City Council - Regular Meeting

it is tuesday may 19th we're going to call our regular council meeting to order if everyone would stand for tonight's invocation it will be councilman barnard

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for this weather and this season. We thank you for all these council members and the community that's showing up tonight to be active in their community. We ask you to be with our firefighters and our police, all our first responders. We ask you to be with our students as they get out of school this week and start their summer break and just have them have a safe summer. Lord, we just thank you for everything you've given us. Amen.

First item on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Anyone like to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda for tonight. I'll second. Next we have the Children's Conservation League annual update. Ladies. No, I'm so excited. You can come up front though.

Good evening. I'm Gail Dufford, and I've been a member of the Children's Conservation League of Johnstown for about 12 years. We have about half of us here, 15 in our membership right now. I'm going to kind of read from my cheat sheet. Children's Conservation League of Johnstown was formerly called Angels and Astronauts. So if you've been in Johnstown for a while, you might have heard us by that name. The state Children's Conservation League dissolved, but we have kept our name. Chapter going because we like to take care of everybody's in the community the way we always have It was established in 1958 Started by a group of women who wanted to begin fellowship and outreach for the children of the community It is a philanthropic nonprofit organization that coordinates the Johnstown Santa Parade and the Santa House, among other activities. They'll tell you a little bit more behind me. Our mission is to add joy and help fill the needs of as many children as we can reach in the Johnstown Northridge area. We strive to promote good moral and spiritual values for our community and our future generations through community outreach.

So I think we're probably best known for our Santa parade and our Santa house hours. But we do also give back to the community and we have scholarship, food donations, time. We donate time to help out where we can. And we look forward to doing more of that this year. We are part of the new non-profit, Johnson non-profit organization. that kind of had all of the nonprofits get together and figure out what we can do for each other. So I think that's going to help us, the Outland community, more often. So the next thing we have coming up is really just participating in the Fireman's Festival Parade. One of Santa's helpers will be writing and styling. this year so there's that we also have our annual cookie walk in Santa parade all on December 5th this year and that the annual cookie walk is our only fundraiser so if you guys want to make cookies we do all the baking it ends up being about five dozen a person so if anyone ever wants to bake cookies let us know we'll take them And I wanted to let Joanne talk a little bit about our scholarship program.

Hi, my name is Joanne Schwab. I've been a member for two years and have just recently been elected vice president. One of the things that I do is I'm the committee director for our scholarships. And last night, Tiffany Boning and I attended Northridge High School award ceremony, and we awarded a senior $1,000 scholarship. I then went to Johnstown High School for their ceremony and awarded a $1,000 scholarship. to a senior there. So that's one of my favorite things that we do. And I also am in charge of the Santa parade. So that's just a little bit of what I do. Thank you.

That's it?

Shirley.

I'm in charge of the Halloween costume parade. we started that about seven years ago and it's been a great turnout this year last couple years we're doing it at the school and I've got a lot of vendors that come and give a lot of free things to the kids they have games we have food for the kids there's a costume judging contest three age levels and we have lots of fun prizes for them And we appreciate the community helping us out with that. So thank you.

People want to join. How, how can they, they join? When are your meetings?

We want to get involved Monday of each month at six 30. We meet in the basement of the Johnson town United Methodist church. Um, and any ladies in the community that would like to join can just come to one of our meetings.

And is there any requirement at all to be a member?

Five dozen cookies. And we do $10 news a year, too. So we don't ask too much. Your time. Love of the community and families.

Our last meeting for this year is the first Monday of June, and then we don't start again until we do the last Monday of August because the first Monday in September is Labor Day. And then after that, it's always the first Monday of the month. And, yeah, take any warm body that wants to walk in the door. Exactly. Work hard.

We eat and chat and plan and just lay back. Yes. Thank you, guys.

Okay. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you. It's awesome. Thank you. Next on the agenda, citizen comments on matters not on the agenda.

I have four speakers.

Josiah Rose.

You can give them to them. You can give them to me. I can give them to them after. You need them. We don't have the clock up today.

Typically there's a clock there. I told her she was going to have to go get it.

I told her just use the timer on her phone. It'll be loud enough.

