City Council - workshop

I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is a duly noticed workshop meeting of Hudson City Council, held in accordance with the Sunshine Laws of the State of Ohio, Section 121.22, and the City of Hudson Charter, Article 3, Section 3.02, for Tuesday, July 28th, 2026. It is 7.30 p.m. And per ordinance 220.031 titled workshop meetings and item C, I would now like to turn the meeting over to Council President Byrd so as to continue through the remaining workshop agenda items. Council President Byrd, the floor and workshop meeting is yours.

All right, thank you very much, Mayor. So next up is correspondence and council comments. Let me know if you have anything you'd like to share. Sam.

Thank you, I just wanted to start by saying Councilman White and I will be hosting a public forum Wednesday, August 19th from six to eight p.m. at the Barlow Community Center regarding e-bikes, scooters, everything with, Motors of sorts and to get everyone's input on that. That'll be a good segue from what we're discussing this evening I also wanted to say we had a lot of concern about the situation happened at onyx Over the past weekend and I wanted to thank our fire department for taking quick action to that and handling it and keeping our residents safe in the city is continuing to look into into that to make sure it is safe for all of our residents and

Thanks. I was able to volunteer and attend the Art and Wine Festival over the weekend put on by Destination Hudson. It was pretty well attended. Everyone that I talked to after was very, very happy with it, and they thought it was a great experience, so I'm excited to see that return hopefully next year. I also want to thank city staff for all the repair work they did on 303, especially the bump near the church up there. That was really needed, so I appreciate the quick action there and getting that taken care of. Thank you.

I'd just like to thank all the organizations that were involved on a very busy Hudson Saturday this weekend. We started off with Touch a Truck in the morning. Thanks to the city staff and the many organizations who brought some of their very cool trucks for the kids to see. As usual, the Hudson Farmer's Market, as Councilman White said. Then later in the afternoon, we went down to the Destination Hudson's. art and wine festival, and we finished the evening with the music on the green at First in Maine. So just a great, great Saturday and awesome weekend for Hudson in general. So thank you to all the organizations who helped make that possible.

A few items. As noted last week, the Mayor's Association of Portage, Summit, and Stark Counties will be holding their annual meeting and outing this Friday at the City of Hudson's Ellsworth Meadows Golf Course. The weather is forecasted to be mostly sunny and a high of 84, so a perfect day. Another community event, in addition to some of the ones the other council members have made here today from recent this past weekend, the Friends of Hudson Parks will be hosting their annual Pack the Pond event this coming Monday evening, which is the 3rd of August. The event starts at 5 p.m. and will run until 8 p.m. at the city's Hudson Springs Park, located at 7095 Stowe Road, which is just south of the high school. I have the pleasure this year to be your emcee for the evening. And again, if people have not been to that, it will include raffle prizes, geocaching, free hot dogs and drinks, and of course the ability to kayak, canoe, or paddleboard online. On the lake, I know representatives from Kent State University will be on site helping the Friends of Hudson Parks as well. A note just on our schedule coming up, we will be on recess again next week, Tuesday, August 4th, so we will not have a meeting on that Tuesday. Our next meeting will be the evening after we come back, which will be a combined regular meeting and workshop meeting on Tuesday, August 11th. With the above, please mark your calendars. You may see some of the banners out and around town, but the Hudson-Lonsburg Annual Beer Gardening, which is on the Park Lane Green across here from the gazebo, that will be happening on Friday, August 7th, and Saturday, August 8th. And then also, as we have noted, just another reminder to the public, We will be holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Dream Playground on Sunday, August 9th at noon, and that is located in the rear of the city's Oak Grove Park, which is off of Barlow Road.

Thank you. Just one thing for me, I've gotten several complaints or concerns about the flags marked in yards for fiber and utilities and the mounds of dirt. And I just wonder if, again, given the pause that we've had, I'm guessing many of those or most of those flags have expired. expired or no longer can be trusted. So if we could have city staff, the fiber folks and engineering perhaps take another look at that and see if there's things we can do to get those removed.

It's like two weeks is the general term. You just have to watch because we don't know if someone's putting a fence in. If someone comes and puts other flags that aren't related. So we'll definitely take a look. And we asked Kinetic to kind of clean up their area and remove any flags that are related to them while they're out there. So hopefully they'll get on it, but we'll take another look.

Okay, thank you. All right, seeing no others, we'll move on to discussion items. First one is 3A26-0056, Environmental Awareness Committee Priorities Discussion. And I think Joe and Alex are going to lead us through that.

All right, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here to present before City Council again at this workshop. You've asked us previously to look at our priorities for the year, revise those, and then to come and give you updates. And so that's what we're going to start with today. And I just want to echo. You just introduced yourself. Yes, absolutely. So I'm Dr. Joseph Ortiz. I am the chair of the Environmental Awareness Committee. And I'm Alexander Salimian, the vice chair of the Environmental Awareness Commission. It's a pleasure to be here, and I just wanted to echo the comments that Councilor Brezovich was making today. This weekend was an amazing weekend for the city of Hudson, and the EAC was very happy to have an opportunity to participate in the Touch a Truck event. I think it was a wonderful event. Everyone had a great time. I think the kids certainly had a good time, as you could tell from the amount of horn honking that was going on in the trucks. It was a lot of fun. And so what we're going to do is I've handed out a handout that talks about the materials that come here today. We wanted to start out talking about some of the specifics that we're working on, and then we can answer any questions you might have about the goals for the year. And so if you look at the page I sent there, there's four items that are on it. The first one that we're suggesting is part of our goal four, city council advisement, is a joint meeting between the Stowe, Twinsburg, and Hudson environmental committees. And we see that as important with respect to our goal four, which is to advise city council. Each of these communities in the area have taken the initiative to start developing environmental awareness type programs like the one that we have here in our Environmental Awareness Committee. And this provides us with the opportunity to learn what other communities are doing, to provide leadership to some of them, to let them know the kinds of things that we're doing here in Hudson and to stay relevant in terms of initiatives that have impacts for economic development and the city in general. So that's the first of the items that we wanted to talk about as an example of the kinds of things that the EAC is doing this year. Alex, you want to talk about the next?

Yeah. So the second one is a cooking oil disposal program. So some members of the subcommittee of our committee has been looking at ways to incorporate a food diversion program. And one of the ideas is partnering with a local restaurant to collect used cooking oil and dispose it rather than pouring it down the drain or bring it to reworks. as a way to keep our water treatment plants free of contaminating oil and make it easy for residents to do that.

Do you want to talk about the school recycling?

Yeah, and then the school recycling is for the education. So we're looking to develop a program or have some high school students develop a skit or some sort of engagement and go to an elementary school to kind of present it. And we're there as facilitators and trying to get them volunteered. So over the summer, we've been trying to be engaging some of the students over the summer break. And as the school semester, I guess school year starts, we'll be coordinating more with faculty to try and implement this.

Yeah. the context has been working with the advisors for those groups. And that brings us to the fourth point that we wanted to talk about, which is the vendor fair. So in past years, the city used to put on an event called Green on the Green, in which we invited environmentally relevant groups to make presentations, to have booths, and that was part of our, what morphed into our Earth Day celebration. We've had poor weather during the spring for a number of those and relatively low attendance. And so this year we changed the model up a little bit and focused on the recycling component of the Earth Day events. And that was great. We had tremendous turnout of folks there, but it didn't give us the opportunity to engage the residents who were there in an educational way. And so we'd like to see a return to the vendor fair model to have an event that we do on one of the greens in Hudson or that we partner with one of the community organizations. And we're cognizant of the time that's provided to us by city staff. We're very grateful for the work that Emily has done and the work that Jenna has provided as part of the Touch a Truck event and so on. And so one of the things that we would like to see happen with that is the EAC to take a more active role in organizing that. Jeff Wells, who was the chair of the EAC for many years and served on the EAC for 12 years when he founded it, was one of the people that came up with this initial idea for the Green on the Green. And at that time, the EAC would handle all of the coordination of the event. So we would reach out to the vendors. We'd coordinate with staff to let them know what the plans were and move forward in that way. And we think that this is a great time to get packed to that spirit to do that kind of thing. So one possibility would be to reach out to the schools and try to hold the event on school grounds in conjunction with them. That would work well with the recycling program that we've proposed and that we're working on, and would help to build interest among the younger residents in the city about the kinds of things that we can do to help protect the environment. So those are some examples of the stuff that we're doing in the context of our help for the city, and if you turn over the page, you can see the listing of the specifics of our four goals and so those four goals are environmental education environmental engagement working with the community land management and council advisement and so the one item that we didn't talk to specifically about was the land management program so our free working group has been meeting with community leaders to develop best practices in terms of land management that can then be applied by the city, by residents, by commercial vendors in the community, and we're working on a report to provide that white paper to the city and city council for review. And so with that, I'll open up for questions if there are any with respect to what we're doing.

Thank you. Questions for Alex and Joe. Sam.

Thanks, guys. I like the clear objectives, and I like incorporating the younger generation. Are you thinking of trying to incorporate this into the fall or spring of this year with the vendors, or this is just something you're looking into to...

We're at the starting phase for developing that. We probably won't be able to get it in place by the fall. If we could, that would be wonderful. But we're probably looking towards spring for realistically in terms of that.

Yeah, I think with the weather, I think we're ideally looking at it for next fall. With this year, there was a lot of activities on the green, so it was hard to find time. I think it was just one weekend that was available.

Yeah.

So yeah, and reaching out to the school district might be a way to address that. I was very impressed with the school grounds that we held the Touch a Truck event on. Very well, the flow was very easy for people to come in and park, and it's a beautiful campus. There were colleagues from EVA Ohio that came up all the way from Dayton to participate. And one of the comments that I got from them was just how remarkable they found Hudson as a city in terms of its beauty. They said multiple times, it's like you people live in a forest.

You have a list of potential workshops. Where do they fit into your?

Yes, the four items on the other page are like new things that we're doing, whereas the potential workshops that we've already presented in the earlier time we were here, but we've been working on them. So we're planning a composting workshop I think next month or September. We've done the ice cream social, the farmer's market, so we're kind of considering those as workshops because we've done a lot of outreach there.

Yeah, rain barrel is one that we do at Tinkers Creek routinely. So all of those workshops. And we did the bee house one as well. Yeah, all of those workshops fall under our goal three environmentally, reaching out to the community and community representatives from local organizations.

First, I appreciate you guys drilling this down to a more easily digestible list. This works very well. So I appreciate that. I did want to ask about, you know, even if you do look towards incorporating a vendor fair next year, are you still going to look to participate in like touch a truck? I think there was the Earth Day thing this year with the tree commission park board. Absolutely.

In fact, we've already been invited to participate in the touch a truck and have it on our calendar for next

Very good. So all in approach.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that we said when we presented the ideas that we were working on was that we were committed to volunteering for the city. We had a very active group of people that wanted to do stuff. We put together the subcommittees, and the subcommittees have been developing all these plans that you're seeing here. And so we're still learning and developing that process, but it's working well. And I think that that has provided us with the ability to really do many things that would have been much harder to do had we just stuck with the we meet once a month kind of model that we were using previously.

This is kind of a way out idea, and Joe and I had talked about it. In some cities in the United States, but certainly in Norway, people pay a few cents for bottles and cans. and then they have a specific machine that you go and put it back in and you get your money back. They also do it in Denver, I think. So that's not something that could be Hudson-specific, but when you get together with Stowe and Twinsburg, talk with them, it may be more of a county kind of initiative, but if this group of three is interested, maybe you could go to the county and talk to them and see if any of that's feasible because what it showed is that people don't do a good job with recycling the cans and the bottles and the glass, but they've shown in Norway that I think you get what, 95% of them get recycled. So it's really kind of a good initiative. So that's one way out suggestion I have.

