Personnel Advisory & Appeals Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. It is Tuesday no. It's not Wednesday, 02/19/2025, 07:04PM. This is a regular meeting of the City of Hudson Ohio Charter Review Commission. Calling the meeting to order, and I'll start with a roll call. Looks we have

a full looks like we have

a full commission here. Mister Hall? Present. Miss Griffith? Present. Mister Hoover? Here. Miss McCoy? Present. Miss Norman? Here. Mister Ryan? Present. Miss miss Spitaleri? Here. And mister Trainor? Here. And I'll note for the record, also have mister Pitchford here, our city solicitor. Mister Van Wink, who is our recently appointed council liaison, welcome aboard. And also mister Sheridan, the city manager, in case we have any staff questions.

Alright. Item three on the agenda is approval of minutes. I don't believe they were in the email, but we have them in front of us. Or

My packet seems to be missing them. Does anyone

have it

there? I was looking for Got it.

Just looking for those. We were You know what

I was thinking? We didn't get an email, but I have them in front of me, but they're a copy for me to sign. So I don't think you all have received them yet. So why don't we defer that unless you want me to pass these around, and we'll have them later?

About the twenty the minutes from the twenty ninth? Twenty ninth. Okay. Do you want me to make up?

If if you could, does anybody how many of us do not have? I don't

think they're in the packets.

So maybe one, two, three, four, five.

Unless they're on the chair over here by the doorway. Oh.

Oh, I bet they are.

I can

make it two six you got

a six six copies? Yeah. Thank you. Alright. So we'll move on and then come back. Item four is correspondence and commissioner comments. I have a couple of things to report. First of all, Harna is not here this evening, I I had encouraged her to enjoy her night off since she can record the minutes based on the recording as she does for council work sessions and then the other city meetings. She did point out that the microphones should be turned on. Mister Sheridan did mister Sheridan did a a good job of doing that.

She did say and I can't help with this. She says when the when the red light starts blinking, press either the gray button on the base and it should turn solid red. These are voice activated. When they speak, the light in the top lights up. If and then she said also there was something where it said trying find something in the basement. But she said something in her email about to me about please make sure that you don't put anything around. Don't block the actual base cause there's some sort of an antenna in it. And it will even if the microphone's on, it will not relay the sound to the whatever the other sheet is.

Right up there. It's down the square. Okay. Here we go. Hello.

Alright. That was the first thing. Second, Aparna did mention in her her email, there is an app called iLegislate that you can download on an iPad or iPhone if you wish. I use it when I was on planning commission. I don't know if the boards of commission still use it at all, but it's a it's basically the same as, like, logging on to the website and downloading the entire packet for the meeting.

If you to look at if you don't wanna, like I have paper in front of me, but if you prefer to look at an iPad or something like that, you can do it that way. If you wanna figure out how to do that, a partner can get you set up with an email, and feel free to contact her about that. After our packet was sent out next, the we did receive a handout, an email this afternoon, and that was a it was, like, a one or two page rank choice voting informational handout. And there's a gentleman, mister Roman, who would be here when we have public comments. He would be here to either present, discuss, or or have any answer any questions anyone may have when we get to that.

Aparna did also pass along to me that just introduced in the legislature on she received this through her clerk, clerk of counsel, Eblas. Senate bill 63 was introduced in legislature on, January 28. I've noodled it on the legislature's website, and it does three things. It defines ranked choice voting. It prohibits it, and it threatens to take away local government funding for many community that adopts it.

All I would say is that it's a senate bill that has been proposed. It was proposed, like, two weeks ago, January 28, and it was just referred to committee, the general government committee of the state senate. No action has been taken. I don't even know if they've met about it. So it's just out there.

It's informational if anyone has any questions. But she had noticed it in a blast, so she passed along to me and and asked that I pass it along to you just for informational purposes. Next. Included in the email handouts that we got, we now have in our possession of the adopting legislation passed by city councilor in 2005, 2010, 02/1515, and and 02/2020 from the four previous charter review commissions. There have been some questions at the previous meetings of, well, what happened and what what what happened at these with the different commissions.

I was on two of the four of them, and one in o '5 and the one in in 2020. And just in terms of just aggregating the information, in 2005, there was one ballot issue that changed 15 sections of the charter in eight articles. In 2,010, there were there were two ballot issues and that changed 16 sections in 10 articles of the charter. In 2015, there was one ballot issue that changed 17 sections in six articles of the charter. And in 2020, there were over 30 sections changed that changed 11 articles of the charter, and that was split into four different valid issues.

I wanna scare people with the number of articles that or the number of sections that were changed. A lot of that was all the boards and commissions were changed to be three, four year terms, exactly the same language. And with there being a dozen different boards in the charter, that changed 12 sections just to be careful. So that's just the summary. The one thing that I did notice that we spoke about one of the sections, it was like in article 12 where we looked at I remember we talked about the type of election and there was discussion of changing the word municipal to general or general municipal, something like that.

That the reverse change was actually made in previous Charter Review Commission. So there's an example of when it says it was changed in this year, and you go back in one of those ordinances, and the sections are all chronologically in the charter organized, and you can check and see what happened to have been done in that section. I've got general notes on it, but it's not worth going into in detail. If you have questions when we get to it, we have it at our disposal. Can get to it real quick.

Next on the was kind enough to provide to us an updated board and commission list. That's the sideways sheet. It lists all of the boards and commissions that are in place in the city. I counted it looks like as of today, there are a total of nineteen, nine of which are enumerated in the charter and 10 of which are created by ordinance. And I've got a list of both if anybody has questions when we both do that, I would just encourage one of one of the questions I was asked during the interview for the council interview, I don't know if you were all over the same question or not, was the question about whether or not and we discussed it as as in a previous meeting, whether or not boards should be boards and commissions should be outlined in the charter or not, and if so, why?

So I'll just throw out something that we're gonna need. I think it would be helpful from a policy standpoint is if we're gonna be touching on that, maybe give some thoughts on your own to why a border commission should or should not be in the in the charter. Just some examples that that I thought of based on past experiences would be, one, whether or not the border commission is necessary or crucial to the function of the government. Two, whether it's crucial to the mission of the of the city. Third, if it is timeless in purpose, not race not related to some current event or action or circumstance.

Fourth, if it is if it serves some statutory purpose, we have to have a planning commission, so it's created in the charter. And then lastly, just by way of example, protection from elimination. Elimination. If something's created by charter, it can only be removed by charter. If something is created by city council ordinance, it can be removed by ordinance.

There might be some concerns about certain boards and commissions not being removed by council for that reason. So those are just samples of examples of why it might be maybe when we get to discussing boards and commissions, that's something to think about. Next, a part I did provide miss Norman was gonna take a look at preambles, and she did provide a list of sample preambles from Aparna provided a list of sample preambles from other communities. And when we get into reviewing sections, I don't know if miss Norman wants to take those, digest them, and and come back and think about it. We talk we schedule it to talk about it in another meeting or whatever you prefer.

And certainly, if anybody needs some more information or has any questions, let us know. And then lastly, we have an updated I'll call it the microscopic sheet. The the one with the point five font size that think it's three pages at this point in time. Just so everyone knows, because I didn't I I mentioned I talked about it two meetings ago, but I didn't even mention it, and it was provided to us at the last meeting. How this is set up is this is organized first by article in the charter chronologically, next by section.

The suggested change are literally the text when someone makes a suggestion. It's taken verbatim from their suggestion, whether it's an email or something on the website or, you know, piece of paper submitted. And then after that, it's the last name, first of who had submitted it, whether they are just a a resident, if they're on council, if they're a member of some board or commission, or if it's something that like the first one in the preamble, that's something we talked about, we initiated. We haven't done anything with it, but I put CRC for Charter Review Commission. The last column is well, first of all, on the lower left hand corner of every sheet is going to be a a a revision date.

So this is meant to be a a living, breathing document, and all we're getting is a snapshot out of it whenever a partner prints it out and provides it to us. But on the right hand side is a record of any action that the commission has taken. And if we have no change, if we read the section out loud and we say, oh, we're good, and we move on to the next one, I put CRC, the date, and no changes. And I give all this information to Aparna right after the meeting, take a look at it once it's put in, and then she'll give it back to us at the next meeting. So it's a continuously updated document.

If you ever see anything that you don't understand or something's missing and or you you need additional information, please let me know and we'll get it get it fixed. One thing mister Pitchford pointed out is that, as I as I mentioned, it's microscopic. It's really difficult to read. I was thinking rather than on eight by eleven, eight and half by 11, you could print it on one by seventeen and three hole punch it that way, and you fold it out. You can have it that way. Alright with that? Yes. Alright. We'll do that for next time. Of the comments that have been received, just so everyone knows, the overwhelming majority of them have been to article three, which is the council's article in the charter.

After that, we have article six, article eight, which each have five suggested changes, then article four, which has four. We have several with zero and then a couple with with one. At the last meeting, there are 16 sections plus the 16 articles plus the preamble and the charter. At the last meeting, we reviewed seven sections plus the preamble, so we're halfway done. No. Really not. Like I said, I said, that's gonna give you a false sense of accomplishment. Right. But it's good to start out rather than having you be disappointed after one meeting. We're revved up and we're ready to go.

What we're here for tonight is to look at in order, I think I had ten, eleven, six, and seven. And then based on the my thought was the sections that we received the most the articles that we received the most suggestions about, that we that we reserve those so that we can have get through things that will be less discussion first so we reserve as much time for discussion of those the larger submission sections. Is everyone alright with that? Yes. Makes sense.

I like I said, ten, eleven, five, and six, I don't know how much we're gonna get through tonight. Keeping in mind, our adjourn time's 9PM. And my next group after this, based on the comments received, would be articles five, eight, and nine, and then we would finish with articles three and four, which article three is the council and four is the mayor. So we'll see where we go, but that's that was that. And oh, last thing.

Aparna let me know today that our next meeting is on March 5, which I didn't know this when we scheduled it. It is Ash Wednesday, and there's another board board of commission that did schedule that, and they've chosen to reschedule it. We we've already scheduled it. Are are you alright with going forward, or would you prefer not to have it? That's fine. Don't have any objections to meeting on March.

I'm making plans to go to church at lunch instead of at the evening.

So Just just checking. I thought it'd be be fair based on what she had said. Alright. That was all the stuff. Now we are at has have you all had a chance to take a look at the quick look at the minutes?

Alright. I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the January 29 meeting. Second. You make the motion? I'll make the motion. Okay. Mister Hall makes the motion. Is there a second? Second. Mister Hoover seconds.

Roll call on the motion. Miss Griffith?

Yes.

