City Council - Regular Meeting

Going live. It is Tuesday, April 21st. Uh 6:31 p.m. We're going to call the meeting to order. Teresa, would you like to call roll? Mayor Tiffany Hollis here. Ryan Green here. Donnie Barnard here. Matthew Huggin here. Kyle Cook here. Jeff Bar. Nicole Shook. Yes.

Before we get started, I just want to take a moment to recognize um another great loss in our community. Uh here we go again. Um John Nyberger was um a great man. He actually uh worked in this building as IG um one of his first jobs. Um, but he was a mentor, a great friend, and essentially a grandpa to everyone in the community. Um, a pill a pillar of the real estate industry, I think, for about 56 years. Um, and the business community, forever changing the landscape of Johnstown. Um, there's there's really not a piece of progress that's happened in Johntown that didn't have John's hands on it. So, I just wanted to take a moment and recognize um the great loss for this community.

Invocation coun or city manager Jeff Sheridan is going to give our invocation for tonight. All right, please stand.

Dear heavenly father, we thank you for this beautiful spring day. We pause to ask you to grant us wisdom as we strive to serve the citizens of this of Johnstown. We ask you to grant us patience as we discuss and debate the business of our community. Help us always to seek what is good and kind in every one of us. We thank you for the freedoms we enjoy and help us to never take them for granted. Grant us safety in our travels. Amen. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Uh, first on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Would anyone like to make a motion? Um, I'd like to see us under um item 9B, uh, there's an item in there that I believe is miscatategorized. I'd like to see that move to other business.

You want to make a motion? I'll make a motion to move that to other business. I'll second. All in. I. Any opposed?

Any other changes to the agenda?

No. I'll make a motion then to approve the agenda with that change. A second. All in favor? Anyone opposed?

Uh action on minutes, March 17th, special counsel workshop. I don't believe I was here. I believe I missed that. Was that the special? Yeah, I think the only one. Not the special. I was I missed the one, but I missed the regular was scheduled one. I'll do a roll call. Okay, our first I can't remember what the date was. I think in the minutes I should I thought Nikki was gone when special.

Maybe I will. No. Okay. No, it was regular council meeting because it was a it was um executive session. The workshop was right before the council meeting on the roll council meeting and you missed on the roll call. Nicole was gone and Tiffany was here. Gotcha. So that was two weeks. My bad. Okay. Sorry. I'll do a roll call. Should have had a calendar in front of me. That's what I recall. Is there a motion? Um I'll motion to approve. A second. Second. All right. Kyle Cook. Yes. Nicole Shook.

Yes. Wasn't here, but yes. You can do either one. Yeah. There you go. Matthew Huggin. Yes. Daddy Bar. Yes. Brian Green. Yes. Mayor Hollis. Yes. Next is uh citizen comments on matters not on the agenda. Do we have any speaker slips? I do have one. Mark Solinski. Okay, three minutes to the buzzer.

Perfectly fine. Shouldn't need that long. Anyways, uh Mark Zenuski, I live at 98 Cherry Hill Drive and um kind of debated whether or not I was going to come in and talk about anything tonight, but kind of stayed quiet about it for a long while. Stayed aside of everything. Um but just want to kind of call into question that each and every one of you is a representative of this city. The conduct portrayed for quite some time now is ridiculous. Um, I kind of liken it to dealing with toddlers that we're kind of arguing and slamming our heads on tables and uh our hands on tables and bickering with each other on the internet and you know like somebody took away our toy. you, each every one of you, not all of you, uh, have got to figure out how to either work together or remove yourself from council because we can't have a representation of this city be the way that it is now. Frankly, it's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed to be associated with the planning and zoning commission with this council. We put a lot of work and effort. Frankly, it's donated time for me. I don't get paid to volunteer for planning and zoning and I really want what's best for the city. Uh so that's really the biggest point that I want to make is if all of you are not willing to work together, work with each other, you don't have to talk to each other and hang out outside of here, but a better representation of the city and putting that foot forward instead of your own personal agendas or personal vendettas for that matter uh needs to stop. Thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. That was the only speaker slip I received. Okay. Uh, council committee reports. Uh, design review board met on April 14th. Next meeting is April 28th at 5:30 in council chambers. We have Heather Green here can give us an update. Oh,

we just had one COA. It was for the church on Jersey. They had um a re-roof or some storm damage that happened. Um it came before us because it was a change in material. So they went from a shingle roof to a metal roof. We approved it. Um that's all we did. Thank you. Uh planning and zoning met on April 14th. Next meeting is also April 28th at 6:30 in council chambers. Um Kyle or Mark, would you like to give an update on planning and zoning? you're here, so I thought I'll put you on the spot.

You're vice chair. Um, no, we we just had a couple couple items. We had the Kyber Run um drive-thru uh which you know was basically moving where there was already an appropriated drive-thru to another location in the Kroger uh facility there uh or you know, parking lot and then also a uh conditional use which we'll see tonight for the layown site there on 62. Oh, your time's up. Your time's up. That's really funny. Um,

I can see part of it on here. I just can't see stuff. Oh, finance committee met April 21st, uh, 5:30 in council chambers. Next meeting's um, not till May 19th. Is that right? Not at Okay. Um, and council chambers, uh, Bonnie, do you want to give an update or? Yeah, we we talked about, uh, the tax a little bit, but not much, uh, since Jeff was missing. Um, finance did recommend, uh, passage of ordinance 05-2026, which is the appropriations item that will be coming up tonight. Uh, and that was about it.

Um, let's see. Rules Committee. The next meeting is May 6th, uh, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. in council chambers. Safety and service. Uh, next meeting is May 6th, 2026 at 5:30 in council chambers. Next, we have director reports. Uh, Chief,

so I provided council with the 2025 annual report. Most of the information was discussed and, uh, talked about in the January report that I provided council. Uh, in the month of March, we did hire a new officer. Um, and he should probably be in an 8 to 10 week program and he'll be out in the field and you'll see him. Uh, we have five to six applicants in background currently and uh, I have a vehicle that I'm selling. It's on gov deals and it ends tomorrow if anybody's interested in a 2017 police cruiser rear seats with how many miles. Might need a transmission. Not doing well at selling that. Now it is at uh $1,876.

How many last month? So get your rough truck for the fair while you can. Hey, that's actually a really good idea. Really is. I like this idea. I'll drive it. City council, pull your trailer behind that. I'll put my trailer behind it, too. Yeah. Uh does anyone have any questions for Chief? I thought it was a really nice annual port. Um thank you. Really, really well done. So,

also with the report we had, I know I usually tell because it seems to be something that's run up a lot on Facebook, but uh I think if I remember correctly, we had 18 on the bell in 2024 and this 2025 we had 22 on the bell, but I'm hoping with uh still seems like way more traffic for hours on end. Yeah, that does seem like more like there should be hoping that 3762 intersection uh ends up taking a lot of issues intersection. We hope that too. So I just thought I'd provide that to I saw two guys back up and miss it today. There was one that was pretty good.

Our officer was right there and he marked out on it and ended up he was able to somehow get off of it. So it's always a plus. any other um highlights from your report want to point out? Um no I mean everybody so at some point uh FBI leader will be coming here I think and presenting the police department. Uh we have to go through I I have all the supervisors they attend. Uh it's a three-week total. Um there's three separate weeks. Uh so all supervisors and myself all have FBI trilogy. uh it's command executive um level training and all four of us now have that and they'll be coming here at some point uh to present my agency with that. Uh so it's a pretty good accomplishment that we all have that um so they want to showcase that. on on the stats. Um I just want to point out the crime prevention patrols or

um no on your year on your annual one or 20 the 2024 versus 2025. Isn't that where you guys changed how you log um like business checks and things like that? Yeah, absolutely. So it's not that the number really decreased that much. It's just the way you log it changed. So if anyone sees that, that's why. Does anyone else have any questions for him? No. Okay. Uh we'll move that to other business. Thank you, Chief.

Yeah. Thank you, Rusty. That was great. uh temporary use application for 480 West Koshockton Street. Um Trevor did the staff report. He is here. Okay. I don't know. Okay. Trev or Thank you. I was going to say I don't know what this one is.

Good evening everyone. Yeah. Uh as Teresa mentioned, I did produce a staff report for this. Um at the planning and zoning commission meeting last week, I guess it was. Yeah. Um the commission discussed the item and recommended a couple of additional conditions I hope which are captured in the uh agenda. And just as a followup, I've been working with Mr. Sheridan and you all will be seeing some revised uh code language in the future to help address some of the screening and fencing falling over sort of thing. So in the future, uh you won't have to put specific conditions on that use. It will just be a requirement that there are fence posts that are set in the ground uh and that the entirety of the

uh area to be used for the temporary use be fenced. Um, so that will be in the future, but the conditions that have been placed on that temporary use by the planning and zoning commission uh will suffice to accomplish that uh for this for this temporary use application. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Perfect. I have a question. Um, on the temporary use, are what is the timeline for them to put the fencing up? So, if things go as they should, meaning someone comes and applies before they set the use up. Okay. The fencing and everything like that should go up before the site is used as temporary use. Yes. Obviously in this case the car for the horse but yeah in reality that's how it should go. Okay. And there is a representative here from the company that's

excellent. Are you talking about seal fencing? Not seal fencing. No this would be um like chain link or other similar fencing that would go around the site and have some sort of mesh or other screening that would go with it. Um, in the past it was basically they were temporary fence panels that were used with like the black or uh green opaque screening that goes in there like cloth screening. Um, and that's something something similar to that would need to be provided for this temporary use as well. Thank you. Thank you.

We don't need to take any action on that. Correct. Yes, you you do. We do

um our code uh requires that it's reviewed by the manager. Mr. Sheridan concurred. If you look on the back page of the application, um it's been reviewed by him. It's been reviewed by the planning commission. And the three recommendations that were given by the planning commission. I have written on there um that fencing installed around the work site perimeter is installed and set into the ground to prevent blowing over. Uh the permit end date is July 31st, 2026 as as written on their application and a site inspection is completed after they're gone to ensure it's returned to um what was their originally only organic material.

It was an organic material originally when we went there and stone. This stone was there prior. It's even on the USGS. You can see the stone. It's already parking lot stuff already there. Someone else has already used that as the same thing. They have put sealed sock and other things around it. I've probably purchased or rented about 300 of these and I've never put any fence with screen stuff on it. I'll have to go look at that and see the cost. See what we need to do to get somebody to come in there and do that or the people that own it.

The problem is No, no. The problem is when people drive by, they complain about that they're seeing everything. So that's why they wanted to put the opaque or whatever stuff in the fence so they didn't have to see what's going on in there. And cuz I mean all we do is park there. We don't do nothing else there. That's just a parking lot for people like Cro. Mhm. They just come in there and park and we pick them up and abandon. So, you're not dropping off any heavy equipment or doing any

There's heavy equipment that's going to come out of there that other people have used, but uh that part of uh part of our company, but we moved it there because NA needed us to get it out of a place they had us do it, but it's temporary. We don't really put equipment there. We put equipment on the sides. But outside of just parking, that's pretty much all it is in the office that I use out of it. Just to have a lawyer office in there. Yeah.

With maps and stuff, surely talk to the land owner and see what says about it. I mean, I can't say I would hate to sit here and tell you that we can do that and the land owner not want that, right? I mean, it's hard. We don't know. It's hard to make promises about something and somebody say, "No, you're not doing that." We don't know. He should know at this point. He's done a site there before and he's had a fence up before. He's had a fence up before. Um, well, so it was a very temporary fence where it had feet and they had sandbags on the feet and any stiff gust of wind, it blew right over.

Yeah. with fence posts all the way around cattle fence post. Yeah, there's a uh there's a successful fence that we've seen there on Duncan Plains. If you know, if you want to know what one kind of looks like, Duncan Plains Road is is west of your site there. Um you go through town past Kroger um to the next intersection there. And uh Duncan Plains and 62, take a left, you can see it there. Um they have one that hasn't managed to blow over, but yeah, we the last time we did this, that fence blew over every day. And the the company, I mean, they were good to work with. They they would put it right back up and it go right back out. So, um, with the wind we have, you're going to need something that goes in the ground or it creates more work for you. And to your point, if there wasn't grass there beforehand, we don't expect you to plant grass.

Okay. I just didn't want to take this guy's stone that he's right over there. It just don't leave anything behind. Y disrespect. No. Okay, you're excused. We appreciate you stopping by. Don't anything just you need to vote. We need we need to vote. Be careful. Okay. Accept it. And put whatever conditions. I mean that the recommendation from planning and zoning was those three with those conditions. Okay. If you want to add any or

No, I'm fine with I'm fine with those conditions. I think that's consistent with what we talked about in the previous council meeting. Are we going to give them though a certain amount of time to put up that fencing because there was nothing litigated in there about that? We can put a time limit. Was there anything previously in there? Well, Trevor had said it was no, there's no sorry, there's no time limit in the code in like there's no time limit for how long it can be before a fence is put up because there again the thought process was before the site is ever used for this the fencing and everything else would be up. So I think in this case it would be appropriate if you choose to approve it if you want to put seven or 14 whatever you all feel is appropriate but a time limit I think is is appropriate

be okay with 14 days. I think the trouble with this is, and this happened previously with this site, people come in, they start use on that site, we realize they're there, then we try to go through the permit route, and it's already too late. Ideally, you would request the permit. We'd go out and inspect the site, take a look at it, and then issue the permit, and you could start work, but it hasn't typically worked that way. So, that's be a penalty. Yeah, I would say we need to penalize I would say we need to penalize the actual um loaner owner of the land um because that's where it has to stem from. If he leases that out, he needs to be he needs to let the person leasing know that this is these are the rules. You need to go to the city do this before you start anything. Yeah. It's not the people who are doing it fault. It's correct.

Yeah. Most of them are coming from another state or another part of the state. They just have a site and they want to start working. So yeah, it needs with the continued construction here. There's going to be more layown sites. and Trevor is looking into uh better locations in the city to put lay down sites as opposed to having it right off of 62. Right. So, we've been lucky as well that way. We've been lucky so far that these are low inensity uses, but if there's something way more intense in the future, that area is going to be a mess. Thanks. Do you have anything said in that lease or whatever for essentially sweeping of the roadway?

Is there any requirement for that in that section? Because there's going to be Is there anything in that that says that they should be doing that? General requirements in your code. It's in the code. It is in the code. I don't think it's in the Yeah, but I didn't know if there's something that we as a city has told them that they need to probably try to have that availability. So, we're not going there and they're trying to figure it out like we had to do at a different location last year. That's the same kind of issue. You tie it back to the owner, not the lease. That's what I was just getting ready to say. I feel like this should fall back on the property owner, not correct. It's and it be their lease. It would have to go back to the owner.