You know, that's an interesting idea. Certainly, we can incorporate the importance of recycling as part of our recycling education program, and we can talk to other communities to find out what they're doing and encourage our residents to talk to their state representatives and county representatives about why we should be doing things like that, trying to recycle more. Along those lines, the... The EAC just completed the Keep America Community Litter Index, and almost all of our streets are in very good shape, have very low litter. Where we did see litter was along sort of the main thoroughfares, where... as many residents living directly on the street there to keep an eye on things. And certainly we do things, see things like cans and bottles from time to time. So your point is very well taken.

Hi there. Either of you maybe can answer this. Can you give any other specific examples on your potential workshops for how to or fix it? And I have an example, but I want to hear from you first.

Yeah, that's a good one. So there are a number of TV shows that had talked about how to or fix it kind of events. There are folks that have Maker Faire kind of ideas where they'll have maker machines that will be there to make parts for broken things you might bring in. So those are some of the ideas that we might do with that. There are resources at Kent State that might be very helpful to reach out to that through the design initiatives that are there, for example.

I'm curious to hear your answer.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you've done things in the wintertime on insulation and energy savings things. Have you ever done anything on water conservation? And the reason why I ask is I was on the phone with a resident maybe last month. They do get their water supply from a different municipality down south of us. BUT THEY HAD A HUGE BILL AND THEY HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO AND THAT MUNICIPALITY WASN'T VERY HELPFUL OTHER THAN TO TELL THEM THAT YOU ARE USING A LOT OF WATER AND YOUR MONTHS HAVE SPIKED AND I ACTUALLY TALKED THEM THROUGH, YOU KNOW, IT WAS THEIR TOILET AND THEIR BATHROOM AND THE FLAPPER VALVE WAS LEAKING AND THEY WERE TURNING THE VALVE OFF BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. THEY JUST KNEW THAT SOMETHING WAS NOT RIGHT. Is that something we can educate people on? If you see things, here's who to call, but here's maybe some of the most common things.

That is a great idea. In the past, when we put together information on conservation, we've talked about how you can turn your toilet into a low-flow toilet. There are a number of ways you can do that. Very simple. You can put a brick in it. It takes up some of the volume of water that otherwise would have been used by the thing. Or you can put a container in it so that when you flush it, it doesn't take the whole volume down. But certainly we could expand those kinds of efforts into making sure that your faucets are not dripping, that your toilets are not leaking. And that happens from time to time. And telling your kids and everyone who's in the house how to make sure to have things in good working order is a great idea.

I would maybe say expand that a little bit. Classic storage hot water heaters, flushing them, keeping them in better working condition, just things around utilities. As we save on utilities, obviously then we're impacting favorably the environment.

That's a wonderful idea. As we head into the winter, one of the things that we can probably expect to see is going to be higher energy prices. That's one of the things that we have as a focus in terms of Council advisement is to talk about things that we can do to help residents save money in this energy crisis that we're facing at the moment.

Sure. I would think that there's probably a fair amount of people, if they don't have an on-demand hot water tank, that they've got the classic tank that they don't know you should be flushing that for sediment. And then the efficiency just goes down. So how do we get easy things like that out comprehensively to help our residents is just an idea.

Thank you, that's a great idea. We do put out sort of monthly information that we pass along for environmental tips, and I will make sure that that gets on the list of things to add to those.

That's good, thanks.

This is somewhat related, but a lot of cities have like a library of things that they can So they have tools that you can borrow to do that kind of stuff. So they have infrared thermometers to measure heat loss or whatever. So that's something that, like we have a library of things here at the library, but they don't have that kind of energy efficiency equipment. So that's something maybe for council to consider.

One of the items that we used in our house was a very simple device called a kilowatt. And what it was was it was an electric meter that you could plug into each of the outlets and then plug your devices into it and it would tell you how much energy it was using. And so we put that in and we plugged in our old coffee pot with a carafe and the space heater on the bottom and found out it was... and our coffee pot was using as much energy as a microwave just to keep the coffee warm in an uninsulated glass bottle. So we replaced that with a coffee pot that doesn't have a heating element to keep it warm and instead puts it into a thermos and that helped us to reduce our energy use. So certainly we can pass along those kinds of tips.

education and getting that out to the public is always the challenge. What is the vehicle and then how do you get people to engage and read it and use it?

Thank you.

So I like that you have metrics, and that's the first step in being able to develop what are called SMART goals, you know, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound. So let's see if we can put some numbers to these, number of students that participate. So something like, you know, we want to have 100 students participate by November 30th or something like that so that so that there's some actual things that you guys can measure and you can come back and say, we met these targets kind of thing. And then my second comment is, and we've talked about this in the past, I know you wanted to categorize these things based on what the ordinance or language in our legislation say about what you do, but I think education is one way that we work in recycling. It can also be used to work on increasing renewables. So I guess I would suggest next year looking at the big categories of environmental awareness and recycling. What do we all... Are we engaging people? Are we educating them? This under recycling and then renewables and whatever categories you like. Because I think that way you can see the kind of a balanced portfolio of what are the things that you're working on and you're addressing all these different things.

Are you familiar with the, I think it's the UN's Sustainable Development Goals? There's like 32 different human metrics and some of them are environmental. Is that like something you're kind of?

Yeah, let's share that with Dan and we'll talk further, yeah.

Yeah, we'd be happy to follow up with those suggestions. That's a very novel way to think about organizing. Okay. Are folks happy with the work that we're doing and want to see us proceed with these four items and the four goals?

Yes, yes please.

Thank you very much, we appreciate the time. Thanks.

Thank you.

Okay, next up is 3B, 26-0057, communications update.

So we have Kathleen Sullivan, the chiefs, and Jenna Stasek are all here to give an update on emergency communications, the protocols and tools the city uses, and then the coordination of special events communication.

I'll sit up there an extra chair seats

All right, thank you for having me. Let me introduce myself. I think this is the first time I'm in front of you guys officially. So I'm Kathleen Sullivan. I'm the communication manager here in the city of Hudson. Part of my role is also as a public information officer for the city of Hudson. So I serve both the fire and police department as well as our public utilities. So I was asked here tonight to talk about emergency communications first and then go kind of into event communications. Earlier in July, we had a couple situations happen where some questions were brought up about our emergency communication process, how things work. So if you have any questions at any time, please just let me know so One of the things we have here is a crisis communication plan all cities have one. It's pretty It's an open plan where no two situations are the same so it allows for a lot of flexibility, but at the same time There are some standards to it. So there's always an incident commander which is going to be your police chief your fire chief or your city manager and You have a communications manager, which would be my role. And then you have a group of people that can be sort of tapped in to help communications, depending on how big the situation is or isn't. From there, you go in through the notification process. an emergency situation happens, obviously police fire. They're the first ones on the scene. They're the ones who know first from there it goes to the city manager, um, which who contacts you guys obviously, um, in the event of emergency and second on the list is me. Um, and that is when we talk with either of the chiefs or the city manager of what kind of communication needs to go out as not every situation deserves the same kind of level. of mass communication. We have code red here in the city for our emergency communications. There's two parts to code red. So there's one where the public signs up to be contacted. That provides us with cell phone numbers, emails, voice messaging, whatever you prefer. The other part of that is a reverse 911 aspect, which is a national list. So any cell phone that is pinging within the Hudson area or whatever geographic area we selected would receive that emergency message if we so choose. That tool allows us to either tap both of those lists or one or the other. Could you explain that last part a little bit, the reverse? So there's a national list for sort of reverse 911. It comes from cell phone companies. It's kind of ever changing. So as part of our service that we pay for for Code Red, we have access to that list. It is geographically motivated, so I can't tell you who's on the list. I can't see any details. However, if I, you know, circle location, do streets, however we want it, we could do the whole city of Hudson boundary line, which for major events, that's probably what we're going to be doing. It's going to capture, I believe for the whole city, it's about 11,000 is on the list at any given time. Cell phones located within that boundary. So even though they haven't signed up for a message, it's going to send it to them based on that list. It would be like the code red messaging. Yes. So that's kind of Code Red is very specific. You sign up for it, you give us additional information, and we are saying we're only going to use it for emergency situations, so not events or road notices, those kinds of things. We're saying it's weather, it's criminal, whatever, and that is only when we use the reverse 9-1-1 aspect to it. And then we have the social media part after that. Obviously, social media is a big part of our world anymore. Everyone is on social media, but it is a good way to get the message out quickly. We have multiple channels. Each channel has a local alert aspect to it where you can actually prioritize so that it becomes on the top of people's pages if it deems it an emergency. Because we are an approved government entity, we do have access to that tool, like on Facebook. So the incident that happened earlier in July, we used that tool. Otherwise, for non-emergencies, we use social media a lot to get out road notices, things of that nature. We have a pretty good following on the city page. So that's kind of where we're at. Any questions? I feel like I'm talking really fast.

Thank you for providing the documentation earlier today. I wasn't able to read it in its entirety, but I got the general sense of the approach in the crisis management. If you would humor me, I'd like to talk about the two events. We had the gas explosion in Twinsburg Township and then the about a week later. So with the gas explosion, this didn't occur technically in Hudson and the Boundaries, but it did affect, there were houses on the north side of town, I believe windows blown out, I mean, damage that did affect. So no code red was used for this crisis. So can you take me through, basically what you guys did on this as far as this crisis management approach and how you went through it, how the decision was made that we didn't need a code red in that instance, how was that determined?

So for the Twinsburg explosion specifically, Twinsburg takes the lead on, obviously it's their jurisdiction, their rules around it. I believe they sent out a code red or the system they use to that local area right before them when they were evacuating that neighborhood for the gas leak. It did not extend to our residents.

The short answer is it wasn't our event. And so we were not in charge of it. We weren't the incident commander. We were called mutual aid to go there. And even though it did touch a couple of our residents on the very northern edge of our town, the predominance of everybody that was infected was in Twinsburg Township. And so we don't... We don't have the... see the authority but it is the entire incident is run by the twinsburg incident command and so we were called to go there and act as an agent of the twinsburg fire incident commander and we were there actually fighting the fire not being in the incident command role and so we didn't have the details about what was going on or the extent of their Code Red event or anything like that. So we were not in a position to be in their incident command function. And I was there, but I was very remote to their incident command location. I was in the firefighting role, not in the command role in that incident.

Understood. And here's where I'm struggling is that an incident like this doesn't care about the boundaries that we have drawn between Twinsburg and Hudson, right? And the residents on the north side of Hudson had really no way to know whether this was a danger to them at any point, right? They heard the explosion. I hear the explosion. And in fact, you know, I heard the explosion before and I texted Tom immediately, you know, so it didn't go through the levels. It started right away. And so when I have residents asking me, you know, I hear there's a shelter in place over there, you know, a couple hundred yards maximum away from my house. Does that affect me as well? I don't know what to tell them. And it doesn't sound like we really had an answer. What I'm getting at with this whole discussion is when I read the crisis management, I saw a lot of emphasis on gathering information, making sure we're getting out factual information, which is very, very good and I think a great part of this. What I'm worried about is that because there's a long period of time of gathering accurate information, are we Are we not taking advantage of the tools that we have to at least let people know that there has been an emergency in a designated area? Please leave or avoid the area. We don't know all the information yet, and we don't need to know all the information just to tell our residents, hey, there's a dangerous situation happening at this specific location.

How many homes were affected in Hudson when that happened? You said a couple. How many were in total?

I guess it depends on your definition of affected. Physically damaged versus a debris falling in their lawn. I guess it would depend on your definition. As far as physically damaged, I believe the answer was four. As far as having stuff falling in their lawn or whatever, I believe the total was eight.