Mister Hoover? Yes. Miss McCoy? Yes. Miss Worman? Yes. Mister Bryan? Yes. Miss Spitaleri? Yes. Mister Trainor? Yes. And mister Kagler, yes. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you all. Next, we move into we've already done article or any other correspondence and commissioner comments. I hogged everything there just to bring everything forward. Anything else that anyone has for the good of the order? It's okay. Nonpublic Yes.

Yes. Alright. Then we move on to hearing none, move on to public comments. This is a time for the public to comment on anything that either is or isn't on the agenda for this evening. If possible, please keep your comments to five minutes. Please identify yourself by name and address so we have it for the record, and I will entertain comments as at this time. Miss Pawlowski?

Thank you. Ms. Pawlowski, would you assist me in distributing this? Sure. Thank you. Unfortunately, I did not include one for mister Pitchford or mister Bandwidth.

So sorry. Didn't go into that one.

Got that one back.

Alright. Good evening. I'm Nicole Kowalski. I am an at large council member here in Hudson. I do want to first begin by saying that, although I am on city council, I am here of my own accord. I was not authorized by the full council to speak on the full council's behalf. I am only speaking on my behalf. Second, I wanna thank you all for your service to on this, commission. I know some of you, in fact, either have in the past or currently serve on multiple boards or commissions. It takes time away from your family, and so I'm very grateful to each of you.

This document that I have distributed, I have also sent to the clerk of counsel, Aparna Wheeler, and she has let me know that she did distribute this to you whether or not you've received it or had a chance to read it. I'm I'm unsure, but I wanted to come speak to some of these topics in person. So the first issue that I would like the Charter Review Commission to consider is that of excused absences and leaves for council members and the mayor. So in the 2023, I was pregnant expecting my second child. At the time, there was some political discord on the council.

And although it was at some point quite obvious that I wasn't pregnant and not smuggling basketballs, I did not actually want to disclose to some of my fellow council members that I was pregnant simply because I'm a personal person, and I don't necessarily like to talk about things like my health with colleagues in any setting regardless of whether or not it's council or in in my professional life. So the problem is, though, that I felt I had to disclose it in order for my absences to be excused because my first child, I had hemorrhaged during birth, and I expected that if it happened again, I would be out for more than three meetings. Luckily, it did not, so it ended up being a moot point. However, I was deeply uncomfortable with having to disclose to the rest of council that I had a medical condition that would likely result in more than three absences. So I ask that the Charter Review Commission explore that, explore how council members and the mayor might disclose something like that in a less public way in order to have their absences excused excused formally.

I can provide more detailed notes on it. I even went as far as contacting HR at the city to try to document my medical condition at the time. But I don't think that this should only extend to parents. I know I'm not the first council member to give birth while holding office. Now senator Christina Roebner also had children while she was on Hudson Council.

So and I don't expect to be the last even after I am not on council. So, additionally, while he was on serving as mayor, mayor Craig Schubert experienced some hardship in his personal life that led to some absences. We have members who serve on the military who often make leave, and I think that this would be something that would be worthwhile for this commission to review. Second, I have been censured twice by this council. Section 3.13 outlines a process for removal of a council member, but nowhere in the charter is a process for censure actually outlined.

Our charter says that where the charter fails to guide the council, they should turn to Robert's rules of order. And so in my censures, that has been cited. However, our council and the mayor have failed to actually follow Robert's rules of order both times. In section 3.13, in the case of removal proceedings, it states the member of counsel shall be given the opportunity at the hearing to be represented by legal counsel at the member's expense to be heard to present evidence and to examine witnesses appearing in support of such charge or charges. Both times I was censured.

I not was given notice. I was given no due process to provide materials in my defense. So whether or not you think I did it or whatever, I would encourage you all to consider if the power dynamic on council were to ever change, do you want to see censure continue to use to be used as a weapon against those arguably may or may not commit some sort of misconduct and should those people be afforded that opportunity for due process. I'd also appreciate if the commission were to consider, and I hear on the agenda that you are, but consider examining article nine, the mayor. Oh, I'm sorry.

Article four. This article outlines only term, powers, vacancy, and absence. In section four point o three titled vacancy, it states that the office of the mayor shall be deemed vacant in the event of the resignation, death, removal from office, disqualification, or inability to perform or not having performed the duties of the office of mayor. However, despite these references to removal of a mayor, unlike article three, the council which outlines a process for removal of a council member, there is no process for removal of discipline of or censure of a mayor. I would encourage the Charter Commission to evaluate this and put into a into in place a process for such measures, specifically because this has now come up twice in the time that I've been on counsel, once with mayor Schubert regarding some comments he had made to both the school board and in relation to regulations of bodies of water in our parks, as well as in relation to mayor Jeff Anzavino who used physical force in a meeting on July 16, and the behavior was never addressed.

And although I did not support censure for mayor Schubert for his use of free speech, I do think that mayor Jeff Anzabino should have been censured for his use of violence in a workplace. Not being able to address the behavior of a mayor is unacceptable, and I tend to disagree with mister Pitchford that there is no way to to address the the conduct of a mayor even if the charter does not necessarily outline a process for doing so. Next, I would appreciate if the commission would consider examining the environmental awareness committee, the EAC. I would like to see this become a chartered committee. In my opinion, environmental issues are too important, which goes to mister Kahler, what what you spoke of.

It is, in my opinion, timeless in purpose and therefore should have protection of elimination. Next, I am asking commission to examine emergent emergency powers of the city manager. Section two twenty point o three one workshop meetings of the charter outlines that any council member, the mayor, or city manager may place an item on the workshop meeting agenda, but items may be added to or removed from such an agenda by the affirmative votes of at least four members of council. However, no votes can technically be taken at workshop meetings. So I believe the language in and of itself violates the charter.

Section six point o four contracts and purchasing just dictates that the city manager can make purchases and enter into contracts on behalf of municipality involving expenditures for the whole of any authorized project, asset, or service not in excess of $25,000. Any expenditure larger than $25,000 must be approved by council. While I've served on this council, section 20 two twenty point o three one took effect, which essentially has forced us to call special meetings or special workshops just so that we can consider any expenditures in emergency situations. And in the event that we cannot find a quorum because these meetings require at least 48 notice, in the event that council cannot get a quorum, should we have a very serious emergency related to infrastructure, for example, it, in my opinion, could be devastating to the community for mister Sheridan or any future city managers not to be able to spend the money needed to fix the infrastructure or what have you in an emergency situation such as that. Of course, I do think that there should be checks and balances on this ability, and it should be very clearly outlined what does and does not dictate an emergency.

But you're all smart people, and I have confidence you'll be figure that out. And then finally, I see that mister Herman is here, and he, I expect, will talk about a topic that I have found very interesting for some time, which is ranked choice voting. So I would ask that the commission also consider whether or not ranked choice voting would be a beneficial change in the way council and the mayor are elected as I believe it would give the electors more of a voice in elections. Does anyone have any questions?

Miss Kowalski, miss miss Villarrie, can you give me an example of a prior emergency that took place just so I

could wrap my brain around it? Absolutely. Thank you. So there was actually a sinkhole, I believe. Is that correct, mister Sheridan? On 303 right across from McDonald's, and it was due to a waterline. And we had to notice a special workshop prior to a meeting in order to place something on a meeting agenda for us to vote on an emergency authorization.

Understood. Thank you.

Mhmm. Thank you. It does happen.

Any other questions for miss Pawlowski?

Perhaps on that same topic, my understanding was an emergency meeting could be called and not have to wait forty eight hours.

This is mister Trainer.

Yes. Is that is that not the case?

Any public meeting does require public notice. So that that would be the forty eight hours. I mean, I'm not sure of what situation. Mister Pitchford, can you better answer that question? I was under the impression that all public meetings must be noticed.

You know, I'd have to go back and look at our current code, but, typically, we require twenty four hours notice on meetings. There are circumstances that that have have been been recently recently discussed discussed that may allow for shorter time periods, but what what she is discussing would clear that kind of

gray area once and for all.

Mhmm.

Okay.

Yeah. So I I believe I found forty eight hours in our charter, but legally, it's a state mandate is twenty four. I think maybe forty eight is it could be best practice. Maybe it's something that's in our charter, but that I did get directly from the charter.

Mike or Anne, I'm trying to understand what the problem is we're trying to solve with the emergency and the example. Mhmm. Is it getting authorization to spend the money to fix it or that it's no bid. I mean, like, to me, it's like, hey. If there's a hole in the road, we have to cover it. It's pretty straightforward. Mhmm. So I'm not sure what the quest in that example, I'm not

I think there's a couple couple aspects just to just for example, it could be the actual threshold of the manager's authority, which I think is currently 25,000. K. And and one of the suggested changes, I don't know from whom, was to increase the threshold. The state has actually increased competitive bidding thresholds across the board significantly to, like, a 100,000. So that's that's something that may be thought about.

But what it's because of the threshold that then that sets in place the domino of, well, if the manager doesn't have authority to do it, then the council must do it. And if the council must do it, they have procedures in place that they can't do anything unless they do this, that, and the other thing first. So that's the concern that I think was brought.

Chair, may I respond?

Yep. Thank you.

Thank you for

the clarification.

So that was a perfect explanation. And it yes. It is related to the limit of $25,000, which I referenced in this is section six point o four under contracts and purchasing. It says that the city manager can spend up to that, but anything over that, they do need approval from council. So let's say we had a terrible terrible accident.

For example, when the truck crashed off of the on ramp to 271 on Route 8, and there was an extraordinary amount of fuel and other chemicals that were pouring into the waterway there below that on ramp. The the on ramp itself was on fire. The truck was on fire. Emergency responders from multiple communities, including Hudson, were called to the scene of that accident. And that on Ramp To 271 was closed for some time.

Let's say we had an accident of that magnitude or of the magnitude of the East Palestine train derailment. It is very likely that any expenditures the city manager were to make in an emergency of that magnitude would exceed $25,000. I would hate for the city to be handcuffed and mister Sheridan not be able to spend the money he needs in a true emergency like because we have to notice a meeting, wait twenty four hours, have a workshop, and then finally appropriate the money in a meeting. So you're talking twenty four hours notice, a meeting, and a workshop before we can even authorize that expenditure. I do believe that council should hold the purse strings.

So I am going to advocate that if you consider this, you put measures in place that there is accountability after the fact for any of those type of emergency expenditures made, as well as very clearly outlining in what situations the city manager would have that power. Or conversely, you could look at that section that dictates that things must be brought forward at a workshop, and that could also be another another thing that you could do to address the inclusion of something on a council agenda to be voted on.

Any other questions for

miss Wallace? I saw that you had

Well, I was just going to ask, in an emergency situation, we're talking about relying on the city manager and the emergency crews that may be involved to address the issue for safety reasons. Mhmm. To me, to to have to have a meeting to say, yeah. Go take care of it. I get I get the feeling that, you know, you're constrained by the dollar amount, but my feeling would be this the city as a whole, the residents, would prefer that the city address the emergent situation that requires attention.