The le can't do anything with it. If the leie is doing something to put the owner in violation, it's up to the owner to go after the lei for the violation. So everything that the leour is going to do has to go for the city goes to the less sour. It's up to the leord to go after the le to enforce anything that they're doing. We don't really have any authority over the le unless they're breaking code. Yeah. I'm just trying to be proactive. If we get something that says that you're supposed to sweep this, then yeah, there's nothing in this lease. Yeah. I mean, we don't want to be driving over mud and dirt as a community.

Well, to that point, I know this shifts gears a little bit, but we had talked uh in planning and zoning about contacting either the the property owner or the person renting if there's a code violation. Currently, we're only contacting the prop or property owner. The property owner I I don't know if we contact both there, too. The owner is who you're going to hold ultimately responsible. That's why you should start with them. If you can get a hold of Liy, that doesn't hurt, right?

Sorry to keep coming up here. I think um chapter 1125 of the code establishes penalties um 112599. Basically, what it's saying is in the event of any violation of of this zoning ordinance, which using a site without a proper site plan, I think would be deemed that um the owner or owners of the building or premises upon which violation been committed. Basically, it says it would be considered a uh be considered a misdemeanor and can be fined up to $1,000 per day. Okay. And Russy, you're just asking if we should be adding that to the application as well. You can add something that says that they're supposed to

I mean, it's in I don't think that's a bad idea, but it's in the codified ordinance. So that could simply just be updating an application that the city has on file without something that deleted. But that's what I would default to is that section of the code because that talks about using a site in an unauthorized manner. Law enforcement on site. We can get a hold of lease much easier than we can get a hold of our land owner. Trying to find who's a land owner is going to be very difficult when the lease is going to be on site daily. Yeah. So I'm just trying to look out for myself and the guy. The issue we had last year was about it was kind of a complicated issue. Okay. What is the bill of council on this?

So, we have conditions that we would like to add specifically to this. Let's get a list of conditions that we'd like to add to this. 14 days. Yeah, I think that's pretty good. I think it's fine. I would actually probably give them 30 for the fence. They're only going to be there. They only be there till July 31st. So that's only Yeah. Cuz if they got to go to the owners to get that in, I mean, getting that fence in, an actual fence, 14 days is going to prove rather difficult.

And and Trevor, you were just talking, sorry to call you, but you were just talking about the fines that's in our code. Is there a fine for laying down a site without an application? I mean, I would consider what has been done already or judge. But I mean, this talk the penalty section talks about using a site without right in not in compliance with the zoning code. They have established a use that has no adopted site plan. You all have not approved it. Um, I feel like that is an appropriate use of that if you so chose to do so. Okay. Thanks. I'm good with 14. I am too. But the trailers already, right?

I mean, we have two options. We can say quit and leave and pay a fine or, you know, you have 14 days to put up the fence. I think that's fair.

There was definitely some sight prep. Mhm. There were there were things that were done there. I mean, that's what I said. This is the second time that site's been used. We need to be a bit more aggressive with that here in the future. But I agree. We need to have our property. We need to have our ducks in a row before we get the aggressive route. Mhm. With the property owner. With the property owner, right? Yeah. I mean, cuz most of it seems like most of these groups are going to be coming in from way outside the area. They call in, they find a site, they go to the site, they're working. So, yeah. It's not the lei, it's not on them. It's really down to the property owner what they're doing with it. So he just needs to know what the rules are so that when he does it with them they know. Yeah. Put together a letter from the city. Sure.

Notify him formally. Okay. In writing. All right. So we have our we have one condition. Do we have further conditions put on there? The three from the three recommendations from planning and zoning. Yes. I don't know if you want to. We'll add those. Add an additional. So the 14 days would be the additional under those three. Okay. So have our four conditions then. All right. So I'll make a motion to approve with conditions. I'll second. Ryan Green. Yes. Hollis. Yes. Cook. Yes. Nicole Shook. Yes. Matthew Huggin. Yes.

Donnie Barard. Yes. I'll let them know. Would it make sense to ask Trevor to draft a violations letter that staff can can review and get mailed out? Yeah. Trevor, can you draft a violation letter? Yes, I can do that. Thank you. Hey, next on the agenda is uh public hearings of legislation. We have ordinance 02-2026, an ordinance to amend chapter 1187 of the city's codified ordinances. Um, Trevor, did you want to give any background on this again? Yeah, we're just getting your steps in today. You might as well sit in the front.

Yeah, I might have to sit back down up here. Um, okay. So, ordinance 2-2026. This has been an ordinance long time coming. Um, this is associated with the design guidelines project. So, part of the part of the design guidelines are are enabled by the code. So 1187 basically says the design review board exists. They have the right to review what's in the design guidelines. What we did is made some updates. There were some confusing language in the existing code. It talks about a design plan a lot and also certificate of appropriateness, but really those two things are the same. Tried to eliminate that confusion. We also tied the review criteria that are in the code to the same categories that are in the design guidelines. So it's just easier overall for the design review board to apply those standards whenever they're uh reviewing a request. Um, and then obviously that's tied to uh the resolution 2026-34 at the end of the public hearing section. Um, here again, if this is adopted tonight, there will be a 30-day 31-day delay in the effective date. Um, and so the resolution that's adopted tonight, I believe has a delayed effective date as well, so that both the code and the new design guidelines become effective on the same day. Um, I'm happy to go into additional detail, but I know we've talked about this several times, so I don't want to just repeat myself unnecessarily. But with that, I'll try and answer any questions you have.

Could you give a brief review? Um, and it's kind of hard to sum up everything all together, but could you give a brief review for the public just to kind of sum up what this is, how it relates to the general household and and businesses.

Sure. So, the existing design guidelines, I think, were adopted in 2021. uh and they apply to a good majority of the city. Most of like all the corridors, you know, 3762, it applies to all of those, most of the residential in downtown. And the way the initial or the current design guidelines were drafted, they were basically written as a zoning code. I mean, they have setbacks and what you can do on the sidewalk and things like that. And but the problem with that is it is only a guidance document. It's not regulatory policy. It's not law. And so in there, the design review board was not given a lot of tools to actually help like guide new development in a reasonable way. A lot of it is just how they feel. You know, we like this, we don't like this. And that's a tough position to be in because it's a lot of subjective review. What we've done with these revised guidelines is a made the code a little more clear as to what should be reviewed when an application is submitted. And then the design guidelines have been simplified pretty significantly to just simply focus on design related items. So it still talks about things like you know in downtown you should have your building close to the sidewalk but it doesn't say it it has to be a 5ft setback that sort of thing. So they are truly now guidelines and not written as such like a zoning code and things like that. Um it also it so we spent a fair amount of time with the design review board listening to them understanding where the weaknesses were in the existing document. We also at the end of I think 2024, beginning of 2025, did several public workshops to allow people to come out and voice their opinion on what do you like, what don't you like from materials, for colors, overall styles of buildings and architecture, things like that. Uh, and so we we updated the design guidelines to reflect that public input that we received. and there again tried to package everything a little more cohesively so that it works better for the design review board, the staff and the public in general to understand what they're expected to do if they so choose to develop within the city. Um, and so what

you have before you now is basically the the end or the culmination of that which is a ordinance to revise the existing code for chapter 1187 and a new design guidelines document that will replace essentially what you have in place currently today. Is that sufficient, right? Yeah. Yeah. mostly for the for the average homeowner. I just want to lay out what we were working with and and what they would see if they have a project that comes to us. Yeah. So, and I will just say while the the area of influence or the uh number of properties that that the design guidelines cover has been expanded, the number of items that ultimately go to the design review board should probably either remain the same or go down slightly because we spent a lot of time, if you all recall, going through that

implementation matrix of what goes to staff, what goes to DRB. And we spent a fair amount of time at a at a special meeting going through that. And so I feel like this ultimately will not be a more of a burden necessarily on any one group within the city. Um but I do think we we have been successful in making it a little more streamlined in terms of what goes to design review board and what can be reviewed by staff. Yeah. And actually streamlining is the big word there. It makes it easier as opposed to a burden. That's the goal. Yep.

So one of the complaints is that with this design review board that it's it's we're a glorified HOA. The city becomes a glorified HOA. What do we say to the residents or how does this impact residents um not in the historic district but in the neighborhoods Leafy do um Concord and and those neighborhoods if they want to change the the color of their siding or they want to change their door gutters how does that impact them financially first of all like what do they have to do and second of all how much does the city get involved in their lives when they want to make a simple change like that

sure I can go back if you give me a little time I can go back and find the specifics, but in general, the goal was for in areas like Concord crossing and any of the newer newer built residential areas that likely already have either deed restrictions or HOA that would govern kind of how things look, those areas, if any changes are are needed to be reviewed, the vast majority of them, I would say 95% of them would just go to staff. Things like solar panels, that would that would require a review by the design review board, but that has always been the case. Now though there are some criteria in that document that say where solar panels are and are not appropriate which is different than the current setup which basically puts all the onus of making that determination on the designer review board with no guidance. So I can see where people may have easily thought that it is like one big HOA but in the designer review board's defense they've been operating with a very very slim set of standards that they've been able to apply. So, a lot of it's just been I don't want to say their best guess, but what they feel is right based on context or what they've seen in other areas that they're they're trying to emulate. So, I think this gives a lot more um certainty to not only the residents but also the board as to what is appropriate, what's

inconsistency. Yes. Yeah. So, for for the average resident, if they wanted to change their color, their door or or windows, they don't need to come to design review board and do something like that. No, I really know that would that would be a staff review. Now, if that said, one of the things that we talk about a lot is what happens if staff doesn't feel comfortable. Something is kind of walking that, you know, a gray area, staff still has the ability to elevate something to the designer review board if they go through the code and the and the designer view design guidelines and say, you know, this could go either way. There's always that ability to go to the designer review board, but you always want that in any sort of in any sort of scenario. Same with the planning zoning commission, same with city council. It it you always want that. Okay.

Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions or comments? We do need to explore how we're going to get this information out in a way that's effective. I know that that's something we struggle with already, but we need to make sure that it is within the 30 days. The citizens do know everything that's going to be asked or that they have the ability to do now without coming to us. That being said, uh do we have any public comment on this matter? Thanks, Trevor. Thanks. Hearing none, what is the bill of council?

I know that this group put a lot of work into this over Trevor, would you say over a year? Yeah, we started with all late like the early winter of 24, right? Early winter of 24 we started on this. So, I saw a lot of public meetings. There was good public feedback. I attended several of the meetings. I know other council members did as well. So I think everybody's pretty well verssed in this. Um so with that, yeah, I agree. We need to get we as always, we need to find a way to get this information out to the masses. Um so that they know exactly what we're working with. Um but with that, I will go ahead and make a motion to approve as written. I'll second. Okay. Ryan Green. Yes.

Mayor Hollis. Yes. Kyle Cook. Yes. Nicole Shook. Yes. Matthew Huggin. Yes. Bernard. Yes.

Find this next one. Okay. Next we have ordinance uh 03-2026. an ordin an ordinance authorizing the city manager and the city of Johnstown to accept public dedication of a right of way to the city from Johntown Land Company. Uh Mr. Sheridan, do you have anything on this or Jamie? Jamie's here. Seriously, if you wanted to come back up, if you don't mind helping, you should have stayed on the front row. I hate this.

Um, okay. So, on this issue, I think what the end goal is that we're trying to do is establish a legal parcel for Licking Ral Electric substation. In order to do that, they have to have frontage along a street because there's substations kind of set back uh out of sight, out of mind, which is which is great. Uh we're doing a land swap with Licking World. There's no money being exchanged, but when we establish that parcel, um they're going to have front on Green Chapel. Now, at Green Chapel space, um the city made an agreement with New Albany because where Green Chapel is today is slightly moved to where it was to accommodate Intel. Um so this was the first application that's gone on that's been in front of the city since the Green Chapel agreement has gone in place. Um so basically what we're Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. So essentially, are you guys creating a flag lot? Is that what you're doing?

We are creating a flag lot for LR and in order to do that, we just have to clean up the right of way along Green Chapel. Um I'll just add in these like as you all do more of these, they will become more routine, but I think that these this will probably be a somewhat common occurrence as you know, rightways continue to be expanded, uh John Lane Company continues to develop their park. Normally, I would advocate against creating a flag lot, but in situations like this, they're fairly common. And I think overall, it's a better end result for the city given that this substation will then be set back what, a couple hundred feet, if not more, from the road behind kind of an existing property that already fronts. Uh, screenshot. Uh, the

I can't I'm getting confused now. the current where the current substation is or the No, no, like the the substation will be behind like an existing lot in front of Oh, along Green. Yeah. And so basically what this will enable to do is there'll be access to the substation provided by the the flag stem the lot itself. Uh really there should not be much if any traffic on through there on a routine basis. Once the substation is constructed, it would just be typical maintenance like you would see. So maybe a vehicle a week or something like that would be in there. But this won't be a driveway that will be expanded in the future to serve other uses. Um, so with all that said, I like I said, generally I would discourage against a flag lot being created, but I think in this case, this is a pretty good application of that sort of scenario.

Yeah. And the neck of the flag lot is essentially going to house distribution or transmission lines. Uh there's a scenario where um any uh extra space might not even be needed um with access, but we the important thing is to establish a legal parcel for LR, which they're well and on their way under construction. Okay.

And I think we were asking this to be approved by emergency so we can close the because we're trying to step we're trying to close the just trade the land and close the there is language it trying to um finalize the land swap. I didn't see that on there. The emergency language is in it's in section three, Teresa. Section. Okay, good. Y that just means this is the second reading in public hearing. It just means it'll be effective immediately and possible. There it is.

Does uh council have any questions or comments? Hearing none. Is there any public comment on this matter? Hearing none. What is the will of council?

I'll make a motion to approve ordinance 03-2026 as written. I'll second. Matthew Huggin, yes. Barard, yes. Ryan Green, yes. Mayor Hollis, uh, yes. Kyle Cook, yes. Nicole Shook, yes. Great. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think moving the substation from the corner of Mink and Duncan Plains to where it's now, I think it's a huge win for the community, everybody. Yeah, agreed. Thanks, Jamie.

Next, we have ordinance 04-2026, an ordinance to amend chapter 1159 of the city's codified ordinances. Uh, this is a public hearing only, so we will not vote on this tonight. Um, I'm not sure who wants to speak on this. Do we want I can if you all let's have Trevor give us the overview on this. Wait, Trevor, you're here for the for the folks at home.

