex. IN D9 IT INTRODUCES THIS TYPE OF HOUSING THAT'S INDEPENDENT FROM THE OTHER DISTRICTS. AND DISTRICT 9 DOES NOT PROVIDE SPECIFIC DEVELOPMENT STANDARDS SUCH AS DENSITY, SETBACK. SO IT FELT LIKE A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF TEXT NEEDED TO BE ADDED IF WE'RE TO GUIDE RESIDENTIAL PROPERLY. SO IT FELT MORE APPROPRIATE TO REMOVE IT AS THE CORE OF THE DISTRICT FUNCTIONS ON A COMMERCIAL BASIS. BUT CERTAINLY EITHER COULD BE

And that is like the Darrylville historic area. Correct.

One of the things I would encourage you to do as you're making a review of this is looking at the table that staff provided on the fourth page of the report. Read that as you're looking at the map. And so go down District 1 and Well, you can look at it online. You can find that. But consider, here we allow a family daycare being permitted as a matter by right and conditional as a model home. That's fine. You don't need to change it. And consider all of those land uses and the housing densities for those districts while you're looking at the map because it makes it make, it's real. It makes a lot of sense that way.

So on page six, housing zoning analysis memorandum, national housing trends overview. So it seems like this lists a lot of things that don't suggest less density.

Is that out of OHM's report?

That is, that is OHM's. Yes, can I comment? Yes.

Yeah, so OHM's memo basically leads with national trends, basically about flexibility. Not every community, but many communities have trends towards housing flexibility, leaving more options open for whatever those options might be, for having a multifamily or single family, for something that's multigenerational, something that's single floor, primary, allowing 80, all of these different, like basically flexibility is I think some of the trends being a little bit less restrictive are some of the trends we're seeing, but this seems to be more restrictive, kind of going against national trends.

Okay, and I thought I had that report with me, but I brought the plan development one with me, sorry. So I'm gonna have to work from memory on that. There are trends in planning just like there are in education, just like there are in fashion, just like there are in all kinds of areas where there is, and I'm going to say this very loosely, there is a product that needs to be sold. There is an idea that needs to be created so that new users will come and need to change their laws to create new developments to do a different thing. We have what's called Euclidean zoning. It's the village of Euclid versus Ambler Realty idea of like we're putting industrial over in this pocket and residential over in this pocket. And Euclidean zoning is not very friendly to flexibility, okay? That's what it is. Do we need to be more flexible? I don't know that we need to be. Could we be? Yes, we could. where should we build that in and who is it going to affect so when we think about a question like that it may be appropriate to have some areas where there's some flexible zoning maybe i'm not committing to this but maybe d11 is the place where that needs to happen but do we need more flexible zoning in the historic district or in the downtown core Do we need more flexible zoning in rural residential? Is that what those landowners are expecting? Is that their neighbor will come in and be able to put in seven duplexes because they want more flexible land use? So it's a bigger question. I can't say we shouldn't have more flexible. I can't say that. But what does it look like? And one idea should go completely crazy on you here. is about form-based zoning, which we don't even talk about. It is the antithesis of Euclidean zoning. Form-based zoning basically asks the question, how does your idea fit in with what's already there? Would we like it or not? Is it too tall? Does it look too tall? Not how many feet is it. Does it look too tall or does it look about right? Is it just about the right density? Is it a shape that fits in with us or is it too modern? Fill in the blank on that. And farm-based zoning is so flexible that, in my opinion, it reduces the level of confidence an existing homeowner has on what will get built next to their property, or business owner, too. And I think that's an important thing to note. So I'm open to discussing flexibility. I'm not sure the place to start with that is in the residential districts where we've made some changes that are important.

comments or questions I wonder if you could send us the information about the presentation that Arthur gave RDL gave about density and with with some specific Times where he, because I watched that and I don't, I guess I don't recall him saying we were totally out of whack and really outliers.

Oh, yeah, I'll find that minute mark for you because I asked the question. So, yeah, yeah, I'll have to, I'll go through my notes and let you know where it is. Sure.

And then so what... What more would you like from us tonight?