Oh, yeah.

All right. Good evening, Madam Mayor and council members. My name is Josiah Rose, and I'm a lifelong resident of Johnstown. I attended Johnstown Christian Preschool, Sierra Foss Elementary, Adams Middle School, and Johnstown High School. I currently attend Capital University, where I study political science, and I am going to attend law school in the coming years. I also currently work for the Ohio House of Representatives, where I advocate constantly for stronger privacy protections and limits on mass surveillance technology, specifically with all the representatives that we know quite frequently. So, imagine my shock when I came home after my second year of college and I found sitting practically in my own backyard the exact surveillance system that I've spent countless hours at the state level fighting against. Not in Columbus, not in Cleveland, not in Westerville, certainly not in New Albany, but right here in Johnstown. The flock cameras are often presented as a harmless public safety tool, but what they actually create is a system that records the movements of ordinary people who have done nothing wrong. Every car that passes by is logged with a license plate, location, time stamp, vehicle description. Over time, what it creates is a searchable history of people, where they travel, where they work, where they worship, who they associate with. This is not targeted policing, this is mass surveillance. And once these cameras are installed, Johnstown does not stay local. Our residents become part of a massive nationwide surveillance network connected to thousands of agencies across the country. I want to be clear, this is not about our Johnstown Police Department doing anything wrong. This is bigger than any individual officer or police department. The concern is the system itself. Once this data is collected, we lose control over how it's shared, accessed, or potentially abused. Flock is a private organization, and they retain all rights to any information collected by these cameras, as shown by the articles I've provided. I provided articles and documentation to all council members showing cases where these systems were misused, hacked, or contributed to wrongful stops and arrests. The AI flock system tracks your typical data points and creates a zone map for each individual car. If your car travels outside of your typical identified zone, you'll get pinged a suspicious activity by the flock system. This could potentially ping a local police utilizing the system and increases your chances of getting pulled over by 30%. This isn't just numbers I'm making up. These are in the articles that I provided you. There's already a flock hammer near Leafy Dill, meaning every parent picking up their child, every student walking home becomes part of a searchable database across the nation. We're talking about the privacy and safety of our community and our children. Public safety matters. Every person in this room wants safe neighborhoods and effective policing. But safety and freedom are never opposites. Communities across Ohio and across the country are beginning to push back against constant surveillance becoming the new normal, including Cleveland. I urge this council to reject flock cameras and prevent Johnstown from becoming a part of this nationwide unconstitutional surveillance network, just as I constantly urge the Ohio House of Representatives every day I go to work. Thank you. And I would love to take questions, if there is any.

Thank you.

I'm Herb Kaler, 112 Wildwood Drive in Granville. I'm the village manager in Granville, here representing both the village of Granville and the Municipal Utility Coalition of Licking County. Mayor Hollis, council members, I'm just here for a couple minutes to express my gratitude for your city manager, Mr. Sheridan, for meeting with me almost three weeks ago. It was good to get a mutual understanding of what our respective opportunities and challenges may be, and we both committed to continuing to connect as needed in the future. My purpose here tonight as part of the coalition is to follow up the conversation I had with Mayor Hollis and My mayor, my vice mayor, Mayor Barnes, and Councilmember Jeff Barr, who's not here tonight, on February 4th, we met just to discuss kind of the future of the coalition with understanding and acknowledging that the belief, that your belief, that leaving the coalition was in your best interest, and we didn't argue against that. What we requested the meeting for was for you to consider allowing the coalition to complete our draft facility plan and to use Johnstown's capabilities in that facility plan, and also to continue partnering on other efforts. Are you advised you bring that request back to full council and let us know what your intended direction is? That was about three and a half months ago, and we'd like to shape our approach with those questions being answered. I know lots have happened since that meeting, the departure of your city manager, a weird back and forth over legal bills within the coalition that I think we've rectified. But I would advise again that a facility plan completed helps to protect your investment in that plan. And we ask you to consider this along with the other partnering opportunities that we've endeavored together over the last several years. I'm not expecting an answer tonight. I just asked for an update. I know you can't answer my questions from this dais, but I do plan to depart. This is meeting two of four night meetings, and the grass isn't going to cut itself, so I'll be departing, but I do ask respectfully for your consideration in that question. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

