City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, I have six o'clock. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Louisville City Council meeting on Tuesday, August 18th, 2026. I will call the meeting to order and ask for approval of the August 18th meeting agenda. I'll make that motion, Mayor.

Second.

Let's go ahead and vote.

Godone?

Yes.

Johnston?

Yes.

McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street?

Yes.

Algianthic? Yes.

Please bow your head in a moment of silent prayer. Amen. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I 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. Roll call.

Get out.

I am here.

Johnston.

Present.

McAllister- Atkins. Here. Street.

Here.

Algianthic. Here.

Okay we have a certificate of an open meeting and I'll ask for approval of the minutes from the July 20th 2026 council meeting. So moved. Jinx.

You and Guy did it together. Joni got it. All right.

Do we have a second?

Second.

All right. Let's go ahead and vote.

Godone?

Yes.

Johnston? Yes. McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street? Yes. Aljancic? Yes.

Okay, presented in front of you is the Mayor's Court report of receipts and disbursements for the month ending July 31, 2026. I'd ask that you accept those as presented. And that brings us to the financial report. Mr. Mack. Floor is yours.

Thank you, Mayor. For the finance report for the month of July, income taxes were actually down 1.2% from this time last year. We're seeing a pretty drastic reduction in the corporate net profit bucket of the income taxes, which we think may kind of be a new normal at this point, if all else remains equal. And if that being the case, if that is true, it could be a loss of somewhere around $200,000 a year in income tax revenue, which will of course have to be made up in the budget process, which we are currently going through. The general fund balance is down from last month in light of the additional transfers we did to the capital fund for City Hall that were approved by Council. The expenditure budget benchmark is 58% for the month of July. All funds are at 52%. The general fund is at 55% when excluding transfers out. Star Ohio interest rate was 3.83%. And then I would like to draw special attention to the brand new seventh page. of the finance report. This is, and I'm gonna be going over the audit results here in a moment, but this is a direct result of one of those management letter comments. They would like to see, and they are technically correct, that the then and now purchase orders over $3,000 be specifically approved by council. So for the month of July, these were the purchase orders. Just as a quick refresher, a then and now purchase order is a purchase order where the purchase order date is after the invoice date. So those are listed there. I'm happy to answer any additional questions on that. I am going to talk a little bit here now about the audit results. Are there any questions on the finance report before I jump into that?

Can you just expand? I mean, some then and nows are like when there's an emergency, it's inevitable. Is that correct?

Oh, absolutely. The reason that they have their own name, which is then and now, and that they're discussed in the law is that they have a good use and purpose in regular activities and things like emergencies or other things, other things can certainly crop up and that's what results in a lot of those. But because historically we hadn't been specifically approving them here, I do think there's a little bit of an element that they were kind of being done out of order at a rate that maybe is a little more than we would have liked, which the auditors caught on to too, so we're gonna take special care to make sure that those are being done in the right order going forward. We've always been in budgetary compliance and things like that, but just keeping these things straight for the sake of the audit and best practices.

It looks like one of them, the payment was made before the actual purchase order was made. Is that typical? Because it looks like the other ones, the payment is always after at least the purchase order.