On density, I really encourage you, again, if you have particular questions about the numbers, I'm happy to try and answer those. I gave you our process, and so you may say, oh, it's not the most perfect process, but we really tried to find the thing that made sense, and that's, again, defensible in the event it gets challenged in a court of law, because that's where We need to be careful crafting these things. You know I'm not a big fan of the existing land development code, not because it has bad provisions in, but because it's just badly written and it's out of date. We don't even, we were talking about data centers earlier. I don't actually think we're ever gonna have a data center unless we actually incorporate anything related to computers, laptops, data, digital, anything. We don't even talk about that in our land development code. And our definition of light industrial is about making products to sell and warehousing and that kind of thing. it's a fair point it could come in through a challenge, that's a fair point to say, but it's so antiquated the way we've written it that it's not possible, I don't think. So having said that, I would encourage you to look at the map, look at those uses and the densities of those uses, consider the fact that the way we came up with those numbers was specifically to try and grasp in the law what Hudson has been doing and what's been working for us. That's the big push here, really. To prevent us from being overdeveloped in a way that we're finding with the town homes on 91, They, they got with this code allowed. And I think it was Mr Sutton who introduced the legislation to change where our town homes were going to go. It's a very dense development. Those places are going for much more than they represented to the planning commission. Of course, they changed the developer in the middle of the project too. And my understanding is they're not really moving. So. For what that's worth, we may have overdeveloped a housing style that is not popular at that price point, even with people who want to be in Hudson School District in a very bad way. We should visit that. Yeah, and I think this doesn't, so.

I CAN GIVE YOU THE DATE OF THE MEETING BUT IT'S ABOUT ONE HOUR IN AND I HAVE MY WRITING DOWN OF YOUR COMMENT IF YOU DON'T. SURE. CHAIR NORMAN SAID THE PLACE WHERE WE ARE NOT ALIKE IS WHEN IT COMES TO THE MORE DENSE USE STRUCTURE TYPES LIKE TOWN HOMES AND MULTI-FAMILY. And there it feels like we have flown. I can't find anybody else that has 20 or 30 an acre. Notwithstanding, you might have a PUD that would allow a special exception. Am I reading that right first? And Arthur, this is the consultant, says yes. AND THEN CHAIR NORMAN SAYS WHAT WOULD YOU SAY IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL OPINION TENDS TO BE THE MEDIAN FOR THOSE DENSER HOUSING TYPES IN A TOWN SIMILAR TO HUDSON. THE CONSULTANT ARTHUR SAID RIGHT NOW IN YOUR VILLAGE CORE YOU ARE AT 20 FOR TOWN HOMES AND 30 FOR MULTI-FAMILY. COULD YOU COME DOWN A LITTLE BIT MORE BY TEN OR SO UNITS? YOU PROBABLY COULD AND BE A BIT MORE IN LINE WITH SOME OF THE OTHER CITIES. I'M JUST STARTING TO THINK, TOO, EVEN THE ONES THAT WE DIDN'T REVIEW, YOU'RE PROBABLY GETTING MORE IN LINE WITH WHAT SOME OF THESE CITIES HAVE AND WITH RESPECT TO WHAT'S OUTLINED. AND HE GOES ON FROM THERE. I'VE GOT MORE THAT I CAN SAY. THAT'S THE ONE. THAT'S THE QUOTE.

I CLAIM THAT QUESTION.

AND THEN DID HE COMMENT ON DUPLEXES OR MOVING?

Not specifically. He really did not go into specific numbers. He left that to the Planning Commission to do, and we worked with staff to get their data on how we should proceed in that regard. So there were some, obviously there's some districts we made no changes at all. We're not changing everything in all districts. We changed the places where we felt the more dense housing was least appropriate, and we tweaked it a little bit in the places where dense housing is appropriate.

Is this where you'd like me to comment on senior EMS?

Oh, I think that would be helpful. Since you're here, might as well be efficient with our uses of time. Yes. Thank you.