Okay, I think, you know, when this first happened, we kind of wanted, as our chief of our city, you give some type of update to us and you still have not kind of taken responsibility for what you should have done or did or did not do. And I think what we're saying is we would like a better response from our fire department as far as, Yes, moving forward, this is what we will change. We will say when we're on a if it's a streetsboro Hudson border, Twinsboro Hudson border, it's affecting our community. We need to have a better outreach to our residents because that's who we're servicing. And I think we feel like everyone was kind of in the dark.

I guess just a follow up. I think what Kyle and Sam are suggesting is that when it is technically outside our area, but it's right next door, the residents still need to know something. So should they shelter in place? Should they run like hell? Should they whatever. So just like let's add that on to the list of things that we kind of figure out as far as we change our processes or review our processes. And then go ahead, Jeff. And then the other piece is that I see kind of a description of like somebody who's got a role to do this and somebody's that EIO and all this important stuff. But when we're talking about an active shooter, for example, We might not even have a chance to get in touch with you or Perry or, you know, it's going to be the officer on the front line communicating with dispatch or somebody else. And somehow we have to have maybe some pre-written scripts or something that just say, you know, avoid Terex and Barlow, Terex and 91 because there's an active shooter. And that anybody with a badge can initiate that. And that we don't have years of authority that people have to go through because that could take five minutes. So just...

One of the things we looked at after the incident earlier this month was how many people have access to Code Red to actually send out messages. And we did have some recommendations of expanding it within the police department. That way, for something that is very quick like that, it could happen more quickly. That being said, we also have to be very careful of who has access to that kind of information and that kind of power to send out a text or voicemail to everyone because if misinformation is accidentally, say, distributed, it can cause a lot of harm to a lot of people. So that's why a lot of these situations are difficult because whether I'm talking to the chiefs or the city manager, the information is still developing and we're still trying to confirm what is accurate. The police situation, we were still trying to confirm exactly where he was at on the road while it was happening. And by the time we confirmed it, he had moved to Stowe. So not an excuse, but that's kind of the quick actions that are going on there. But it is something we definitely discussed about expanding the number of roles within the code set red system outside of say three individuals that it gets expanded.

Jeffrey. I guess the example that I wanted to bring in, Chief, maybe ask you a very simple question. The example is when we had talked on a home committee meeting, gosh, maybe two years ago, there was an example. The school system manages their own communications. And there was an incident on the school where I think they had a gas leak or something. And they went through their process and sent things out to their families and residents that they had within the school system. the city didn't know about it maybe that's not the exact example but that's things like that have happened so we sat there in the home meeting and we said how do we at least get our communications teams together so that if something major happens you know who to contact at the city so then we can go through our standard processes and push that out to our residents if it's deemed necessary. So my question, Chief, is can't we get with, and I understand there's different systems that maybe the neighboring communities use, but can't we get with our neighboring communities and say how do we get tied into your communications so that you can at least give us, if something happens in Twinsburg or Streetsboro or Boston Heights or Coggle Falls or wherever, Stowe, Can't we just simply get tied into their crisis communication so that we know, and then if it's yourself, Chief Tabak, Kathleen, yourself, or whomever, then we can say, okay, we've got this information. We're doing our job, but somebody's got the information that we can then push out to our residents and use our same channels that we do now. To me, that's what we do with the schools. So is that possible?

Certainly anything's possible. Maybe I should back up a little bit. Border incidents are extremely rare. This is the first one we've had in a very, very long time. The incident was, and there are very separate issues that occur on borders. The gas line was not something that, the gas lines are not connecting and feeding the houses in Hudson. They were feeding the houses in Twinsburg, not in Hudson. And the situation was something that I and the Hudson crews were actively working on extinguishing the fire and doing the job that we were called there to do. And, I think that it's the ability to get connected is something we can certainly talk about. If they use Code Red and we use Code Red, there's certainly the ability to try to make that connection. I honestly don't know what Twinsburg uses and what Stowe uses and stuff. That's not something that we have that connection. I'm not sure that, I think we moved on and I didn't. I didn't have the opportunity to answer your specific question, Sam, if you wouldn't mind repeating what I didn't have the opportunity to answer your question. You didn't feel that I did my job

And fight the city after of fight the city there was really nothing much came from the city I found on facebook live today's Benson hoods are hasn't city managers halted all future directional drilling. But you know from a social media standpoint, there's nothing that you you come from the fire department and in fact the police department as well. So there's nothing clear what's coming from you as a chief portraying to our residents of hey, this is what happened. We're trying to keep you safe. I was hoping you were going to come immediately to the council. I know there's an ongoing investigation, but just to say this is what's going on, this is what we're doing. As far as that reverse code red is concerned, you would think that if they have a similar system, that geobubble would... go over into that neighboring area, I wonder if they do have that because then that would in fact have covered those residents. But I would like more, I would like you to have more of a face of what happened and to be present for our residents to let them know that you're here and doing everything. I just feel like that was lacking for our residents. And I was trying to collect for the people and talk to our city staff, but there was really nothing that came from you. So tonight is the first time that you're discussing anything that happened. And I want you to take responsibility for it, not just say a couple houses in Hudson were affected because as we have seen over the last five, six years, things are constantly happening. So anything can happen at any point. And I just want you to be transparent about that.

I guess, and forgive me if I'm not quite understanding. Are you asking for me to come to council more frequently? Are you asking me to go on Facebook?

When there's an event like this, what did you do? What was your response to the public after the Twinsburg event?

To the public, okay. And that's where maybe there's a disconnect, but the incident was a Twinsburg incident. And it had an impact on Hudson residents. But it was a Twinsburg incident. And all of the information that gets relayed about that incident happens through Twinsburg. And that is something that is a, I don't want to say a cardinal rule, but we We don't go and share information about an incident that happens in another city, just like with the shooting incident or the criminal incident that occurred. I got asked to do interviews about what happened. I don't do that. That's something that is not in my purview. It's something that we try to do. I guess we stay in our own lane. And that's something that when you have an incident that happens and whoever that incident commander was, they are in charge of that incident. And when it goes across geographical lines, the incident commander and the city where it occurred is still in charge of that. I believe I understand what you're saying is that you were looking for me to share with residents at the time that the incident happened what the impact was on Hudson. Unfortunately at that time, I was not in a position to be able to stop what I was doing and contact Kathleen and say, okay, here's the impact that it had on Hudson. because of where I was at and what I was doing. If you were looking for after the fact, come and say, okay, Hudson, these are the number of houses that were impacted. Yes, that is something that I didn't do. And if that's something that if we have another incident that crosses the border and does that, that is something that I could do better. Absolutely. If that's what you're looking for.

I'll say from an administrative standpoint, we didn't, Jerry wasn't asked to come to council. Our whole, our sole focus then became, how do we make sure that,

that doesn't happen you know we went into the let's make sure that doesn't happen here so let's stop all drilling and maybe that's our fault for not you know getting that information out but we went into the let's make sure it doesn't happen in hudson and stop drilling and involved extensive i've been involved and the city's been involved extensively about going down that road and and i so i i'm trying to make sure that i i understand what for the future that you're looking for me to do because i'm i'm not sure I'm not exactly sure where I've failed, Josiam, and I want to make sure that I try to do better. Josiam?

seems to me there needs to be a better communication pattern between the communication people and the other cities. So if their communication person who was giving out things had called you, then you could have put something out immediately and you would have been doing your job putting out the fire. So I think the problem is all, you know, with Stowe, with Twinsburg, with Streetsboro, we need Boston Heights, we need to have some better system that everybody alerts the other so that citizens can be told what's going on. Like if you had put something out, there was this, everything's safe, there's not gonna be, as far as we can tell, there's not another thing happening, whatever. Whatever information they give you from Twinsburg, if that was the people that were in charge, like you said, Chief, but you could get that from them and then you could relay it to the citizens.

So actually Summit County has a public information officer group. We meet once a month. So most cities have a representative there. We talk about different issues and that's something I certainly can bring up in the next meeting we have. I actually reached out to Twinsburg's fire PIO right after the incident. I knew he was probably extremely overwhelmed with media inquiries and things of that nature, but I just wanted to make sure Hudson and Twinsburg were on the same page of directional drilling at the time. They hadn't put out a notice. I didn't want them to think we were trying to one-up them, things like that. So there was some communication, but there was not, I would say, in the moment of the actual incident happening. There was not between the communication teams.

I think it's worthwhile to look, because I've been here, whatever, 18 years now. I don't remember this ever happening before. And then we just keep two incidents that are like that. So certainly we'll look at anywhere we can get better because we want to keep everybody informed. Kyle.

Thank you. All good discussion on working with neighboring communities. The other aspect to kind of these situations that I wanted to discuss was so Code Red and this crisis management is kind of laid out for informing people about a danger. What about kind of not exactly the inverse, but okay, you heard a huge explosion near your house. You want to know that it's actually safe. What about communicating, okay, you are aware as the residents, maybe we already sent out a message, maybe we haven't yet, but you know something's going on. You want to know, hey, am I safe? And so if... If it is safe and we're not telling people that it's safe, they're still worried. And so I think that's a little bit missing from this overall communication crisis management is letting people know when a situation is either resolved or a situation is, though people are worried and there's a lot of chatter, it's actually not a danger to them, an immediate threat of life to them, their family, their houses.

So I rely on both chiefs or the city manager, depending on the situation. Sometimes it's public works or whatnot, but they go through their own system of protocols. And again, that accurate information, is it fully safe? Can we really say that? Things of that nature. One of the recommendations after reviewing these incidents was making sure that we have posts when situations end. So when road notices, emergency road closures happen, putting out another communication saying, you know, the road is fully open now. So that is on a recommendation I think would be very helpful. That's kind of where we're at though on that situation.

So my understanding is you would use tools, mostly social media, in that situation, right? You're not going to get a Code Red message that says, hey, I know you're worried, but you're going to have to turn to social media, which, like you said, the understanding of Code Red is you are going to use it for emergencies, not to let people know, hey, there's not an emergency.

And one of the risks, there are other systems out there for non-emergency notifications via text or email. There's tons of companies. The risk is that you get put on a spam list essentially. If you're starting to get too many messages or things you don't care about, you'll report it as spam on your phone. I'm sure we've all done it. Once you get on the list, it's very difficult to get back off of it. So when you're talking about emergency communications, if you have a sign-up list, you want to make sure it's very specific and that you're not going to get a lot of opt-outs because that's what keeps it a good system, essentially.

Okay. I think implementing a post situation, now everything is safer, everything was always safe, that would really go a long way to helping residents feel good about the transparency about what's going on. My last thought on the You know, you mentioned Summit County. Unfortunately, obviously, our entire east side is not Summit County, so we can't just rely on county communication to kind of fill that role. That's all I have.

Were you going to talk about Notify Me?

Yes, so one of the questions I got asked was about Notify Me. Our website does have the capability for Notify Me. It is, in my opinion, a very clunky system. The notifications you get might not be what you're exactly looking for. So if you sign up via the website, you would essentially get updates whenever anything changes on the website pertaining to that topic. So if an edit is made on a page about XYZ, you're going to get that update. it may not be what exactly you're wanting. You want a new story, you want road notices, you want something specific. Um, there are other communication channels that can do that, that we can definitely look into, um, that I would say a more stream line than notify me. Um, but in the short term we can definitely reuse that platform. We have the ability to do it right now. Um, we just aren't utilizing it because there's not a lot of people signed up. And like I said, it's a little clunky.

So maybe we do need a better platform and not to renew the notify me maybe? Is that an option?

Yeah, it comes in our packages of the website we have. So we might have to essentially upgrade to a different platform. Okay, so that's something we can maybe look into for... Yeah, like an add-on if that's what we want where you would get text or emails for specific non-emergency events.

It's actually a good time because we're getting ready to start the budget so we can look at softwares and make that part of the budget process this year.