I have mic rush twice so I don't know how that works. First topic

Thank you to the ladies there. My sons and I have had many magical moments in the Santa House. We appreciate the work you've done. I raised four boys in this town, and there's been good and meaningful camp here. I started thinking of some of the times that it was awesome. Thank you. There should be eight. There should be one for that table. I want everyone up here to have one, please. Okay. Everyone up here have one. All right. Good evening, council. My name is Michael Rush. I live at 11577 Duncan Plains Road. My property backs up to the Grove substation and also the new road for Goyan Ecologics. What you have in front of you is pictures from my property, so I want to start up in the top left-hand corner. That is a flooded trail in my yard. This trail is a walking path that me and my neighbors have enjoyed. My wife and I bought this place 26 years ago. There used to be a beautiful woods next to it. Now it's a trail through the woods and it's gone. I'm okay with that. They cut down their land. Anybody can do anything they want on their property. But you can't mess with mine. That's my private property. So my trail is flooded. That's actually a really nice picture. You go back there now. I went back there this afternoon. My trail stinks. It's frothy. It's nasty. All my vegetation is dying. All the trees that I have back there that don't like wet roots, they're stressing. You go to the next picture down. There's a field tile, a drain that my kids and I put in in that path that drains that water out to the low spot further to the west in the middle of the Kolojex field that they're not working on right now. It drains to a low point there. You go to the next picture in the upper right, you see the arrow, there's a low point in that field. That field floods when we get extremely hard rains and within 24 hours, it drains out. It hasn't rained out there for quite a while, and this flood in this field, that is exceptional. That's a five inch rain flood for 24 hours. We're many days past any kind of substantial rain at all. What's happened, you go down to the bottom right picture, I should quote what happened, my speculation is, when LRE cut the groove in by that red arrow, they cut that field tile. The field tile that I'm referring to is the one represented in green in the bottom left-hand corner. That field tile drains out all the land that was the Heimerl Dagg farm back there. It drains all that water into that field tile. It runs subterrannally under my land, goes to Mike Petrie's land, and then comes out at Kyburn Run Creek under Duncan Plains Road. So what's happened is they cut this groove and suddenly my land doesn't drain anymore. You can also see in the bottom right picture, in the bottom left-hand corner there, they got a drain pipe there. That's about two feet too high. Nothing's draining there. So I have sent these pictures and emails out to a wide variety of people, licking soil, Iowa EPA, Ecologics, Licking Rural, everyone who needs to. And I was told that I should send it to you all, and I didn't get your emails out yet. But he had a meeting, so I saw that heckle right over here. Because it is city of Johnstown land, and I want you to be aware of it. Now, besides the inconvenience of me not being able to use my land and I'm going to suffer some potential vegetation and some large trees dying there, there are a lot of people looking at Duncan Plains right now. And if someone walks back there and says, that's a wetland, I lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, much to the credit, Dawn Smith from Cologix, who I highly respect, she's looking into it. Chris Turner from Turner Construction, the head guy, he came out and talked to me there. And you guys sent out an inspector as well. But that was a couple days ago. Haven't heard anything. A email and fixed. That's all I'm asking for. So I appreciate your time. Any pressure or questions you guys can ask, have this happen sooner rather than later because vegetation dies, big trees die real quick in this kind of stuff.

Did you say you have already talked to Don?

Via text, yes. I'd like a little more action now.

Okay.

Dawn is wonderful. Dawn's been really respectful. I came to you guys in December and talked about some things. EMHT came out, this green drain that runs underground. They had no idea it was there. They drained their retention pond. It's now draining out and tapping into this field tile where before they were going to run it on the surface of my property. They built a structure there that drains down into that and goes under my land and slows out like everything else has for the past 26 years sub-trainly. can't say enough about how great emhd was to us and walking out here inspecting this and taking care of the problem can you send me an email with your contact information i sure can't that picture there that says low point has that ever flooded in the past So Ryan, we get hard rains, we'll get a flood there, and then within 24 hours it's gone. Once that drains, my land drains. So when I see a flood on my land, I know when I go a little further up, I'm going to see the field's flooded. As soon as that field floods within 24 hours, mine's gone too. It takes a hell of a rain to make this kind of a flood. Not the rains we have right now.