So just a little follow-up on concerns that we've had around senior EMS, senior facility EMS calls, and that depending on how you slice and dice it, it's 40 to 50 percent of calls that involve transport and or just calls that are kind of evaluation and moving on. So, we've looked at a preliminary review of three randomly chosen cases at three different facilities. A rough estimate is that It looks like only appears that 10 to 20% are potentially preventable. Of these 90 cases, there's obviously a big, huge spectrum. The most obviously preventable one that should have never happened was EMS call to a facility, patient in cardiac arrest, EMS arrives, they start doing chest compressions and all the stuff that they do, giving medications, and then somebody comes in from the facility and goes, oh, we found the DNR form. So that is obviously something that is, should be prevented, should, we don't wanna waste resources that way. Others of them are relatively benign injuries that maybe could have been managed at the facility or transported to the emergency department via another option. There's situations where I need this patient seen or this resident seen today in an ER in the next three to four hours, but I don't need to call EMS to get them there. So there's some of those cases. Other cases clearly needed EMS transport or evaluation and or evaluation but possibly the injury and therefore the EMS call could have been prevented if we moved upstream. So a fall prevention program at at one of these facilities or greater, more robust efforts to keep the residents from falling. What we did find also was that the drive time to the facility represents an incredibly small percentage of the total run time. So these are runs that take, you know, two to two and a half hours, so 120 to 150 minutes, the drive time to get to the patient is a very small percentage of that. So placing facilities closer to the EMS station or changing geographically where they are would really probably not change the burden of the calls. So the next steps is that we are meeting with the area senior facility leadership, each one of the three places, meeting with their CEO, their director of nursing, or whatever senior clinical folks they have. Reviewing these in depth, what kind of interventions can they do? What are sort of the common themes amongst the three different facilities? Can we begin by sharing best practices and lessons learned and again implementing things that reduce these calls? So it's not gonna happen fast. We need cooperation from everybody. We need to work with them when summertime is the most challenging. But that's the path that we're taking right now.

Sure. If you don't mind, if I respond, I misspoke. The cake was for senior housing, not because it was July 15th of 2025 that city council recommended the change to planning commission. And again, staff, if you could bring up the full city map of the zoning districts. in Hudson. This is important so you know where our logic came from on this. The recommendation was that the senior living facilities, so community continuing care and the assisted living specifically and the institutional housing uses would be limited to a specific district because it would help in the future, it would help control the number of calls that got made. And when we looked at that information in conjunction with some of the developable land that staff gave us for future housing and large developments, because you need a certain number of acres to build those kinds of facilities, right? So when we looked at that, what the planning commission's thought was if we leave it only in district three, which is the, I'm sorry, it's district two, right Greg? That's the blue that goes from side to side.

District three.

District three, thank you. Sorry, I don't have my distance glasses on. I can only read some of the things. So the proposal was to leave it in district three. as a way of reducing the number of calls and the distance and this sort of a thing. And the Planning Commission looked at that and said, this makes no sense. It stretches the entire width of the city. That's a five mile radius. And yet you're telling the people to the north, they're too far away to build senior living. And you're telling the people to the south, like where Hudson Grand is, you're too far away to build senior living. And this is not going to survive a legal challenge. This won't fly. So The Planning Commission said, let's find another way to address the number of future I'm going to call them senior living, and that's going to be the umbrella term for all these. Okay. Let's find another way to address all of the senior living development that could happen in the future. Let us create that overlay district. This is only one way to skin the cat. There is a totally different way as well. And so we said, well, if the issue is about the runs, and that appears to be where the cost is being sucked out of the city from, these... Unlike a citizen who calls once every, in my case, 26 years. I've only had to call EMS once, thank the Lord. But we're barely making those calls, and yet we have corporate residents who are making repeated calls every day, week, month. So how does this balance out to be fair? The best way we could think of is for the future, let's have an overlay district that is based on the geography of the proximity to the first responder unit. There's a totally different way to solve this problem as well. And that is for council to decide that in order to have a good balance of housing mixes, that we will in Hudson not allow the number of dwellings, I can't say dwelling units because they don't all have kitchens, the number of senior housing dwellings to be capped at a percentage of the total number of housing units there are in the whole city. That would be a great way to solve the problem. Right now, I think, Greg, you can correct me if the number's wrong, I think we're hovering around 11%. It's like 10 plus of our, and that's on a par for many other places. But the issue is, are we going to allow more to be built? Because it does represent a tax on first responder services, regardless of how far they have to drive. So I'll offer that in response to you. Council, you have to be the ones to make that decision. My issue is related to the flushing toilets and occasionally the kitchen that's in the dwelling unit. not being regulated related to density, even though it is a residential use that is taxing our utilities in a way that goes above single-family homes and duplexes and almost above the townhomes. Okay.

I kind of would like to evaluate the latter of what you just spoke about regarding the assisted living, just because, you know, if you think about it in a different perspective, you know, we would like to have a different fire and EMS in a different part of the town down the road, right? So to say that, well, then we could say, well, we do have more resources in this area, right? So I think kind of looking at it like you said,

The percentage.