Yeah, I think people, I was looking at the notice. I mean, it was kind of confusing because you had to click through every single individual topic that you wanted. Then you had to get a code. And I think because the city is so focused on social media that having that quick update, I think residents would like that.

And we always have to be aware that not everyone's on social media. So having another method to contact those people is always really important.

OK. OK. So based on this discussion, can you then get us back some information. It doesn't have to be a personal visit or a visit to workshop, but we heard about the speed of getting the code reds out, the number of you're adding more people that have the capability to do that, some pieces about post-event communication as well, kind of closing the loop. the whole working with more organizations and seeing what can we, given Chief Farns' comments about one organization kind of owns the whole thing, but how do we kind of pull that information out and share that with our residents better? And then you also mentioned, and I don't want to go down this path, tonight because I think you guys should do your work on this and then come back to us and talk about at the end you commented about relocating the fireworks display to a place that allows sort of better sheltering and kind of semi-urgent or emergent leaving of the area kind of thing.

Yeah, I didn't know if you wanted to talk about event communications or not. Jenna's here. We had a few recommendations based on the fire incident. Okay. So if you're open to that.

Sure. Before we do that, just to kind of circle this, it's kind of a different animal for the police side of the communications, and we had talked at length about that. Did you want to give Chief Tabak a chance to talk about that, or do you want to move on to the... That's a different kind of a moving event, and we did talk about that in this, and I'm happy to step out and give him that opportunity to talk about that if you wanted to.

So, Perry, do you want to expound on some things? Are there inaccuracies that need to be corrected or anything you want to add to? Thank you. Thanks, Jerry.

Yeah, I don't really have anything to add unless you have any questions. I mean, I sent a, I'm almost positive you got it, but I sent a pretty detailed memo the very next morning after that incident with Ohio State Highway Patrol, which kind of broke down a lot of the timeline, you know, involved with that. So I guess if you have any questions about that or anything else, I'm more than happy to address them.

This was, this incident was a little, was unique in that, I mean, you might have lots of other chase situations, but if it's a, if it's an active shooter in X grocery store in Hudson, that the location might stay the same for quite some time and might be easier to be accurate about where somebody is and what's going on versus someone fleeing.

Yeah, this was definitely a unique situation where you had a another agency who has jurisdiction throughout the state that got involved with a pursuit, turned into a shootout between the suspect and the trooper, we weren't involved with any of the initial start of that, whether it was the pursuit, the shootout. And so we came in kind of the tail end. So there was some catch up just getting up to speed as we were beginning to assist the troopers and figure out what was going on. I want to say based on the memo I sent you, I think that with all the dynamics between, again, a pursuit, accident, shootout, securing the initial scene, looking for the suspect, which, again, in the memo I think I told you that we believed that the suspect was possibly still in that area. So that was our primary focus of the initial officers that arrived on scene was to secure the vehicles and secure the general area. But then it evolved into a carjacking down the road. So now we had a secondary scene. and then a follow-up, an additional pursuit in another jurisdiction. All of that was conducted within almost exactly an hour, you know, a time, which may seem like a long time, but staff, whether it was police, OSP, even fire EMS was assisting with people that were injured. You know, like that, right? So I did have communications with Kathleen and the city manager during that time span and evaluating what we had, when we had it, and what to put out was not as straightforward as maybe it would seem. We did get some information out about the intersection to avoid that area. at a time like I would have put anything out, again, it was already, the event was, had already concluded, so.

Thank you for that summary. I was going to say, you know, with this situation, I recall, you know, Things as they do coming through on Facebook and oh, my goodness, there's something going on. So I text Tom and just say, hey, this is exactly what I texted him. Was I understand there is some type of situation on the south side of town involving gunfire? Can a code red message be sent out and then would would eventually be getting sent out? And, you know, I wasn't cognizant of this whole crisis management plan at that time. So I guess my question is. I ASSUME THE MESSAGE WAS GOING TO BE SENT OUT REGARDLESS OF MY TEXT MESSAGE AND THAT WAS KIND OF THE APPROACH YOU GUYS WENT THROUGH.

I PROBABLY TALKED YOU THROUGH IT.

I THINK WITHIN THE FIRST MINUTE OF TALKING WE WERE LIKE IS THIS CODE RED APPROPRIATE. IT WAS YES BUT THEN IT WAS WHAT DO WE SAY AS IT'S MOVING OUT OF OUR JURISDICTION. SO THAT WAS THE DISCUSSION.

I know when we talked last fall that we have some kind of support system for people who've been victimized, and I hope that the individuals that were involved with their car being jacked, carjacked, that we gave them whatever resources that they could use.

We absolutely have protocols for stuff like that for victims of crime.

I know... I don't remember if there's many houses along where this happened, but I know last summer when we had the officer involved shooting, many of the people on Stony Hill felt that the city didn't get didn't get back to them, didn't support them. Then we tried to have a forum, but it was a long time later. But I think we need to be aware that there were many people on that street that were concerned. They had small children. What was going to happen? I think they just needed somebody to talk to them. So I think if we can keep that in mind when incidents happen, that that'll decrease a lot of the fears and anxiety that can be among our citizens.

I do understand like, and I think it's human nature. I think these days, especially with social media and everything, everyone wants information like immediately or like while it's happening. I understand it on my side though. We really, and we have these discussions as things were starting to progress and I was getting information myself, uh, was, you know, I, I'm big on, you know, accurate information as timely as possible. Um, you know, uh, there's gotta be a, a balance with that. I mean, I understand that people want to know right then and there, but, uh, You don't want to put out inaccurate information as things are changing or wrong information before you have it. So it really is a balancing act.

I think a lot of people, information's important. I think what they wanted more is to be able to talk about how scared they were, how they feel, and that they just feel that we're there for them. Maybe the information can come later. We can say we don't have it, but them to know that we're there, that we care about them, We understand it was pretty scary and that we're doing what we can to make our neighborhoods as safe as possible. And I think that goes a long way. Okay.

Thank you very much. And then Jenna, you're going to.

I can stay here if you're okay with that. Okay, Jenna Stasek, Community Relations Manager. One additional component to our communications that interrelates to this topic tonight is our community event coordination and the communication NOT ONLY TO AMONGST OUR STAFF AT THESE LARGE SCALE EVENTS WE HOST AS A CITY BUT ALSO TO THE PUBLIC. WE OBVIOUSLY HAVE DETERMINED WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO NOTIFY THE PUBLIC AS TIMELY AS POSSIBLE AND WITHIN OUR SCOPE. FOLLOWING THE FIREWORKS INCIDENT, WE HAD A POSTMORTEM MEETING THAT WAS MYSELF, some members of community development, communications, public safety, and public works. And part of that discussion was how do we take advantage of tools to improve our communications, not only amongst our staff, but also to the actual attendees of the event, the people that are physically in this location and a couple of the items we came up with was utilizing our message boards that we have. We talked about adding a few more to our fleet so we have the ability to notify the public in the moment. We also talked about adding drones with audio that can circulate large outdoor assemblies. We talked about improving our internal communications by select individuals having access to 800 megahertz radios, which is how our public safety communicates, and those were the main priorities we wanted to address, just so not only are we focusing on our Code Red and our emergency communication through our social media, but also to the individuals that are attending our events. With that discussion, we talked about pros and cons of relocating our fireworks from Barlow Farm Park, which we have not finalized any recommendation to this group yet, but we have sought out two options, one being Veterans Way Park, which we shoot fireworks from there for our winter fireworks. Chief Farns and Chief Tabak are evaluating that plan for safety to see if we could reasonably implement something from that location during the summer because the greenery does add a different complexity to the launch site during the summer than the winter. But that option would allow us to have viewing locations in our downtown and promoting that economic driver in our downtown businesses. The other option, which would need discussed with other stakeholders, but we are looking at maybe one of the school sites, but we would need buy-in from the schools as well, so that is also a consideration, but nothing has been determined to date.

Questions or comments? Kyle.

You mentioned the economic driver of downtown. I will admit I'm not normally in Hudson on the 4th of July. How many of our businesses in that downtown space are open on the 4th?

I'm glad you asked. Well, so far our contract for fireworks doesn't actually fall on the 4th of July. So most of them are open their normal business hours when we host fireworks. So that right now would not be a factor, but maybe in the future.

Okay, thank you. And then just personally between the two, I know you need buying from the schools, but That one does interest me just because now you've got a very built-in shelter in place, right? Downtown, not so much. But I see pros and cons to both.

Yes, absolutely. The schools would be an exceptional option. I know that is a more favorable solution from public safety. It's a contained site. There's on-site parking, access to message boards. We have the ability to notify people in an emergency. They can shelter in the schools. They can have access to their cars. That is one thing we truly don't have right now at Barlow. So I think it's our due diligence to explore other options and see what we can figure out.

I think the big thing, like we talked about, is maybe another platform for communications would be really good for a lot of the answers to all of these, just for updates. And inform people, follow, make sure you are prioritized. Like you said on Facebook, people probably don't realize that you can, what is it? You don't like it, but you... turn on notifications.

Yes. Definitely. Also, one of the things we talked about was establishing a command center for when we have bigger events over a certain amount of people. That way, all the decision makers are in the same spot. So when the weather or something happens, everyone is making an area and we can get communications out really quickly from there.

I would like to touch on one item related to weather. This may be something that council is not aware of, but for our large scale outdoor events that are hosted in or by the city, I do establish a direct line of communication with our National Weather Service. They give us a private line that we can call in. They give me a report in the morning showing what the conditions are, anything you could think of. But for fireworks in particular, that is one that I signed the city up in addition to the monitoring that Chief Farnes also establishes through his channels. So very unfortunate what happened to us, but we did check all the boxes with weather ahead of time.

As you're mentioning, when you have a venue that requires buses to transport, then we either have to be more risk-averse and cancel sooner or more frequently, or we get a different venue.

Absolutely.

Yeah. All right, and Kyle, we do expect you here every Fourth of July from now on. Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Jenna. Thank you, Kathleen.

Thank you, Jerry and Perry as well.

Chief Farnes, thank you.

Okay, next is 3C26-0058, temporary special events.

Hello everyone, it's me again. As we noted through our council comments tonight, special events are at the heart of our city. We have over 150 on our calendar, so as we've talked about some of our emergency protocols, this has also brought to light that there are some inadequacies that we should address through our permitting process just to ensure that not only our expectations are clear to our event organizers, but also we're keeping the public safe. So this is a very multifaceted discussion. I wanted to just give you a brief update tonight and then I will come back later in the fall after our event season winds down and I have a chance to work with fire more in depth in police but the special event codified ordinance hasn't been updated since 2016. There has been some changes to fire code since the 2025 fire code updated large outdoor assemblies and there are some specifications that Both Lieutenant Vilt and I agree that we should work into our permitting process just to ensure that we're always crossing our T's and dotting our I's. As a part of that process, Lieutenant Vilt is recommending that we look at establishing an event risk assessment, which would help us identify our events as low, medium, high risk. So high risk events would be events that have over 1,000 attendees. They utilize a significant amount of city resources and need us to be honed in more so in the moment, maybe require more staff from our end. As you know, we have quite an abundance of events and some are extremely well attended as you saw this weekend at the DH Art and Wine event. So this is in the works. I just wanted to give a brief update as we had Ms. Obert at Planning Commission, identify this also from an event organizer standpoint that our requirements are not clear and easy to follow. So let's take a look at that. Let's also align it to our fire code. Let's figure out a way that we can address everyone's issues with a nice pretty bow and I'll bring it back to council in the fall.

Is there like a gold standard risk assessment or are we gonna create our own?