And then go ahead and schedule whatever meeting you have to have in order to pay whoever it is that's taking care of the issue. But, I mean, like, with this with the pothole that developed or the sinkhole, you put pylons around it, you call the emergency meeting, you have it within twenty four hours, twelve to twenty four hours. Then you can address the the situation you described about the truck going off the ramp and the spillage of fuel, etcetera, on the highway, to me, that's something that you just you just take care of. You shouldn't have to have a meeting to address the issue of providing safety for the community.

Mhmm. Yeah. I think maybe for clarity, and I'll I'll talk loud enough for the microphone. I don't believe there's anything preventing us from emergency response, you you know, fire, EMS, police. And I don't know if you were alluding to that. I didn't think so. But our ability to respond with to an emergency is not inhibited, I believe. And just for clarity that this is about the response to, like, fix a pothole or fix a water main, and the debate is how quickly that gets done. Is that

So in my conversations that I've had with mister Sheridan, water mains are a great example. Should something excuse me. Should something actually impact a large water main that were to, for example, either have a significant portion of the city without water for more than a twenty four hour period of time simply because we have handcuffed our city manager from being able to enter into contracts to fix said infrastructure issue. I mean, that is a matter of of public safety and health in my opinion. So I agree with you, mister Bandweg, that our safety services would not be inhibited from responding.

That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the fact that contractors don't work for free, and you don't know what emergency we are going to have in Hudson at any given time. We certainly wish we did because we would be able to respond quite quite a lot better if we did. But we don't know what emergencies we might have in Hudson, so I'm just asking this commission to review whether or not that is something they would like to take on at this time.

Can I just a point of clarification because I'm I'm a little hung up? These situations, you're describing an event. Right? There's the immediate mitigation. The truck is on fire. We're going to put it out. We have the ability to put it out. There's a sinkhole that opens up. We're gonna put pylons on it. Right?

That's the immediate mitigation. We're gonna deal with this problem now. And then the remedy, it sounds like they're being confounded when they're it is two separate issues because the remedy or any significant expenditure, we call an emergency meeting and we figure out how to fix it and where the money's gonna come from and who we're gonna so I just to me, the the way the, issue is being described, it's mixing the the mitigation with the fix. And to me, it's two separate issues. We it doesn't appear that we have any problem mitigating.

Right? If we need a fire truck, we're gonna call the fire department. Rebuilding a house, right, that's gonna take time. So I just I I and maybe it's, I'm just trying to make a point that we're not gonna wait twenty four hours if the house is on fire. Right? We're gonna call the fire department. They're gonna put it out. Rebuilding that house and working with the insurance companies and finding the contractor, like, that's probably gonna take more than twenty four hours. So I'm just I'm really like, I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm trying to understand what's the problem we're trying to solve because I I I I haven't heard the problem we're trying to solve.

Chairman, could I respond?

Well, I I just wanted to clarify. We're in the public comment section now. We're not in the in the process of actually discussing the sections. Okay. Yeah. We will be discussing the sections. So I'd like to try and keep us focused on if anyone has any questions for the comments that miss Kowalski has brought forward. And I would I would just say two things. I just if you were not aware, we did receive all of well, a number of I'm not sure if they were all, but at our two meetings ago of the of the written comments Mhmm. On the various sections, and I think you've outlined them in verbally this evening as well, which is great.

We appreciate that. We we try and we try and be to be generous with public comments and try and keep things to fifth or five minutes a person if possible. We're at we're at about fifteen now, but I'd I'd like to ask how much more time. Do you have you presented everything you have to present?

Everything. I was just waiting to take additional questions.

Yep. Are there any additional questions or clarifications needed

from So my only real question is, is this a request for a new section in the charter? Because there's no charter section mentioned with this. So it's for a new section.

Mhmm.

Okay. Thank you. And

one one note is the city does actually have some documentation in place that outlines the types of responses for emergencies. And mister Sheridan, as city manager, is the head of our safety services. So that is something that would be used in conjunction with an emergency. However, it is the emergency expenditure aspect that I'm asking the commission to look for. And, mister Ryan, your note about if a house burns down, you don't fix it overnight.

We're not talking about using public funds to fix private infrastructure. We're talking about things like roads, water systems, things that are are that would use public public funds allocated from the council.

Any other questions for miss Kowalski? Thank you very much. We appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Alright. I skipped over council liaison. No.

That's okay. I wanted to let the folks in the audience, miss Qualls Is

that mister Herman? Speak. Welcome. Please if you could please identify yourself by name and address, and we get it for the record.

Thank you, mister Kegler and members of the commission. My name is Kyle Herman. My address is 3652 Highwood Avenue, Stowe. I'm an at large councilman in Stowe, and you may be asking, why is a Stowbilly here talking to our charter commission? Promise I'm not trying to interfere with what you're doing.

It's because long before I even dreamed of running for city council back a decade ago, I became a supporter of ranked choice voting and in had been I was working on pro democracy programs in Lebanon and Iraq until I moved back home in 2020 thinking it was to wait up the pandemic, decided to stay. And it's in that year that I got connected with other Ohioans on Facebook, and we ended up founding this nonpartisan, nonprofit, Rank the Vote Ohio in support of ranked choice voting. And then over two years ago, councilman Skyler Sutton reached out to Rank the Vote Ohio to express his interest in ranked choice voting. And so I've gotten to know him and learned about how Hudson has actually had cases where candidates have won with less than a majority, something like 38% of the vote, and instant runoffs are a simple solution to fix that. Because with ranked choice voting, instead of just picking one candidate, you can rank your choices.

In that way, more parties or candidates could run, and you have more confidence that your vote will actually matter because it requires majority to win. Because if no one gets more than 50%, then instead of having an entirely separate runoff election like they do in states like Georgia, you can just eliminate the last place candidate. And then instead of those votes being wasted, they simply transfer to those voters' next choices. And so this has been used statewide already in Maine and Alaska and in more than 50 cities throughout the country, and it is becoming so common that it's now part is now recommended by the National Civic League's model charter. The League of Women Voters of Ohio has also endorsed it.

And so I wanted to come to you and offer my myself and rank the vote Ohio as a resource as you study the possibility of RCB. I would be happy to give a PowerPoint presentation or just come back and answer questions when you reach that section if you would like Because there are some confusions about ranked choice voting that frankly are sowed by some partisans, usually from deep blue and deep red districts that like having the one party rule. But and that's what we're seeing with s b 63 at the state house, which is similar to a bill that was in the previous session of the general assembly that we have consulted with lawyers and they believe would not be upheld by the courts because it's a very clear violation of home rule in the Ohio constitution. There are actually five Ohio cities that used ranked choice voting last century, and the Ohio Supreme Court ruled multiple times that cities have a constitutional constitutional right to use RCV. And SB 63 cites an example of traffic camera tickets as an example where they claim they can usurp Home Rule, but that is a budget neutral police power that is completely different from the heart of the purpose of Home elect our leaders.

And so we I just wanted to let you know that as you face these questions and barriers, there is help from Rank the Boat Ohio. I previously served as executive director, but now I am a senior adviser. And I am also going to be going to Stowe's Charter Review Commission this year to ask them to consider ranked choice voting because I think that both our cities have a lot of similarities and that we are politically not dominated by one party or the other. You we have a healthy mix of Republicans, Democrats, and independents, people in the middle. And the power of ranked choice voting is that incentivizes people to work together across the political spectrum for the common good to win that majority instead of feeling partisan pressure.

And Stowe and Hudson's councils are both supposed to be nonpartisan and honestly, the vast majority of the things that we do at the local level aren't partisan or shouldn't be partisan. And so this is a systemic reform that's becoming more and more popular across the country because it reduces polarization and it allows candidates candidates and politicians to to work together instead of feeling pressured by their parties. But I'd be happy to answer any questions or come back if you would like to consider it in the future.

Any questions for mister Herman?

Just one clarifying question. Greg Hall, your your purpose in presenting is to be a resource, and and there's just no align alignment issue with what Stowe's gonna be looking at in their charter and what Hudson I'm wondering what you're kind of you're you're here as a resource, not as an advocate for the city of Hudson to align with Stowe. Correct?

Mean, so I'm here in my personal capacity as an advocate because I support it, but Rank Vote Ohio itself is a nonpartisan, nonprofit resource. So on the sheet that Aparna printed for all of you, you can reach out to Rank Ohio, or I can also give you my card so that you can contact me directly. Sure. Thank you. Yep. Just to clarify, were you here on behalf of Rank the the vote Ohio

or in your individual individual capacity? Capacity? Both.

Or okay.

Yeah. Got got it. Just clarify. Mister chair.

Yes. Miss Norman. Sarah Norman. So so I have just a couple questions for you. One is in the event the senate bill 63 comes comes through through and would and would clear legislature, I'm always looking for the alternative ways to skin the cat.

So would it be an acceptable thing for us to write into our charter that in the event a candidate had not received a majority of the vote, we would necessarily force it to a runoff election since we could know not use run ranked choice voting. Okay. And then I'm I'm I'm kinda wondering. I I get the the point about the partisan power grabs, which, you know, both parties have an interest in their self preservation. We understand that.

But I'm I'm wondering what sorts of real criticisms there are about ranked choice voting. I mean, there don't appear to be any that are obvious, but that doesn't mean there aren't real criticisms. And so and and then, too, I have to just tell you that I have I have a cautionary feeling because when the League of Women Voters supports something, it probably leans to the blue. So so I'm kind of on on edge on whether this is truly nonpartisan. So what what are the real like, if we had to defend this to citizens, what would we say to them? And what were their what would their criticisms be when they brought them to us?

Great questions. First of all, on the senate bill SB 63, yes, an alternative would be to say, well, we're going to do traditional runoffs since we're not allowed to do instant runoffs. The city of Lakewood alternatively wrote their proposed charter amendment so that it would allow the council to then decide whether to actually use ranked choice voting. So it's more of an an enabling charter amendment that now the sixty three's revisions since the the previous general assembly, since they're trying to, like, circumvent the Ohio constitution, they now made it so that it says something to the effect of the the city will lose its local government funds if an ordinance or resolution enacts ranked choice voting. So one loophole to that that we're exploring is a charter amendment is not an ordinance or resolution.