Yeah, maybe it would be a better way to look at that.

I think that would be a great way. And we have to think about what the economic impact is of developing more senior housing without a commensurate increase of non-senior housing to go with it. So, in my opinion, we're built out on senior housing. We're comparable to Columbus. Okay, so...

I will just add, I appreciate the joint meeting we're going to have. So just so everyone's aware, we're going to have a joint meeting. So in my opinion, we don't have to decide anything tonight or right now. That's another meeting where we can come back and discuss more of this with the whole commission, including we could discuss plan developments. You've also brought up a number of issues with plan developments and clarifying that. I think some of the other issues we've talked tonight and just clarifying the language. And there's also FROM OHM. ARTHUR AGAIN HAS A REPORT. SORRY, I KNOW ARTHUR HAS A LAST NAME, BUT I FORGET HIS LAST NAME. I JUST KNOW HIS FIRST NAME. THANK YOU. MR. SCHMIDT. HE HAS A GOOD REPORT THERE TOO ABOUT PLAN DEVELOPMENTS. AND THERE'S SOME DIFFERENCES THAT I THINK IT WAS TWINSBURG AND AURORA HAVE MINIMUMS AND WE DON'T HAVE A MINIMUM FOR THAT. SO THERE ARE SOME CLEAR DIFFERENCES THERE. SOME SIMILARITIES, SOME DIFFERENCES, AND THERE'S A LOT OF FLEXIBILITY WITH WHAT WE WANT TO DO. I THINK THAT'S ALSO A GREAT TIME FOR US ALL TO DISCUSS ALL OF THIS. SURE.

SO SHOULD WE THEN SEGUE TO PLAN DEVELOPMENTS?