I am sure, knowing the fire world, that there is a standard risk assessment, but I am going to let Hudson Fire take the lead on that part. But I will report back on that. Couple, if there aren't any questions, I just wanna touch base on a couple fun and new activities that will be upcoming. If you are not aware, our first street alleyway is being redone by Door Two in partnership with Fairmount Properties. They are doing a mural. That is on the First Street alley from First Street to our parking garage. It is right next to the old Nestle location. They are going to be incorporating mirrors. It will be phenomenal when it is done. But they are planning to do a sip and stroll in partnership with Fairmount. And then also an event leading up to the Greens where we just re-hung Birdsong. So that'll be really fun. It's tentatively scheduled for September 3rd, and we'll release that information shortly. Grace on the Greens, this will be a new four-week food truck event at the request of one of our councilwomen. We are planning to do a once-a-week lunchtime food truck. I haven't released it to our vendors yet, but we are hoping to get three food trucks per week starting in September. As a part of our America 250 series, we have our community picnic coming up on September 6th. This will be a fun event. We're going to have some carnival games and some fun activities from the city, a musical performance from Western Reserve Community Band. This should be a great evening and it'll lead into a screen on the green of National Treasure. We will also host our 9-11 stair climb, which was an initiative of the Military Veterans Commission last year. This is the 20th anniversary of 9-11, so this will be a more in-depth ceremony, but that will be the morning of September 11th. We are also looking at a Hudson four-mile turkey trot. This was brought to me by Hudson Athletic Boosters as one of their primary fundraisers for the year. They are working with a company called Endo Monkey Racing, which the gentleman who owns the company, he is a local Hudson resident. So that will be really fun. And then one thing that is in the works that we haven't determined yet is celebration of Peg's 25th anniversary.

Questions, comments?

Exciting. Very much so.

I just want to say thank you to Jenna. We communicate and work on several of these events. I know how hard you work and the time you put in and the evenings and the weekends. So I appreciate what you do for this community. Thank you.

Thank you. Last week's Clinton Crossing thing, that was... You worked on that, yeah.

Thank you, but I can't take all the credit. The community development staff put a lot of time into.

Yes. All right, thank you very much.

Thank you. Got the next item, too.

And the next, moving on. We're not letting you go away. It's unfortunate that Amanda's not here because I know she likes food trucks. So Jenna, go ahead.

Okay, so next item is food truck operations. This is another outdated section of our codified ordinances with recent questions to council, especially with operation in residential neighborhoods. This is definitely a section that we need to take a hard look at and also mirror any changes that may have occurred with the fire code as well. So chapter 874 will be updated this fall and I will come back with the report recommendations on regulations. Just a highlight, we are fairly aligned with some of our neighboring municipalities. The only difference would be is that we have historically allowed food trucks to operate at block parties and graduations. We've determined it as a special event. However, some of these situations that have been recently brought forward have been trucks that are not permitted in the city and have not been allowed from our office based off of a permit. So we definitely want to take a look at that and then this would also be another project in partnership with Hudson Fire just to make sure that we are adhering to all the fire guidelines with our recommendations in the mobile food truck codified ordinance. Skylar, I know that you had a question regarding this. Did we answer them sufficiently or do you still have some outstanding? Resident questions.

I didn't have any questions. My resident raised a concern about a food truck that was operating out of a church parking lot and did not appear to be part of a specific event. It just set up operations.

Okay. As our, as our codified ordinance is written, that likely would not be allowed depending if they're, if they're outside of our, our commercial district. several of the other complaints that were brought forward were operation in residential districts, one being on the street. We have one exception in our code that allows ice cream trucks, but even that probably is discretionary on safety and where they're parked.

Can you clarify, is it Summit County Health Department that Ensures the food is safe. We don't have anything Ourselves, right?

Yeah, we have our own permitting process that we established from the city But it is more of an inspection of the actual truck and it's its operation But the food permit would be issued by either Summit County Public Health or another County Public Health They are there is reciprocity throughout the state of Ohio for their their health permit. I

I do like the idea of a background check for them, for the ice cream trucks, because of the number of kids that they interact with.

That's absolutely.

Questions for Jenna?

Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Thank you. Oh. So I don't know if I read, did I read 260059? That was food trucks, that's what we just did. And then next up is 3E MP-8586, ordinance amending chapter 478 of the codified ordinances and declaring an emergency. And this is about low speed vehicles and Chief Tabak is here.

Good evening. I guess I'll start with a little bit of background. I may not read the entire memo that I provided council, but I'll probably hit the majority of it. Back in September of 2025, council adopted Ordinance 25119, which was sponsored by Councilman Sutton. It established regulations under Hudson Codified Ordinance 47.8. 0.01, governing the operation of low-speed vehicles, under-speed vehicles, utility vehicles, and many trucks in Hudson. Just for some historic background, this was prompted by, I believe it was House Bill 54, which The state had basically changed Ohio law requiring municipalities to affirmatively authorize these type of vehicles on the roadways rather than just kind of taking a silent stance and letting things fall back on state. Uh, ordinance, um. When originally passed, the current ordinance relies mostly on minimum standards contained in the Ohio Revised Code. It does not include adding local restrictions, operational limits, or enhanced safety provisions beyond those state requirements. As interest in these vehicle types has increased since the ordinance adoption, the police department has encountered growing safety and traffic concerns related to where these vehicles may operate, their visibility, interaction with higher speed traffic, and use along pedestrian and vehicle dense corridors. Because of these growing concerns and the fact that Councilman Sutton was the original sponsor of the original legislation, we started having conversations with him to review these concerns and discuss whether updated local standards could help address Hudson-specific roadway conditions. And so out of that, we collaborated to outline a set of proposed updates that extended beyond the basic state minimum requirements. With the goal of improving safety, clarifying operational expectations and better line in the ordinance with Hudson's roadways. The proposed adjustments were presented to the safety committee on June 17th, 2026 for discussion with the intent of bringing the matter before full council for policy direction, which is why we're here tonight. In the memo that I provided, we outlined the categories and the specific changes that we were looking at, and again, as a guide for what we wanted to see in the ordinance. And then at the safety committee, we also discussed the possibility of council as a whole wanting to amend these, add to them, and have input and discussion as far as where we moved forward And I can certainly go through each individual one if you'd like or questions or discussion.

I went online and I checked what they have in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. And I think two of the three require that the operator have a license, require them to have insurance, which I didn't see written here. There's a lot about how fast they can go. I also wondered about where they can park. What if somebody comes with a huge one with like super duper big tires, you know, that kind of thing. Um, you know, it seems like there's a lot of, um, gray area. Yeah.

Most of those things are addressed with these changes. Um, and again, uh, there was a copy of a, uh, ordinance that, uh, Solicitors offset looked at which corresponds to the summary of the tentatively agreed-upon updates Let me go through those briefly To comment on that Most of that is covered by Ohio motor vehicle code still motor vehicles You have to get a license plate or need a license plate.

You have to have a driver's license attached to the owner of the vehicle You have to have insurance that you show to the DMV at the time you get the license plate. We don't need to outline all that. It's in the motor vehicle code.

I think it'd be helpful for residents, though, to know that.

Well, that's one of the things I think we need to do, regardless of what direction council wants to go with the ordinance changes. I think a key component in this is going to be some public education, like following up on the changes. One of the things that we would do, again, regardless of what changes are implemented, we would notify anybody that's either already had an inspection and is currently operating under current ordinance. We also have a list of people that have been calling, asking questions, and we've told them that we're actually We've been pretty transparent and open with them that we're working on possible changes We'd reach back out to those people and then as well as using Kathleen and the communications team to get stuff out to the the public and putting stuff on the website as a to educate the citizens Skyler you want to comment on these changes Not specifically, I mean I would just reinforce that I

The history here is that these were always permitted under Ohio law. It was changed last year to basically say that municipality has to I don't want to phrase this. Instead of it being automatically approved in any municipality, the municipality has to explicitly say they're approving these types of vehicles. And then to the chief's point, we're now allowed to specify our own restrictions on top of the state's motor vehicle code. And that's what he has proposed here is restrictions that are on top of all the other state level restrictions.

Sam?

I think what I learned, you know, this was as it is right now, you can have a golf cart and drive it anywhere in Hudson right now. You don't see them often. It's not to say that we won't in the future. And with Chief's request that he's been getting, I think that's why we wanted to bring it to everyone to see what your thoughts were of if this starts to become more prominent in the city. We already have traffic issues. We already have parking concerns downtown. Should we have some restrictions on the roads as far as the speed limit, which is what was proposed to change on here or not?

i think those are like the big topics that for everyone to kind of discuss so we can kind of get on the same page perspective wise just so you understand um when i say we're getting a lot of requests um you know i think we've done 12 inspections but keep in mind prior to hospital 54 and us affirming you know the allowance of the vehicles um i want to say that in my eight years here uh i've had one for golf cart inspection. So we've done 12, and we've taken double or triple the amount of calls with questions. So my goal would be to implement some of these higher standards, these safety standards, before we have issues would be what I would like to do.

Do you want to pull up the side-by-side one?

The side-by-side one was a working dock. well that uh... we'd used uh... essentially making take you you certainly can pull that off but right now the only restrictions again we fall back on state State laws right now, the only restrictions are 35 mile per hour speed and under they can't be on any parts of the roadways that are 45 mile per hour, which we were. We've actually cut that down significantly over the last couple of years as it is. So it's 35 mile per hour. And then again, the licensing. as Mr. Sutton said, we kind of fall back on state guidance. And in the proposal, we refer back to adding additional state verbiage rather than going into detail ourselves on restrictions for like child safety restraints, which we currently don't have. We fall back on other state language so that as that changes, we don't have to continually update our code.

Just, yeah, so yeah, you say it's a working document, but it's a nice list of if we want to go through this and understand it better, I think that's a good place to start. But Kyle, you had a comment.

If you could just help me understand. When I approach things like this, I like to say, okay, what's the problem we're trying to solve? So you mentioned the calls, and it seems like there's an increased interest in these vehicles. And use. And use, okay. Are we seeing problems? Yes.

Okay, could you elaborate on those? That would really help. I'll give you a couple examples. One is I've had an officer call. and it's not hearsay, I mean, I spoke to staff here at the Hudson PD, observed a golf cart with a small child, infant possibly, that age range in a golf cart. Again, I couldn't tell you what classification it fall under. That's one of the other issues, these things just visibly for an officer to look at one of these things tell you well that's a you know X Y or Z it can be very difficult just by the looks but with a small child again no safety restraints picking up another child at school in the school line again under current current ordinance that would not necessarily be prohibited so that's an observation we've also seen some golf carts on State routes where we had a golf cart reserved where people were getting frustrated because it was going slower than normal traffic and you know I've said this numerous times our number one complaint in this town is is is traffic and so After a while the you know vehicles then started passing, you know the golf cart So again, we are observing some some things you thought we've also had people wanting to have homemade vehicles inspected. One of the things in here requires the vehicle to be manufactured with a VIN. Again, we're addressing some of the things that we're seeing. And then some of the things are, I guess, what I would consider anticipated, right? I don't have stats because this hasn't been in effect for a long period of time, but I also don't want to wait until we have a serious accident and have a kid hurt because they're riding in these golf carts and stuff like that. So there are observed things that we're seeing already and then things that we're trying to avoid dealing with as we move forward.

That helps. Thank you.