So, uh, this one had this ordinance has been before council before it was transmitted back to the planning and zoning commission for their reconsideration. Uh based on the feedback that was given at council planning and zoning commission uh discussed the item and basically the only change is now um Denver court and sportsman's club road had been added to the areas that could have the expanded set of uses. That's really the only change. So just a few words. So not a code change just simply you know. Yeah. Yeah. We're not we didn't add any uses change any standards anything like that. It is simply just adding where those uses are are

Yeah. Does anyone on council have any questions or comments? Yeah, about the traffic study. Um, can you explain based on here how this traffic study works, Trevor? So, if a business comes in, it's got to be if it's greater than 20,000 ft, it's going to require traffic study. Yeah.

So, how that works is um similar to through any other development process, you know, you have to provide site plan, storm water plan, all those various things. If one of those if a development is coming in with a building larger than 20,000 square feet or I believe an addition larger than 20,000 square feet um they have to provide a transportation impact study which essentially will analyze there's some metrics in here for what it at a minimum what the traffic study has to to analyze. The purpose behind that was there's obviously limited capacity in the roadway network in the city. uh that may or may not change in the future, but at least to protect uh the city in the interim, we felt that it was a good idea to have this transportation impact study. What that does is it looks at intersection capacity, meaning like all of a sudden if you have a 100 more vehicles an hour turning left out of an intersection, what does that do? Um, and so based on that, if it's determined by the transportation impact study that a signal is needed, a turn lane is needed, that sort of thing, that before development can start, the applicant for that project has to come to the city with the transportation study and say, "Hey, we need a new signal, and that's going to cost, you know, x number of dollars." The goal of that is for the applicant and the city to work together to split or figure out a way to fund and construct those um those improvements that are needed as part of that. Um it's not specific currently the code isn't I I think it was good to have some flexibility just because we don't know exactly what may come down the road. Uh but at least the transportation impact study will inform you all as to what the expected impacts are from a vehicle, you know, vehicular standpoint. So with that with that on item V in that five

it says it shall be reached to determine how these improvements will be funded, installed and maintained. To me it comes out vague that it I don't want to see Johntown get left on the hook for 90% of a a signal and I don't know if it's fair to a company if if they're the last one and four of the companies have come they get stuck with 90% of traffic signal. So I agree. Can we can we enhance that item B to make it that was or is it better to leave it vague because you get more negotiating power?

You do have more room for negotiation. And I think that the reason it was written that way is because normally if you're going to do some sort of even split of you know you pay a certain basically an impact fee study. You know, every development that comes in pays x number of dollars. Whatever it is, you have you the city would need to understand like fund and understand a study upfront to know what improvements might or what yeah what improvements might be needed based on the types of construction and then you can kind of divvy out what an impact fee would be for that. I floated that idea loosely and it wasn't like wasn't taken up which is fine. Um but I think that's what or that is why you see the vagueness in the code as it's currently written. So, I don't think it leaves a door open necessarily for you all to get hung out to dry, but you will have to really take seriously those negotiations when they come in to make sure that a you don't take on an unfair burden and also the last person in the door doesn't get that unfair burden either because that's obviously not what anyone wants.

Mhm. Uh, one of the other thing is no minimum lot size um except for the paint powder coating. Um, should we consider a minimum lot size for certain uses? say if it's a trucking company or something that it has to be a minimum size to put a trucking company in there. So the I will the only though that is certainly something we can consider. The only thing I will say is that with this expanded set of uses the minimum lot size has to be at least two acres and fronted on one of those roads. Um so I'll leave that up to you all. If you feel that it's needed that we either adjust the acreage or add that to to specific uses I think that's something that could be explored. What is your recommendation? Those site requirements are for existing also. Correct. Correct. Yeah.

So it that hasn't changed any the two acreage I think we added early in this process. It was it was early in the process and I um we had to do that because of the nature of light manufacturing map currently extending into the old part of the city. So you're very unlikely to be able to cobble together that size land. But in the in the actual P or not PD district, but in the LM district proper that we think of most of the are going to have a parcel that big. Yeah, that that really was it. The minimum acreage was was included in there to

discourage or limit the ability of someone within downtown basically because that's where some of the LM is to start redeveloping in industrial ways because the comp plan says that's not what you all want. And I think just from general discussion I've heard at various meetings that's also not what the city wants. So and with the aesthetic aesthetic standards, who enforces that? Like who in the city enforces that? What's the panel? Like how how do we enforce if someone just says I don't want to put my tra, you know, yep, hide my trash.

So those sorts of things for sites that are already developed. That's kind of a little bit different can of worms. If someone was going to come in, let's say, and do a site expansion, they're going to add onto the building, you would try to bring that site into greatest conformance with the code. Meaning, if they were going to put a building addition on, you make sure it's in front of the existing building to try and, you know, meet meet the design guidelines because in this case, they're codified ordinances. And so, who enforces and reviews those? All of those standards will be reviewed during the site plan process. Um and so that was part of going back to 1187 the changes to the design guidelines. We felt rather than try to send industrial buildings to the designer view board because industrial buildings are inherently kind of purpose-built for what they need to be adopting just a set of standards in the code that could be reviewed by me or whoever the planner is at the time reviewing it and they can say yeah I know you don't want to do this fence or this screening in front of your parking lot but your development can't be approved unless you unless you do that sort of thing. So that's the basically the enforcement mechanism is you don't get an approved site plan if you don't meet the requirements of the code. Okay.

So it shouldn't really be an ongoing issue once once you go through the site plan review and building review process that should be the end of it. All all those issues should be sorted out during that time. Okay. And my final question with the traffic study in these in the permitted uses if when does a traffic study come into play? Like are they required to have a traffic study just because they're over 20,000 square ft? Mhm. Basically. Yeah. And that would come that would required to be submitted at the same time a site plan would be. So yeah. And if we see that they're going to bring in 3,000 trucks a day and it's going to mess traffic up. Can zoning or council stop them then from coming in? Can we say no, we don't want you even though they meet everything else?

Right. I think in that case it would be if it was going to be something of that significance. I I think that then is going to fall on how it's negotiated between the city and the applicant. If they meet the the use requirements and all the zoning requirements, I don't know that you really have a way to preclude them from from developing. However, you can put the onus of most of those improvements on them, which may stop the development from happening just simply from a financial standpoint. Do they have to do the develop? Do they have to do the improvements? If you Yeah, you can hold a site plan. You wouldn't you would not have to approve a site plan until that agreement for whatever improvements are required has been agreed to by both parties.

Okay. And then Kyle, did you guys talk about like if they come in saying they're going to have 10 vehicles a day, but they're really bringing in 200? What do we do there? Yeah. There's nothing we can do there, is there? There's not I don't think there's really that's that's a hard thing to police. Yeah, it would be. I I agree. And all all I will say to that is whoever is doing the transportation impact study should be following their professional code of ethics. Meaning that they shouldn't be saying that you know this use only produces five cars a day when it produces 500 or something like that. So yeah, some of those things are just kind of left to honesty and ethics at the end of the day to to make sure.

But to the same if if Atrium or one of the existing companies suddenly ramps up production on an existing business and then they're just outgrowing their shell there basically they could do the same thing. I just heard the horror stories about 31 gifts when they were here and the tra police out there having to direct the traffic. So yeah, thank you taking your time.

And just if I can speak I guess from planning and zoning's perspective. I'm sure most up here know, but we started this about a year ago too. Um and the idea was we looked at what our current code offered site selectors and um saw that it was pretty outdated. So, it was our goal to make Johntown more attractive to good businesses that want to come here so that we can start getting some money. We need that cash flow. And the area that we are discussing is already zoned light manufacturing. Um, we're not changing that at all. The only thing that we are changing is the permitted uses. And in doing so, we didn't want to affect the areas that was buted up right against residential. We wanted to keep it only over there in commerce and that way we can have good businesses over there. Let that grow up like it should be as it's already zoned so that we can have some more cash flow into the city. Um traffic is an issue. Uh but I mean with 80% of it being through traffic um I I can't sit on a plot of land or planning and zoning didn't feel that we should sit on a plot of land that could be developed to where we can get money in here to fix roads and get money in here to do that just because we might have more traffic. We're going to

I understand I wouldn't explain it to just No, because it's it's a good point and I I think back to it's a catch22 almost. the Sim City game. And if you were designing a town now, you would not put that industrial park there. It's the worst spot for it because of how the city's grown up. When they did that, it was a great place for it. It made more sense. And that's that's where I've debated back and forth. Do we continue to continue to not build on, but utilize all of it and impact our city more, or do we pull back and say, "Let's try to push things other places." My only fear with that is that if we pull back and we wait too long, then how long does that just sit as an empty area that could be making money?

Well, and I think Mark or someone said that what stops someone from building something 2 miles down the road that's going to impact it. So, right, you know, they may say, you know, I don't want to use this industrial park. I might go down the road halfway to Udica and do it there and impact us. So, we also have water and sewer there already. So, the infrastructure is already there for us. So being able to capitalize on things that we uh you know essentially are shovel ready, we we should take advantage of that. We went back and forth a lot over the past year. Um because it's definitely a discussion. It's it's it's an area that's not being utilized the way it should be is really what we came down to. Uh does anyone else have any comments?

Hey Trevor, I have one. Um so let's just say somebody builds a spec building back there. Um, what's a what's an average size of a of a spec building? Oh, it depends. Uh, I mean a lot of It really depends on the site size, but I mean it's not uncommon to get a couple hundred thousand square feet. Is that an approved use on I'm just saying if you Well, I mean, if someone someone could easily put up, you know, like a a spec building that was designed for any of the uses that are allowed in that code. It doesn't have to I mean, the use don't have anything in there requiring an end user for for it. No, you really can't because I mean that that would be the same thing as not allowing any commercial building to be built until you know the exact restaurant or tenant that's going to go in there. That's just not and they could change.

And I'll tell you what, real estate wise, I mean, a lot of you'd be surprised. A lot of businesses don't want to build a building. They don't want to be involved with building a building. They want to move into something existing or they want to have a company that leases things out. So, to be more productive and get users faster, sometimes you need business or buildings that are already present. But we did have Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. Can I finish mine? Thank you. Um, so the spec building, um, depending if it's, um, within that I again I'm not going to play like I know how to know about spec buildings, but um, are they over that 20,000 square footage mark?

I would think so. Yeah, a lot I mean a lot of buildings. So would they before somebody moved in that particular building um would they be required to do that that traffic study and do that and then what happens to the site plan so to say that they have to come to when the spec buildings already there. So, in what kind of what kind of site um do we hold kind of site inspection do we hold for a spec building if that were to be an option for somebody to do?

If I were reviewing a site plane like that, someone came in with a big spec building, no end user necessarily identified. I my recommendation be would be your transportation impact study needs to account for the like the worst possible scenario. I didn't I was just getting ready. Worst case scenario that most intensive then we could we could we could as a council say to to that particular you know person or or whoever wants to build that that they would have to do the traffic study. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's required when the building goes up not when a use goes in. Okay. Great. All right. That's a good point. Great. And and yeah, I didn't mean to walk on you there, but I just I just remember we did have a spec building come in last year that we denied because of that exact reason. we they didn't know what was going to go in there

and we didn't know the traffic studies. So, it was sort of or the impact on the environment. It was kind of like no, they had a lot of unknowns. They they did have a lot of a lot of questions. Does this What I'm asking is that this particular uses and the way this is set up is going to cover what we couldn't before with a spec building cuz I didn't see anything in there. I just wanted to make sure the uses are the allowable uses list has been expanded but clarified. So, it's very clear now what can go in there and now there's also this requirement for that traffic study that there again it's when the building goes in not when the user goes. That's good to know. That's a good question. Great. Thank you. Anyone else? We'll open for public comment.

Couple things that I had um just to get out of the way while I have them here. Um just a couple things that I wanted to change in usage or at least see what council thought. I ran these by zoning. um zoning didn't didn't feel up to these, but I wanted to run them by council. Um just a few uses here. One was a uh you know, like a sports field or sports park building. Kyle knows I was going to bring this back up. I didn't know you were going to bring it back up.

In the central Ohio area, this is something that's been popular. They run lacrosse fields, other things, hockey arenas, things like that inside of these buildings. If we have a big unused building, that could be something to help out Johntown to have a sports facility there. um D1 sports, all all those sorts of things um are prevalent in central Ohio, but not on this side of Columbus. So, I I think that could be a great use. Money maker, not necessarily, but a use that the city could definitely get. Um, one that we had talked about was auto body shops. Um, I know that we would have to have some caveats on storage there obviously to uh to deal with the parts or cars, damaged materials that would be sitting around potentially on a facility like that. But I think we should give a second use to that type of business. Um, a lot of the people who work at an auto body shop, I've seen Reichs, I've seen others, they are making six figure incomes uh to work on bodies there. And I'm I'm telling you, as far as a, you know, an income tax um generator, not that any of these are going to be a massive one, I think that's an overlooked one um that we should take a look at because the potential is there. If they have 20 plus technicians making six figures, I think that's something we should look at. Um pharmaceuticals could be another one. Obviously, we have to watch how that affects our water and sewer supply, but I think that could be another one that we look at because if you look at regionally some of the pharmaceutical companies that are coming in that you might not think about, I think there may be some niches there that we could think about. Um, and then also um we currently have a what a 40ft setback up against the residential.

I think it's from the front. I think uh sorry, I'll or it might be more. Um, yeah. Yeah, it might be more. The the one thing I wanted to make clear that's to the building, correct? That's not to the pavement. It's to the building. Yeah, that was one of my concerns. Endeavor cord. Yeah.

Yeah. With with Endeavor Court especially, we want to take a look at if the building is 40 to 100 ft away, well, that's that's great. But if your parking lot butts right up against somebody's property there and you're idling a truck at 4 in the morning, that becomes a problem. So, I want to take a look at how we're doing that and the screening in place. Um, which leads me to my next point. Um, and 4 I there. Um, it's a 30 it's a 30-in screening currently. I want to make sure that we have higher screening and that we're doing our buffers correctly to mitigate for noise sound, you know, noise, light. Thanks, Ryan, for bringing that up. All that sort of thing. Yeah, just to clarify on that,

I think the noise the 30 in height for screening is just around parking like actual vehicle parking areas. Any areas that are used for outdoor storage have to have a minimum 6 foot wall, like fence or wall. Um, they have to be 100% opaque. They have to be made of wood, pre-cast concrete or similar. Uh you can't use corrugated galvanized metal. Um you know how it goes though. If you have a paved structure, if you have a paved area, they are going to bring machinery or trucks or something into there.