SURE. I DON'T THINK WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A PARTICULARLY EXTENSIVE CONVERSATION ABOUT IT TONIGHT. I WOULD LIKE TO KIND OF JUST INTRODUCE SORT OF WHERE AS THE CHAIR OF THE PLANNING If we were to have a plan development brought to us right now, I'm very nervous about making any decision on it, whether to approve it or whether to deny it. I'm very nervous. And I did create, I sent it to Dr. Weinstein. I did a sort of transcription of the land development code references. I'm still finding more. I'm sorry, it's not up to date. But I was going through related to... data centers and found a couple of other references to plan developments. This document highlights questions and concerns I have as a planning commission member who has to make a decision, and can we just start with what a plan development actually is? Because it is defined in the purposes section that govern them as one thing involving, let me make sure I'm saying it right. A mixing of permitted uses, and the definition does not indicate, oh no, wait a minute, I said that wrong. I'm sorry, planned developments is exclusively mixes of uses, exclusively mixes. The definition of planned developments says it can be for solely residential, solely commercial, solely industrial, or a mix, which means a person could bring us a planned development for residential development, okay, it's a planned development, And they have no mix of uses. And so according to the definition, they would be in. According to the purposes statement, they're not even in the ballpark. How do I start with that? All right. We just pretend that Greg and Nick wave their magic wand and we go on to doing some of the other analysis. And the rest of my annotations highlight some of the conflicts in timing. So your subdivision application has to be turned around in 30 days. So if you're planned development, which would be normally 120 days. Put a footnote there because that depends also. But if your turnaround is 120 days for a planned development, but your subdivision has to be turned around in 30 days, we don't actually have 120 days to do the work. We've got to turn around the subdivision much faster than that. There are conflicts in, there's some concern, it's to the mechanics of how this works. The way I have read the code, The application comes to the Planning Commission and we make a recommendation to Council and Council approves or makes recommendations for amendments or changes and then sends it back to the Planning Commission to make the final decision. In that time period, we cannot take any new evidence And again, you've got to put footnote there because we're all having public hearings, which apparently are going to be de novo. Notwithstanding our new rules on public hearings, we didn't change this part. So we're going to have a public hearing and people are going to come and testify. And then you're going to have a public hearing and people may be the same, may be different, will come and testify. And then our job is to look at your recommendation and be sure if you required any amendments to it that we add those in. And as long as they have your things added in, we rubber stamp it because we can't consider Joanne Fabric's closing as a change circumstance that would start the process all over. We can't consider a change of a developer like the townhomes did as a change of circumstances that would maybe alter our decision. So the mechanics are really messy on this. Since we're having multiple public hearings, including the final approval at us, so I Again, I can't explain to you why this makes any sense, but that's the way it's written. Where does the appeal come from? If somebody doesn't like the decision, are they appealing from the planning commission decision? Well, that wasn't final, so it shouldn't be a final appealable order. It can't be of the council decision because you're not the final say anyway. We are. So it would have to be the public hearing from the final decision. decision on the plan development, which would have what testimony? I mean, what gets included in that? The first two hearings as well? Is it a continuation? We haven't done this since 1st and Main. I don't know how messy that was. I don't know that anybody appealed. That's one of the mechanical issues that is problematic for me. I feel like we are setting up, just as an example, we are setting up all planned developments, if we didn't change anything. We are setting them up for a conflict because the planned developments allow great variance without going to BCBA in the standards that govern everybody else in a district. And yet we were requiring compatibility with the development nearby that got no variance at all. So are we actually going to allow changes in the development if they're required to look like the development around them that had to abide with all the laws that exist? I hope I didn't lose you in those weeds, but that's one of the considerations, too. This is written very loose in the way of applying standards. We're supposed to look for excellent design and fabulous built products, and they have these really fluffy terms that have no definitions in our law, and I don't actually know what an exceptional design is. Is it because we hired IM Pei, God rest his soul, to design the building? Is it because we have great features and it's all environmentally sustainable and it's LED certified? What makes this exceptional design? Is it really just beautiful? Is that what it is? I don't know what that standard is. I don't want to subject the city to risk of suit because I got it wrong. So I'm asking you, as you look at this language, I'm asking you and the recommendations hopefully our subcommittee will bring to you is to protect us. Protect the Planning Commission and protect the city in the event we are going to go forward with plan developments. Our first recommendation is probably gonna be about the map. I think I famously brought you my really badly colored map about all the places where plan developments are allowed. in our city. Why is this the case? Why do we allow these in the rural residential? Well, if it's all residential, maybe it makes sense. But again, we go back to the conflict of what is a planned development. Are there reasons why we don't want them down in the village core? Wouldn't that make, isn't that where First and Main is? Wouldn't we want that to be there? Sorry, that's small. It's two acres. They are there. It is the In four. It's in four in the village. That's the historic. It's not the historic district. It's the area surrounding, but they're not allowed there. It's just on the other side of the Clinton crossing area. So they're allowed in Clinton crossing, but not on the other side of the tracks. Why is this the case? So first is gonna be the map. I hope it'll be fairly simple. We may have to consider some special zoned areas for corridors, because it might make sense along 91. The second part is addressing the text. I am not of the opinion we can just, and I showed you this before, I think, I'm not of the opinion we can fix just these two pages when we have some districts that have seven to 12 pages of guidelines for us to review. And here you would be bringing us as an applicant a very complex design. It would include commercial, retail, it would include medical offices potentially, and residential. We're looking at traffic studies for mixed uses. This would be so complicated. How am I supposed to make a good decision for you? With just these 2 pages of information, so where that goes, I can't predict right now. I've asked staff to check into the American planning association to see if they have model language figure. That's a place to start. It's also a neutral entity. They're the professional group for planners. That would be a great way for us to find out what the current. It's a trend to some degree. It's an 80s and 90s trend, just so you know. It's not new. It's an older trend, and there's potentially even reason to ask if we actually need it in Hudson, but I don't have to take you there tonight. So that's a more detailed explanation of where I sort of think we'll be headed on this. It does affect, in my opinion, it does affect the timing on Clinton Crossing if it is proposed as a planned development. And so that's something that council has to really think about very thoughtfully on how do we want this to proceed in front of planning commission and what's the best way, not the shortest, not the most expedient, what's the best way to get from point A to point B on Clinton Crossing. Questions?

Thank you, Ms. Norman. Not District 11 and some discussions I've had with residents there notwithstanding. You've laid out a number of theoretical dangers of our current plan developments. I have to ask, if there's only ever been one plan development even submitted, that being first in Maine, help me understand it it seems like this is gonna be a lot of work to do all this to fix this situation but it also doesn't seem to be something that anyone's trying to make use of as some loophole to to do things that we don't want them to do um so i i guess that's where i'm having trouble right now and if you could help me oh we absolutely were going to have it in district 11. everybody knows that

The developer wanted that, and they're sad that they didn't get the residential component in that. So it would have come to us. You're right on one hand. We have no track record. We have first in Maine. I don't know if any of us lived here at that time. I'm not sure. But it was... I DON'T KNOW HOW IT WENT. I HAD LITTLE KIDS AND I REALLY DIDN'T COME TO ANY OF THE MEETINGS.