That one must be a special case because theoretically we can't Or something in the system perhaps, because we can't even push through a payment without there being a purchase order in place. So that might be a thing where the payment was originally initiated on a certain day and saved as a draft and finished up later and it took on the original date. It's possible, but the system does not let us actually post large payments without a purchase order being in place. strictly speaking that's not possible so I'd have to look into that one specifically and figure out why it's dated the way it's dated sounds good okay good good there all right we'll hop over to the audit results as I said There was one audit finding which related to the posting of estimated resources to the ERP system. While it should be noted that we were in full legal compliance with budgetary law the entire time, there's no issues on that front. We're just gonna take extra precautions to make sure that the system reflects what is certified by council and the county and everything was fully above board in that case. There were also three management letter comments. Management letter comments are much smaller things that auditors kind of find as they're going through and they suggest to clean up best practices and things like that. One of them is the then and now purchase orders that we just went over, so I won't belabor that too much. Second is an issue with on behalf payments. Quick, you know, explanation. An on behalf payment happens when a generally a grantor or a lessor pays a vendor directly. These are larger projects, OWDA projects, ODOT projects, things like that, where ODOT will just pay the contractor directly for the work they did and the money never passes through the city. Because of that, A lot of entities, and I have seen it a lot in my career, will just not post those because there's no money changing physical hands. And they bring it on as part of the year-end work to do the audit report. They bring that activity on. It's done a lot. This group of auditors doesn't like it. They want to see it be posted, simple enough to fix. We're just going to start posting. They'll get posted as an equivalent revenue and expense so that it doesn't affect the the balances of the books at all. So we'll start doing that. And then the third thing was an unfortunate scheduling issue. The Records Commission is required to meet twice per year. In 2025, our December meeting ran into some scheduling issues and got pushed into, I think, early to mid-January. They took issue with it. They pointed it out. We're just going to make sure we do two this year. And the one that got pushed into January then is one for this year. So it kind of corrects itself a little bit. So we're just going to make sure that that gets done, but nothing too major there. And that's what was found. Any questions? I'm happy to answer them.

So for the record, they only met once in 2025.

Right. And they're required to meet twice, and that's what was...

Okay. And this was, in your former career, this is what you did, correct?

In a fashion, yeah. I was more on the consulting side of the auditor's office, but I worked very closely with the auditors doing this work, yeah.

Very good. And what these kind of letters, typical for a city or a municipality? Absolutely, yeah.

Especially, this is our first year with this audit group. The state is of course required to audit all these entities every year. They don't have the manpower to do that so they are by law allowed to farm these out. And so the state will take you back for a while just to keep things fresh, make sure new eyes are getting on the audit. This year they farmed this out. Again, this is our first time with these auditors and that will typically come with them picking up on things that maybe they're more concerned about than another audit group or the previous auditors have looked at your stuff so many times that they don't notice anymore and that's the purpose of getting the fresh eyes. But yeah, I've never seen an audit report that didn't have management letter comments. There's always something you can improve on, which is perfectly fine. Sure. All right.

Any other questions for Matt?

No.

Okay, I'll entertain a motion to approve the July 2026 monthly finance report.

I'll make a motion to approve the July 31st, 2026 financial report.

I'll second. Okay, let's go ahead and vote.

Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street?

Yes.

Algiansic? Yes.

Okay, next up is resolution number 26-48.

being a resolution approving the 2027 alternative tax budget document for the city of Louisville.

I'll make the motion we bring resolution number 2648 to the table for discussion.

I'll second.

All right, Mayor. So the approval of the alternative tax budget is just a signaling to the county auditor office that there is a for the property taxes that they collect on our behalf. It's an annual resolution.

Is this it? Just this inside millage? Is that all it's?

That's what we get from the auditor's collections, correct? Yes. Okay.

All right. Same as what we've done in past years. Every year.

Okay.

Very good. Good to vote. Good to vote. All right, let's do it.

Godown?

Yes.

Johnston? Yes. McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street? Yes. Aljancic? Yes.

Okay, next up is ordinance number 26-49.

Being an ordinance accepting the final plot for Aspire at Orchard Park number 2B, located within the corporate limits of the city of Louisville, Ohio.

I'll make a motion that we bring ordinance number 26-49 to the table for its first reading. Second.

All right, Mayor, so as Tiffany said, this is the first reading of the accepting of the final plot. The area that we're talking about is the northeast portion of that residential development. This is just the first reading, but if you have any questions, Mr. Giuliani from the developer is here to answer them along with Dave.

I know we've talked about this a lot. Anything else you'd like to share?

Not at this time, Mayor. Pretty much self-explanatory.

Yeah. Anything else you want to share, Mr. Giuliani?

No, it's the next step. It's going to be 41 single-family lots.

They're making great progress. I just stopped out there today.