All right. Yeah, we'll definitely look into that. Hopefully it's something that's just construction phase related and not a longer issue. Something that we can work on as that site's developed.

We didn't have this problem earlier this spring. It was working fine. All the drainage, I was very pleased. And I sent Patricia Brown, UMHC, hey, thank you very much. It's all wonderful out here. But I think this groove that Wicking Rural cut for a drainage just here, so they have their pad up here. It goes down into the ditch, and they built another mound. I think when they did that, they hit that tile and then busted it, which prevents it from draining. So the relation to this where the arrow is, to the right is all the flooding, and the water flows from right to left. Gotcha. And I'm glad to walk around with anybody out there, too. It's beautiful. We'll drink a beer. But they have come out a long time ago to fix the first problem, and then the guys were out here the other day, but I haven't heard from them in a couple days. I want to bring it to your attention. Yeah, thanks for letting us in. Yeah, appreciate that.

I'll get back with you.

All right, so my second topic is, you guys have probably all seen it. Thursday night, May 21st at Township Hall, the Transportation Improvement District is coming to town. I'd invite all of you out there, everybody who's watching this online, I went to the meeting last Monday or something like that, whatever it was, and all the comments were to the very end, and I got to hear how wonderful everything is out here, how great our roads are, how wonderful traffic's flowing, and how happy everybody in the community is. And I got up, and I usually am not at a loss for words, but I was. And I got up, and the first thing I said, I said, Mr. Bill Lozier, you're one hell of a storyteller, but it's 100% fiction. So much to his credit, he's going to come out here, face the music, listen to the community. I'd invite everybody to come out, have very direct issues that are wrong, possible solutions. Everybody be really polite though. That's what I ask for. We need to respect our community and present ourselves very well. A couple of things that I talked about. They're closing Duncan Plains. They're going to divert us all down Green Chapel to Clover Valley. Y'all ever been dunking planes here between 3 and 6 o'clock now? There's more traffic on dunking planes than there is on Route 62. And I asked the guys, I said, you're going to do that? How in the world are you going to get that traffic from Clover Valley to 62? You're going to put a stoplight there? You're going to have a police officer there? You're in headlights. They hadn't even thought of that. They had no idea how much traffic was coming down dunking planes. And the other thing is my road, Duncan Plains, is getting absolutely destroyed. Green Chapel is closed. The beach is closed. Nobody wants to go on Clover Valley. It's all detouring down my road across the street from the 11T. I don't know what address that is, but it's crumbling, and it's getting worse. So GID is coming out. It's our chance to talk to them about their plans for our community and what they're doing, how it's going to work, phases of construction. You look at the map up there, you got the roundabout at one end of Duncan Plains closed. You got the roundabout at the other end of Duncan Plains closed. Turner Construction was going to close Duncan Plains at Enterprise Parkway last week. They didn't have a permit. I can definitely see them scheduling that when my roundabout's getting built and I can't get out of my neighborhood. Johnstown, Lincoln County, Monroe Township, Delaware County didn't talk. The people at TID had no idea there was going to be a roundabout built at County Line and Duncan Plains during that time because it was a Delaware County project. Can you imagine that? So this is our chance to kind of talk to these guys as a community. They definitely need their eyes open on what's really going on here. So I invite everybody out, including the public of Johnstown. And I know we have some township trustees listening and watching. Pull the trucks out of the bag. You're getting more room in that hall.

What was the time?

It's 6.30 Thursday, May 21st at the Renown Township building. Thank you all for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Next on the agenda, council committee reports. Design review board met on May 12th. Next meeting is May 26th at 5.30 in council chambers. Heather?

We saw the tabled application for Kyra Rahn Shopping Center. They came to us with a couple options for some designs for building A and C. which are additions to the existing property. A is a standalone and C is kind of connected to the Kroger back there. But we ended up approving it with some conditions to the option B that they chose. That was it.