And with the, you know, with how things go in business, they're moving in possibly all hours of the day. So the last thing I want is semi-truckss idling in the parking lot overnight. you know, they bring a shipment in and they're waiting until 6:00 a.m. when the business opens. Um, you know, hanging out there. I I don't want that up against a residential area. So, that's something I think we can all agree that we want to take a look at. My thought there would be let's look at if you want to go that route, that's completely fine, but let's look at citywide noise ordinance because that's really what would govern in that scenario. I wouldn't want I wouldn't want that to only apply to one zoning district. I think that's something that should be universally applied because you don't want that anywhere. I mean, I I agree with you with the noise ordinance. They are tough to enforce as as Rusty could probably tell you.

And that's going to be the case whether it's in it's going to be tough, but my thought is if if we have a blank slate here and we get to build from day one and we we select that out a buffer area that allows for a usable situation, I I think we're going to do better by the by the residents that way. At this point, what can we do to mitigate? I mean, I will say there is a massive row of trees there today, which is great. Huge trees. Hopefully, those aren't cut down in the building process. Um, I mean, is that something we can negotiate when they present their site plan at at that point?

Not really. I mean, the site plan itself, the way I mean, the way the development process works is if someone brings in a site plan that complies with all of your ordinances from setbacks and storm water and building requirements and all that, you know, we can't require it, but we could negotiate it to say, "Hey, can we park?" It won't come in front of a board. It's going to come in front of staff. It won't. Oh, it goes to staff. Typical site plan just get reviewed administratively by staff and off they go. Unless something like a variance or conditional use. What if we were making this a separate PD? If it meets all the conditions, staff doesn't have the ability to elevate. That's a lot. I mean, that's what we want to do. It's tough to do after the fact because we already have businesses in place.

Well, in a noise ordinance, doesn't matter how long the business has been there. Noise ordinance is noise ordinance. I mean, no, no, I was talking about a separate issue, but I think with screening, I think with setbacks, I think along those lines, we can make it a workable solution. um just from space. I mean, obviously, if I fire up my lawn mower out there, you're not going to hear it in here cuz it's across the other side of the parking lot. So, I just want to make a workable solution. Yeah. And I I I agree. I mean, Endeavor Court was something that we had a hang up on to begin with. We wanted included, but we were even talking about including only one side of it, you know what I mean? Which which would have solved the problem. Are they're allowed to build on both sides in Denver court then, right? And we had asked about screening

screening so that we can make sure because 100 ft really isn't that far. That's what we're talking about. Well, we had talked about possibly taking the the housing side of Endeavor out or screening it out just through zoning, but apparently there's not a legal solution to that. Can you change your setback? Can you change it to 200 ft and that would Well, that's the route I'm going. I think in all honesty I was going to look at that because pull up one of those sites really. How how extreme does that limit what can be built there though and is there at what point are we I'm just trying to get my computer to work right now if they do build we can if you come here real quick but we don't I know I I went back and looked at it. I'm just asking

to that. So the distance from Endeavor Court to uh the nearest res row of trees is going to be go a long way. So, so if we require a 200 foot setback like that's and then what 100 foot setback is going to really limit kind of what can be built there. 200 ft would really count that site south of Endeavor really is unbuildable at that point. So, I'll leave that to you all. I mean setbacks are difficult

and there again especially when it comes to noise and things like that. You have a big clear open field, you can be a thousand feet away and hear something. you have dense vegetation, you might only be 100 feet away from something and you can't hear it. So, a lot of that is very circumstantial. So, I don't I don't have a If we increase if we increase the setbacks too much, then we're not going to bring business. We're doing a big it's not a big area that we're we're talking about there though. It's it's just a little there's not much you can actually do in that area now. And this is the joys of when a zoning meeting meets a organized city council meeting. But

we're not we're we're bringing business in by expanding Endeavor because they can do the one side which has got lots of property. The other side is as much Can we make it required to where there's more screening when housing is within a certain Yeah. Um we've done that in other we've done that in other parts of the code. That would be easier than changing a setback. Yeah. So, actually, I mean, it's all it's all well, not easier. Um, the ordinance is in draft form now anyways. I mean, now's the time to I guess what I meant is not limiting other areas by that setback, you know, just because of one location in light manufacturing. If we make it to where it's that there needs to be more of a screen when housing is involved

screening and we're not limiting other development to happen in areas we're not so concerned with that on the distance from the road on endeavor the edge of the road to the last or the plot line of a house is 364 ft. Okay. So there's really not room to do much there anyways. So it's a football field 100t set back. So if you set back 100 ft that gives them 264 feet. I'm not sure how much they can build. I mean, they could put a parking lot back there, couldn't they? They put a parking lot right for the property line, couldn't they? With all due respect, though, they could put a parking lot to the property line, which is what I'm semi, which is what I'm trying to to stop because I don't want a semi pulling right up to those people's property line.

Now, to bounce back off of your idea of adding like body shop in there, I would expand that, not limit it to body shops. And in all fairness, I'm that's my background years ago, right? But body shops, auto repair, diesel repair, you are absolutely 100% right that those bring big dollar jobs in. Both of those are already listed. Are they? Okay. So, I would just add the body shop to it then. It's in there. What was zoning's reason for not body shop is on there, right? Is body shop on there? On there. I had it marked down as Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I wasn't in zoning for the last I think the arena the uh pharma were the only two that we left out those. Was there a reason why zoning didn't include it? The arena

or either one of those? um arena and well not pharma I don't recall but arena was primarily because the the purpose of that area is to industrial industrial it's it's to have income come in for the city and when you're having an arena you're going to have what 10 employees and yeah it's not going to be a money it's not going to be high paid jobs you know so it doesn't really benefit the city other than being cool that was the whole basis of finance committee no I'll be perfectly I mean I mean

well that was the whole idea between finance committee this evening is we have to look at our tax revenue as a city because we're walking a fine line with our budgeting for everything. So, we need to attract the things that are actually going to bring us more revenue, not actually cost us in the long run. So, I agree with you on that. We're going to open it for uh public comment. Thanks, Trevor. Yes.

Um my name is Al Benton, 827 Road. Um my wife and I are the actually the owner of ABY Leasing. ABY Leasing owns industrial property here in the city. It also owns developed and in undeveloped property in Heath and then another and then farms in in the county and various properties, the holding company that we own. And I appreciate your thoughts to try to protect the last ones that are going to build in the industrial park because the 67 acres that we have will actually be the last part that's going to be developed if anything gets developed out there. So, I appreciate your thoughts and and trying to protect me uh from uh bearing the burden at the end of the process and um I would I would caution the the city or to actually view this as really an opportunity for the for the city that that the amount of land that's out there is is a huge part par part of land. All right. And when you start looking at buildings, you know, my buildings, 20,000 square foot building, I don't believe anyone's going to really build that. That's very expensive to build. You know, I've built a building. Um, I would think most of your buildings going to be more like 30 to 100,000 square foot because they're cheaper to build. And I would I would say that you really take a look at that in whole industrial park. And I know the Johnson family has 60 acres next to my 67 acres. And I would think that someone would want to come in and actually develop the entire 60 acres and come up with a massive plan that would would really benefit the city going forward. And I would say to you that as a as a factory owner and operator that there's a tremendous opportunity I think in the future. Okay, the future is Intel. I know we don't like Intel. I know we but there's going to be 100 suppliers from what I've been told that's going to come in and support their business. So those would be higher paying jobs than what

you would typically see. And I would say that you you really need to have the developer if they if the Johnson family actually sells the property and develops that property to really look at a comprehensive plan for the entire property and get get the most that you can out of that developer. Have big asks and and make sure that the city is protected and the city can get income from what goes in out there. So I appreciate your time. I appreciate your service uh and leadership in this community and um you know I know it's a thankless job. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

And on that note um I want to just make sure we're not forgetting about the NCA that we discussed last meeting that would be applied to this light manufacturing district for any new builds and updates to current buildings. Kyle, they're the lawyers are looking at that right now. No, they are um they're looking at that. Um I asked about it, so they're looking at it. You want to give an update to everybody on that? No, that's all I said. It's in Kesa. Do you want to I mean it's brought up. It was brought up perfect by Kyle. And so um and Nicole asked about it. So I um asked Yas and that I sent an email and they said they wanted to pull in EMTT who's their

specialty guy on NCAA's and they would have an answer for you all. um or a memo of some type before the next meeting when you vote. Perfect. Thank you. Anyone else from the public?

Good evening. Uh Justin Fox. I'm an attorney with under Hill and Hodgej here on behalf of the Johnson family who is Mr. Benton's neighbor on Sportsman's Club Road. Um, I really want to just say how much I appreciate the dialogue tonight. Uh, and I appreciate the fact that this went back to planning and zoning and here we are, I think, raising really valid issues. Um, I I agree with Mr. Benton and see that this is an opportunity. Um, for historical context, the Johnson family has owned this property since 1979. At that point in time, it was not a part of the village. It was not a part of the city. The city came to the Johnson family and in and requested that they incorporate or annex into the village uh to receive in that process they would receive the light manufacturing designation. At that point in time I think it was uh considered and thought that that would be an expansion of the business park. As I've discussed with you guys and as we've seen other uh applicants discuss in this process that light manufacturing designation didn't really provide any uh true asert ascertainable entitlements. So it was an old and outdated text which you all know uh and we commend the city for hearing us and hearing other uh applicants in the fact that we think that this needed a really serious look which it got. So, you know, I believe that uh at this point uh we are on the right track and I think that I'm speaking for the Johnson family when I say that, too. Uh and uh we'll continue to be here to engage in this dialogue to make sure that that we get this right.

Thank you, Jess. Thank you,

Mark. Go. used to one last kind of you guys have all mentioned the things that I really wanted to cover so it's already been kind of said but to reiterate the the opportunity that is available here I appreciate the context around developing that whole entire piece it's one of the things I brought up at one of the last meetings is if we can guide how the exits happened at sportsman's club I mean curb cuts was one of the big focuses that we ended up having at sportsman's club of how much can we actually put over there at least Both these plots are long and fairly skinny. Uh I guess in terms of what I would think industrial area is up for and as much as we can guide that traffic and if somebody wants to develop the whole entire thing I had an idea of a one you know one way in one way out on sportsman's club so it guides everything out to 310 keeps out of the city. So if there is an opportunity to work with a developer who does all of that and adds a road all the way over to have them guide the traffic out that way we have the opportunity to do so. and it's a blank slate right now. Uh the uses that are added on here and I think for context for anybody who's watching at home or anybody who reads back through the notes is that this is not a drastic change from what's already available. Right? Any of the uses that we've proposed, anybody can come in and they can ask for variance and we probably allow it to happen over there

because some of them are already technically in existence. We don't have warehousing listed in there. We don't have data centers listed in there. So, I mean, the biggest gripe that people have of high traffic or high truck traffic areas that are not listed veterinarian in there, right? They're not pulling 30 trucks a day into a veterinarian, right? Some horse trailers that are going to maybe go in that way. Uh, I think it's a tremendous opportunity to have an extra piece, but be able to guide where we need and how we can direct traffic out that way. The biggest focus that I also had was thinking outside of the box. Uh I think it's no secret that anybody who knows me knows that I look at land transactions a lot and that uh I know who owns what properties and what those transact to be. Just north of us is a lot of land that can be developed very very quickly. So if we aren't going to be on board to develop what we have available already set, they'll just go right north of us. And then all of that revenue that was supposed to come into the city is now going north. And all of that traffic is still coming through town.

So while I agree, yes, traffic sucks. It's it's an issue no matter what we look at. Hopefully, we can guide it some way and that we can get a developer that does help work with us on that. Uh but I'd hate to see it all go outside of city limits and go elsewhere. Thanks, Mark. Mark, anyone else have public comment? None. We're not uh voting on this tonight. We'll be voting on this on May 6th. So, we'll move forward. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah.

Are there edits that you want to add or I guess that's a good good point. I do have them. I would like to make them before it comes back next time. Yeah. Even if you don't have specifics, it would be good to get some guidance that I can draft such as screening that goes up against residential. To your point, Ryan, there is a section in there for that section one call out zoning that's not LM that abuts the LM. So, it does call you add more, right? It calls for 6 ft minimum height and I think 25 foot minimum depth, but you can just amend that.

Okay. Yeah, I think we can amend that section. Where's that at, Mark? Sorry, I'm trying to keep up, but it's page 5D1.

Yeah. So, within that, I mean, let's see. Visual screen six feet in height. Yeah. So within that you could always so that would mean that at a minimum 25 ft away from the property line could be nothing but vegetation screening that sort of thing that number could be bumped up or you could keep it at 25 ft although it might be a little tight but if you want to do some burming that I mean that's generally how the other communities around here have taken have addressed their industrial areas. Dublin's doing it. New Alb's already done it. Um it's it does take up more land area, but it certainly accomplishes more of the goal of screening if that's if that's what you'all are after. So if we do burming, there is a kind of a

and you can also do a combination. Some places do short burm with a fence burm with a six foot fence 12t total or foliage landscape. Yeah, put foliage along there as well. That's a pretty significant once it grows in especially that's a pretty significant. I was just thinking about the property. I know the backs of those properties pretty well and there there's currently like a drainage ditch that goes down through there. So, if we do Burming, we're going to add potentially to the volume in that drainage ditch. So, well, that would all have to be worked out by the storm water engineer. Like they you can't discharge off your property onto another property. That's right. Storm water management. Well, it's it's interesting back there. The wetland area and all this stuff. So, and it may be as long as there is a check and balance to not put water in people's yards. I like the BM. I like the BM idea.

I like the BM. You put trees on top of it and it's right 12. That's exactly what's all around Intel. I mean that New Albany engaged uh a local firm here to come up with design standards for that and that's ultimately what it was. Now those are on a pretty grand scale in my opinion, but you could certainly scale that down some and have a very reasonable approach for a smaller site such as what you have up because that would fix the issue Ryan's talked about if it's a parking lot up to it. If you put a burm on the one side of the parking lot going up to that neighborhood plus trees, it's going to cut down. It will. How do we put that in there then? You I can I don't have an exact set of code language on the top of my head, but I could certainly go look at the other jurisdictions around here that have done that and provide some language similar to that. Yeah.