It looks good, and it should be ready soon. the city. So they'll be posting a bond here soon. Get ready for the second reading. We'll get everything filed right after that. Because we are hoping to get lots. And I'm kind of pumped after seeing that repository article, St. Louis looks like a hot area for accessing the state, which is great news for us, for you, for me. So that's the next step. And then probably in a few months, we'll be back with phase three, which will be 35 single-family lots that are replacing what was first planned to be 47 townhomes because the townhomes were not that hot. And the single families are basically flying off the shelf once they get home. So that's the plan.

Great. Yeah, sounds great.

Thank you for having me here tonight. Excited to be here. I think it's a great opportunity for all of us.

Yeah, it is, and we certainly need housing. There's no doubt about that.

No doubt. And the price point that DR Orton's coming in with is just amazing.

Right, which is great. It's a good fit, I think, for our community. It is. And, you know, to your point, with 44641 being so hot in Stark County right now with the hits that they're getting on the realtor sites, this is great timing.

Yeah, it is, and hopefully we can take advantage of it. So I'm hoping that it keeps going. it stays this hot and i'm getting to phase three as soon as possible as i'm talking today he said look you see any other land up here i have to take a look at it this has been it's been great dealing with the city um great dealing with dave and all the people that work here

Sounds great.

Good to hear it.

I was thinking back to when we had a couple different presentations on basically the jobs follow the housing. And we all want good-paying jobs to continue to come to our area, and that requires the housing to be there in the single-family homes, those good neighborhoods. Those are the kind of additions we want to add. So thank you. Thank you for coming, and we're looking forward to more homes in the near future.

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Okay, let's go ahead and vote.

Before we vote, Dave, do you know what this takes us up to, a count of homes in that Orchard Park? Oh, I do.

Yeah, okay, very good. This 41 will take us up to, let's see, we'll be 35 short of 199, so it'll take us up to 164.

Okay, and then the next phase will get you to the 199, is that correct? Okay, that's awesome.

Okay, that's fantastic.

All right, now we can vote.

Goodone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street? Yes. Algiansic? Yes.

Okay, that brings us to our public speaks portion. Is there anyone here to speak on anything? Would you like to share anything? Hey, you got three minutes.

Come on down.

I was going to say, that's not 30 minutes. That's three minutes.

So my name is Joseph . My first council meeting was yesterday. But I was introducing a concept of painting patriotic fire hydrants throughout Louisville. There's about 650 to 700. I had some discussions with some of the individuals here. and a couple reasons one is they did it for the bicentennial I wanted to do 250th I thought national and more important civic pride constitution town and also an update of our of our fire hydrants we have a sharp looking fire chief and sharp open fire station engine but some of the some of the some of the fire hydrants are pretty bad so That's that was the crux of it, but then for my last meeting I did some homework and one of the things you guys are talking about having more people move in here businesses move in here and stuff like that, but it would be fantastic if. The individual saw that little detail of a fire hydrant, which is sharp, small detail. They said, look, these guys are paying attention to small details and the safety of our community. So, you know, that might. Draw more people into, I think it was your question. What little things can we do to. As this gentleman was talking last meeting in regards to, you know, what we can do about. bringing people in. The other thing, this is another wild one, but is, and this is some homework, but the PPR, are you familiar with that? Public protection, if you have a good rating of a fire hydrant, a fire station and community, it lowers your home insurances. So it's another. I'm sorry Yes, yes, yes, but it's directly related to a lot of different things hydrants is part of that. Yes I'll take any questions. Oh, I should tell you I was asked to do one downtown, but I didn't I do it did it in the field so a fire hydrant and it's on Thank you married in yoga, so if you want to take a look at it, I didn't do it downtown Any questions, we won't have to take them.

How many are there?

There's somewhere between 650 and 700, depending if you're talking private and public.

The ones at the school, would you leave them as they are? They look like little Smurfs. They're light blue and white.

Yeah, well, I was told today that those are public, private. Those are actually owned by the school.

Are they really? Yeah. Okay, all right. We will go out and test those, but any service that's owned by the school, those are private hybrids.