I KNOW THERE'S WORRY ON DISTRICT 11. MY QUESTION IS FOR THE CITY AS A WHOLE BECAUSE WE'RE DISCUSSING PLANNED DEVELOPMENTS FOR ALL OF HUDSON AND ALL OF THIS WORK THAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. Does the planned development really offer all of this danger to us if another developer has never made use of this?

Curveballs come. Curveballs come to us. The one that comes to mind the most was the veterinarian slash dog park that was proposed just north of the turnpike on Prospect. And the developer had gone in and cut down trees anticipating this was going to become And you can't do that. And no one thought in a residential type area like that that anyone would ever propose such a thing. And yet here it was on our table. know legally there were some um there were a lot of hoops to go through there were a lot of hoops to go through but he had already taken the preemptive step of doing some clearing and that that was not going to get him a past decision so so curveballs come to the planning commission at times we don't expect Another good example would be the townhomes on 91. Close to the end of the validity of the last comprehensive plan, they submitted their application. They got grandfathered in, which is the legally correct decision to make. I had to kind of hold my nose when I voted yes because it was legally correct. And then a matter of months later, we have a new comprehensive plan and it's now a non-conforming use. It'll always be a non-conforming use. How long will those houses be there? They haven't even been finished yet. Are they 20 year homes? Are they 40 year homes? How long will we put up with a non-conforming use in that area when circumstances changed, and I would argue changed for the better with our new comprehensive plan? The previous comprehensive plan literally said that that parcel should have townhomes on it. Okay, that's not what a comprehensive plan is supposed to do. It's supposed to give us aspirational language for how to weigh the proposals that come in front of the planning commission as the will of the community for what we want our city to be. And so we had to do that. That was a curveball, and it's not in compliance any longer. They will continue to build as long as they keep moving on it. They'll be grandfathered in. until the last unit is built, and again, legally, that is the correct decision. So Kerr Falls come to us, and we have been blessed that we have not had a slew of planned developments come along. How many Dollar Generals would we want in Hudson with You know, the mixed use coming in with a couple of town homes and maybe a car wash. Would we like that on Stowe Road? Would we like that to be closer in on Ravenna Street? Is there any place where you could imagine those being appropriate in Hudson as a planned development? And how do we, the Planning Commission, defend against that kind of proposal? Could it happen? It could happen. Why not have better laws? I'm not afraid of the word. Why not have better laws that say what we want and what this community values? Let's do that.

FAIRLY REASONED. THE SECOND PART OF MY QUESTION ON THE POINT OF DEAL, IT'S NOT SO MUCH A QUESTION. WE'VE HAD SOME FOLLOW-UP DISCUSSIONS WITH SOME RESIDENTS WITH DISTRICT 11 AND A BIG THING THEY BROUGHT TO US WAS SOME WORDING I THINK ON ONE OF YOUR PAGE, TWO PAGES THERE. I WANT TO SAY IT WAS LETTER A REGARDING, I CAN'T REMEMBER THE EXACT WORDING BUT I BELIEVE IT WAS ECONOMIC burden, essentially allowing them further flexibility beyond what just the planned development itself restrict them to. And they felt in regards to District 11 that that would allow the developer to theoretically argue that we've placed undue burden on them and they can't make this lot economically viable, I think is the terminology that was used, without some greater flexibility.

would love to conduct that public hearing okay i would love to do that because i'm going to expect your accountant to come take the stand i'm going to expect your expert witness on the uses that we do allow which are i believe generous i don't believe we have particularly restrictive um zoning we have appropriately restrictive zoning laws. This, Joanne's property, would have been suitable under District 8 or District 11 for development. It still is. Now, what I can't control are market forces that aren't related to Planning Commission And if it is a bad time to develop light industrial, that's not my problem. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the developer, but it's not my problem to fix it. I can't fix it. So let's see that data. Let's see that evidence. Let's find out where that is. We have economic hardship statute in the Land Development Code. Let's run it up the flagpole and see what happens.

So it's your opinion that that wording is sufficiently, you know, they would not reach that burden and you would feel comfortable with that economic viability text remaining for plan developments?