Sorry. We probably should have clarified the categories for everyone who isn't as intimately familiar with this as I am. The state has four categories, low speed, under speed, utility, and mini truck. Low speed is, your best analogy is a golf course, golf cart. They can go, at best, maybe 15 miles an hour. An under speed would be a, I was still a golf cart would be a good analogy, but a gas engine powered one. They usually taught, I believe that category by law tops out at 25 utility vehicles. It's a pretty big category. I think an ATV falls in there as well as your traditional utility mule that you would see on like a farm, like a John Deere four wheel or six wheel. But that's a big category. I mean, My personal one can go up to 45, my neighbors can go up to 55. Some have doors, some don't have doors, they all have Mirrors, so it's a category of something that's slightly less than a car, but a lot more than a golf cart. And mini trucks is, I'm not sure why the state put it in this category, but the nickname for them is Kai trucks. They're very small Japanese trucks. Oh, good, yeah, he's got, there you go. They're like those little two-door flatbed compact trucks. They're You can almost fit two of them in a parking spot. They're very, very skinny. And I think those usually go up to 55-ish. But they, I believe they have airbags. I'm not entirely sure. The chief might know for sure. But they much more resemble an actual vehicle than. So this is a big, there's a lot of vehicles encompassed inside of this ordinance, which is why Um, the chief is one of his recommendations is basically splitting out those categories and putting category specific rules.

I can read those out too, if you'd like, while you're, you're talking about that. So, uh, in the red line version of the ordinance that, uh, uh, solicitor's office reviewed. The following restrictions shall apply to each category of vehicles as follows. One, the operation of under speed vehicles shall be prohibited on all public roadways. So the under speed vehicles, those are like your traditional golf cart that doesn't exceed 50 miles per hour, completely prohibited. Street in Hudson to operation of low speed vehicles shall be prohibited to all public roadways speed limit in excess of 25 miles per hour. So those would be the golf carts that Mr. Sutton had talked about that are a little bit more high speed. Again, look wise, they can look very similar, but it's more about the speeds that they can obtain. All right. And then three, the mini trucks and utility vehicles shall be prohibited on all public roadways with speed limit in excess of 35 miles per hour. And so those are the three categories and the designations that we have in the current proposed change.

I went through and I attached the pictures. It is, there's a, I mean, it's hard because there's so many that can meet different categories, trying to pull them all together. So I did attach, this was attached to the agenda at It gave a couple examples, but there's, like the scouting chief said, there's tons and tons of different ones out there.

This also addresses my concerns with the kids, because we have language requiring child restraints under state law, including but not limited to Ohio Revised Code 451181 shall be permitted on such vehicles, so that it specifically addresses that. You had mentioned, I believe there is some language in here that talks about licensing. We don't go into death because that is covered under state law, so it's kind of a given. But I think we do. One of the things that we have in here is anybody under, I think, juveniles from driving the vehicles.

South Carolina also puts for these lower ones that they can only be operated during daylight hours.

We have some restrictions that we've put in, so universal for all permitted vehicles, so all the categories that we discussed, no operation after 9 p.m., a vacate door by 6 p.m., seatbelts required for all occupants, no passenger requiring trout safety restraints, which I just talked about, and then VIN requirements. Again, no modified or homemade non-compliant vehicles. So those universal rules would apply to all the categories that we discussed.

They had another interesting one saying that you have to remain within four miles of the address listed on the registration. So that would keep somebody from going

I think we should look at if you're saying like look at the bigger picture picture then so I think one of the side-by-sides was stating if they're only driving in 25 mile per hour areas which I think we could potentially adopt but you are permitted maybe we had done to say you can cross areas are of 35 to get to said other area of like a residential area for example and

Can we talk about that? I guess I can speak in general terms. That was discussed with the city solicitor, and that is something that could be written in, meaning if you break it in whatever area, you could allow for cross-net intersections to get from one area to the other.

Yeah, I think that would be a fair compromise. These are state routes, so you have semis, so it would push people not to be traveling on Darrow and 303 unless you're getting to another location. That's something that I would propose to kind of... I've looked at other places that have also done that. Instead of just saying you can't... If some of these people have golf carts, I don't want to just strip it away and say, oh, now you can't use them anywhere. It gives a little bit of balance, I think.

Okay.

The complete forbidding of the sub-15, sorry, if it was low speed, I believe, under speed, the lowest speed category, the 15 mile per hour one. This, to me, gets a little bit into a discussion I think we're going to have on e-bikes eventually of having to determine... by sight is something allowed or not. Now you got to go over there, pull over the 25 mile per hour one to make sure they can go 25 mile per hour and not only 15. Is it worth completely prohibiting the 15 mile per hour ones if we're going to limit them to 25 mile per hour areas?

I believe that currently the 15 mile per hour golf carts are not legal under state regulations.

So there are already, we wouldn't be, that helps. Okay. It's still, you still have the problem of like, you have to like go. It gets really complicated. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, and again, that, that ties directly into the, the whole e-bike and all these new tools. Right.

Type one, two, and three.

And that's another reason too, you know, that, that, uh, I wanted to address this because again, we already have a, a, uh, densely traveled, uh, We're now mixing in the possibility of these types of vehicles. We're already seeing issues with the e-bikes, scooters, and stuff like that. And I do think it's an important conversation as the newer vehicles now are intermingling with our... a traffic uh and uh high volume of uh traditional bicyclists as well as uh pedestrians i mean the city uh i i live here any time day or night there's there's people walking jogging biking and i think that's one of the great things about you know about hudson but these these things can cause issues out of your point that in order to they would have to get an inspection and they get a sticker so if it's

The under speed, you'd be able to at least tell that one. Between 25 and 35 would be a little more difficult, but the under 25 you'd be able to tell without the sticker.

So can you put up the side-by-side again, please? I just want to run through it just to make sure everybody's questions are being answered. about where the streets operation is permitted. So this would be even the utility vehicles that can go with 35.

Now, again, this is an older working doc, just so you know that there's stuff that's going to be in here that is not in my memo that is the working framework. These are things that were discussed. One of my original proposals was to prohibit... These types of vehicles, or at least some of them on our state routes and or possibility again, as we work through. Discussing some of this stuff and or possibly just simply prohibiting them on roadways that exceed 25 miles per hour with the potential for a crossover at intersections with traffic control signals, stuff like that. So, again, this that side by side by side is an older working doc with many other things that we discussed and some of the things that came up during the. Safety Committee meeting as well.

This summary is a pretty good Moving down So the the inspection piece so so we're talking about something that is manufactured hasn't been And I would like to hear more. I mean, I would like to hear information or data that suggests that these components in these vehicles deteriorate faster than a regular car in order to need an inspection every year.

The inspection would be to assure that, I guess, twofold. One idea with the inspection... Just to determine the vehicle.

Okay, so we're not talking about repeat inspections?

No, again, but that's open to... Council as a whole. I mean, if you guys want inspections every year, that's fine. But what we kind of came up with was at least a one-time inspection. It allows us to... So right now, the Department of Public Safety, traditionally, they've done most of the inspections for golf carts. So... When Mr. Sutton originally sponsored the legislation, we did have some conversation. I had some concerns as far as safety issues. And we did discuss one of the things that was in the original language was specifically listing Hudson Police Department as the inspecting agency or entity. However, without any safety enhancements, on top of the minimal state requirements, my suggestion was to remove that because all you would be doing was putting a burden on Hudson PD for these inspections when There's no reason anybody could do the inspection because it simply falls back to state code. With the enhanced safety stuff that we're talking about today, we would do the inspection to assure that they have the brake lights, seat belts, the things that aren't necessarily required under state minimum requirements. Going back to tires, you talked about the vehicles have to have certified tires. So if they're running, we could see that stuff up front And either, you know, inspection or advice person. Hey, you've got to add these things then come back to us and get the inspection. And we would do that a 1 time inspection. We could sticker the vehicle. So, if we saw the vehicle driving around, we would know that that vehicle had been inspected at the same time. My idea would be to take whatever counsel, whatever direction you want to go. We'll have a pamphlet. We talked about education. And when we do that inspection, we've got firsthand contact with that person. So there's no doubt they know the rules for Hudson. And we can hand them that and have the discussion and move on.

So I volunteered myself as one of the – I may have been the first inspection for Hudson. vehicles. I'm sure it's changed since then, Chief, but at the time we took the existing state checklist and went down that. Think about your golf course, golf cart. It has no mirrors. It doesn't have brake lights. Obviously, that category is out at this point, but that next category up the, the low speed, those are commonly called street legal golf carts. They have side mirrors. Um, they have brake lights. Those were all included on that checklist, that existing checklist. So I believe, and I'm doing this off memory and I should have brought my copy of the sheet in, but it was, um, a windshield, which I didn't have installed and they made me install it. I had it in the barn and I just had to put it on a side mirrors, rear mirror, um, Turn signals, but those are optional under state law because you can use hand signals. Horn, I believe. That may be everything that I can think of. So then on top of that, the chief is saying we'll add seatbelt requirements, which all these vehicles should have if they're street legal already. And we'll license plate light, which I don't remember seeing on that sheet. We would add that one too.

We would take that DPS. It's the form 1373. We would just use it as a template, add in what we add in above and beyond, do the inspection, and again, sticker the vehicle with a very visible sticker that the officers would know, drive around that that vehicle has been initially inspected, and then provide the of restrictions based on what, again, what council decides to move forward.

Is there, I tried to look up, because it's a long revised code that the state, what kind of violations? It's misdemeanors. What would be a violation for someone going too fast or someone being where they're not supposed to be?

It's a title. I mean, they could theoretically get cited for speed, I mean, speed like anybody else.

What about being where they're not, say they're going down 91?

Again, if that's where council wants to go, obviously that would be written into the ordinance, which would then we would cite under, you know, those restrictions under our city ordinance and not, you know, not state code. And again, I think we even specified in here just to make sure that we put language in the These vehicles shall not be driven on bike paths and other areas that are restricted. Again, I mean, we added some stuff in there about that. We'll put some language in here. To about repeat offenders that was on the advice of the solicitor's office as we kind of discuss things. If you get somebody, you know, most people, you know, 99% of the people, if you have contact with them and you tell them, hey, this, this particular vehicle can't be on this particular roadway or it can't be in this particular area. That person is going to go. Okay, thanks. And they're going to comply. We did some. to hear about repeat offenders. So if you get that person's like, I don't care, give me the ticket. Well, next time we come in contact, it's elevated.

So can you comment on the pending traffic and safety data with regards to the state route restrictions?

So again, we had discussed. Full disclosure, I'm not a proponent of the golf carts and these types of vehicles in town. That being said, I don't pass ordinance for the city. That's council's job. I'm simply expressing my concerns as the chief of police based on my experience. So one of the things again originally that I had talked about was prohibiting these vehicles on state routes was kind of a primary concern for me based on the amount of traffic, the type of traffic, and the fact that these vehicles They're not necessarily some of them aren't designed with some of the safety features. And, you know, we have a lot of semi trucks and stuff coming through downtown. So that was one thing that we discussed originally. And we had discussed the possibility of holding that to see if there was any issues with vehicles on the state routes and on the 35 mile per hour roads. This was discussed between myself and Mr. Sutton, then at the safety committee. And again, and I think Sam kind of had alluded to maybe that's a conversation as whole. What does council want to see? Do you want to prohibit them on state routes? Do you want to limit them to 25 mile per roads? Or do you want to stick with the core safety stuff that we've outlined and then revisit it at a later date. That's kind of where we're at with this.

You could come back at any point if it's a problem so it's not like just passing it now means it's like this forever. You could always amend it again.

So as it probably is obvious I'm a very big proponent of these which is why the chief and I have Locked horns a little bit on this But I think we came up with some pretty decent compromises here With regard to the state route thing I would argue It may seriously jeopardize our state funding for state road repairs we have continuously my entire time on council been told we can't ban semi truck traffic on state routes and because they're plated and titled state vehicles and that would jeopardize our state funding for road repairs. I would make the exact same argument for these. People are paying a tax to the state when they get their plate and that tax goes to road repairs. It would not be, I'm sure there's a lawyer somewhere itching to take that case and see how it shakes out at the state level. I don't think it would be a hard argument to make that we have overstepped our boundaries if we ban any legally plated vehicle on a state route. I hear the argument about speed. I would also argue horses are still legal on most of these roads and state routes. Amish buggies are totally legal on all these roads. So I don't really, I hear the speed argument. I don't really buy the speed argument. There's a hundred different vehicles that already operate on these roads that create speed problems. I mean, cyclists, and I'm not saying this as if they're in a derogatory manner, but cyclists are operating at a slower speed than the traffic around them on almost every single one of these roads. So I don't think there's a case for a full ban on state routes or a full restriction on 25 miles. or full restriction to 25 mile an hour roads, at least for the utility and the mini truck category. Those vehicles are more than capable of keeping up with the flow of traffic on those roads. And most of them are, they have the equipment to make themselves operate safely with that surrounding traffic. They've got side mirrors, they've got seatbelts by, by definition to be in that category of vehicle at the state level.