Okay. I didn't even know you could have a private one. Okay.

and i appreciate that she had talked to us to quote car and couple couple uh... saturdays ago and in the garden it's it's a fantastic project you know i know you've probably seen his stuff what he's done rotary but The fire hydrants once you mention them. It's kind of like once those things you start seeing I've been driving around now I'm like looking at the fire hinds.

I'm like oh my gosh like I didn't I didn't even see them a lot of them before and it's If I looked at all of them I've looked at personally seen at least 400 450 and I will tell you about 20% look pretty decent Which tells you the other 80% probably? a little

Yeah, so I I'm fully behind the prime. I mean the one that you painted looks fantastic I walked down and saw that and on top of the painting that just the Cleaning them and making making sure that you know, they're functional and ready to go and not have old chipped You know paint would be a benefit as well Now I have to tell you there's a lot of concerns that have been you know You can't have just slopping paint on there.

You got it. There's a lot of like I said, I legitimate concerns, from the dredge to the valve cap on the top and stuff like that. So here's the one.

yeah so however we can responsibly move forward and addressing those those concerns especially I have mentioned to Andy like I think it would look great even if we started in 44 and 153 kind of your high traffic yeah areas and then we already have the divisions broken up for how we do the sidewalk program would it make sense to attack it by section that way But, yeah, I was excited.

So that was actually on my list under new business. I presume then that council is okay with granting the permission to start the project. And we have just probably a few more details to work out, but we'll get it going. Or Mr. Klobuchar will get it going.

I had anticipated talk, just so you know. I mean, I have no problem talking. I'm excited about the project.

The one that you did there in our neighborhood, is it probably by the water tower? Is it close? Okay. Is that what we can expect or is there a few different, um, designs?

Well, so this is in the details, you know, um, initially I thought, Oh, everybody, you know, you get a good community project going, so on and so forth, you know, and yet you put your stars on it, you know, and stuff like that and decorated patriotic. But one, 700 and all those fine details could be a little tricky. Two, like I said, there's painting restrictions. So not anybody can just slap stuff on. And the paint's important, but the preparation's equally as important. So to answer your question, perhaps coming into Louisville and the main arteries would be where you'd want to put a lot of good energy. And I've thought about this through. There's five different districts. And you do the districts. And I don't know if it's a community thing, depending on how we go. But you take the top five in each district, top 10, and let them do the main arteries and make them look good. And it's a Constitution town. And this is something that will last, on average, At this particular point, again, if you just throw paint on it, it'll be ready the next year, it'll be chipped and taken. But it could be a good five to eight year, you know. Any other questions?

Rod, is this something you guys would have to do? What, paint? Yeah, if he didn't do it. That's a service. So you guys would have to do this if Bill wasn't taking this project on.

I remember growing up, I mean I'm the oldest one here, but growing up the service department did come around and we would gather around and watch them paint. It was something cool back then.

You'd watch paint dry.

Yes. Outside.

For fun.

That was because we didn't have cell phones or anything. We'd ride our bikes and go over there painting. We thought that was really cool.

And like I said, there's some beautiful neighborhoods. It'll kind of give community pride, too. And some of these are blending into the background. And you don't want that. You want them to stand out. Okay? For many reasons, but that's important.

As of right now, I've not heard anything that's committing city workers to doing the painting.

Well, I just wondered, if he wasn't doing it, would that be your responsibility? And how often do you guys have to do that? It hasn't been done in a long while.

Okay. The fire department wants to jump on it and do it, too. Okay.

I didn't want to commit anybody to anything that wasn't like... We can't hold a paintbrush. One of the things Mr. Gluckhart mentioned, I think he had 50 volunteers at the point when we had talked that had signed up that were willing to help.

No, no, that's not true. I'm sorry. It was an idea, talking to my friends. I said, do you think it would be a good idea? I said, I'm not asking you to paint. I'm not asking you for a donation. So I thought you said no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

So we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Okay, sounds good.