Yeah, that' be great. Generally, it's it in my experience in kind of doing a cursory review of this sort of stuff, it generally says how tall the BM has to be if there's vegetation required or not or a fence required or not, that sort of thing. And just provide some general specifics on that as well, like, you know, one deciduous tree every 25 ft, one conifer coniferous, you know, those sorts of things. So, I can come up with some standard or some draft standards to include in here for the future. I don't know if that what it does for the readings if that matters or well if we change it before the next reading it can be edited I mean we would open it for public again we have to start process all over because no because that's why we have the that's why we have the first reading in case we want to make

edited you're allowed to change it this was the advertised public hearing for the process but if you open that doesn't mean it has to be the final draft. Yeah. So I can do that. I can certainly look at some uh similar that similar standards that would be applicable here and get those in written form and submit it back to Jeff and Teresa. If Yeah. And if we're going to apply an NCA to this too, we may need some time for that to play out because if we approve this, I mean, although it takes 30 days, we want to have those we have to find out the NCA first. Yeah, we want to roll those out congruently because we don't want to prejudice ourselves somehow. I'll pass along the um memo from legal counsel as soon as I get that.

And just so that I'm clear, the preference of council is just to have that requirement adjacent to residential properties. Correct. Correct. Well, it's worded to where it's or nonLM, right? NonLM. So, let's just keep it that way. Fair. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that'll work. I only had a question of how does it affect current building?

So in in a situation like that that would be kind of sight specific. Yeah. I mean I would I would apply things like that. So let's say an existing building's been there but someone's going to come in and double size the building. You can work with them through that process but I would not try to go in and retroactively apply those standards to existing properties. That's a very difficult situation. You're talking about Kahi Helilios there. Um, technically they probably have enough space, but it's the atrium building that's absor

Yeah. If they're going to make a significant change to the property, I mean, they're going to they're going to have to comply. They're going to have to come in for a a zoning. Okay. Yeah. So, so we're going to change that. And then did you want to add any of those uses even potentially into a conditional use situation? Personally, I'm a known in sports arena, but you already know that. Um, I'm good with pharmaceuticals. Yeah, I'm known sports as well. It's cool, but Yeah. And it can be somewhere else. Yep.

Are you looking for something? Oh, I I was waiting on Do we want So you said two no on the sports arena. No on the sports arena. I'm not a fan of the sports arena. Okay. So no on sports. Pharmaceuticals. You guys I'm indifferent. Nikki. I'm okay with it. I'm fine with it. Pharmaceutical. Yeah. Yeah. And then the auto body. Oh, it's already in there. Yeah. Pharmaceutical. What's that? A laboratory use research. That's a broad interpretation.

I think if the intent is to allow for production of pharmaceutical products, that would be different than a than a research laboratory in my opinion from standpoint. So I don't have an opinion one way or the other but if you I just want to make sure pharmaceuticals would be like for production of medication correct research that's different and that would be subject because I know Jack's going to say that well yeah I was going to say that and and any um discharge out of any of those businesses would either have to be subject to pre-treatment or meet the standards we have.

Yeah. I don't know if I'd want that as a use that's allowed. If it could be a to one where they could come in and ask because if if if it's an allowable use, sorry, Jack, I cut you off. If it's an allowable use, then they don't have to come in and tell us any type of effects that it's going to have. No, but I would defer to Jack. I assume when you go to get a like when they come in and start talking about sewer taps and things like that. I assume you ask them questions like at that point uh we would want to definitely know what their discharge would be, strengths of discharge and then we would require pre-treatment as needed.

So I did I wanted to make sure this all still falls under that preview that the wastewater department as well as water usage. We can meet that those limitations before they come in. And Jack, do companies like that who come in who may require further, you know, treatment in their discharge, is that something they do on their end? We would require, we would tell them what our local limits, okay, can stand, what our plant can treat, anything in in excess to our local limits of waste strength, then they would have to uh do a pre-treatment process that at site on their site, correct? Before they their site, their expense, their responsibility. Okay. All right. And that's been that's common practice in my experience if a user like that comes in

and we need to strengthen that before people come in. Those questions need to be asked up front. Okay. Yeah, we we we did remove that from conditional uses. Did you? The pharmaceuticals. Yeah, I was say we did. I say yeah, I forgot we actually removed that from conditional uses. I mean that's if that's what zoning wishes then I want to stick with what they wished. Yeah, it was it was conditional use. It said pharmaceuticals, general pharmaceutical products, cosmetics, and toiletries. I just didn't think it was very beneficial, but I'm fine bringing it back. I don't And I just confirmed with Jeff. I mean, the whole the whole principle of this, even if it's not listed, they can still file for variance. Yes. Yeah. So, right. So, I just leave it off and if they

we'll leave it on as a condition. I would rather do that than I agree with Kyle. Yes. Yeah. Uh you can't as I said as reverse of that it may be an approved use but they still have to meet the waste limits. Absolutely. That's two different two different standards.

Can we get a final determination for Teresa? I just want to make sure that we come back with the most complete uh edits. Right. That Jack, you have no concerns with that? Yeah. Okay. Matt, what do you think? I'm okay with it. Okay, Donnie. Yep. All right, Ryan, we know you're good, Tiff. Yeah. All right, then. Let's do it. So, just to confirm, bring back pharmaceutical production as a conditional use. Yeah. And develop some standards for uh mound. Yep. Mounding, burning, that sort of thing. Okay, cool. Thank you.

Oh, we already closed. So not to but sports arenas I know that it's but if it was like a sports related something they would just come in for conditional like most of the chillers are built in those kind of industrial parks a lot of like was it golf simulator something that could go back there things that are actually making money that our business that could attract more people. One of the issues that when um we tried doing the neighborhood routing through there originally um they don't they don't like a lot of commercial or car traffic and I wonder if

Yeah. And I wonder if having something like that would in have more people drive like people who aren't used to being around trucks driving back there having issues. Just curious. No. Thanks. Okay, moving on. Uh, ordinance 05-2026, an ordinance amending ordinance 16-2025, the annual appropriation ordinance of the city of Johnstown to approve necessary changes to appropriations. Uh, first, uh, we're going to make a motion to wave the second reading. Make a motion to wave it.

I'll second. Sorry, was that Mr. Barard? Yes. Motion and Kyle. Donnie Barard. Yes. Ryan Green. Yes. Hollis. Yes. Kyle Cook. Yes. Nicole Shook. Yes. Matthew Huggin. Yes. And then this is um a change that was brought to us by finance committee tonight. Yes. So it what it is is we are a pass through for engineering services. Um the money comes to us then we pay it immediately out. Um these are basically like an escrow account. So our our budgeted was was it 80

$80,000 for this and this year we've already brought in north of 400 yes north of $400,000 in engineering fees. Um so to correct this account to handle anything else that comes through with these engineering services. Um they've elected to take this up to 800,000. Okay. Again, this is no revenue for us. I wish it was. Um this is just us bringing the money in and paying it right out. Yep.

And the plan is to set up a escrow fund because it actually increase it looks like we're receiving the 800,000 in revenue and expenditure. So if we pull that out of the general because it's going through the general fund. So the the correct way I think in the future to pull that out, set up a separate fund. Makes sense. Would someone like to make a motion? Um, I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2026-29.

I'll second. Yes. Nicole Shook. Yes. Matthew Huggin. Yes. But to clarify, it was 05-2026, not 2026-29. Kyle. Oh, okay. Just for clarification, but yes. Barard. Yes. Ryan Green. Yes. Yes. Not here. Got it. Next is resolution 2026-29, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a phase 2 intergovernmental agreement with the Lincoln County Transportation Improvement District.

This probably Dave Dandy. Yeah. Yeah. This this is a additional fees uh as far as for the study it's 15,000 and then per this we will be receiving that those funds back in the agreement. So actually the next one also will be similar this also with the increase or front the money and then we will we'll be replenished.

Are both of them we front the money and get the money right back or is the second one different? a sec. Well, we get I will wait. Um I'll save my question for that. Does anyone have any comment or question hearing? None. What is the council? Okay, I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2026-29 as written.

Did I miss a second? Donnie. Okay, sorry. Mayor Hollis. Uh, yes. Kyle Cook, yes. Nicole Shook, yes. Matthew Huggin, yes. Barard. Yes. Brian Green. Yes.

Resolution 2026-30, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an intergovernmental agreement with Lake County Transportation Improvement District. Same thing, different Yes. Roundabout. Anyone have any questions or comments? Yes. Is there a this one's asking is this one a we get the money and pay it out um or is this this our cost because there's no hard cap on the estimated contributions. That's what I want to we'll seek reimbursement project. So they would come back. Okay. But we're not going to get too far over skis where Okay. Just want to make sure.

And just to clarify, the first one was for 6237 and then this one is for the Dunham Plates roundabout. Correct. Correct.

Does anyone want to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve resolution 2026-30 as written. I'll second. Matthew Huggin, yes. Donnie Barard, yes. Brian Green, yes. Mayor Hollis, yes. Kyle Cook, yes. Nicole Shook, yes. Next, we have resolution 2026- uh 31, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the John Smonro School District. Uh Dr. Wagner is here to explain further and we also have Mr. Sheridan that can answer questions. Do I need do you want me to go through things or I

Yeah, if you just want to do like high level, a little brief. Sure.

Um, first of all, I appreciate the council considering this. Um, we're trying to keep our building projects on a timeline. We have the three projects. We have the multi-purpose building out here. We have what we call the west campus, which is on our current site. Um, and then we have the north campus. And we're expecting depending on weather still is to try and get all three of those sites open uh by December, you know, if not sooner. And so, um, you know, during my fourth year with the schools, we've really appreciated that cooperative relationship with the city council that's been around for, like I said, my tenure here, and I really appreciate that. Um, what you have in front of you as a memorandum of understanding, and it's really the core for us is, uh, two things. one is it's on the second page, but u we're trying to get you know our uh construction team working again. And if you look at Does everyone have theou actually the recital? Okay. Um it's on the second page there. It's a north campus and um one of the things that we're really trying to do there is get the sewer um or the sanitary tap reconnected there. We have two taps up from the uh previous buildings that were there and uh have a copy of the ordinance which I've shared from 2015. So uh just need to get that reconnected. The primary timeline right now is trying to get that sanitary tap because we're going to have to dig deep there. Um and the details are there. If you want me to go through them, I can. But we have an existing 4-in tap and and we need to uh for water tap and we need about a 1 in is what we expect there. And then the the sanitary is about a 6 in. And then um the west campus down here uh we need a 2-in water line which will connect to our existing and then the uh 6-in sanitary will connect to for the new concession stand. The multi-purpose building out here we know we're going to need a new 2-in um water line as well as

we're going to have to have a new sanitary um line connected and we know we're going to have to do that. So, um, we're just asking for some time to a truss walk to work together so we can get back on our construction schedule and then we'll have a time to work with the city manager and the other city officials to try and get this finalized on these water and sewer tap fees. I have one recommendation or if we could make one change. Um, I don't want us because this is something different than we would normally allow. Correct, Jack? Yes.

Okay. Can we add something to theou or to the resolution that says thisou is unique to this public institutional project and shall not establish precedent. That way we're not it lets people know that we're we're not establishing president here. But because it's a public institutional project, we're allowing it to happen. I think it probably has to go back to Yas then. I would I would assume Yas is the one that drafted it. I didn't know if we could add it to this page. I mean, you can add it in one of the sections, but I don't know how legal I want to consult our legal counsel. I mean,

I mean, if council does I I just don't I don't want a company come and say, "Well, you did it for the schools. Why are you doing it for this?" I have no problem doing it for the schools. I just want us not to set precedent for right going forward. Um, I think my thought process on it is that there there's a lot that needs to be worked out whether there were existing taps or not existing taps and where things were swapped out. I don't think that there's a lot of other sites in the city that that would ever be the case with and they're essentially asking for a 60 to 60day um pass well time to work time to work it out just like we did on the trees. I mean, it's the same thing. So we're not holding up their construction progress by and while while we work this out

is really question for Mr. Wagner if I may here. I I understand that on the north campus we there's been some confusion with was our taps swapped or not swapped or or recordeping is is a bigger part of that. But if you know that on the west campus you need a 2-in tap and on the multi-purpose you need a 2in tap. But why do we need theou for those two items? What if if we know the the tap sizes and and obviously the city knows the tap costs and those aren't in question. Why why are I'm trying to figure out why we're

Yeah. No, I think it's a good question. Well, first of all, let me answer what Donnie said. I the district on behalf of the school, we're willing to stipulate that this is nonprecedented setting. I think whatever format that takes. I would um like to get things moving because we're static right now. Like we literally can't do anything with the projects and No, I don't want to hold you up. I didn't know if

No, I appreciate that. And like I said, well, we could stipulate to that. I think there was question and at some point I've been trying to work through the administration, but I'm happy to work with you or however you want to do it, but there was questions about these swaps and and all that. that I have the ordinance. So, I think we put everything together because from what our records show is there wasn't a swap that we have the 2015 um and and I think what we're showing too is we we we know there was much discussion that I can't find a record of that.

So, I think I can uh speak for myself in this position. the north campus. I I think you're exactly correct. With no records being found, um those taps are are yours and you're not going to have to pay for those on the north campus. Okay. So, again, we're in agreeance on that. Okay. Um, and with the west campus and the multi-purpose building, uh, again, if we know the tap size that you need for those uh, independent buildings, I'm trying to again understand why why we need theou because those could just be paid and we'd be done.

The I think on the west campus, I didn't think that we needed an additional tap. We were going to we were going to leverage our current assets that we have there. So, we were going to if you see this in the dumping or the lift station and all, we were going to tap into that for the sanitary and the water. I didn't think we were going to need anything new for that. Yeah. Yes. Anytime you pull more water out of a main to run to a new building, you have to have a new tap and tap fees are applicable for that. And water in, water out. So, a new tap fee coming off of that line to feed another building, you'll be taking water away, but also then you'll be discharging more water, which then takes capacity out of both the water and sewer plant. So, anytime there's a tap made in either water or sewer, there's a capacity fee that has to be paid.

Yeah, that's something that'd be nice to study because with the old um baseball that's down there, I thought there was actually a tap at one point. But we don't have clear records on that. It was a I know there was a line run down there. There was a line and there was a um some kind of pumping station or something. They had like a ladder or something that was supposed to fill down there. We've got vestages in that old building there. So, I think those are things we need to work through. So, okay. Well, that's my thing is is I guess what I'm stating here to council is that

I agree with you on the north campus. Records have not been found. So I those taps are yours. Uh we can find no swap even though I know there was discussion on it. Um but in my view on this the west and multi-purpose both are requiring new taps to new buildings and those tap fees are applicable. We don't um we don't dispute. We we know we're going to need new taps here for this building because we I think you're probably aware of this but I think the line runs under this building, right? The water line I believe runs under this building anyways defeats it or one of the lines. It runs through here some Yeah. some. So we we know we're going to need new tap for the multi-purpose building. That's not Yeah. So you have one tap that that's here on the site,

right? New building will have to have a new tap. Now what I was told is you were thinking about putting a new tap into this building and utilizing the old tap to the new multi-purpose. No, that is incorrect. No. Okay. I think that would be good. however we need to do this is I think this window would allow us to kind of work through some of those things because you know not revisiting the history and it's some my history but I know there was some you know what went on with the tap fees a little bit in the past so I think we it's good that we can clarify like this is where we are especially with that north campus right now so I'm willing to again work with the city the main thing I'll tell you honestly is that north campus I mean that's the thing the and it's really the sanitary because we have to go so low

but we're trying to that's the biggest thing right now is trying to get that north campus and then this is lined up and then there's the whole economies of scale like we're trying to get the uh you know trying to leverage our earth equipment together. Um the west campus isn't as timely. I mean there's there's some time there. So you tell me however you want to do it. You know we'll work with whomever. Okay. you, Jack. I, you know, appreciate your history and be happy to work with you on that.