So just to piggybacking on that, would you object to a state route prohibition for the underspeed vehicles and the allowance of, I'm sorry, low speed vehicles and the allowance of the utility of mini trucks? I mean, is that something?

Yeah, I mean, you and I talked about that. I think the only concern there is that you have residents who live on those roads and they may have a vehicle that is effectively rendered useless by the passage of that ordinance. I'll be honest, most of the folks I've talked to are utility vehicle or mini truck owners. I think I've maybe talked to one person who has a low speed vehicle. So I don't know that I'm prepared to defend their case I think that would be the biggest argument is that you you have residents who live on those roads and you're basically saying they can't operate their vehicle so the the Amish buggy is a is actually a good example because it it is legal

And it also represents a potential for serious, horrible accidents that happen not infrequently down in Amish country where the speed differential is what contributes significantly to the loss of life or injuries. So I think that's where you're probably coming from, Chief, is that safety piece. So, Sam.

Just to segue into because we are going to be talking about like the motorized scooters and e-bikes. If we say then we are eliminating any use of those motors and or golf carts from the Dora area would at least limit the traffic downtown and parking in that area with them. I mean, I think that's something that we should consider or discuss as an option.

Sorry, man. You're implying a complete door ban right now. There's a must vacate by 6 PM.

I'm saying a complete door ban just for parking purposes downtown.

um i'm very sympathetic to councilman's sentence points about um bicycles especially with the e-bikes you know we're gonna have probably a similar conversation um you know i i personally love the e-bikes and there's a lot of safety concerns about them and i'm sure we'll talk about them but yeah it's hard for me to sit here and say um you know i want to put a ban of any sorts on where and when These low speed vehicles can operate and then turn around and say, but an e-bike that has a motor that's capable of going 28 miles per hour or 20 miles per hour, depending on the class of the bike. Yeah, that's fine. Because it, in my opinion, can slow traffic just as much as any low speed vehicle. There's a lot of moving parts here.

I agree we need to align it in some way moving forward.

As far as the DORA goes, I agree with it being something time-based. The DORA encompasses the green. If you want to take your low-speed vehicle down to the farmer's market, I don't think the fact that it's a DORA and people can theoretically get a drink at 10 a.m. should ban the vehicle. That's kind of my general thoughts on that.

We could always, counsel's direction, but we could always pass this ordinance as written with the safety enhancements, the timeframes, and then revisit it if you choose. That's an option. I'd like to see something, though, like, you know, going back sooner than later because we are seeing more, you know, more requests. And at the very least, you know, not all my concerns are mitigated or alleviated, but at least a significant portion with what we, you know, the baseline that we have written would be intact.

And as written, the underspeed, the ones that max at 25 miles an hour? could drive on 303 where the speed limit is 45? As written? No.

As written, no vehicles can exceed a 35 mile per hour. That is one of the restrictions that's in our current ordinance.

Okay, but they could ride on 35 mile an hour speed limits going only 25?

Categories that can go 35 can only ride. You can only go up to, so the low speed can only go in 25 mile an hour.

Okay, okay.

You're limited to 25 miles.

25. Yes. Okay. All right.

Got it. Or road segments might be the right way to say it.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay. So. There's a lot in the e-bike thing is going to be probably worse.

I agree. We can always come back.

Yeah. Good discussion. Let's review this. We have a whole week next week to just do this. And I do think if you could, I don't know if you want to keep that side-by-side thing and update it or whether you just don't. Is that helpful?

I'll just update it with the current.

Yes, yes, yes.

We can attach it to the legislature because the legislation as it stands now has the changes that are laid out in the summary.

Okay, Kyle. Brian, I sent you from a previous discussion around the urban district, the speed map. Could we get an updated version of that speed map attached so we can kind of visually see here's all the areas. Yep, good.

Okay, thank you. Skyler, thanks for your work on this. Chief, thank you. Thank you, Chief. All right, next is 3F26-0060, Clinton Crossing Update. Greg.

All right, good evening, everyone. As everyone in council has followed and attended many of the events, we've been working strongly on a community-led plan Generation plans, but as this engagement is starting to come into focus we wanted to give you a brief update tonight and start to more actively Engage Council in these coming weeks with updates and direction from yourselves Excuse me a Brief summary of recent work as you likely know we had the June Charette sessions we had 125 residents participate and they broke into 17 small groups and and all came up with concept plans with the assistance of a planner architect from the design team. Then July 1st, we had a community session where the public could see all 17 of those small group plans. We had over 120 residents attend, view the 17 plans, provided feedback on preferred uses, and completed a survey in which we had over 100 of those surveys submitted. And then on July 1st, 22nd, our session last week, we had a session at the foot, or at the entrance to the project site at the terminus of Clinton and Village Way. At that session, you can view three plans which were prepared by the design team based on the direction and feedback and key themes from the engagement to date. In addition to those plans, we had prepared preliminary analysis related to parking, traffic, and project financials. We had over 200 residents attend. to provide feedback on that and complete a survey. That survey is still active until August 3rd. So far we've had over 150 surveys completed, which has been a great response. I don't want to go too far until we have a full and complete survey, but we are seeing some trends that I'd like to at least acknowledge. We're seeing strong support for smaller single family along with some secondary allowance for town homes. We're not anticipating appreciable support for duplex, quads, or apartments. So far it appears that there's minimal support for the concept of a 40,000 square foot grocery store, which was one of the three options. We are seeing a fair bit of support for the considerations of a hotel, market hall, flex community gathering space, and community center space. We had a question related to the community's opinions on how important it is for the city to recoup the $11 million investment. And we had a pretty strong reference there with over 50% referencing community recovering those funds as important or extremely important. And there was a question related to if adjustments were needed to the plan to better capture that investment, how would we do that? And it was referenced as considering increased private ownership of semi-public facilities, increased hospitality uses, and decreased development which would not trigger the consideration of a parking deck within the project. So some additional notes going forward. City and staff anticipates RDL working towards a single preferred plan for community engagement on August 22nd. That also will be held at the project site. Feedback from that session will allow further refinement of the plan for formal review by planning commission and city council. One other dynamic that we're seeing is that the community is asking about some uses which may or may not end up fitting into that final preferred plan, but may still be of value to the community. Some of these include a community recreation or fitness center, nature center, senior center, dog park, and community theater. We anticipate tracking some of those to you through the upcoming budget process so you can at least see how those might prioritize going forward. And then a few brief additional timeline items. As we noted, we want to start increasing some engagement with city council. We have the planning commission and city council joint session for August 10th. That one will largely focus on the process that we'll go through with the project and some high level feedback on the plan. This is similar to how we kicked off planning commission's review of the comprehensive plan a couple years ago. Council and PC had a joint session at that time before kicking off that effort. And then we also anticipate coming back with you two weeks from tonight on August 11th for some further presentation. By that date, we anticipate RDL will have the framework of that preferred plan, and we can give you some additional information on that, give you some information on the concept financials relevant to that project, and get some further direction from council before that goes to the community on August 22nd. And we're tentatively tracking for Planning Commission to start concept site plan review in September with a project introduction and then their formal public hearing in October. And consideration of a development partner in the coming months in partnership with that concept plan coming together. So that with anticipation we'd have the opportunity for a Planning Commission approved concept plan and responses from a developer RFQ or RFP process by late this year. And one piece that we'll be getting back to you to get some feedback on is the consideration of request for proposal where developers would give a formal proposal including purchase price or a RFQ where a developer would give their qualifications and we would negotiate from that point on the most qualified developer. So there are a few pieces to come in the coming weeks and I'm glad to address any questions.

On the grocery store, is it? I'm just wondering, the way it's presented, you see a 40,000 square foot grocery store, and you know Heinen's is already there downtown. I'm wondering if the opportunity for, and I know there's nothing in place for this, but the opportunity for this to be a Heinen's moving into a larger footprint is being clearly understood as that being a possibility of what this would be.

I think there is some confusion in the community about that, whether or not that would be Heinen's. That came out of several of those 17 small groups that desire for larger Heinen's. That was talked about seven, eight years ago when proposals were considered for this site. But I also feel that one of the reasons that it scored lower is that a 40,000 square foot grocery would generate the most parking and the most traffic impact of any of the uses being proposed.

I did discuss, to your point, but it was... There's no easy way. Yeah, it's not easy. Because it's in... We couldn't figure out. There isn't a great way to...

Understood. When we say that the grocery store didn't score well, it's just... Yes, and I understand why. I'm curious if... there's just no good way to present it with, this could be, you know, with something, you said it was in a previous plan, and it's asked about a lot, and it was in a lot of the charrettes, like it's definitely an idea that has a lot of interest. So I guess I'm just, I'm wary of, you know what, they didn't score low in tossing it out because of all of those points.

Yeah.

Of the three plans that were presented last week, Greg, are you saying, those ones that you were saying Of all those three were like the most important, like you said, the Market Hall Community Center, is that what you're saying? They came, they got from those three specific that were presented?

Yeah, those uses seem to be the strongest. Those were in plans one and three. Plan two was heavy on the grocery store. And then... We asked respondents to talk about the southern site which is a non-residential and we separately asked them about the residential which is north of Owen Brown. So plan one I believe was the strongest on the residential side that was heavier on the single family. So that's kind of the framework that we're looking at and I sense RDL will probably be looking at some type of blending between plans one and three for those non-residential uses to at least propose.

So Greg, what about the possibility of, so let's say we agree on a plan, the residential is very clear cut, the southern public space is also, we agree upon it, but two or three of those things are expensive. And that can, do you see us being able to move forward with the residential and one third of the public space and then have that be in phases as well?

It's possible to phase in the project. We have talked a fair bit about how this might be perceived in the development community. and we'll certainly learn more about that when we go out to developers, but we've also been conscious to not do that too soon to keep this still community focused, so it is a little bit of a challenge there. We sense that there will be value in trying to find one developer. Our understanding is a residential will be very predictable and a safe investment. The non-residential will be riskier, so we want to balance those rather than let them get broken up. AND WE ARE TRACKING WITH A FINANCIAL CONSULTANT TO ASSIST US TO KNOW WOULD ALL THREE OF THESE INITIAL CONCEPTS BREAK EVEN AND RECRUIT THE CITY'S FUNDS OR WHERE IS THE RISK LOCATED. SO THEY'RE STILL WORKING ON THAT AND THEY'LL BE GIVING US MORE SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR THE PREFERRED PLAN. SO THAT WILL BE A KEY PIECE OF COURSE IF MORE OF THE SOUTHERN DEVELOPMENT IS PRIVATELY OWNED SUCH AS It could be a market hall, hotel, and a community flex space that could hold winter farmers markets and civic and community events, but could still be privately run. That would be less city initial investment and almost more importantly, less city operational investment going forward. So a lot of that's still to be discussed and defined. Okay, thanks.

This can always be adjusted. You know, when you look at a market hall, as they're looking at the financials, if a 40,000 square foot market hall doesn't play out financially, maybe a $20,000. I mean, we could look at the sizing. That also helps traffic and parking.