Definitely wouldn't neglect the maintenance of the parks and the roads to Pinkfire. We'll see what we can do. Okay, all right. Let's move on to new business. Looks like we have here a recommendation for the construction manager at risk for the City Hall construction project from the CMAR Evaluation Committee.

Yes, so I guess for the benefit of the council members, we went through this process for the fire station. There's two primary ways that you can do a project like this. One is to have it designed, engineered, and then you go out to bid where interested people will submit a bid and you pick the lowest and best bid. Another way, which is more recently allowable in the state of Ohio, is the construction manager at risk process where You bring a company on board early on to work with the architects and the engineers, primarily in the interest of reducing costs. They're more familiar with the market availability of supplies and materials and can incorporate those variables into the design and the engineering of the building. We did the CMARC process with this building. It worked out really well. So we decided to do it again with the City Hall building, It's all spelled out in many, many places in the Ohio Revised Code. There's all different types of rules and procedures and processes that you have to follow. But the short of it is we had to develop an evaluation committee, which we did. All of the firms that responded to the request for qualifications were evaluated. We shortlisted three of them, meaning we picked the top three. Those three firms then were issued what's called a request for proposal, where they provide both pricing and technical information. and then we evaluate those responses, and we have to subscribe points to different categories that they're required to cover. We went through that entire process. The top three firms that were shortlisted were Hamlin Construction, who built this building, Beaver Constructors, and Cabinal Building. and after going through the entire process beaver constructors is who came out from a point perspective on top and determined to be the best value for the city for the city hall project after you identify that best value firm there are a few things you have to check on in essence before the legislative body which of course is you can accept the recommendation of the committee so I'm just going to run down that list real quick here and this is specific to the Beaver constructor company they have no unresolved findings for recovery issued by the state auditor they are not debarred under ORC 15302 they have not been found by a court to be in default of a judgment or breach of a settlement agreement They have not violated Revised Code 3517-102 by exceeding campaign contribution limits. There have been no clerical errors found in the process that would change who the recommendation is. There are no conflicts of interest known between the voting members of the committee and any of the top three firms. And they are enrolled and are in good standing with a drug-free workplace program. so having said all that our recommendation to council for who will serve as a construction manager at risk for the city hall project would be beaver constructors assuming that you accept that recommendation we would then work to come to an agreement on a contract with them, which you would see the first reading of at the first meeting in September. If for some reason, and I think it would be very unlikely, that we are not able to come to an agreement with a contract, or on a contract with them, we would then close negotiations and move to the next on the list. So that's where we're at.

Guy, I know you were a part of this process.

Yeah.

What would you like to share?

I thought Andy did a phenomenal job of putting this together. It was a ton of work for him. We had a really good day interviewing all three of these construction companies. We had Daryl on site and Corey Smith who did a great job of asking questions to all three of them from a construction perspective, from a pre-construction perspective. They did a phenomenal job with that. We had the architects here. who also were non-voting members, but they really assisted us with a lot of the questions. And Andy had it set up pretty good, too, where we had some time in between each one of these where we could discuss not only the prior construction company, but the one to come. So after we went through a lot of their proposal, we could kind of, I guess, prompt our architects on what questions that we wanted them to ask from an architect perspective and how to frame those questions so we had enough time to do all of that. It just really went smooth. Andy kept us on task the whole way through and it was a great process. I know it's a lot of work but I think it's, It's a lot better for government, and it's a lot better for our city to go through what we went through in a long day and a long process to get through all of this. But I've been involved with stuff like this before where you have to take the lowest bid. And I think the city, the residents, the taxpayers, the city as a whole is better off for what we had to go through and what we're going through using this process. So I appreciate what you guys did.

to get us to this point as i said i think everybody would agree that this this method of acquiring these projects worked really well with the fire department and i and i agree i the the concept of going out to bed with the engineering documents that you know the bid documents for a project of this size or the size of city hall I think it leaves a lot to be desired. I'm much more comfortable with this process. When it comes time to build, the builders, the architects, the engineers, they're all on the same page because they came up with it together. And there's really, I think, a lot less room for error.