May I make a suggestion regarding establishing a precedent rather than modify the language in the in the resolution or the actual agreement, simply state for the record that the council and mayor wish to make it clear that this agreement is not to establish any precedent as future taps. That way you don't change the legislation, but you make them clear the city's position. That work? Yeah. Does anyone have any other questions or comments for Dr. Wagner?

Hearing none. What is the will of council for resolution 2026-31? Make a motion to approve as written. I'll second with stating that this is in no way to set a precedent for any future um water tap discussions.

Brian Green, yes. Mayor Hollis, yes. Kyle Cook, yes. Nicole Shook, yes. Matthew Huggin, yes. Donnie Barard, yes. Yeah, we appreciate the support. Thank you, Dr. We'll work with Mr. Lied and, you know, keep you updated and council. Okay, we'll get it worked out. Yeah, thank you again. Yeah, thank you.

Uh, next we have resolution 2026-32, a resolution to initiate an amendment to chapter 1165 of the city's codified ordinances. Uh, I believe this pertains to the uh plan district. Jamie, do you have This is the the cloud

for the the PD zoning related to density bank and the rights to um allow other properties to join. Okay. So, I think uh there's a couple code revisions and one is um we're slight we would be slightly altering the plan development rules so that um other applicants can join the plan development. And right now the only applicants that can join the plan development would be the original applicant for the plan development which was the Joshtown Land Company. um through strategic partnerships. For example, um if we wanted the um folks that are buying the Piper farm or bought the Piper farm to join our plan development, there's currently no process that would allow them to join the city or join the plan development or join a new zoning code right now. So, this would be establishing a pathway for them to do that as well. Um and then with the density the residential density bank there's it's a similar thing. Uh by doing these code revisions the city would not be making any commitments to it but it would just be establishing a process at a time to later identify a location for residential density at which time the city would have complete rights to approve or deny a location. um as well as approve or deny site plans um you know the architecture all all similar things um it's just we're just trying to establish a a process in which gives that gives us some optionality on the planning process

does anyone have any uh questions or comments for Jamie Yes. Yeah. So with this one, yeah, you're saying you're trying to do this so that if Piper or whatever and you want to move the the housing density basically then right and you're saying with this and I need from Mr. Sheridan or or someone that we could deny the housing bank to go there. I'm not reading that. We can deny it. Correct. No, I think so. Okay.

Yes, you would have the right to deny or say no. Um this but you don't right now there isn't even a path to say to say yes. I thought in the original that you could move it up to a half a mile. I don't think that was the housing bank, was it? Yeah, you could you can ex well actually in a way the plan development can expand a half a mile a half mile

and and if the the plan development expanded then you could create new sub areas. Right now what we're doing is you having the optionality to taking the density bank and have a mechanism so that we can transfer density outside of the plan development as well. So for example, if somebody else unrelated to us decided to develop Kyber Run for residentially, somebody else de decided to develop unrelated us Dun's property outside of the plan development, somebody unrelated to us, like if Will Cox decided to develop their property for residential, it would be a mechanism where we could transfer some of the residential density bank so that we're not piling on additional entitlement residential so that we're still aligning with the school district's long-term goals. Okay. So, let's let's talk about like the Will Cox property right here.

Yeah. He wants to come in. Let's say that property there. I don't know what it's zoned for. Say that property is allowed to have 200 units. Yes. So, you're saying he would get his 200 units plus two he could bring 200 units of yours or 200 units of yours would be used. Buy 200 of their units because we've approved 1,200 units. Correct. Over there. He could take some of your units to his property if council agrees. If council approves, so take his unit. But you're right. I don't We would not have the right to transfer residential density without council's approval.

Right now, there's no way to transfer residential density even if council approval wanted us to. So essentially, this allows us to have less units available as long as they're able to go through and use their units. I would say it gives you greater flexibility on where those units are located. Well, that's why that's my fear because he increased it from a half a mile to two miles. That could go from basically down there all the way up here. That's correct. And that's not where we wanted to put the,200 units. We wanted That would still have to be But we could still turn that down. Yes, right. You don't have to. We could turn it down. You still have to as long as we can still turn it down. Of course, we still have to approve it.

And I think part of the challenge, so some of the precedent is this based on um in what we've done in New Albany in the past from a residential density bank. So there's a residential density bank that ties into the strategic plan of the city and the long-term goals of the school district. Now, that residential density bank was a little bit easier at the time because there was one um one party that owned the majority of the ground. We don't have that luxury in Johntown, but we want to come to a similar planning concept where we can move those residential that residential density around. Without it, I think it makes a hard it's it's hard for the city to plan long term and align with the school district's goals because how can we start to entitle we I mean how can the city start to entitle additional property not knowing which which which what site's going to develop at what time and then in the worst case scenario is you over extend yourself and then flood the school district with too many children. So I think it's just putting some guard rails on what what gets developed when too.

No, and I'm good with that. My because I always thought if you guys did Kyle Run or or the Dun that you would transfer your units there. I I have no problem. I was concerned when I saw it go from 0.5 to two that you'd be putting these housing units Oh. further up here causing traffic issues.

No, the the the two mile radius was somewhat arbitrary. I mean, it it it does include the Willox property. Um, so we identified some potential areas that the city already has for potential residential growth. Um, could have been a 2.2 or three, of course. Um, I also don't I don't want to stand up here and negotiate against ourselves right now, but we realize that 1,200 apartments in two years ago to support Intel's at the time 30,000 employees is not equivalent to 1,200 residential homes in 2026.

Right? So I we wouldn't be We would be we would we wouldn't mind having whether it's a formal mechanism or I think the city it's actually probably to the city's benefit to leave it a little subjective but at some point trading units where um let's say two two apartments are worth one single family home because they have the same impact to the school district um or a similar income level or income tax too. So that's I mean

and that land bank is or I'm sorry housing bank is that's something that's still negotiable for us to say how many apartments equal one home. Is that correct or Yes. That's still negotiable for us to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't or or us. I mean, correct. Right. Because everything's still subjective and so negotiable and we're just trying to future proof this. I don't know if it's necessary at this point to necessarily quantify that exact trading amount because

I understand that, but it's still on the table to negotiate that. Of course, I think I think the the the power is completely still in the city's uh I mean council's power uh to approve or deny um is this actually probably just this actually in a way gives you more power over the units more opportunity. Yeah, exactly. Jamie, and it also gives us the ability. Sorry, I should say sorry Matthew. No, you're fine. Yeah, you have a question. Yeah, just a real quick. So, is this just a simple house cleaning or have you already been approached for units? Pointed question, blunt one,

but it's it's a good question. We've been I wouldn't say approached. We've we've discussed if this if this if this concept came to fruition, uh I think that there's other developers or other I shouldn't say developers, other property owners currently in Johntown that would have an appetite to potentially engage with this transfer, but we don't have like a deal in place right now. It's more of a general if you can will you question by somebody else not us but if you can will you if you can get this. Okay.

Yeah. And we we don't want to um we don't want to give up our current entitlements, our current residential entitlements. But we've talked about how the economic development process works. If a great econom economic development project came to us, the best site we have right now is the site across right across from Intel's front door, which is currently zoned for multifamily and um commercial mixeduse development. It's not zoned for industrial. Uh so if we get this in place that actually just it gives us more flexibility when that industrial project does happen or that economic development driver does happen so that we're not it's just one less thing we have to deal with because um I hope I we're going to be frantically trying to get I don't know what it is someday but we're going to frantically trying to have a project come to us uh and we're going to look back and say we're glad we did this part while we could. So, so

the greater flexibility benefits both parties. Correct. Anyone else questions, comments? Okay. What's the little council? I think it's just the first reading. It's just the resolution. Okay. That's correct. Yes. So, it will go to planning and zoning. Yes. Yes. This doesn't change any text tonight. Oh, you have a comment. Yes. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Mine says vote.

We've always enjoyed uh a good relationship with planning. The one caution I would say just hearing this today is I'd like to know the impact of all this um generally for the city but also for the schools. When we agreed in the past, the school board did to the 1,200 units that was between study and because of the products that were offered um our study showed about 60 or 70 students out of that 1,200. It goes to housing it may be 600.

Well, what I I stood up here and I was doing off the top of my head, but um what I said last time at the council meeting is still accurate. A house for us generous housing generates between8 and 1.2 two students right now. We, as I said last month, we need to update that. So, I would just caution, you know, if you use if you move half of those extensively, that could be another 600 students for us where we're looking at, you know, from the previous study was 60 to 70 students. So, and then the other thing I would say, go ahead one second, for us to work towards is um getting language where we would always include the school in these negotiations as we negotiate with especially with like housing banks and you know,

some cities do that like Pascala has that in their charter I believe or um but that a lot of that comes to schools. Here's the other thing I would tell you too. Like let's just say arguably you take 1,200 units and you spread it out across the city. That can have transportation implications for us too. And you have to, you know, we'd have to think about that. We want to study that as well too in terms of busing and and routes for us right now. Um, you know, to add a bus route typically is at least $100,000 a year, sometimes upward of 200 depending how far we're traveling and all too. So, you know, there's just and those carry through a forecast. So we'd we'd really like to have an impact or look at an impact of that. So Okay. Yeah, I agree. Thank you. Could I speak also? Sure. Real quick, if

you don't mind.

Um, one one thing else I I think that you would need to consider is that these transfers are going to be a revenue generating thing for the the person that's transferring these housing units to it. So you basically need to look at what they're planning on doing with the property. So the property that was initially uh designed to h hold these units, they're going to turn that into something else that has more value. So then they're going to also sell those housing units to another developer, right? And generate profits off of that. So you're really putting that that other developer in a in a hole because they're going to have to pay for these housing units. So just be aware of all the nuances. And I'm not a developer, okay? But I've worked somewhat in this area over the years. And um there there's always a rationale for what they're trying to do and and just make sure that we are protecting the schools in our community and what what's happening cuz they're going to try to get as much as they can for the property and for what's been allowed and just please uh make sure that you protect all of us. So thank you.

Thank you. Next is resolution 2026-33. Go there. I'm sorry. You have to vote on this. I thought you just said we don't vote. You're voting on the just to initiate the Okay. Well, that's what I thought too. So, but everybody stopped me on the vote. Do it or this is just a resolution that initiates the process of changing my title. We do have so you need a motion. Yeah, I'll make a motion to approve it as written. We should have made a motion. Okay.

I'll make a motion to approve as written to send it to planning and zoning resolution 2026-32. I'll second um Matthew Huggin. Yes. Corner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. Ryan Green, yes. Mayor Hollis, yes. Kyle Cook, yes. Nicole Shook, explain to me the vote again. Just we're sending this to

This is There's three ways that a text amendment can be initiated. One is by an applica uh an applicant turning in an application to change the text. um a resolution of council or a resolution of planning and zoning commission. So this is just the resolution of council that initiates the process to change the text amendment. It will passing this tonight doesn't change the text. It sends it to planning and zoning commission which is the next step in the process. The planning and zoning commission um will have this on their agenda. There will be a public hearing. Um they'll review the text. So and then

can be made at that time. Yeah, there's public hearings that then planning and zoning will make a recommendation to council. It will come back to you and that's why she's so good. Thank you. Um, yes then. Fine. Okay, your vote is yes. Yes. All right, that passed 6 to Z. And next is resolution 2026-33, a resolution to initiate 5 to everything tonight's been six to zero. Five to one. Donnie said I'm not that good. I take back my comments. I was wondering if you were thinking that. Are we ready?

We're ready. Resolution 2026-33, resolution to initiate an amendment to chapter 1141 of the city's codifying ordinances. I'm not sure who is updating. Is this Jamie? Is the NCA? Your turn to get your steps in. Sorry. I know. Um,

I'm just kidding. Um, no. Um, okay. So, this is the one at one NCA. I think this is initi being initiated by the city uh uh as but the goal here um is to establish one NCA and as we ex as industrial development or economic development expands throughout Johntown having one NCA we believe is going to better align everybody's interest so that uh one different industrial parks weren't at a competitive disadvantage because one might have an NCA charge or one might not. We also want to avoid having somebody benefit from um infrastructure or water or sewer lines that get installed but not pay the millage. So, anybody that taps into the the water lines that are funded by the NCA should pay into that until um the the debt is retired so that the city can then start using discretionary funds as soon as possible. And then with this too, the NCA board is the same for all. Is that correct?

As of right now, yes. Uh there's seven seats. I'm a board member. Um the city has four seats. The city will always have a majority. Legally, they have to have a majority on the board. Um and um yeah. So that'll be Does anyone have any questions or comments? Just one question I have just for clarity. So, if we're giving the ability for other developers to enter into the PD district in the NCA, how exactly can you lay out that process again for us? Yeah. So, I as far as how seats would work on the board and everything?

Okay. So, well, there's I guess two different things. Entering the the PD, um I think we would have to the original applicant also has to approve them. So not just somebody randomly can join without create their own sub area, right?

Um and then join the NCA uh layering on top of the NCA the 9.75 mills that is um that is put onto the property indefinitely. It actually shows up on the tax bill. Um now somebody can join the NCA and not be in the PD. So for example, if if the NCA if the current NCA and the current PD paid to paid to fund water infrastructure lines that came down Mink uh to benefit an economic development project and those lines were there in place and somebody decided to tap into those lines while they still had and they still had debt on them. Um, by having one NCA, the city could then require people to join the NCAA so that they're tapping into so that they're paying their proportionate share of those existing lines, which would then help retire the debt quicker. With the board seats, what's currently proposed actually does not address that. I think that has to become um negotiated at a later point depending on my guess is if if if somebody with one acre for example could join the NCA

tap in the line pay for it but I don't know if one one acre would justify one of the seven board seats if somebody else had 500 acres. So, I think the the board seats uh depending on the growth and scale would have to be addressed at a later date. This might be something we have to talk about as a as a city. Um

but yeah, it's it's a question that I've had is as this grows, develops, and matures as a district and we have our NCA involved and other major players come in, I know we've talked about other developments. I mean, if you're going to bring 1500 units in over a thousand acre parcel, obviously you would consider yourself a major player and probably want to have some involvement. So, that's that's something we'll have to figure out on our own. It's a negotiated process. It has to balance out the advantages of joining the NCA have to balance out with the cost they're going to accept because they're now a member. Yeah. All right. But again, tonight we just are voting to send it to planning and zoning back to initiate starting the process.