And so it you may actually be more effective in putting it directly into the amendment. And then when it comes to the question about partisanship, the League of Women Voters and many other organizations that work on democracy issues are seen as supporting usually whichever party is not in power in whatever state they work in. And that is the case with ranked choice voting is that it tends to be opposed by the party in power the same way that gerrymandering reform tends to be opposed by the party in power because the parties in power, they don't want competition. And so what we've seen in Ohio with SB 63, it is co sponsored by a Republican who is talking about running for state office and a Democrat who is from a deep blue county and likes one party role in that county. And so with ranked choice voting, it levels the field so that there can be more diversity of competition, which is why it tends to be opposed by partisans in places where they are already in power and want to keep power.

And then in terms of criticisms of ranked choice voting, the biggest is that people claim that it's confusing, but the vast majority of people who have actually been able to use ranked choice voting in real life, in exit polls they report 90% or more say it's simple, and the vast majority say that they want to keep using it. And so we we see places like Alaska, there was a repeal effort against ranked choice voting but a majority still wanted to keep it even though there was very, like, partisan campaign to try to get rid of it. So voters, once they get used to the idea of ranking their choices, they tend to find it easy even though there may be a little bit of a learning curve at first.

Thank you.

Any other questions for mister Herman?

I just have one question. Yep. Could you give an example besides like a council at large that this would be used for? Because usually it's limited candidates, candidates, not three or four. So besides the council at large, what other or is this only for like city councils?

So there it can be used for single winner or multi winner races. So for like award award seat or mayor, it those are single winner, and so it's an instant runoff to get

50% per Then they drop the last candidate until somebody's okay.

Yes.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. But the and follow-up to that, the question on in the case of our ward council, it's the top three vote getters. So and everybody gets three votes.

For the large. For the at large. Yeah. So in that case, it's a form of proportional representation in that the threshold is then 25% in that any candidate that gets more than 25% gets a seat and then the remainder of the votes get redistributed.

Well, would be 25% if it was four or in this case we have three.

So it would be 3%. The the threshold is how however many votes it requires that three can be elected but four cannot. And so three people can exceed 25% and then the remainder is less than 25%.

Yeah. Interesting. Any other questions for mister Herman? K. Thank you very much. We appreciate your time. Alright.

I'll be very brief, and I'll follow-up with notes.

Is this liaison or public comments?

This is public comments.

Okay. Got it.

Thank you. So first of all, I'll just say thank you all for being a part of this and taking part in the effort to keep our our city a great place. My brief comment on ranked choice voting, I'll say I've worked in government corruption and the stabilization of nations for a long time. There's no process you can do that is perfect. So it's always worth looking at the pros and cons, but I'll say even with ranked choice voting, my experience in Iraq and Lebanon was not one that I would endorse their election process.

And I say that because any process can be manipulated. In the case of ranked choice voting, if you don't like the current top contenders, you can flood it with multiple candidates to disperse the votes. And then so my point is just anything can be manipulated. If you're gonna look into it, look into it deeply and have a real reason to change what you have. It's not to say that it doesn't work or couldn't work in certain circumstances, just that it's not an end all be all.

My other public comments, and again, I'll provide the documentation to a partner to distribute after. I also want to highlight the need for my support for term limits at the 12 mark. I think it's important that we involve involve more people in the governance of our communities. And when we allow people to stay there forever, you have two things. One, more people aren't involved because there's somebody just sitting in the seat.

And two, I I would say that in my experience as well with government that power corrupts, and over time, it corrupts more and more. So you're just putting things at risk the longer you leave the same people in. I I did want to voice my support for election requirements for bodies in receipt of levied tax dollars. Again, I'm not gonna dive into all the details. I wanna give you back the time for tonight.

And I similar to the EAC comment from miss Kowalski, I wanted to propose the chartering of the Military and Veterans Board and Commission so that it was a permanent body and not simply an act of an individual council because of its crucial nature to the mission of the city and that segment of our population as well as the timelessness because, hopefully, we'll always have that capability in our nation and living in our community. I did wanna provide an amplify comment on the censure as a a public comment. I would say in contrast, because the council did not proceed with any removal proceedings, we did follow Robert's rules of order to which the requirements that miss Kowalski was looking for were not relevant. So we did follow the law. And, again, in a contrast comment on emergency spending, what I wanted to be clear of is no should be afraid that we're not gonna respond to an emergency because of a funding limitation.

Emergency response is something that we do. And to the analogy mister Ryan was giving, the concern is about being able to spend over $25,000 in infrastructure, which within forty eight hours, I don't know that we could stroke a check to get a water line in here. Anyway, we've had this discussion at council, and you can look at that. I believe, from where I am standing, that our policies are adequate. We don't need to remove checks and balances that would allow emergence spending over $25,000 under the guise of emergency when a catastrophe or an emergency is handled.

There are guidelines for emergency response in the city, which we review thoroughly. So it's just a contrasting opinion. And that is all that I will share today. I know you got a lot to cover tonight. So I'll follow-up with notes and get them through upon. Now I'll go back to being your liaison.

Did anyone have any questions for mister Van Wink? No. Okay. Just we call it that in writing, miss Wallywink? Yes. Okay. Great. Alright. Any other public comment? Alright. We move on into art or item seven on the agenda, which is review of articles. We will start with article 10, which is approval of appointees. I'll start to my left. Mister Hall, would you like to take us through section 10.1, removal from office? Yeah.

Section ten point ten point zero one, removal of office. Except as otherwise provided by this charter, any member of any board or commission of the municipality provided for by this charter may be removed from office for gross misconduct or maleficence or noneficence in the disqualification for office or absence without justifiable excuse from three consecutive meetings or upon conviction while in office of a felony or other crime involving mortal turpitude for or for violation of the oath of office upon the charge or charges being set forth by the resolution introduced by at least three members of counsel. Counsel shall hold an evidentiary hearing at a public meeting upon the charge or charges brought, provided, however, that member being charged shall have been notified in writing of the charge or charges at at least thirty days in advance of such hearing and provide and provided further that the member or legal counsel of the member shall have been given an opportunity to be present evidence, and examine witness appearing in support of such charge or charges. The affirmative vote of four members of counsel shall be required to remove the member.

K. And just by the way of example, this section was amended in 2020. The changes in 2020 are in the ordinance that we have we've been provided, mostly wordsmithing related to the hearing itself, a requirement for four affirmative members of council affirmative votes of council to be remembered. And I didn't check the changes that had been made in '10. Does anybody have any comments or questions about section 10.01? I

have one.

Mister Hoover.

I guess this might dovetail with what miss Kowalski was talking about as far as justifiable excuses. Guess I'm curious what does the city like, if you're a city staff, is there just listed justifiable excuses or who do they have to notify so they're not notifying the whole city of what they're why they're not at the at any meeting.

Mister Pitchford, are there any procedures in place for

As it relates to this particular section, there is no list, if you will, of what might constitute a an excuse a justifiable excuse. It has been an ongoing discussion for board members and commission members over the last couple of years. There have been if you if you read on here, there's a discussion about disqualification for office. Council has adopted a specific section for qualification for office and, you know, set forth several requirements, you know, being in the city, like, physically being in the city for a certain amount of time so you're not gone for four months as a as a snowbird might be gone or something like that. Because they're we're trying to make sure that that you are actually involved in the city, know what's going on in the city, that you're not coming home, and you're here for, you know, two months of the year sitting on these board of boards and commissions.

So that's an example of how council has been able to kinda work within the language that we have here, but there's no justifiable excuse. It's really a a determination that would be made on a case by case basis by staff. That that's gonna be a different example of the determination of what is justifiable would be based on the charges that three members of council would bring and then a vote of city council. Does it help to clarify the difference between city staff, boards and commission members, and council members?

Like, there are different processes for each. Is that part

of what you're That's what I kinda getting at. I was I was just kind of curious

Yeah.

How the city staff handles it, and if that could be any guidance for how we handle, like, council members or boards and commissions, or they might not be helpful at all. Just curious how the city handles it.

So I was just gonna add, if I may, from personal experience on two city boards. I I don't know if we had a yeah. We did have a a city liaison on cemetery board, and it's a small group that only meets quarterly. And if somebody couldn't come, they just told the staff person, and we just didn't come. And the only time well, there was never a time we had canceled for lack of forum because the rest of the people would show you kinda knew.

You know? Planning commission has been a little bit different. We had, two situations where, one of the members had an extended period of absences, and we tried to inquire with staff because the rest of us weren't told. Only staff knew or the chairman knew, but but it wasn't made public to the rest of us. And we tried to very delicately inquire if this was a matter of, like, personal turmoil, and we should extend some compassion to the situation because, obviously, we don't wanna be telling people, like, get off the planning commission because you have cancer or something like that.

And the situation resolved itself when that particular member stepped down about the time where he had missed he was gonna be missing, I think, his fourth meeting in a row. And so so that's the only situation that's come up that I know of in in that, and that's how it worked out. The second situation was I don't I really don't wanna indicate the specifics, but there was a member on the planning commission who indicated that he was going to have to miss two meetings. And they were personal reasons. And I happened to know because I was gonna have to be the person chairing the meeting.

So so I didn't inquire into that. I mean, sort of it was taken on a good faith level because this is this is a person who's never misses, always participates in a really healthy way. And so it just sort of organically, I would say, worked itself out. I don't know if there are more significant problems on other boards and commissions, though. I you know, that's that's only two out of the 19. So for what it's worth, I that's that's all I got.

I was just gonna comment that when you volunteer to be on a board, I think you have to give respect to the other members of the committee. But do we really need to limit the number of meetings that they have an excused excused absence? I mean, that you you want your committee to be functional, but you also, like you say, you have to show them some compassion if it's a personal illness, injury.

You know? I'm I'm not quite sure. I would argue for that number of times. And three isn't magic except the three strikes and you're out in baseball. That's the only good reason for three. But but when you have a smaller board, you may be fighting to have a quorum, and a person's regular absence inhibits your ability to make quorum, which means you can't conduct business. Right. So that's a good reason for it.

Just for clarity, trying to remember off the top of my head, it was a rolling 75% attendance. So it was it doesn't matter to to your point. That was the council discussion. 75% attendance in a rolling way. Because if you're absent more than 75%, it needed to be addressed whether it was person like, there's not ex the excused absences we threw off. And I only give this as background to the discussion because we didn't wanna get into, like, an it's not an HR policy. You're a volunteer. We don't need to know the personal circumstances. But the board comes at risk or the commission comes at risk if you're not able to maintain the 75% attendance

rate. Excuse me.

I think this seems to me, this seems to be like a definition issue. Right? I mean, I'm wondering, mister Pitchford, if there's, at a state level, more definition of what an an excused absence may be for somebody in in either on a commission or in an elected position because it seems like there's just I what I'm hearing is what is excused and how public does it need to be. And I understand that there's probably some sensitivities there at a personal level, but I just wonder if at a state level, there's any sort of I've gotta believe that, you know, there may be one third

the first group to deal with the kind Yeah.