Dave, I'm sorry. I think I left you out of that. But I appreciate what you did, too.

Thanks. Now, Beaver's local, correct? Yes. Beaver, their headquarters, I believe, are in Perry Township. They're from the area, yes.

About 30.

Yeah. So there's Beaver Escavating, which has been around for, I think, 75 plus years. And then Beaver Constructors, which is a separate company owned by the same people that have been around, I think, over 15 years.

And they... did they have the contract for the Ed Maslin for the some of the additions they've done over at the school yes like for the football yeah they were working on a football facility she's covering every inch of grass over there there they've got that they're in the library the Key Bank Center at the Hall of Fame in the library to it library and fire station

Those projects will be completed. The completions of those projects corresponds with what we would be starting.

And obviously we would pick the best value for our taxpayer money, but I think it's an added bonus when they have local employees. It helps the local economy start counting at large. Absolutely.

AND I THINK THEY FELT VERY STRONGLY ABOUT THIS PROJECT, BEING A LOCAL PROJECT. THEY SPECIFIED THAT THEY REALLY WANTED THIS PROJECT. AND I ANTICIPATE THEY'LL DO A GOOD JOB.

THEY WERE EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE ON THE PRICING PORTION. WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THE PRICING VERSUS THE TECHNICAL, THE PRICING ISN'T What we would all know is the guaranteed maximum price. It's the fees that are associated with their work on the project. We don't have a cost for the building yet. It's what their fees are for the work based on what is available at the time. Again, they were very, very competitive.

I think we're really fortunate, too, to have... two really, really quality companies that came in to interview to choose from. So we are in a big county, and you would expect that. But we're just fortunate to have quality companies like that that can do this size of a project without a problem. Great. Any further questions? I'm OK to vote on this, right?

Yes, we've confirmed that. Okay. Okay. Do you need a motion? Yeah, just a motion accepting the recommendation of the evaluation committee.

I'll make the motion to accept the recommendation.

Second.

Okay.

Let's go ahead and vote.

Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Streak? Yes. Aljanthic? Yes.

Okay. Very good.

I believe we will need a motion also for council to appoint Tiffany as your designee to complete the required Attorney General's Sunshine Wall training.

Okay. And I appreciate that. I know. know tiffany we're trying to clean things up and do more things just by motion make sure they're they're part of the record i just want to make sure i know some of the trainings at least when we've looked at in the past it's always during the day when a lot of us are at work and i don't want to assume does anybody want to complete the training are we okay with tiffany completing it as our designee and then informing us keeping us keep us on the right side of the law

We do already have two that did complete it. Guy and Tricia both completed it on their own. You get the gold star. So I know it's difficult. It is a three hour training. And you're more than welcome to do it too, Joni, if you wanted to watch in with it. Or I could be the designee and you can do both. It's all yours.

Yeah, I'll make the motion to accept Tiffany as the designee for the Sunshine Law Training.

Second.

OK, go further. Let's go ahead and vote.

Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street? Yes. Algiers? Yes.

Now, was that motion just for me?

It's for whoever doesn't have the job.

Okay, all right, it's for everyone. In the past, it's been everyone. Correct.

I can tell you, it has gotten a little more lengthy compared to what it was.

It's interesting, though.

So you're saying encouraging people to do it, right?

Yeah, on one of those flights to Europe. Yes, yes. Yeah, right. Get the internet into it. Yeah, yeah.

Very good.

um okay hey let's let's go ahead for um department i'm sorry i skipped over department head uh reports so yeah i sent you the information on that train phone company with uh yeah i've met with them a couple of times they do seem to have a great product especially for communities like ours uh unfortunately it is it is very expensive So what I left with them was that it likely wouldn't be something that would get funded unless there was considerable grant funding. But I think it will maybe help us seek that out. But essentially for anybody that didn't get a chance to take a look at it, A notification sets a system for residents and for first responders when a train is stopped on the track as it was a little while ago for an extended period of time so that people could pre-plan to avoid the area. But again, it's not inexpensive.