Does anyone have any other questions or comments? What is the will of council on resolution 2026-33?

I'll make a motion. I'll second. Brian Green, yes. Mayor Hollis, yes. Kyle Cook, yes. Nicole Shook, yes. Matthew Huggin, yes. Donnie Barard, yes. Thank you, Jamie. Uh, resolution 2026-34, a resolution to adopt the Johntown Design guidelines. And we have Trevor back.

Please state your name. Um so again to continue the conversation earlier this is simply the resolution that will adopt the design guidelines that go along with the chapter 1187 ordinance uh revisions that were uh adopted earlier. So the the document that's in the agenda packet would be basically what is adopted and will be used by the design review board and and staff moving forward. So with that again happy to answer any questions but keep it keep it brief for the time being. Yeah. And this goes into effect uh May 21st along with with the chapter 1187 edits as well. Yes. Anyone have any questions or comments?

Uh what is the will of council? I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second Kyle Cook. Yes. Nicole Shook. Yes. Matthew Huggin. Yes. Barnard. Yes. Ryan Green. Yes. Mayor Hollis. Yes, this one has been a long time coming. Good work. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh, introduction of legislation. We have none. Uh, next on the agenda is council priorities, goals, discussion. Briefly, I'm going to pause there. If anyone wants to leave at that this point, um, there's not a lot left on the agenda, but um, you're welcome to stay, but if you're snoozing and want to leave, now's the time to do it. Give you just a couple of minutes.

Thank you. Thanks, Trevor. Thanks, Trevor. I get why the good's good. Okay. Uh, council priorities, goals, discussion. Um, I guess we'll start with Mr. Huggins.

This has been brought up what, about a month ago, for council goals, our priorities as council. Um, and I might other than Kyle may be the only salesperson on the panel here that I've been in sales and marketing. I guess Nicole's been in sales and marketing for 20 plus years. And in 20 plus years of being in sales and marketing, I can tell you every time that I make an agenda to put out goals or what we're going to concentrate on, a week later it changes. So, as a council member, I don't think that I in good conscious can sit here and say, "Here's what our priorities are as a city and follow this what we need to do because by the time we meet again in 2 weeks, it's probably going to change."

If a perfect example, and I I would hope Miss Trees would back me up here, how many times did you change the packet since she sent it to us Friday? Like 12. Like 12 times. So that I mean I guess I I guess it does what I'm saying is I don't think we need a huge discussion of what council priorities are. We're elected to run help run the city with the support of everybody in the city. So I don't think we need to really sit down and nail down a priority list for city council. Just my two cents. That's great. Uh any goals?

Um do what's right for our constituents. Um, you know, this is my first tenure with city council here. I've sat on a lot of boards in my life. Um, for the most part, I see us working together. Um, I will echo some of what you've seen on Facebook. Um, you know, we're not always going to agree. So, the goal would be to work together really, really well. We don't have to agree. That's why there's seven of us so we don't get tie votes a lot of times. So I my goal I guess for me my goal is to do with the people who signed their name and put me on the ballot to get me elected. I'm going to do up here what they elected me to do which is work with them, work with the rest of the council and do what they've asked me to do. So that's my main goal up here.

In talking to Mr. Sheridan, I think as a city manager, he needs to know what his priorities are and where he gets direction from. Is it is it just from say the mayor, me, who what is his direction on a daily basis? What should his priorities be in these two, three, six, infinity number of months that he'll be here? And that was my thought on this is to give him some guidance on what our priorities are as council. Is it at the the old council it was sewer and water? That's obviously changed. So, what what do we want him focused on? I' I've noticed like in his reports that he's going through personnel files. Is that something we want him spending time on right now or do we want him looking at economic development? What is the city want him to do at this point? And I think it's we should give him the f give him the guidance of where to go. That's our job as council is we give him the guidance. He he takes our guidance and runs with it. Is that correct?

Yes. So that's that was my thought of why we should do this tonight is because I don't feel like he's got the guidance right now. Have you given him a task or asked something of him that he's not been able to complete?

No. Because it's not my job. It's all of council's job to give him a task. It's it's no council member should give him a task and say go do this. It should be the will of council. So that's what I'm What does the will of council want him to do right now? And in my opinion, as a seasoned city manager, I believe he knows that job and that's why we hired him to do to do the job and prioritize what what is important and it is his job to oversee staff and personnel. He has that has to be a part of confrontational with you.

I'm not either. I'm I'm just saying so for personnel issues if that if that is an issue personnel he absolutely has to he has to get to know the staff if we're going to expect him to oversee it and you know do dayto-day his number one goal what should be his main focus right now as a city manager I think that's a hard thing to nail down I mean I mean but where should we want him to put the majority of his time I get your question I'm just saying I think it's a hard thing to nail down I mean the reality is is that you know when we all met with him individually I think we all gave him guidance on that Brian. Exactly.

And you know, in my meeting with him, I said, "Money, roads and revenue are where I'm at right now." You know, um, we need our roads fixed. We need revenue coming in. So, what are we missing? What's out there other than OPWC? What kind of grants are we overlooking? And I know grants you need to match and stuff like that, but what else are we missing economic development wise? Um so I mean from that front I know we had that meeting and already discussed it but to your point that's where if you say if you if your idea is revenue and roads but I also need the dayto day I also need the day-to-day done too

right you know and and I agree need day but if you say revenue and roads and he doesn't do that is are we going to grade him are you going to grade him wrong that he didn't do what you want him to do when all the rest of the council said they want to do this that's that's what I'm trying to do is who's who's guiding him on what he should do on a daily basis. I mean, if if you don't need that, Mr. Sharon, I I want you to tell me or

No, I I I I believe this conversation stems from the follow-up email I sent after trying to meet with each of you and having a conversation just to say, you know, give me your top three. Give me give me some bullet points. And it's less of this is how I'm going to spend my time and more I want to make sure I'm not missing something. So, do you feel do you feel the marching orders that we all gave you were were too broad or all over the place or do you need us do you need us to narrow that scope?

No. If if if my reports to you don't have any significant omissions, if there's not something important that you haven't seen come across one of the blurbs in my my weekly report, then we're on the same page. The biggest certainly having priorities and saying one, two, three, whatever that helps, but it's more am I missing something. Is there a problem? Is there a project that needs greater attention? Because I haven't seen it in any of your reports. That's what I was trying to capture. Let me ask you, Sure. Um, being the seasoned um city manager that you are, that's a nice way to put it. Sure. I didn't say old. I said seasoned.

I said it was a nice way to put it. I appreciate it. So after you've been on the job for how a month, month and a half and a half. Okay. Um what do you feel from the feedback and what you have the meetings that you have attended and um what do you feel is your top you feel the city's top five six priorities are at this point? Um I'll put you on the spot. I'm sorry. No, that I I I'll give it a shot. Okay. dealing with development we know about

and putting the city in place to take advantage of it. Being prepared for the development we anticipate, but we don't know exactly what form it's going to take. And then the third would be trying to make trying to put the city in the best condition to address some of the deficiencies we know that we have. parks and recreation, roads, staff, those kinds of things that are everyday responsibilities in every city in town that may not have been given the attention needed in the most recent past. Okay. Does that make sense? I hope

very much so. I for one like those priorities. Thank you. So, I'm I'm I'm I'm comfortable as long as one of you doesn't say, "Well, this was important to me." And I've not seen any mention of that in the however many weeks of weekly reports that I've sent. I will tell you the weekly reports I'm doing here are much more detailed than the ones I've done in the past because this is the beginning and it's more important that I try to give you a better taste because I get to see some of you a lot, some of you not so much. And I want everybody on the same page. Appreciate that. Yes.

So if I'm being successful, I'm I'm good with it. The main thing is if I'm missing something, if there's something that's important that hasn't been given attention or that I'm not aware of cuz there's still a lot to learn. But I I I appreciate it. I I I I greatly enjoy the challenge. I will say I'll give you great accolades for your reports every week. They are very very detailed. I like them too. Um I like the fact that there's no secrets. Yes.

I think that's I think your reports are very very open. I mean even if when you and I had our first meeting um you found out I'm a little off but you know that was right in the report. And I think that's important because that was an hour, hour and a half of your time that was spent talking to a council member. So you are accountable to everybody, you know, accountable to me, accountable to the rest of the council, accountable to the city. So I think in that capacity, I'll give you the greatest accolades I can in that capacity. Um, I guess I misunderstood your question, Mayor Hollis, when you said council. I didn't realize we were talking about his

I did not either. I thought we were talking about minutes and and you know and I'm not trying to be funny but if I was to sit here and say what do I want Mr. Sheridan to concentrate on. I can sum it what in two words and you just reverse what his title is. Manage the city. Well, it's three words, but manage the city. Donnie, do you have anything else? You don't have anything for council priorities or goals? No, it doesn't sound like you guys want to do that. So, Oh, well, yours were referring to the city manager. So, I'm asking council.

I feel that the my the city's goals would be the city manager. world. So that's that was my thoughts is if the city has five goals that we want him these are our top priorities the top priorities of the city then that would be his top priorities. He would not be clearly he would not be trying to get a swing set if we said parks and wreck weren't you know a priority. So so what are your priorities? My priorities is to work on our boundaries and establish our boundaries for our city where we can grow in the future and how we grow in the future. an annexation plan.

Annex, not an annexation plan, but how do we annex with the the stipulations that surround us that we don't have the sewer and water around us? So, how do we how do we grow in the future if there's sewer and water outside of our boundaries? There's a couple of different strategies on how you would address that. And you don't have to answer right now, but that's just that's one of my thoughts. Another one is getting our zoning. Um, and it's it's already started, but getting it more dialed in. Um,

we we now have a zoning code enforcement and zoning inspector. He he'll need to be trained. So, uh, but I think he will do a good job. Building the staff, um, is another one. I've got uh a half dozen uh decent resumes for planning and and uh development to the director of planning and development. I've got a phone interview with the third one tomorrow and I'm having lunch with another candidate tomorrow. Um I would hope before my initial interim tenure is complete that I would have a candidate to present to you as a recommended hire. And then my fourth one

and it can't come too it can't come soon enough from my perspective. I'm sorry to mean and then my fourth one is just this is something for me that I think the city needs is someone who seasoned I think you someone came up with first but being a seasoned person in this role and seasoned city manager. I'm sorry. What what have you seen in the past that we need to implement in Johntown? What am I seeing the past? And I'm not I'm not asking you to answer that right now. I'm just these are the the four goals I would have. That's a good question.

I I believe in my experience, I've only dealt in one other community that comes even close to the expected explosive growth. And what I would tell you the lesson there is there were far more obstacles and negatives they anticipated that would come with that growth uh and they weren't prepared for.

So growth is a good thing. It beats the opposite. Does require preparation. I I think maybe the best way I I've I've I'm I'm sure I can say it right. the the the challenge we have is you need a staff today that you can't afford to be in the position you want to be in in 10 years

because it'll take that long as this growth moves forward for some of these things to fall into place. That might be the greatest financial challenge notwithstanding all the other ones that we've talked about fixing the roads and so forth. But but really that's that's the if we can find a key to that, you're halfway there. Can you imagine what your staff will need to be? What you think Johntown will look like in 10 years? No. I don't want to think about it. I hope I hope that helps.

Make us good, Ryan. You have anything? No. No. Honestly, the only thing that I would say for you, I mean, we're giving you a a large task, but honestly, in short, it's the show goes on. Um, we had changes. We we moved people around. Things happen in life, but the show goes on. So, always does whether you like it or not. Pick up the ball and run with it with all the plates that we had spinning before. Doing my best. I already spoke. How you been? Michael. You have Michael. Um yeah, mostly just um I wanted to be able to hear from you. Okay.

On your on your uh priorities that you've kind of seen in the last month and a half and I think my based on your experience and other cities as well,

not you not that um I my my biggest things are like organizational stability and continuity is a big one. um full council communication and and transparency. Uh charter aligned governance, financial oversight, transition track, cost tracking, which is we have a finance director, but you kind of keep an eye on that as well at the city manager level. Um the staffing um issues and solving some of those, which you have obviously put out a planning and development person. You hired a inspector, zoning inspector, which is awesome. And then just what you said the development um and infrastruct infrastructure awareness. So

that's that's that's a pretty broad task. I mean those are that's a lot of very challenging and significant accomplishments. If we get half of those we'll be doing all right. Yeah. Absolutely. But we're moving all that forward. That's my that's my big one is all of those are moving. Okay. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to other business. Uh, Mr. Hoggins, anything. You moved the agenda item. Yeah, I did. Oh, yeah. Yep. I did move the agenda item to other business. So, do we we have to do that first then? Yes. Thanks, Teresa.

May I speak on that? Yeah. Yes.

Thank you. Um, so, um, I have been in contact with the, um, District 5, uh, person. I I believe his name is Chaz. Um, his information is not on here because they don't really need it, but we're having a significant project at the, uh, State Route 37 in Leafy Dell that encompasses a school as well. So, I reached out trying to be a little bit proactive and um they did come up with um a sheet and several um links that you can um that we the the actual citizens can um scan uh get email updates on road closures. It's going to be a year-long project. The road closures could start to happen sometime around June 1st and could go, like I said, for on for 12 months. and they were so nice to put out um a project fact sheet and also a QR code to be able to sign up for emails for alerts. I know that every Thursday they will um update uh for the following week. So, my um I wanted to make sure that everybody had this and then get council's input on where and how we should get this information out um to the public. I know that we have an HOA over there. It's there's two um but one of them has an active Facebook page that can definitely benefit from this too.

Um I already gave it to Dr. Wagner um with the school. I gave Rusty one and I gave um Jack one as well. Can you email that document to me so I can post it on our Facebook? Thank you. I will. Um and um I'll also Yeah. Um is there any other uh will council here for where they might want to um put this out? Um, the more people who have it, the better off we are with. So, this was something that we've been talking about safety and service and working on. So, what was the reason for circumnavigating our safety and service committee on this?

I just live in Leafy Dell and I wanted to be able to offer something to the um people here. I didn't I could ask you the same about circumventing the um economic development committee and the meeting that Tiffany and you had on Friday with developers um and um Monroe Township. I think the library would be a good spot to put it too. Thank you. I appreciate that.