Right. Yeah. I also I also just wanna make a statement. I respect everyone's personal lives. Right? But I think, when you do volunteer for a board, I don't know that it's it should ever be written, but you definitely have a responsibility to be, you know, at least a little bit forthcoming about what your what your obligations may be outside of that board that inhibit your ability to perform.

I'm not aware of there being any specific standard at the state level. That's not to say there isn't one. We have not come across that, but we need to look. I've I've got friends that serve on state level boards and commissions, and I can certainly inquire to see if they have any standards. I would I would counsel against a specific definition. I I think it's there are so many different variables that come into play. It it's really hard to capture them all. And if you once you start to define them, you may accidentally, by doing so, accidentally exclude others. Mhmm. Even by providing examples, you begin to color what your intentions are.

Right. And then all of a sudden, we haven't we've forgotten something or something that's completely un unseen comes up. The the more general standard of, you know, justifiable excuse and in the charter it exists. You know, counsel, for example, is the judge of its members, and that's pretty typical of parliamentary procedure. You know, the the members will decide for themselves, will regulate themselves as to what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. This would, in my opinion, fall into that that category. And just as another example in the law, there's a concept called excusable neglect. There is no definition in case in fact, the case law says

there is no

definition. We just know what kind of when we see it, and it's based on factors, and each case is different.

That's that's interesting clarification because I was kind of my thought and I appreciate that because my thought was that we were trying to kind of lean towards what may be, like, established in, like, labor law. And and I I actually agree with you. I think that it we probably should refrain from over over defining things here. Yeah.

I'll see there are examples Sure.

Yeah. Definitions. Even a best practice. Yeah.

But yeah. My without looking further into it, like, knee jerk reaction to that is that you could get yourself into unintended consequences. Understood.

It it it sounds ultimately the three strike rule. It's an effort to maintain continuity and viability and execute on the purpose of counsel of the board of the commission. That's why it's in place. And, you know, setting that next I'm all about setting expectations. So before someone volunteers, if they understand the expectation is you can't miss more than three, well, that's table stakes.

So to me, mister Pritchard, I I appreciate the example of, yeah, we're probably better off not trying to codify excused versus unexcused. It's, hey. These are the expectations. Did you meet them or not? I mean, it's actually pretty simple.

And if I may, maybe we'll get to this later when we get to counsel, you know, on this same topic. But it the number of people that are present Correct. Certainly in in our system system under under our our charter, is absolutely relevant. There are certain times that it's a procedural matter, but when we pass things, what's called on an emergency basis, we have to have it's set out in our charter and in our code. If seven people are present, you have to have six votes. If six people are present, you

have to have

five votes. If five people are present, you have to have five votes. So it it matters. Attendance matters. It's it's it can be it can be an important question if it really truly is an an emergency and we're authorizing the the city staff to file an application for a million dollar grant, and we can't get it done because somebody isn't there or and and that's kind of a habitual thing. Now you see how that'll be it really matters if it was justifiable or not. You just really put the city At risk. At a disadvantage. So it it matters. Certainly, at the these things come quickly to mind at the council. There may be examples at the board and commission level where those may occur as well. But certainly at the council level, it's an important consideration.

Just to be clear on our discussion, this is only about boards and commissions. Councils in a

different section.

Yeah. We'll get to that later. But Right.

In this call, I kinda mentioned it. Right. So it was that that concept. I just wanted to

Yeah.

Plant that seed. Appreciate it.

The only like, as I as I read the entire paragraph, the justifiable excuse is what we focused on, but there's all these other checks and balances of three members of council Mhmm. Have to bring it to a public. I mean, I'd argue that for our particular charter, thirty days is could be devastating. Right? So that's almost too much time to allow the process to play out just with ours. The rest of them are probably fine for that. So I think it's actually set up pretty nicely. I don't think there's much of an issue with that.

Yeah. I think I agree with you. The only thing that I see in here that is just maybe missing is just some sort of notification because it doesn't this allow this, at least the way I understand this, allows for somebody to just no show a meeting, whereas you could almost put in something that says justifiable excuse or notification in writing of a of a planned miss of a meeting or something to where I can just email ahead and say, hey. I'm gonna miss this meeting. It it affords the opportunity to reschedule that meeting or any number of things to take place. This doesn't really account for that. I don't know how we could put maybe even consider that, but just it just looks like it's a miss here.

Well, if the if the excuse is not going if the justifiability of the excuse is not going to be judged, which it doesn't sound like it ever is, then really what the issue is maybe it's without advance notice. Without yeah. That's a

better way

to say it. You have to contact the clerk or contact the chair or something like that. Let them know. Yep. I I would just say a couple of things. This strikes me as a nine times out of 10, this is not a problem situation. And on a one time out of 10 that it is a problem, nine times out of 10, it could be solved by talking to the member where there's an issue. And on the one time where you talk to them and they're intransigent about it, then you you deal with this. This is almost like the stopgap. And I I've gotta believe if we search back twenty years, I'm not sure if it's ever been used, but might not.

In terms of justifying excuse, when I just for context, when I worked as a consultant for local government in the state of Michigan, the strangest thing is when I went to every board and commission meeting, the first thing they would do on every agenda is to approve all apps to excuse all absent members. And it was a motion of the body to excuse the absent members that were not there, and it was always approved. Mhmm. So there was never any judgment of it. And it's almost like, well, if you require it and you require the the body to to me, it's not just what's justifiable, but who's the judge?

Is it is it the body itself, or is it counsel, or is it something like that? If you put in place a a situation where it's required, then in my mind, it almost becomes perfunctory where it's always gonna be approved. And if it's if it's a problem, then it it's probably gonna be approved anyway, but somebody's gonna talk to someone on the side and say, hey. Why aren't you here? We approved your absence and just to avoid some embarrassment. But where are where are we with this section? Do we do we want any additional information on that, or we leaving it as is?

As is.

As is. As Alright. We move on to article 11, which has three sections, and it's 08:24PM. We start with mister Trainer. Would you be so kind as to take us through section 11.1, personal advisory and appeals board composition and terms?

This book strengthens your eyes.

So we

can we don't need the the legal document.

This is easier for you to read.

No. This is good. Okay.

Section 11 dot o one, Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board composition and terms. The Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board shall consist of three qualified electors of the municipality appointed by counsel and not holding other public office to serve without compensation for staggered six year terms. Each member shall have been a resident of the municipality or territory annexed thereto for two years preceding appointment and shall continue to remain a resident during the member's term. In the event of a vacancy, counsel shall appoint elector to fill the unexpired term. No member shall serve no no more than two consecutive full six year terms.

Meetings of the Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board shall be open to the public except as may be provided by state law. And it was amended amended in o in 2020.

And I think the amendments in 2000 were to change the body from a civil service commission to a personnel advisory and appeals board. In 2020, the changes were to the terms and term limits and that type of thing consistent with all the other boards where the section for me. Any questions, comments, or suggestions regarding that section? Little little known, little heard on a board that assists with personnel and safety. Okay. Moving on to section 11.2, miss Griffith. 11.2 is Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board powers and duties.

As set forth below, the Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board shall have jurisdiction over personnel matters for municipal employees other than the city manager, except provisions covered by collective bargaining agreements and shall not be required to extend its jurisdiction to any other city or school district or political subdivision of the state or their employees. Any employee, except for the department managers and other similarity situated employees as designated by counsel, shall have the right to appeal grievances involving dismissals or suspensions for periods of longer than three days or eligibility rulings to successfully higher levels of the municipal management until satisfied or until the board excuse me. Or until heard and decided by personnel advisory and appeals board, provided, however, that such a grieved employee presents the grievance to the board within thirty days of final determination of the grievance by the city manager. Any department manager or similarly situated employee as designated by counsel aggrieved by the final determination of the city manager may appeal grievances involving dismissals or suspensions for periods of longer than three days or eligibility rulings to the Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board within thirty days of the final determination of the city manager.

All decisions of the Personnel Advisory and Appeals Board shall be final. And it was amended in February 2005 and 2010.

K. And I That's a lot.

That's lot to digest. And

just for clarification on each one of these as we move forward, and we do have suggestions, I'm gonna mention if there are after the section's read, I'll mention if we've received any suggestions, and then that's when we can go through the discussion. But I skipped over when we did 10 o one. There were no comments about that section. Big surprise. And same thing with sections 11 o one, eleven point o two, and the one we haven't gotten to yet, 11 o three. Any questions or comments or clarifications anyone needs about elect sex 11

o two? Mister chair, can I just ask mister Sheridan a practical question? Mhmm. Could you just do you does this board meet? Does is it used with any regularity? Are these provisions helpful to the conduct of that board's business?

The board does meet. Only when they have issues, they at least meet once a year to go over the employee handbook, and I find them to be a a great place for any staff members that don't feel they were fairly treated. So

That's a great answer. That's helpful information. So this this would be a very important not something we would wanna relegate to the council just deciding on their own, like a a pop up, you know, border commission. This is an important one to be in the charter.

Correct. And it's made up of people from HR legal backgrounds, so that are working in that. So there are experts on this. And Great.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments about the section? K. We'll move on. Miss McCoy, would you take us through section 11 o three, personnel principles and rules?

All appointments and promotions of your municipal employees shall be made solely on the basis of merit and fitness demonstrated by examination, demonstrated job performance, or other evidence of competence. Department managers and other similarly situated employees as designated by councils shall serve at the pleasure of the city manager, manager subject to the city's standard performance evaluation process by the city manager as stated below with the right of appeal as provided in section 11 o two. Discipline, including without limitation, limitation, demotion or discharge of all other municipal employees shall be for just cause only. The city manager shall propose rules for the establishment and maintenance of a system for recognizing and rewarding specified demonstrated job performance, which will con contribute significantly to the enhancement of the efficient administration of the city's programs of public service. The city manager shall propose such personnel rules to the personal advisory board and appeals board, which shall report to counsel its recommendations thereon, and counsel may be ordinance, adopt such rules with or without amendments.

That was amended in 2000 and 2005.

Any questions or comments about that section? As I recall, in in 2005, the the changes changes were were brought brought forward by the manager at the time and the solicitor, and they were more tweaks that were designed to improve the operations of the board since it had just been created five years earlier. No comments or changes?

No. We

finished our eighth ninth article. We move on then to six, time being 08:31. Upper part of

the book here.

Before we go into it, section six has or excuse me. Article six has four sections in it. Miss Sileri, would you care to take us through section 6.01 limitation on rate of taxation?