For example, I think plan one talked about a 10,000 square foot market hall. Plan three talked about a 20. So I believe RDL is going to look at something in the middle so that it's pushing that scale down a little bit to help ease traffic, parking, and financial cost.

Okay. Thank you. Great, thanks a lot. And next is 3G26-0061, excess general fund carryover balance.

Good evening. You may recall at the retreat in January, we talked about the excess carryover balance, which is basically when we do the five-year plan, we do a forecast kind of early, much earlier than the end of the year. And so because we budget conservatively and our estimates are conservative and so forth, We typically will have what's called an excess carryover balance. Our target balance is a 40% carryover, so anything over that 40% is considered excess, if you will, and this is just talking about the general fund. At the end of 2024, we passed legislation that's attached there that The intent of the legislation is that the, is that council would spend at least 50% of the excess on infrastructure. And so what we, assigning some numbers to this discussion, you'll see in the memo, the excess carryover at the end of 2025 was, I'm just gonna round this, 3.3 million. So 50% of that is 1,655,000. We've already approved 593,000, went to the inclusive playground, which is considered infrastructure, and then leaving a balance of just over a million dollars in excess funds that's available to hit that 50%. In other words, we would need to spend an additional I'm gonna round it down, million dollars to meet that 50% threshold. And so what we've provided to you is the list of possible uses, and this is general funds, so it's council's discretion on this. Possible uses of the general fund excess. And so what we provided is the list, you should have it. It's an attachment, it's got kind of the green bar list there. These are the resurfacing projects. When we went out to earlier in the year for the annual resurfacing programs, these were the alternate streets that did not fit within the original budget for the annual resurfacing program. You can see in there, They're listed in priority order, primarily on the PCI rankings, then also I think that engineering takes into account the impact, the amount of traffic that would be positively impacted by having it resurfaced. And so you'll see the 15 segments within the community that are for your consideration. Down below, These were some of the other projects or purchases for council's consideration that we could use the excess fund balance, apply that toward, and you'll see some, primarily they were, the focus was on the equipment, was primarily on safety type purchases, like we talk about the message boards that was mentioned earlier, the drone with the speaker and messaging capability, A grapple truck is, it's a large vehicle that has kind of like a claw attachment to it that can pick up if there was a widespread, with trees down and things like that. It has the ability to grab that debris and remove that easily. And then the last one I wanted to mention there is the, on the connectivity projects. Separately, there's a, it's kind of small, but there's a list that's an attachment there that shows all the remaining connectivity projects and what's highlighted on that list is the one on Stowe Road from Chamberlain Drive to Pine Trails up to the Twinsburg Township border. It's the number two ranked one That section, because of the bridge that's currently, the 480 bridge that's currently under repair, that section of the road is closed. So it would be, as far as timing, it would be a good time to do that. It would be less disruptive than once that road opens back up. And the reason we listed the number two as a consideration, the number two project, is you'll see the number one project Barlow Road is about $2.3 million, so it would effectively, we would go well beyond the 50% of the carry. So discussion tonight is just get feedback from council, your thoughts on this, what direction you wanted to go in. You'll see the recommendation is recommending do the additional paving projects to meet the 50%. and then leave the remaining excess in the fund for future uses. So it's, the money doesn't go away, it would just remain, any leftover would remain within the general fund, and then when we sit down here in the fall and go through the budget, that would be a consideration, that fund, that money would still be in the general fund for future appropriations.

Just to clarify, you're saying we have essentially a million From left?

To meet the 50%. To meet the 50%. Right, just it's $1,062,000.

Unfortunately, he's not here to give clarity, but if I remember the intent of Mr. Banweg's ordinance, this was his ordinance, This was to expand our infrastructure. It explicitly uses language like unfunded projects. It is true, it is entirely our discretion on how we want to use these funds so we don't have to, there's nothing in that ordinance that binds us to spending it on unfunded projects but the intent was unfunded projects and everything on this list is a funded project just not in this year. It's effectively bringing forward projects from 27 and 28 rather than doing what Mr. Bandwagon intended, which was looking at our backlog of projects we've never been able to get to and chipping away at them.

We don't have those here though right now, right?

Correct. They're in the five-year plan. What we were looking at were projects that could be done or purchases that could be made done this year. So any of those. The other things I take into consideration, and I can appreciate the intent, pulling forward unfunded projects. You're now going to take projects that are a lower priority and you're going to... Higher priority projects by the reason they're unfunded is because they were a lower priority. I understand. I understand what you're saying.

I just experience all that because we've done this and all that happens is we find a new project to fill that space that was made by pulling something forward. We never go to the backlog and actually start chipping away at unfunded projects. We'll pull something forward. year or two years and we'll look we freed up a million dollars in next year's budget and then there's always some surprise million dollar expense that comes in that fills that space never chip away at the backlog that was the intent of this ordinance I don't agree

I think what last year we got like a vac truck and did we get the vehicles.

Yeah. Hurricane too. I believe so. Yes.

And those were where were they on the on the list.

I don't recall conceived in 2025. They were not on.

I know the hurricane, the sweeper, we had been contracting that out for a number of years and it got to the point where The contract price was getting higher, and the availability of the contractor was declining, and so we made the decision that it was, in order to be more responsive to our needs, it was better to just buy it ourselves and have that available all the time.

The Stowe Road sidewalk, if I'm remembering correctly, it may be an unfunded on the budget.

That would be the one The other thing I did all of all of the yeah all of these sidewalk projects are you'll recall when When Joanne had let we pulled All we moved all of this I believe we moved all of the sidewalks done and that's why we have some of the excess right I Was part of it. Yes Well, part of it was the excess was we didn't do the Prospect Street, the sidewalk over the Prospects or the Turnpike Bridge on Prospect Street was part of it. And then also the other part of it was income taxes came in stronger the second half of the year than we had projected.

Jeff, which one did you say would, since it's already torn up, would kind of make sense? You were saying, since we're doing the construction right there, if we would, connectivity, is that what you're referring to? Yes. That's what you're talking about?

Yes, that's the one, Stowe Road, Chamberlain Drive to Pine Trails. It's in the northeast quadrant. It goes up, because there's a sidewalk there now just past Stowe. Hudson or Ellsworth Hill Elementary on the east side and it would extend it up to the Twinsburg border effectively.

I still wrote it. It is in unfunded. That project is in unfunded right now in the five year. 570.

And we can't do just part or some of Barlow. It's kind of like a. All or nothing.

You're saying it's like a. I didn't ask that question. I don't know. I'd have to find out.

Yeah, I don't know that that makes sense. And the other thing I will say is none of those are designed. So while we can certainly say the money, timing-wise, it won't happen this year. I can say it'll be out. It could be encumbered, but it'll be out in the next year.

Under Middleton Park, Kyle, I think that the park board had expressed interest in kind of improvements to sort of compensate them for not getting the

Right, so the Middleton Park study, $40,000 budgeted for this year, and then the Middleton Park improvements is $20,000 this year, and then $150,000. These are all funded projects. The only thing that's technically listed as unfunded under the parks plan is $250,000 for a dog run. Everything else for parks is funded.

I had a conversation with Trent. They have started to make some of the smaller improvements out at Middleton Park. They either have or they're underway replacing the trash cans, the pipe replacement at the roads, drainage, picnic tables, that sort of thing. So they're doing that in-house. They'll either have it and they should have all those done by the end of the year. GPD is doing a study based on the feedback that they were getting from, that they received from the residents, so GPD should have that study in time, hopefully in time for the budget, for budget discussions.

Linda, I apologize. What I'm going to say here is that, you know, from the Middleton Park discussion we had with residents a month or so ago, you know, the general feel was they didn't want this, you know, big marquee park there. They wanted it to stay a small neighborhood park. So I don't think, you know, it being a funded project already is really looking for more money. And we have, you know, of the uns of the spent money already we spent it on parks um so while i am the parks liaison and i love the parks i don't know that i'm going to sit here and bang and say let's absolutely spend more money on parks um i appreciate the notion for the unfunded projects but you know just events that have happened this year i do think like the message board it's very

small monetary amount would be relevant to put money towards to update our platform for resources for communication and then, not to try to throw a curve ball, but Jeff, I know you know a little bit, we were looking into making sure that we have the funds for making sure our staffing was appropriate for the EMS side of our safety services. So is that something to think about if we, as far as funding is concerned, to make sure that we're adequately staffed on the EMS side?

Yeah, so that is one of the directions we're given for the upcoming budget to run those numbers, and we're looking at a couple things. We're looking at how our ambulance billing, for example, and some of the policies we have there, and can we if we change some of our collection policies, how much additional revenue would that generate? Because we do, I think Tom had mentioned at one point, the number of write-offs that we have for the ambulance, what we collect versus what we are billing, it's pretty substantial, and so that would be a council direction, that's something we anticipate bringing forward. That's why the recommendation was to hit the 50% and then just hang on to the rest because there are some unknowns that.

So we don't want to spend the 1.6 million, we're gonna save that? Correct. Because you said that we had 3.3 and so we want to. That's the recommendation.

That's the recommendation, okay. You can certainly have that option.

Yeah, I think one through four.

Which one are we looking at when you say one through four?

This, yeah, okay, yeah, okay. If we could get some information on can we do part of Barlow this year or spend, it's probably too late, but... See if we can pay for some of number one connectivity plan. And that unfunded project list to see if there's anything that jumps out at us would be helpful.

You said number one on the connectivity? Did you mean, so you meant Barlow? No, you meant Stowe Road. Stowe Road, the 570 for Stowe?

No, the Barlow one.

Can we split it somehow? I don't know if that would.

It's probably not, but it would.

I don't know if that would make sense, but I can certainly ask. Okay. And then I'll compile to Skyler's request the unfunded projects that are listed as unfunded. In my mind, I'm thinking of, because you can only pass, you can only budget something one year at a time. The rest, years two through five in the five-year plan, they're conceptual. We're not tied to that. We're only tied to the first year. So in my mind, unfunded is anything beyond what's been funded this year. But I understand, you know. you're asking, what I'll do is we'll pull together all the projects and we can come back. We don't have to decide this right now, but discussion about it.

thanks um one other thing i'd like to consider um is we're talking about this unfunded money the budgeting um we're going to come back here on the 11th and discuss the additional um specs for the fiber then we anticipate you know the additional requirements we're going to put on is potentially going to raise the cost of doing this fiber project um fiber, 100% infrastructure, not unfunded. But if this is money that we wanted to try and offset some of the perceived increase in costs, there might be a decent use as well.

after this was already put together in the council packet and out the door, we internally had some similar type conversations about that, and could we?

Is there a way to? Such as the radar that we discussed.

Because, yeah, the concern there is if we're putting all these restrictions in place, these new requirements in place, it's gonna drive up the cost of the fiber project, and is there a way to mitigate that? Yeah, yeah.

So. Thank you. Well, thank you Jeff. This was helpful. You're welcome more discussions. Good problem. Yeah Okay, and then that

we could clarify what the intent, you know, if the intent, to Skylar's point, is to a truly unfunded project, maybe more clearly define that so that, you know, there's an understanding going forward, so. All right, thank you.

Okay, thank you. All right, next four, proposed consent agenda for August 11th, 2026 council meeting. There actually is none, so that's different. Five, proposed legislation for August 11th, 2026 council meeting, ATMP-8586, an ordinance amending chapter 478 of the codified ordinances and declaring an emergency. That is the, low, slow speed vehicle legislation that we just discussed previously. And that's scheduled for the first reading on August 11th. Items to be added to the future agendas? Okay. And then finally we should say thank you to Carson.

Right?

He's doing his first, he's going to be a rising senior or is a rising senior at Hudson High School doing his first taping tonight. And if he didn't hit the record button, then we'll just come back tomorrow and do it all over again. Is there a motion to adjourn?

I move to adjourn.

ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. WE ARE ADJOURNED AT