Yeah, I'm going to say yes. Do you know the citation exactly that you're talking about?

I believe it's the main section of the planned developments. And I believe it's letter A, subsection A.

can't if you don't see it immediately then we could um i'll just read it because i have it right here the purpose statement says within the specific districts uh planned developments are intended to include encourage flexibility innovation creativity and site and development design by allowing mixing of permitted uses and or modification of variation from otherwise applicable district and development standards. In return for that, skipping a little bit, planned developments are expected to deliver exceptional quality products that preserve critical environmental resources and provide above average open space amenities. You know, I may have left a part of that out. Let me go look, because I see ellipses at the end of that paragraph.

Greg, do you know what I'm referring to?

I believe the reference is to 120403, which is under variances. I was trying to find it. Thank you, yes.

Oh, no, I don't have that included, Mr. Brasevic.

That was the point reference. Thank you, Greg.

Could you read the subsection I'm referring to?

There's a couple notes, but under 120403A... It references variances shall not be granted by BZBA unless application demonstrates the following exception or exceptional or unusual conditions exist that are not common to other areas similarly situated. And practical difficulty may result from strict compliance with any of the zoning standards provided that such relief will not have the effect of nullifying or impairing the intent and purpose of these standards. In determining practical difficulty, the BBA shall consider the following, and that includes, number one, whether the property in question will yield a reasonable return or whether there can be any beneficial use without the variance. There we go, thank you.

So not a section we usually have to deal with, but first of all, you're not getting a variance for use, right, Mr. Hannon? You can't get a use variance?

That's correct.

Okay, so the variance would be for building footprint, for setbacks, for encroachment on wetlands, and the variance would have to go to the BZBA, and it would have to be so egregious in order to prevail on that that the applicant could not sell the property, use it for anything else, he or she would have to have that specific variance in order to do anything on the property. And that's a very high standard to meet. It does happen. There have been cases where that sort of thing has happened. I'm much more concerned about what plan developments allow the city manager, aka staff, to do without any review. If the change involves a minor modification, which is less than 10%, equal or less than 10%, then the city manager staff can approve that change without coming to the planning commission or the council. So when you look at a two acre development, it might be a size difference of a couple tenths of an acre. But if you're looking at a 50 acre development, now we're talking about five acres plus or minus that never come to us. So that's my concern in that review process. I think variances, we should consider that and And it might actually make more sense to ask a plan development proponent to show us the list of variances they would need, rather than giving carte blanche to the planning commission to say, your design is exceptional. Build what you like. and council having to take our recommendation at face value and us committing really a travesty of justice where other people who are not making planned developments have to go through the variance process themselves in order to get deviance from those underlying district things.

Thank you very much for your opinion on the variances. I appreciate the point. Yes, thank you.

I appreciate the point.

Looks like there's no other, Questions or comments? Thank you very much. Thank you. More to come, obviously.

Yeah, thank you for your time tonight. I do appreciate it. Thank you for coming. Appreciate it.

Okay, next up is 17, proposed consent agenda for July 21st, 2026 council meeting. A is TMP-8776, a motion to acknowledge the timely receipt of the June 2026 monthly financial report.

So just a couple highlights through the end of June. Income taxes were 2.7% over 2025, which is roughly 2.8% above estimates. So income tax-wise, we're above estimate. Interest income continues to be above the estimate as well. They haven't adjusted, they haven't reduced Interest rates, so we are beneficiaries of that. Hctv is highlighted on the graph on the 1st page is. Well, below by well below estimate, and we've talked about that. You know, multiple times in terms of the decline in their franchise fees. One thing I wanted to point out, the excess carryover fund balance, general fund balance, we've talked about that, the ordinance that was passed, the very last page of the report summarizes that. We'll be coming to council at the next workshop, the 28th, to give council a list of items for consideration for how that excess fund balance can be spent on infrastructure. That's all I had on that.

Questions or comments for Jeff, Kyle?

Thank you. Great news, obviously, on the income tax being above expectations. As we started the year, and as you told us when we were initially below, that that's kind of normal, and then it comes up as we get past a certain point in the year that bared out, as you said. Is there any tendency to the opposite in the second half of the year? Do we anticipate these numbers holding? Do we have any projections at this point?

I don't, it's kind of difficult to project, but I would think, you know, it's gonna, I would guess it was gonna, it would bump up and down as we move through the year. I wouldn't expect any dramatic drop off or anything that would cause concern.