The power of counsel to levy taxes shall be subject to the limitations provided by the constitution and laws of the state of Ohio, and nothing contained in the charter charter shall be construed to authorize the levy of any taxes in excess of said limitations without a vote of the people. No tax on income earned or received by residents municipality or earned or received within the municipality shall be levied except by a vote of the people of the municipality at a general or special election on a day designated by council in the resolution declaring the necessity of submitting the question of the levy of such tax. Upon approval of such tax, counsel shall be ordinance shall, by ordinance, provide for the collection and enforcement of the tax with such with such exemptions and deductions as counsel may determine.

I think last example of that was after the floods in, whatever it was, 2003, I think, there was a vote to increase the income tax at the time. I can't think of anything since then, but voters get the right to increase the rate below the credit in the next section. Any questions or comments, clarifications needed about that section from anyone? See. We have suggest first suggestion, article six is in section six point o three.

Any hearing none? Miss Norman, if you would take us through section 6.02 tax credit.

Sure. When the taxable income of a resident of the municipality is subject to a municipal income tax in another municipality and or joint economic development district or joint economic development zone on the same income taxable by municipality, counsel shall make provision for granting the resident a credit of the amount of income tax paid on such taxable income to such other municipality or joint economic development district or joint economic development zone equal to 100% of the amount obtained by multiplying the lower of the tax rate of such other municipality or joint economic development district or joint economic development zone or of the municipality by the taxable income earned in or attributable to the municipality or joint economic development district or joint economic development zone of employment or business activity. Council may not decrease the amount of such credit without having obtained the approval for such decrease by a majority of the electors of the municipality voting on the question at a general election amended last in 2010 and only two sentences.

It's a great language.

Translation, you pay income tax where you work first. And you if you live somewhere where you owe income tax, you also have to pay it there unless your home community grants you a credit. The changes in 2010 were to add the tongue twisters of Joint Economic Development District and Joint Economic Development Zone to where it said municipality before that. Perfect example is me. I work in a township, township, but I I also also work work in in a a joint economic development district in that township.

I pay a 1.5% income tax where I work. I owe a 2% income tax where I live. And if Hudson did not have this language for the income tax credit in for the district or zone, in addition to municipality, I would owe 3.5% in income tax. So that's basically basically the the purpose of the section. Any questions or comments about that section? No. Suggestions? Section zero point or 6.03, finance director, mister Hoover.

Finance director shall be the custodian of funds and accounting officer of the municipality. Finance director shall be appointed by the city manager subject to the approval of council and shall be responsible to the city manager for carrying out the duties of the office, which include a, preparing financial reports, b, receiving, collecting, and depositing all monies due to the missing municipality and signing all checks and vouchers for the disbursements, c, being the custodian of official funds and bonds and of instruments for the payment of no money to the municipality and d, performing all other financial duties as directed by the city manager or council, and that was amended in 2000.

And just to clarify, we do have one suggestion received for this section. On the bottom of page two of our micro sheet. And this was a suggestion submitted by mister Sheridan, who's actually here. The suggestion is add provision for acting finance director in the event of an absence or disability of the finance director. So the is the current provision that if the finance director's absent the manager serves or there's no provision?

I don't believe there is a provision.

Mister Sharon, since you're here, did you wanna elaborate on that?

Basically, just said it. So there's no one in place of the finance director if they're not here, and I did not know if it just reverted back to the city manager. So I just wanted to clean up that text.

I don't think that it would be almost clear to say it. The the city manager or designee shall serve as acting finance director in the absence thereof rather than getting into a whole appointment process.

I agree.

Mean Oh, yes.

I haven't

I haven't memorized this book yet, but I am wondering if it's if there's another section maybe that already states some sort of coverage clause like that.

I don't think crazy. That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Well, what I'm just all I'm saying is we may not need to draft that. It may be in here somewhere and we can just copy it forward. Yeah. Yeah.

There has to be a backup.

Yeah. Or or maybe that's a clause that would just be covered cover well, it could cover the entire section. You know what I mean?

Yep. There are some about that. And stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, just above in five zero six, they talk about how you get an acting city manager. Yeah. So it doesn't

So there are other sections. There are specific ways to handle vacancies. Right. So we you just mentioned city manager. If there's a vacancy in city council, if there's a vacancy for city council president, those are all called out. There isn't one for the city finance director.

And I suggest we Yeah. Get that. Mhmm.

Yeah. K. So we will note that six point o three, I'll note that we'll ask mister mister Pitchford to check for cross references in case it's already covered somewhere else. And then if if not, draft something to that effect, city manager, or designee in the absence. Any other comments or suggestions from that section?

Next would be sec mister Pritchford?

To clarify. Right? So you're looking for language that would that would designate the city manager as the acting finance director in the in his incapacity

incapacity or or vacancy? Vacancy? I would say a city manager or a designee thereof.

Yeah. I agree.

I agree.

I see he wrote his, but if we're doing I don't know if we're doing his or her or if we do try and avoid the use of gender, just say, does it need or or something. Just whatever however we do it throughout, I can't remember. Anything else, mister Bifford? No. Thank you. K. Section let me we did six point o three with mister Hoover. Yeah. I just Yeah.

Kind of boring.

Six point sections 6.04, mister Ryan is is contracts and purchasing. And if anyone doesn't feel comfortable reading or you prefer, just just sit past. I'm not this is, like, telling

me this.

I just didn't wanna have to be talking myself. I'm just trying I'm just trying

to get hooked on

phonics. Again.

Section 6.04, contracts and purchasing. The city manager may, within the amounts and items appropriated by the council, make purchases and enter into contracts in behalf of the municipality involving expenditures for the whole of any authorized project, asset, or service not in excess of $25,000, without competitive bidding, except as may otherwise be provided by ordinance of the council. No purchase, no purchase or contract in yep. I read that one. Shall be made except with the lowest and best bidder as determined by the council after advertising for bids in writing by both of the following methods.

A, publication for a period of at least once a week for two weeks in a newspaper of general circulation within the municipality, if such paper is available, and b, publication of the municipal website for at least three consecutive weeks. Three consecutive weeks provided, however, that the council may authorize contracts without advertising for bids for professional services for the acquisition of real estate, for the joint use of facilities or exercise of powers with other political subdivisions, or for the product or service of public utilities, including those municipalities operated. And the council may authorize a purchase or a contract in involving an expenditure of more than $25,000 without advertising for bids if it is or if it determines and declares by an affirmative vote of not less than five members that an emergency exists affecting life, health, property, or public peace and sets forth the nature of the emergency in its resolution or ordinance. The council may also authorize a purchase or a contract involving an expenditure of more than $25,000 without advertising for bids if the purchase or contract is made through another political subdivision's contract for purchase or a joint or cooperative purchasing program. As such, methods of purchasing and contracting are authorized by state law.

Amended 11/07/2000, 11/02/2010, 11/03/2015, 11/03/2020.

And

this will This

is the walker.

This is

the walker. Yep.

So this section, we've actually received

A lot.

This section, we've actually received four suggestions so far from councilors Byrd, Kowalski, Sutton, and a staff member Melissa Raber. So doctor Byrd suggested that the city manager have should have more flexibility during an engine during an emergency to spend more than $25,000. There may be situations where the city manager needs to respond rapidly to an emergency, and he, she should not be limited to $25,000 if there are situations that threaten public safety. The current amount is somewhat arbitrary and does not reflect the cost of an appropriate response to an emergency. There may be future situations during council recesses where four council members are not in town and the scheduling of an emergency meeting is problematic.

I suggest I suggest a $100,000 minute limit. Miss Kowalski, I think she had outlined everything Mhmm. Here earlier, so I will read it again. Mister Sutton was here at the last meeting, but he suggested to refresh by charter. The city manager may not spend more than 25,000 without council approval.

The concern is that an emergency, for example, a collapsed road, this may impede their ability to contain slash resolve the situation. I do not believe this is a valid concern. To date, the situation has not occurred in the city. And if it did, one, I am doubtful that any council would reprimand the city manager for managing an emergency. Two, open Ohio's Open Meetings Act permits an emergency meeting, which does not require the standard twenty four hour meeting notice.

For example, an emergency meeting of council could be called at any time of day in order to provide spending authority for an emergency. While I do not support modifications, if you do consider adding language for this situation, my suggestion would be to allow the mayor and city manager to declare a state of emergency during which the spending limits are raised or removed and provide the council with the authority to end a state of emergency. And then lastly, Melissa Raber from staff had suggested to remove the method a of advertising bid nose notices in a newspaper of general circulation within the municipality. Regarding that one, we can always hope that we will have a newspaper again, but it's not required. It's I think one of the previous version of this just required the newspaper.

Now it says a website.

And I

think the law is moving in that direction.

Right. So

I'm sorry.

What your is pleasure with this section? Mister Spillery.

Mister chairman, members of council can probably answer this. In the in the event that an emergency meeting needs to be called, does it have to be in person?

We we are required

by staff.

Required to okay. Okay. So being out of town, we can't

dial in provision that was removed post COVID

took a

while. Okay. Okay.

Although I believe that under home rule, you can establish that you can call special emergency meetings and do it virtually under certain circumstances. Because I know Macedonia just did that on their charter review two years ago.

I would agree with that. If we put it in the charter, we could do that. Yes.

Prost

in general, processes, even the voting, right, all the RVCO. Anything that has to do with process, if we wanna put it in the charter, we have the ability to do so. Okay.

That would be provision that would eliminate the risk of not being able to get

Mhmm. Mhmm. For them.

But you

wanna in the event of an emergency. In the event of an emergency. I would

again yeah. But but I also thought I actually thought council man Sutton's idea was interesting.

I did too.

Because to allow two people, you know, that are they could they could declare a state of emergency, and then it can get repealed as soon as council wants to

or the lead. Stop. Right. Mhmm.

So that's just another alternative to having checks and balances. Yeah.

I I guess I keep coming back to the same question of

what's the problem I I don't know that it's a huge issue, but it does seem to be a

hot wire.

So mentioned I'm sorry.

It's Well, and so to further that, my question is, has this ever been an issue? Because I keep hearing confounding emergency response with repair. At Mea culpa, I shouldn't have used somebody's house. I should have set a school. That's public. Not that I want a school to burn down, for the record. But we will always respond.

Mhmm.

It's we will always respond. How we repair and rebuild after, I can't see anything needing to be decided before the situation isn't fully attenuated. So I again, like, what's the problem we're trying to solve, and has this ever been an issue?

I don't disagree. I I again, six comments on it or five comments, it seems like it's worth discussing. But I think it has worked for many, many years and probably makes a lot of sense to to leave as is.

And I will just say the comment I was gonna make is it's it's actually the converse that, to my understanding, has been a problem in the past that the city manager previous city managers in the city's history have used the ability to contract at a certain level and created successive contracts, which they shouldn't be able to do. There's no check on that, and that has happened in the past. I I wanted to ask a very practical question of the city manager as far as and I gotta find my notes here. I gotta find Ms. Kowalski's comment because I wrote them right on there, and now I've I have too many papers over there.