I know we have some really good grant writers.

Are the train stoppages happening more than usual this year?

I think beyond the one that lasted for so long, which was caused by a derailment, I don't know that they're any more frequent.

I think there was just another one that same week. Yes. It just happened to be on the same week.

It was considerably more frequent. We, as city officials have, A lot of the same questions that the community had as far as why they couldn't back it up, why it was necessary to stop it. Why they don't give us a warning. Why they don't give us a warning, why the information about what's going on comes so slowly. As I have said before, we are at the whim of the railroad.

Have we experienced any problems with, like, our emergency services getting stuck or not being able to make it somewhere?

So, fortunately, from the police standpoint, it's relatively easy for the police vehicles to get around that. And I know that the fire chief, of course, coordinates with the township on necessary responses. So it doesn't. Not that it creates an ideal situation, but it doesn't create the kind of issues that I think most people would be concerned about with respect to public safety.

This company, did they reach out to you? Or were you looking for something?

They reached out to us. It's been a couple of months ago that they did that. I've had a couple of online meetings with them, several online meetings with them. Because then, you know, they had to obviously get some information from us, take a look at the tracks, get some data, come up with a cost for our particular circumstances. Okay.

And I replied to your email, but not until like 5 o'clock today, so you wouldn't have seen it.

A question I had, though, was...

Is there something else out there for first responders instead of a big system, a big elaborate system like that? Is there something that they already have? Does the railroad company not allow people to see their schedules and things of that nature? Do they not send out alerts?

Is there a way we can do this without that cost? I don't know that the schedule would be the issue. It would be the own anticipated stops that kind of create the problem. And again, it's...

it's very difficult what's that yeah if you do so researching I didn't know if there was maybe a smaller system or an easier just something for

Yes, I know it's a pain for citizens that you're coming into town and you have to sit for an hour. I get that. However, the important would be that a fire truck can get around, which sounds like Rod's already got something in place with Nemeshilla, and I'm sure the police have somebody always on both sides of the tracks at all times. I mean, this isn't... These railroad tracks are not new to our town.

Correct. And we've also, of course, had a lot of experience with the flooding, which also kind of cuts the city in half when it happens. So I know police and fire are good at adapting to when those circumstances happen.

Where do we stand with the crossings?

Well, the good news is the stuff that we can control You see the second set of tracks that was on Constitution that was so poor they've been removed and that's been asphalted. We are still waiting for word from Norfolk Southern on the potential cost of installing the rubber surfaces over the crossings and The privately owned ones, they are also waiting to get information about the company because they would also like to install the rubber surfaces to make them consistent and smooth. But again, we're relying on the railroad.

We'll take a follow-up next meeting where that's at. Okay.

Okay. Anything else? That's all I have, Mayor. All right.

Chief? Thank you, Mayor. Fire Department has nothing new to report today unless someone has some questions for me.

I did see them out doing a few flushing of the hydrants on this thing.

Actually, we're testing the flow rates on them. Oh, is that what that was? Yeah, we do a district every year. So they're in District 3 right now. Just before it started raining buckets. They had to get soaked. Yeah, yeah. Yep, that'll be going on until they get a district done. Okay.

All right, very good. Dave? Mayor, Council, I have nothing at this time. Okay.

Daryl? Actually, I do have a few things that I was excited to tell you all about. The air conditioning at the Constitution Center is wrapping up. They're finishing it up. Great. So they'll have cold air just in time for it to turn full and get cold outside. I know that the community cover will be happy to hear that. So they're dynamic. HVAC is doing that job. They're doing an actual, they're doing a really good job installing that. The other thing I wanted to point out, this was at the end of July, but we didn't have a meeting since then, but New Point Church came into town. I think you and I talked about this a little bit. We kind of did a joint project with them. They wanted to bring in people and do some work in the parks so we went ahead. Normally every other year we get playground mulch for some of the playgrounds and we got playground mulch for Aljancic and Wilson and they brought in a group of like 20 some people and they spread the mulch out. and did a really beautiful job. So if you get a chance, I was gonna bring pictures, but if you get a chance to go by Aljancic and Wilson, I was vibing there again today, it looks really, really nice. I'm thankful for them.