Okay, thanks. Next is 17B, TMP-8770, ordinance amending ordinance number 25-165, making appropriations for the current expenses and other expenditures of the City of Hudson during the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2026 by making additional and or amended appropriations.

Sure, this is the second appropriations amendment that we will pass. Three times a year we will do this, and this is, as is noted, these are basically adjustments to the budget, things that weren't anticipated or perhaps maybe went over budget. And the attachment there, the Exhibit A, it's a relatively short list, which is good. Just a couple of the larger ones. Under public properties, you'll see $150,000 for increased costs for snow and ice removal. That, as I believe, was referenced during Eric Hutchinson's acknowledgement of his retirement legislation. Further down, you'll see under the fire department, they've had some significant vehicle repair expenses. They've purchased a couple of some additional smaller equipment. As well, the EMS department had some significant vehicle repairs. And then the other one is the carryover funding from last year for the Hudson Drive water line project. We're reappropriating the grant money for that project. And then the $50,000 for our cushionette that you approved earlier for the additional merchandise for the golf pro shop.

That's it. Okay. Thank you. Next is 17C, TMP-8701, resolution amending resolution number 25-38 to increase funding for the snow and ice control program contract for public...

Does council have any questions? Because I think Kevin's still sitting back there. And I need him to come up if you guys have any questions. He's been here all night.

Kevin, you want to get some steps in or something? Oh, he's good. We're expecting another heavy snow year. Is there like a farmer's almanac thing?

uh 17d tmp-8771 resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a local public agency quote lpe lpa federal local let project agreement with the ohio department of transportation for the boston mills road resurfacing project this is one where 80 percent gets covered by

That's our license plate taxes being brought back to the community. But it's from the corporate line with Village of Boston Heights all the way to 303.

17E is TMP-8772, resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a local public agency, LPA, federal, local, let project agreement with the Ohio Department of Transportation for the Veterans Rails to Trails 2 project. 125911.

Dr. Byrd, this was the section of rail that we just purchased from Norfolk Southern and simultaneously staff and engineering staff submitted an application for this, so we got some grant money.

So my question is, I heard like 29 to 30, something like that, 2029.

Years, you mean? Yeah. Brad, do you? 2031. 2031 on this trail, Brian's saying.

Why does it take so long and In the interim, before it becomes a trail, can it be a mountain bike place or something like that? That's what Dan was wondering.

That's the first thing I know. The federal funding is passed down from the feds to the states to the local MPOs. We don't dictate the schedule. They dictate the schedule when the funds are available. Okay. We will ask. If we go faster, we'll ask. I meet with ODOT and AMS every quarter, and each and every one of those meetings, I'll say, can we go faster? We have staff working on this design for this project later this year. Meaning, can we move the project up? We move it up, right.

The rails are coming out now.

Yeah, that'll take about another three weeks, but they're actively being removed right now.

Questions or comments?

You're going to take your bike on it? We'll neither confirm nor deny.

Once the rails are removed, are we then in a holding pattern until the funding?

For this project, yes. If there's a desire for a locally funded bike trail, that's a different story.

but I know there are some areas when we walked it, gosh, two years ago, I mean, there's some washout areas.

There's some washout areas, yes.

Some areas that aren't super friendly.

Yes, to make it safer public, we'd have to do some improvements. Okay.

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Brett. Next is proposed legislation for July 21st, 2026 council meeting. 18A is 26-99. ordinance authorizing all actions necessary to affect the governmental national natural gas aggregation program with opt-out provisions pursuant to section 4929.26 of the Ohio Revised Code and directing the Summit County Board of Elections to submit a ballot question to the electors and declaring an emergency. That will be scheduled for a third reading next week.

And just to add to that, the FAQs for this were put on around July 9th. Communication staff posted that. I believe they sent it to all council and the mayor. So just giving you a heads up, that is on our website.

Awesome. Thank you. Okay. Items to be added to the next two future agendas. Anything else?

Craig, do you think we can get an update on the YDC from Katie and the Salton? Do we have any updates on that? Or could that be on a future agenda?

I refer this to your manager, but we can certainly provide an update to Council.

Anybody else? Okay, so number 20 is adjournment. So is there a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn.

Second? Second. All in favor of adjourning? Aye. Okay, awesome. We are done at 22.04.