But my my question really was as a practical matter I I I can I can do this off the cuff? As a practical matter, you find out about an emergency, and we'll let's just take the broken water main because that's a problem that's pretty common. It's not as extraordinary as as a truck spilling lots of lethal chemicals into the water supply or something like that. And so what what is the practical reality about how the city address this? You find out about it, and then you probably don't actually show up on the scene.

You probably have a person who knows something about plumbing, not that you don't, but I'm just looking at you as a person with a a bigger bigger picture, you know, 30,000 view look. So you so I'm guessing you send the person who knows about the utilities to assess the situation. You got issues related to pavement if that's compromised. So you've got some people involved with roads. Some cones get thrown up.

Maybe emergency responders have but you don't just let the water go until council convenes. So how do those decisions get made? And that's an expensive one. I bet you can't get that fixed for $25,000. So how does council respond to you at once you've committed the city to an excess of $25,000 to fix an emergency?

Well, first of all, I can't do that currently, if that's what you're asking. Above 25,000, we have to have a a council meeting.

But you don't know. Because this is an emergent situation, and water's bubbling up out of the pavement. So you don't know what it's gonna cost because somebody doesn't bring you a contract and say, well, to shut your water off, it's gonna be 20,000. And to fix your pavement and set up cones, it's gonna be, you know, 30,000. And so now you're way over and you and you don't say, oh, I guess we won't fix this because it's over my authority. Right? Am I right?

Correct. I guess and I'm sorry. I I am a water I'm licensed water. So That's

his specialty.

Alright. Alright. Alright. No. And and I mean, to

answer your question, I'm gonna give you guys my career. Can I just mister chair, can I just give an example here? I think it'll help clear everything up. In 2001 or no. 2002, March 24, the city of Stowe, where I worked before, we had a a flooded pump station. 34,000 people didn't have water. The person walked into into the pump station. All he saw was this waviness, and everything was underwater. So we literally were shut down. I got a call. It's my daughter's birthday. That's how I remember that. She was one years old. And came all the way over from Pennsylvania because I was living over there and driving to Stowe. And, you know, came to the site.

And, again, everyone's doing what you said. And, you know, we Tom, we got this. We got that. All city people. But we were waiting for you. And I'm like, okay. Well, you're not pumping this out. You need to get a contractor in here, and it's gonna cost more than $50,000. I looked over at the mayor and the service director and said, I need your authority to go ahead and get these contractors in here now, and these are the people I'm gonna call, so on and so forth. Jump ahead. Seals Corners by McDonald's out there. One of my staff in that city again, all water related. Water is water is we all need water, so that's the key. Drain I'll I'll I'll go into the you guys mentioned the truck real quick, and I'll mention the flooding. And I've been in many of those.

But water there, the water pipe was in the in Mudbrook Creek and was literally open. We were pumping, and water was just going right out of the river. So the pump station's over by Kent. Steel's Corners is by Cuyahoga Falls. We literally were pumping water through our entire system, draining our water tank, which is a fire issue. And I was mowing the lawn. They called my house. My wife came out and said, hey. You need to go somewhere, blah blah blah. Went down there. I stood at the guardrail and said, you need to call these two contractors. And I'm not a contractor. I I just know. And I'm sorry. I do. So it's hard for me to dislocate. I don't know the law. This guy knows that. But, basically, I was we need to call these two contractors. I got ahold of one.

I I looked at the mayor and said, I need to bring them in now. I mean, we we are going to contaminate our water system if we don't if we don't get this fixed. They fixed it in two days. And it was an Akron based company, and they were one of the only people that could do it. That those are two examples of water related. I needed immediate, you know, response. Another one is if you have a a house that's lower and a water main breaks up here, it's your house, let's just say, And the water goes down the driveway and it's flooding your house. My staff can't handle that. You know, that's just there's a lot of water. There you know, the break might be, you know, a whole bunch of things we need to bring in a contractor for.

Therefore, it's above $25,000. I do like the fact. I do agree with what you said. I've said this to counsel that I do not feel that we should raise the limit. I I think $75,000 is a lot for no checks and balances. I mean, if you wanna go to a 100,000, I mister Kager, you know, say, I thought it was a 75. Maybe they bumped it up. But, again, I think the 25 thousand's fine. I just think a city manager should be you know, call the mayor, call the president and council, and if two of those if you and, you know, any two of those combinations can declare, like, a state of an emergency, go. We we start, you know, writing the checks.

I I think that's because the mayor could be out, like somebody mentioned, on recess. That's that's a difficult time. Council goes out on a recess for spring break or something. I have limited amount of people here. They cannot vote. But I don't think any everybody has never gone out. No. But having three of them be able to call state of an emergency and basically give me that green light or the city manager, not me. But I'm looking to the future, and I like I said, I do like the 25,000. I really think that's a a nice check. I agree with what missus Norman said. You know, they very easily, and I've seen it in my government experience, 25 and then 25 over here, but it's the same project.

Mhmm.

It was $50, but you're coming in in pieces. And I don't like that. I I It's illegal. It is. But but you see staff that'll twist things or whatever, and and I and our finance department does catch that. So I just wanted to give you guys all said this has been a hot topic with counsel. I think those are the examples that I have seen in my career that determine it. August 8, we were hit by a flood. Two thousand year flood. That's biblical, as I said in the state of the city. But, technically, there's not much we can do. There's not much a contractor can do in a flood. A truck goes over the highway and catches on fire. You're calling in the county hazmat team. That's not even us.

So they're calling in county hazmat team. They're putting in all the different filters they need in the stream banks and all that in Macedonia, Macedonia, calling for mutual aid. We don't need, you know, any emergency for that. So it really comes down to water. And the sinkhole on 303 was a sinkhole. And, again, structurally, I I'm an engineer too, so it was like, hey, guys. We need to take a look at this. We need to determine if my road's under mine. I got semis weighing 90,000 pounds going over this.

We

can bring in underground radar, for example. That's what Princess Diana created with with Bosnia and and the bombs or the land mines that were there's more there's more metal in this pen than there are in those mines. So the underground radar can look about six feet down and can determine the density of the soils and and the compaction. So things like that, you would bring them in. Could be over 25,000. So, hopefully, it gives you guys some examples. It's few and far between. I don't think storms, I don't think wrecks, I don't think fires are gonna need that emergency. I you very easily can call a meeting, but water, I would say, is probably the biggest one. Sewers aren't. You know, they're not. I mean, again, it's something we can fix. So hopefully that answers your questions.

In the limited amount of time that we have left, there seems to be, in this section, four different things that were discussed. And I just wanna get some sort of direction unless we wanna defer and discuss it more. But I think it'd best at least come to some sort of Yeah. Understanding. The first is the easy one, the suggestion about the newspaper. Just to clarify, mister Sheridan, are we are we doing the advertising in the hub?

We do. Okay. And I would just put the word or in there. Mhmm. So if ever there isn't a nor news, instead of and

Well, I think it's it says it says and, but it's preceded by if such a newspaper is available. But you're saying that

I mean Either or.

This would mean that if there's ever if there's a newspaper, it should be advertised there, and it's always gonna be on the website. But if there's no newspaper, it doesn't have to be there. So Yeah. I think that was that was part of the if it's available because everybody thought the hub was gonna go away five years ago. So Okay. Is is everybody okay with leaving that in there, or do you prefer the newspaper thing to be changed?

I think you can leave it. Leave it. Agree

to you.

Alright. Never mind. I don't it's it's not prevailing technology, and I understand the city manager's point is, like, to say or would allow us changing and to or would allow us to move exclusively to the website as long as we have electricity. And in the event we have a large power outage as we did I forget the year when we had the brownouts and the and the grid was down for three weeks,

then

we can publish in a newspaper if we have one available. And if we don't, we're just gonna do it the old fashioned way, and Tom's gonna go out with pace to put broadsides on the side of the city hall.

Well, if I don't I don't think it should be or because if if it's I think it should always be on the website, period. That's because that's where, like we're saying, that's where technology

is is going. Going. It's going on the website. I'm an old fuddy duddy. I probably won't get on the Hudson website, but I'll look at

the hub.

Yeah. I

think there's And I'm not that old, but that's just a reality. Okay?

Okay. I I don't feel that strongly about it. I just recognize that paper is not the preferred technology anymore.

So out there.

Yeah. I know. I I like the no. I I got one foot on each side. Okay? So I I like newspapers. But yeah.

I mean, if if you wanted to do I mean, it definitely should be on the website. And if you wanted to do optionally also in the newspaper, then that one it's gonna need to be different different than an or. Just wait until you order it afterwards. Yeah. Do you prefer it the way it is, or do you wanna Leave it.

We can leave it. We can leave it. I I'll yield to you.

The second thing was the

Sorry. Could one thing on

that. Yep.

So wouldn't the Akron Beacon Journal be considered a newspaper general circulation or Cleveland lending to Cleveland newspapers?

It is. And if the hub would go away, we'd be paying thousands of dollars to Yeah. That's fine. Of dollars. So I

don't know.

I'm my opinion is, like, just get rid of the newspaper thing, but if I'm a minority. Anything else?

Only two of us on this corner. I like

what you personal experience with having to deal with against

the future. Yeah. I like what you said. I'm the I'm the editor of a local Italian American newspaper as well, and I knew it's it's it's a dying breed. Seth, I'm sorry, Scott.

It's just

I'm sorry.

I I'm gonna start cheating. What mister Hoover said just told me, actually.

Maybe there's if we take it out entirely Yeah. And we just say in a publication, there's nothing to prevent the city out of convenience for people who read continuing to do it in the hub. Right. But just there's no obligation Permission

to see stop with the legal. Alright. Yeah.

Take it out. So you're thinking

Mister commissioner, if I could just add one comment for all of these things. It's the devil's advocate is the piece. So it it doesn't if it doesn't require if you don't see danger in that. Right? That they're gonna hide. That's what I mean by the devil's advocate is there, but, you know, less risk. It's the same with the money. There's a convenience side. It would be nice to have. There's also the risk side. Mhmm. So that's why I say in consideration, the counsel my comment earlier that's not available in your written portion yet Right. Is to mitigate the risk of abuse of that. That's why my comments previously have been get at the counsel. They hold the purse strings.

Right. Then that that that believes so the first thing for the text would be to delete the everything from a down to b.

Yeah.

So it just and they don't and we'll even get away by the following methods. It's just make it so it's just on the website. The second was the it was discussed to have the Gosh. Provision for council to hold virtual meetings in the event of an emergent of a designated some sort of a designated emergency. I thought that sounded like it made sense, but I think it more belongs in the council article Mhmm.