So I agree we do need to get this information out. This is something that we have been both projects we've been talking about in safety and service and it's something that I brought up in the last meeting of we need to get better at getting this information out about traffic and things like that because we've already had one project over here that caused significant traffic concerns without a lot of updates. So, it's something as a city we do need to get better at and it's something that we've been working on where there's any billboards, you know, bulletin boards when you walk in. So, Troyers and stuff like that might be a good location. Um, Teresa, I do have an alert a traffic in the text alerts that I Oh, yes. Yeah, there is a traffic one that people are signed up for, so I can put it there. Yeah,

it would be a it would be text information. So any of these road projects that we have, and this is something that we've been talking about, any of them that we have, even if it's something infrastructure related that's not necessarily our city working on, if we could definitely get things out like that, talking about the time frames, um, anything that we have that comes in on the permit, I think we should get that information out. Nicole, are you planning on putting us out on Town Square? I mean, half of us live in Leafy, me, you, and Ryan. So are you going to put on Town Square? I don't know who runs Leafy Dell one.

Well, um you can as of now I talked to their um uh board member of theirs. They wanted to shut down the page because there were some of us from HOA 2 that was on there. So, they were a little I think they I don't know exactly the ins and outs. I know they still have their but they don't have the HOA1 would not be connected to our town square because they have a different population. No, no, no. I know that. That's what I'm saying. And are you going to put it on Associa, which is our town square for Leafy? We're Leafy Dell 2. Leafy Dell one still exists. So I don't know who runs that. Um, so that'd be somebody else to give it out to. And Ryan, there's a condo association, too. So there's technically three HOAs.

So you probably know those people who run that that you could give this to and that would pretty much encompass all of Leafy. What is Town Square? Squares is just a online tool that associate uses for people to basically do they get up I don't remember getting any updates when somebody posts on there or I don't I don't I don't know how honestly it took me forever to get logged in on there. I'm probably wrong person to ask about HOAs. Yeah, it's the town but the I don't know if you how that posts on there where people would see that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean we used to have a Facebook page.

Yeah, we can't post on it. But yeah, I don't even know who our manager is over there anymore. So, they go through managers like once every six months, I think. I can check into it and see. I'm not sure. Yeah, I they're one of my clients anyway. I mean, if I I have some people that work at that office if you want me to throw it over to them, see if they'll post it. So, yeah, if you want to, I can. Okay. Thanks. Anything else with that? I have one other thing. Um, not with this, but did you Oh, I'm sorry. We'll be going to other business now. No, you can go ahead.

Okay. Thank you. Um, just so um Teresa, I'm going to I'm going to not put you on the spot, but I think I'm going to give you a um a kudos for having to change the 12 times at this time. Um, it currently states on our council rules that we are to have the agenda items to Teresa by Wednesday um by end of business day for the following Tuesday meeting. And I don't think it's um I think we're all grown up here that we don't need any kind of um oh, you know, like the mayor doesn't have to text us all or whatever. I think if we have those in by Wednesday, it gives Thursday a time for people for the for Teresa and the mayor to write the agenda, get it correct if they have any questions or anybody forgot and wants to add something. So, I think the goal is to try to have the agenda published on Friday by 3. So, Teresa can leave by 5 like everybody else. I know she's left 6:30, 7:00, 7:30 on some Fridays before the meeting. And um I think we need to really be cautious about um the stress we're putting on our staff. And so as a council as a whole, I'm not blaming anybody. Um I'm just saying as a council as a whole, I think we can do a better job at making sure that we get that information to her and and council rule states it that we have to have it in Wednesday by end of business. So

trying to get you out of here at 5. Yeah. Okay. On a Friday. Nobody wants to be on work at 7. sneaks up on everybody. I It does. And I just think if we get in the habit of doing that, I I think it will work out a little bit better in my opinion.

Kyle, do you have anything further business? I do not. Ryan,

I do. So, opening day for JYAA uh baseball and softball, youth sports, April 25th. That's a Saturday. So, stop by and also watch for traffic in that area. We're going to have a lot more people than we typically do in that area. Um also um looking at the agenda tonight and I had some public also reach out um on clarity on the agenda versus what is to be voted on tonight versus what is a first reading. Um, I had people ask, um, they've had some confusion lately over where you see like item number 13, the introduction of legislation, and then you have other items and things. If we could do something just in the wording, um, to get everybody on the same page and let the public easily see it, um, whatever that may be, just of categorizing things and and labeling them on what's going to come up for a vote tonight versus what's just the initial, um, hearing on that, I think we could do something there. Um, it's listed on the

on the legislation of when the I think a lot of people just read that first agenda page and that's about all the further they go. So, I don't know if there's something that we could just put onto there. Are you saying separate the So, we have three categories. Tabled legislation is tabled. It's under that. Public hearings if they're holding public hearing is under that. If it's just the introduction. Yeah. Yeah,

if we get something separate just the introduction piece. So, if this is the first time you're going to hear it, there's no vote to be on that that night, separate those ones. Um, just so people know because I'll have people that that call and ask or send me a message and ask and say like, are they going to vote on this tonight because they're prioritizing their schedule on whether they want to show up um if it's going to be voted on versus a public hearing because there may not be as much conversation on it until the actual night where it's voted on. I do do that. Unless I put something in the wrong spot just with at least where they're listed at.

Yeah, just with where they're they're all in that category tonight in the public hearings versus the introduction of legislation. Trace is looking at it as their public hearings because they're public hearings where you look at their introductions. Yeah. Yeah. There's I think there's just a a disconnect in how people look at them and I'm I'm sure you're probably right, but because you've done this and and have a I'm just not sure what to do differently. Yeah. If there's something that we could put in there when it is the first hearing and it won't be voted on just to separate it would be under the introduction of legislation category. Part of the challenge was the agenda was so extensive. True. Yeah.

What what if we made a note that items in bold are the only ones that will be acted on that night? Yeah. Yeah. If there's if there's not going to be action that night, I think we should separate those. Oh, yeah. You can color code it, too, and just have at the top that if it's in red, we're voting. And if it's or green, we're voting. Red's first read or something like that. Too many people get it in black and white. So, yeah, I'm just going to say if they're not looking at the gray scale. Yeah, if they're not looking at the legislation in the packet to see when the readings and the vote are um I don't know. I'll figure something out. We'll come up with something. Yeah, it has to fit into my civic clerk program. So, got a way to make

lighter agendas. Lighter agendas. You don't know we're growing. I've heard that. I've heard that. We got a lot going on in town. Actually, before those categories, I did used to put for each piece of legislation. I used to write after it like in italics like when the introduction was, when the public hearing is, when the vote is. So, I mean, I could go back to that. It made it longer, but it would be more clear maybe. Yeah. whatever creative solutions we come up with. If in doubt, they should contact us or we'll be able to tell them. There you go. Anything else?

I hope. Yeah, Donnie. Yes. Um I think Nikki mentioned it earlier. We've got all these council committee meetings, but we haven't had economic development yet this year. And I think that's one of the highest priorities of the city is economic development. We're making it a priority with everything. Should we get the one of those scheduled too? Economic development is interesting because a lot of the projects that we do are huge projects. So they come through the staff and then straight to council without really going to a committee. It's not like zoning or some of the others have been where what is the purpose of the committee though?

All right. I've asked myself that quite a few times either. especially with the previous administration because things were things would go to finance that could have gone to that or and I've seen it with other things. We send things to certain committees instead of going to another committee. So, it's interesting how the how things play out, but economic development is interesting because it's very broad. So, there may not just be something that's an easy conduit to shove through there. I think it's worth a conversation though in a committee to define it a bit better because it does have a definition. Um the committees do have definitions and yeah and uh I mean I think it serves a you know a good purpose if well defined.

Who's on it? Myself, Tiffany and Ryan. Okay. Okay. Um I'll let you guys figure that out when you guys want to schedule that. Um in the manager reports there was something about rightway acquisitions. What's the status with that? Is there we having issues with the rightway acquisitions for the the mink road uh rideaway acquisitions are behind schedule and so we're getting more involved in trying to get that back up on schedule. Now who handles that for us? Uh we the David Ror was the gentleman who was hired to do the rightway acquisition.

One of the issues was the significant rightway was uh owned by the Dun and they' not responded. So, I got a hold of them and we're getting that worked out. One of the issues is we can Nico can throw more money at it, but then it takes longer to get paid back. So, we're trying to do everything we can to get that back on schedule and work with the property owners so that we can move forward. Okay. Um, the next thing was the proposed splash pad project. Is there a proposed splash pad split that thousand times? splash pad project and what cost are we incurring any costs right now with Jacob's engineering bowing construction? No.

So, we've had the same splash pad project that was proposed years ago that basically we've been working with. We have the same money earmarked that we've had for years and there's no money for right now. So, there's there's money from the state that we've had for years. I thought that grant went away. It's been sitting there for a couple years. So, yeah, I brought it up last year and it was the same thing. Still, are we close? Yeah, we still have it. So, we're kind of working off all of the the old things that we've been working on for the last 6 years. Who is like where is the status? Like, are we looking at what area of the city was going to go in the cost? It's like infant stages just preliminary to see if we can even get the grant back.

Okay. Um, and then there is one about uh meeting with developers and looking regional water and I was just want to get an update on that. Is there a problem? A little bit. Yes. Can I ask why? It's in the manager report. I'm I'm a council member. I'm have the right to know what's going on with my city. Yeah. But you've been in the seat before and you did things very differently. And I'm asking for an update and we can't provide one at this time. Can we have an executive session next in two weeks to discuss this? Sure. Sure.

Is there a problem with me? I mean, I'm just asking a question that was in this and if there's a problem, I would like to fix this so that we can work better together. I'm trying to work better together. I've sent you text or answer text. So, I'm just trying to figure out a way to communicate. I'm not required to answer your text, Donnie. That's what this is about. As a council member, the mayor is not required to communicate with me. We got anything else in other business, guys? Kyle, I'm trying to fix the problem. There is a problem that a res I'm not going to sit here and let you badger me. I'm not doing it. Arguing is not fixing. So, residents, the mayor will not respond to council members when they have questions. All right, before we wrap up, I actually do have some other business that I would like to take care of. Um, as you guys know, we're going to be having our second rules committee meeting May 6th. Probably much needed.

I have put myself up for chair of that committee. I do expect that vote to go through for me to be chair. I'm going to ask of anybody within this council or within staff if they would like for me to address anything. And here's a couple things that I'm going to earmark. One of those has to do with your personal computers and your personal phones on this panel.

If you're using it for personal business, it is against council rules to do that. For me, that's a morality clause because you're not paying attention to the city business and we have to figure out if you're caught doing that. Why we're trying to conduct business, what if anything can be done to a council member doing that? Simple as that. I'm a rule follower. It's what I like. Second thing is something I've noticed and I hope the residents understand where I'm coming from with this. If we have somebody behind that pulpit, you need to pay attention to them

instead of sitting there on your phone texting whoever or searching whatever or anything. My computer's up. It's always on the agenda. I'll ask Mr. Sheridan. Did you see anything else on my computer tonight? No, sir.

The agenda. So, if anybody has anything they would like me to address in rules committee, I'd be more than happy to take an email from you. I would ask that you address the email to me and CC the rest of council on the email. All emails to I would think and Miss Tracy, you brought up an email that you had to ask Yas about. I do believe that email should have went to all of council. Um, even though it was addressed by a question that Miss Shook had, I think if we're going for transparency on this council, working together, those emails should be blasted out to everybody on council. That was my point with the questions I had here.

So, um, again, I'm open I'm opening myself up. Um, we bring up council rules. Nothing's ever done about it. I've studied council votes. I've studied council meetings. watch the YouTube videos and I can tell you that the rules weren't followed. There was count there was votes that happened. There was people questioning the votes of council right when they happened which is actually a violation of council rules and that can be misconstrued as a vote under duress. So I want to make sure that we're doing the right thing here on council to address your concern. Mark and I don't know you but I'd like to meet you after the meeting if that's possible. So that's all I have for other business.

And Donnie, I wasn't saying that you had to be done with your other business. If you had I was just simply saying that Thank you.

Donnie texted me earlier this week asking if uh Mastadon Ice Cream celebrating their one-y year anniversary next month and he would like to do You called it a resolution. I believe you meant a proclamation. um uh for them and I would like council's input on that. I personally, as much as I love Macedon Ice Cream and I love Joanna, um I don't feel that we should do that for one business and not every business in the city. Um I think we have a chamber of commerce that could facilitate that if if we wanted to recognize businesses, but if the city is going to do it, then I think we need to go back and uh recognize every single business in the city. That's just my input, but there's seven of us, so I wanted to get everyone's input prior to answering your text.

Well, I'll just start on this end. I don't necessarily I I agree. I think Joanna and her family are phenomenal assets to our town. I've been to Mastadon's ice cream. Love it. Think it's great. I've also been to Elray. I've been to Black Diamond. I've been to Wits. I've been to Troyers. I don't think it's necessary to take one business out and celebrate one business in a discrim and and even though it's in good good spirit is still discriminatory

against other businesses. So, you know what? I I'll give them a huge shout out. They're doing a great job, but I agree with you. That's a chamber of commerce type thing. That's a Better Business Bureau type thing. I don't think it's a council's job to celebrate individual businesses because that's what builds animosity in a town. You celebrated this business but not this business. You were friends with this person. You were friends with that person. That's how we get division as small town. Just my two cents. I appreciate the sentiment, Donnie, but I do agree with Matt.

I think one easy way to differentiate on who gets a letter and who doesn't. I know that at the state level when I work down there at the Senate, um people ask for president's letters and things all the time. We've all asked for them here. Um they have a clear set of rules through LSC that that tell you who gets a letter and for what. So maybe that's something maybe that's something council rules can be can figure out and we'll decide. Person who has those rules. I can get them for you. They're they're the reason I brought it up was cuz I noticed they had one from Kevin Miller on there because Yeah. And I mean it's it's hard to draw a line, right? But there's, you know, 100th birthday, not 95th or, you know, 50th anniversary, not 45. So,

um, we can draw that line and having a standard. Yeah. Have a standard for who gets what. It's a good point, man. That's a good suggestion. Yeah, that's all I had. Did anyone else have anything motion to adjurnn? Teresa, sorry. Just a reminder, just a reminder, the next council meeting is on a Wednesday. Yes, the election. So, it's May 6th. Oh, be informed. I just didn't go vote. Glad I just canceled something. Well, I accidentally scheduled my vacation to leave May 6, so I'm going to

I'll make a motion to adjourn. I'll second. All in favor? All right.