That was it? Okay, thank you. Planning and zoning met on May 12th also. Next meeting is also 526, 630 in council chambers. Kyle, do you have any updates?

Yeah, we discussed and tabled the housing bank and moved to move to council the discussion of rezoning if council chooses to annex the 98 acres there as well as the NCA.

Finance?

Nothing to report tonight.

Rules Committee got canceled on May 6th and not rescheduled yet.

No, we tried to do a quick reschedule for earlier this evening, but scheduling conflicts, I think, took precedent on it. I did want to kind of bring up the last time that we were going to meet with rules, I did request from council any concerns or anything that they were wanting us to look at as a rules committee. At this time, I didn't receive anything from anybody on council, so I would assume that there's no pressing rules or anything that we do need to look at. Not sure when the next rules committee, I'd like to get one scheduled. Just for clearing house purposes, we do still need to take a vote for a chair of that. And we do need to address just a couple things that are up in the air. I think we can schedule one and have a quick 20-30 minute one with just those members of the committee. And I don't even think we would need law involved with that at this time because we're not looking at making any type of changes. It's just an idea for them at this time. So So I'll get with the other two members here, hopefully this evening after the meeting, and see if we can get a time schedule.

Okay, sounds good. Safety and Service, next meeting is June 2nd at 5.30 in Council Chambers. Director Reports, Chief Smart is not here, so I don't think... Did anyone have any comment or input on Chief's report on the agenda? Next item is tabled legislation, resolution 2026-19, a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute a lease amendment with the American Legion post-254. It was introduced and tabled on March 3rd. What is the will of council?

Did we get anything from the Legion?

I did not.

I haven't seen anything revised to come back. Mr. Sabo said that he thought their attorneys had an up-to-date draft, but I haven't seen it, and if you haven't seen it, then our law director probably hasn't seen it.

Then as of right now, we do not have any further directions.

Just leave it tabled, which we don't have to do anything for to leave it on the table. Just leave it tabled. Public hearings of legislation, we have none. Introduction of legislation, we have none. We'll move on to other business. Mr. Huggins, do you have anything?

I did have a question about the young gentleman over here that brought up the flock cameras. I did some research on the flock cameras, and I know in the budget there was an allocation of $15,000 towards the flock cameras, but I am not seeing or finding any vote of counsel to approve that. So I don't know if that was done under special rules of order or if it was just kind of through a bypass of counsel.

It wasn't a bypass, Council. So he asked for it in his budget. The budget was approved so he can spend it. Council had, in the past, when he'd asked, said, no, we're not putting that in the budget this year. Nothing was taken out for it.

I guess my question would be something of that type of technology. I would think we would need to have an open discussion about it for the public to weigh in on it instead of it just... going through and say, oh, it's in the budget, let's go ahead and do it. I mean, I want to go off of what you said, sir. I'm not a big fan of flock cameras myself. As a conservative, I think they're a grave abuse of power. It's not in your listing, but if you look at Dayton in the last year, they just released that they had over 7,000 instances of all that data being taken without proper authorization. That's scary for the citizens of Johnstown. Anybody driving through Johnstown, not a huge fan of it. So I am questioning why we got to that point without our public knowing about it.

It was discussed for three different budget cycles for three years. It's No one was trying to hide anything. I mean, it's just like if Jack wanted to buy a piece of equipment, are we going to have that in open council? I understand that you're saying it's more, I didn't realize there was as much controversy around it. But it was openly discussed.

in council or just sleep or just finding one of the president in the notes i just saw in finance when i get back out for a couple of years but because i remember it came up finance i believe it was a little bit of safety service that was so it got presented in finance what uh... in november and then came up in safety and service it's later on after i was already twenty twenty six yeah i was already but i did not agree to buy and so in safety and service we asked the chief to come up with a protocol since we already had uh... THE ITEMS, WE GOT A PRESENTATION AND A PROTOCOL, BUT IT WAS ALREADY DONE BY THEM. AND THEN I DON'T THINK IT EVER CAME BEFORE OR AFTER.