Where we talk about the meetings of council. So maybe it's just think about that for article three later. Mhmm. The third issue was the actual declaring of an emergency, and I can't remember. Is that I I remember during COVID, it was required, like, the manager and the mayor jointly declared an emergency local at the time. Is that is there a provision for that? Is that an ordinance? Is it in the charter? Is Or a state?

That is kind of a gray area. That concept does exist in Staples. Okay. And it is a part of the city's probably, it's part of our general operations.

So we do have a of our security The city does have a process in place to declare an emergency, so we don't need to create it in the charter.

Or do you think it

would be of help to do that? Well,

there's a prop let's just say it this way. There is a process that is in our emergency operations plan. The emergency operations plan is not public.

Okay. Yeah.

So if

you wanna create a process that's public, then you should then you should do that. Yeah.

And if we're and and that might end up being the in under the manager section or the mayor section or whatever where we're and maybe give some thought to the declaration of emergency. Because if we're gonna say council meetings can be held in the event of a declaration of emergency, but we're not defining how an emergency is declared.

But that is also a very tricky just like justifiable excuse, council went round and round about the definition of emergency, and everyone has a different definition of what

emergency is. If we don't define it, then we'll just perpetuate that. Yeah.

So so is it is it defined whether it's public or not public who can declare the emergency?

Yes. Okay.

I it's I just I'm sorry. I'm a child, and I think about the episode of The Office where Michael Scott says, I declare bankruptcy. And it's like, no, dude. It doesn't work like that. So I was just wanted to make sure that somewhere it is codified, written, who has the power to declare emergency. And if it's written somewhere

This context is for an expenditure. And so I don't think it should be a bigger

Yeah. Mhmm.

Definition than it really needs to be. And from what I'm hearing, it's it's we're fortunate that the present city manager is conferring with people to say, hey. You know, it's not gonna fix itself or for less than $25,000 and and takes care of the things.

Do we need to do we need

to encapsulate that in the charter as something something that's required to be done? I'm asking the question. I'm not advocating.

It sounds like we may be when we were discussing in articles three, four, or five, council mayor, manager, that that topic may come up?

I would put a little more complexity on it. So in when in looking at this the last time council looked at this, the first sentence, you'll read in her last clause says, unless council provides otherwise by ordinance.

Mhmm. Right?

So council, in theory, if you just rely on that sentence, council could create a mechanism that authorizes him to be the city manager to to act in an emergency. However, there was a there was a repeating perspective that if you read on, the the remaining sentences in the charter prohibit that. Right? So if you read them together, it's still prohibited. And so therefore, the conversation was and why you see different members of council saying different things is because there was a debate on how to read that, and they were that's why it's here.

It's because the question was, how do we clarify that if we want it or we don't want it? Because right now, we are not going to authorize the city manager manager to act in an emergency. There's it's there's there are competing beliefs as to whether or not the charter allows it. If you want to make it something that we we put to the public to allow, then that is your prerogative. If we don't, then these will stay as they are.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Sorry?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I mean, really, if doesn't happen very often or really hasn't been a problem, then why would we wanna change?

Yeah. I just wanna highlight Tom's example. We have the sinkhole. We fixed it. It occurred. Okay.

So I I would recommend no changes.

No changes. The only other regarding emergency. And then the only other question was the actual threshold itself. There was a suggestion about a larger, and then there was miss Norman, made mention of how the threshold it's the the threshold itself is there's a there it can be gone around if it's not defined. I'm familiar with defining it, but where you you can't go around it. And so is the the two issues are the threshold itself, the 25,000, if you're satisfied with that at the current time. And number two, do you need it tightened up so that there can't be any go arounds? I'll just say that I

think mister Sheridan's comments on on the threshold and and in support of the threshold carry weight for me. K. I think I was just curious about modernizing the value, but you seem to think that it's still relevant and still appropriate. I I also know that there's many other mechanisms to your point of supporting additional funds if needed. And, also, I think we're talking about twenty four twenty four hour limit anyway. Mhmm. You can't spend twenty you can't spend money quickly even if you wanted to sometimes.

So But I think just to clarify, the 25,000 is at discretion, not twenty four hours, but the need for twenty four hours

is Yeah. That's what I'm saying. If if it was in excess of 25,000, there is a mechanism that isn't much longer.

Yeah. The question would be if if a job was going to cost a $100,000, but 25,000 would be a deposit that would get whatever contractor in earnest going, is that a normal situation, and would that be acceptable for most that they understood what the the like, process was? The the only other thing I would ask is, you know, it is worth mentioning that five members of council need to be able to convene to actually

Have a quorum.

To have a quorum. Right? So

Four for quorum, but five

No. Five actually to an affirmative vote of five is actually what would would over And an emergency exists. Yeah. So the question I come back to can if they if that can be done remotely, virtually, whatever, and it can be, you know, treated with urgency if needed, that would probably be enough. I don't wanna overcomplicate it. So it just depends on if it's the 25,000 if we feel the 25,000 gets you going and then we can go into the normal process, great. But if we feel like we're gonna be in a position where we need something to happen within twenty four hours, you need to make it virtually available, I think.

I think there might be a case for adding that to six point o four versus putting it into the council earlier. I think we said in articles Three. Two or three articles three. Only because if we put it with article three, then what considers an emergency? So then council could be on call all the time. That's not really fair to them versus putting it in here makes it specifically to the event that happened versus leaving it a little bit more open ended. Right. That's the only thing we're putting in as a six.

We've heard I've heard three different people say three different timelines that it's a four we have forty eight hours to convene, we have twenty four hours, and then you can do it whenever. So I don't really know That that's still not clear to me.

So the forty eight hours is for regular meetings. K. Twenty four hours is for special meetings. There is a we do have in our code a mechanism for twelve hours. Okay. Right? So we can meet within twelve hours notice. You're kind of reading the language kind of backwards, but it has to do with publication of notice of a meeting. So we can meet within twelve hours currently as it exists. That's not the charter, but that is our code that allows us to to meet within twelve hours.

Within twelve, you can move as you can move as quickly as you want to, or

you have to wait twelve hours?

Always in person. There's no okay.

Yeah. The the the rule for ages was always a person.

And it's

When we had COVID, the state suspended that rule. Then they extended that suspension, and then it expired. And we are now back to the old rule in person.

But then I thought there

was something mentioned earlier that we thought maybe state law did allow Three charter.

If if we make it in the charter Mhmm.

We can make it that way. For

a specific purpose. It's general state law right now. No. You have to be a person.

So the twelve hours really is what you're saying Yes. At the okay. Okay.

Can you do it quicker than twelve hours? I'm sorry. I'm getting wrapped up on this. But can you if you could get together in two hours, can you do that? Or is it?

We cannot.

You have to wait at least twelve hours, then you can on twelve hours and one minute, you can get together, make your vote, and then you can okay. Cool.

As of right now.

It may just be overthinking it. But

it it's not. It went into the elaboration of what's been I don't wanna take your time, but it all started with a disaster or a catastrophe, and now we've changed the language back to emergency. And that's the definition of where we're It does get conflated with emergency response. So if you put the box around, this is a broken water main. It's not a catastrophe. Mhmm. Could be handled by feet. You know, like, life, limb, and eyesight response from the federal government. It's always there in the natural disaster or catastrophe. And I'm only saying this to level the bubbles. Right?

Yeah. Yeah.

We're talking about a hole in the road or water, probably water being the most costly and impactful.

So I'm

just talking about a water main break. So using emergency catastrophe, natural disaster, just we're talking about a water main break.

Mister Kagle?

Yes.

Just real quick. And I I know this is a public meeting and everything, but I have to tell everybody here, if I'm confronted with an emergency and I cannot get ahold of counsel and I am not waiting twenty four hours, I will ask for forgiveness afterwards. And for me, that's that's really the point. If I if I just, right now, go ahead and call an emergency for something on 91 and it's frivolous and they call me to the table, they have the right to, you know, get rid of me. Mhmm.

And I guess not all city managers are equal. So, you know, I'm more of an engineer and and a utility person, but other city managers could be a lawyer. They could be a planner or whatever. So, you know, to me, I think the judgment of my staff and everybody is if I'm standing out there with a resident and they are having a catastrophic issue, I'm sorry. I'm not looking for counsel. I'm moving forward and getting it done and then ask for forgiveness later. But like I said, it's a public meeting, but, basically, that that's what I think the role of the city manager is, especially especially as as a a a safety service director to title.

So Isn't mister Sheridan, isn't that then handled by then and now certificate approval by the council?

Correct. Anything over 3,000.

Well

Is is handled by council. Anything below is handled by the finance director.

What I'm getting at is is there then and now, that would be that would be exceeding I'm thinking of exceeding the man exceeding the managers or, excuse me, ex exceeding the the manager proceeding without the council's authority first, the remedy for that would be the council approving a then announced certificate for that afterwards. Is that done?

I don't think we've had anything above 25,000.

So it hasn't happened, but that would be the matter.

That's that would be the That's that's

the whole purpose. That's the

whole purpose of that announced certificates. There are times when purchases have to be made before the commitment can be authorized, and people rely on the judge judgment of the people who are doing the, you know, purchasing. Mhmm. And then the it's done it's either if approval is required, sometimes it can't always happen, and so it's subsequently subsequently approved approved as as the the the commitment is authorized then that was made then is authorized now.

And if it's a problem, council will tell the city manager, hey. Would you get your stuff together and come to us in a timely manner manner so we can go through the normal process? We're not Yeah. I'm not seeing a problem to mister Ryan, I'm not seeing a problem to fix here. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Alright.

So the the threshold itself for mister Sheridan's recommendation and the comments, it sounds like the 25,000 is is sufficient. Mhmm. Is there based on the comments that have been made about discrepancies between the first and later sentences, is there any value in adding that except as maybe otherwise provided by counsel by ordinance of counsel to the later sentences as well to eliminate that? And any question to that effect so that there's no argument about it? Or is it

I would I would almost propose just because of that. That seems to be more complex than Yeah.

Yes. A few minutes worth

of conversation.

Save it. We yeah. We may

put it on

the agenda for a later meeting. Alright. So alright. Why don't we we obviously don't have time to do article seven since we're past deadline. We will start the next meeting with we wanna finish discussion of this six point o four. Yes. Yes. Start with that? Yeah. And then I have in my notes, so six point o four in article six. And then I have the next order would be article seven. And then I had five, eight, and nine. Mhmm. Okay.

Let's see how we go.

We have no additional public to provide public comments. I just outlined the articles we'll be reviewing at the next meeting, which will be on March at 7PM here at City Hall. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Mister Ryan moves. Second. Miss Norman seconds. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. This meeting is adjourned at 09:18PM. Thank you all for your dedication.