AND I'M NOT SAYING THERE WAS ANY HILL WILL OF ANYBODY INVOLVED. THAT'S NOT WHAT I'M SAYING. IT JUST SEEMS LIKE IT WAS NOT PUT THROUGH. I THINK THE PUBLIC WOULD HAVE LOVED TO BE ABLE TO WEIGH IN ON SOMETHING THAT'S GOING TO BE IN THEIR BACKYARD WATCHING EVERY MOVE THEY MAKE. JUST AN OPINION.

Yeah, if the public has anything to say about it, we welcome them to weigh in. I'll definitely provide the protocol we have that can come up, and people can review that for sure. Do you have it? I have a copy of it in my email. Can you share that with everyone?

Yeah. I was curious about it because I was answering questions.

Yep. Yeah, that's the only other business I had. It's funny that I didn't even know you were coming tonight because that was something that I had been just watching at lately.

Maybe that's something we need to put on the agenda for next meeting when Chief Smart's here so we can have a conversation about it. Make sure that we don't forget that one.

Do we have a copy of the presentation that we got from FLOC?

Actually, I just sent it to somebody. I had another resident reach out about it.

I know they had a sales rep that came in and did the whole presentation, but I didn't know if we just had a copy of that available. If we could put out that and the protocol to everybody, that would be great.

Was that a video? Was it like a PowerPoint?

I think he was here. He was here, but it was a virtual.

It was presented on a couple of different types of financing safety service.

I would like to add that, you know, I know I seem like a voice of disdain for the flock cameras. I have the utmost faith in Chief Smart and our police officers in this town. What I don't have faith in is a company that's not based in this town taking my data and doing whatever knows what with it.

It's also the other police agencies can tap into us.

While we have faith in Chief Smart, we don't know if there's another agency that's going rogue and- Well, I think, and this is a big source of contention, and all of it works in together, and let me just, I hope you guys will entertain me for a minute here. We hear a lot about privacy matters in our world. The other thing we see on things like, I like to call fake book or Facebook, however you want to say it, is AI development in data centers, right? At the end of the day, if you're not paying attention to this stuff, I give this 10 or 15 years with the advancements before quantum computing happens and everything that you know to this day where you think your banking information is stuff secured, it'll be broken by quantum computing. Most people don't know that the quantum computing day was 4-14 of April. Did anybody know this? If you start reading about this stuff, I pay attention to AI a lot, data centers and things like that. There's something to be said about all this data they're collecting for a reason. So as Americans, as independent thinkers, and as free people, I want to maintain that we're doing all we can for freedom. And I'd love to quote Ben Franklin here, those who are willing to give up a little bit of freedom for safety and security deserve neither. And that was one of our founding fathers. So like I said, I'm not trying to be a voice of contention, but I do have concerns.

Mr. Bernard?

Nothing.

Mr. Green?

My only question, how are things going with the CIC? I'm going to ask that again.

I sent an email out.

Did you? Okay.

Regarding...

I'll have to take a look at that.

And we have until September 13th when it expires. So Emmett Kelly, we can read the whole chart.

I'll go back through that. I think I remember seeing that. Yeah, mowing season. Stuff gets in the shuffle here. But I'll take another look at that. That's something we definitely need to get going. That's all I have.

I know Township has reached out about meeting. I wanted to see what everybody thought about that, how we wanted to rotate, who was available when, and whatnot.

Yep, it just needs to be a non-quorum, so we need to send three people, and I think they asked for May 27th at 6.30. Does anyone want to volunteer to go? Who do we want to send?

I have that open. Kyle? Kyle first. I can volunteer to go.

So Kyle, Matt.

I can go if nobody else wants to.

I have it open as well. Okay.

Do you want to do Nicole, Matt, and I the first one? That's fine.

Sure.

If it's okay, I'll just reply to the email. Yeah. And let them know.

That'd be great, thank you.

The CIC email came out April 21st.

Thanks, Tony.

Makes sense, I haven't made it off the lowers.

That's all I have. Yep, congratulations to the freshman band for a superior rating at State. And then I'd like to say congratulations to the class of 2026 who are graduating on Friday night. So, go Johnnies.

Go Johnnies.

Anyone else have anything? Mr. Sheridan?

No.

Jack? Dave? Okay. Motion to adjourn?

I'll second.