Your splash pad is, like I never saw so many people with a splash pad on.

It is a, yeah, it is a, I was excited. I've been driving around the parks more. The baseball fields are being used, maybe not so much in Metzger Park. Wildwood's being used quite a bit. Splash pad is just every day. People are knocking on the door to get in there, so it's cool to see. Like to see this stuff get used. Absolutely. Sure. And then the last thing I'll bring up, and this is kind of a knock on wood sort of a thing. The creek clearing project that we've been doing, we keep track of the rainfall amounts at the sewer plant at the end of Chapel down here. We, Sunday, there was about an inch and a half of rain. And to my knowledge, we didn't see any issues around town as far as flooding. And that's happened a couple of times this year, but I'm pointing out this past Sunday. I actually had one of our employees says he has a rain gauge at his father-in-law's house, and he said he got over two inches of rain at his father-in-law's house. That's an enormous amount of rain. rain and I would like to say knock on wood hopefully that's due to some of the creek clearing that we've been able to accomplish in some of that project but again we're excited that so far it seems like that's going well with the flooding around town Darren weren't you

We are applying for some additional funding to Muskingum.

Yeah, Muskingum Watershed has a couple of different grant options for us that we are applying for. We're kind of in the process right now. The first one is a one-time grant of $20,000 that you can apply for and get funding, but it's a one-time deal. But what they advised us was go ahead and apply for that grant because if they deem your project to be an ongoing project that can go year after year after year they have a continual funding source for that that we might be able to get to so I will say that the creek clearing it's kind of one of the things where those guys take material out of that creek okay and the water level goes down and then they move down the stream and they keep going what happens is the water level goes down and it just exposes more stuff in the bottom of the creek so then they gotta come back and almost start over take more out and there's just that much stuff in that creek down there. I would love to take pictures and show you guys but every time I go to do that, it's just exposed more logs and stuff laying in the bottom of it. I'd show you those and you'd be like, Well, they didn't do anything. But yeah, Dave's right. There is a couple of grand opportunities for us that we're looking into to keep that going.

And we are in the process, Commissioner Harrell, me and Andy were at an event, and we set up a meeting here in a couple weeks with Muskingum about possibly getting additional funding for projects here in those fields.

Chief, you've seen like where I live, where it's been flooded like, worst it's flooded since I've lived there. Worst, I've had ducks and geese because it's my whole backyard is like nothing but a pond. And he was there, so you saw it. I mean, it was never like that. It was always Metzger's that got flooded. That ended town.

Yeah, that was such an enormous amount of water. That wasn't due to the creeks overflowing. It was because the voluble water,

storm sewer system just couldn't absorb it as quickly as it was accumulating i mean that wasn't the only time it just happened the other day was it two days ago or whatever i couldn't move i could move the front and the side but i couldn't move my backyard because the wheels were soaked on my lawnmower And my neighbor too, he said he's never had that much water in his backyard either. And then when I had somebody that's coming to look at my house to add some soil, he looked in the creek or whatever and he said there's a big, island of silt or you know sand and stuff or dirt that's all in there and he he quoted me a price for him to take it out but it's not my yard it's not i said no it's not my property so we'll see what the people have to say he said it's just been accumulating for decades and it's there

How far on the, the Creek removal is it, are they all the way done? Are they halfway? They three quarters or what percentage of that project are they?

Cause a lot of it, we don't, you can't see from the road. It's going to be a multi-year. And so if you look at the watershed. WHERE WE STARTED IS THE SOUTHERN PORTION OF THE CITY, PRETTY MUCH NEAR THE CITY LIMITS AT THE MAIN BRANCH. AND THEN AS YOU GO NORTH UP TO, SAY, WEST MAIN STREET, YOU CROSS UNDER 153, AND THEN YOU HAVE THE AREA THAT YOU JUST REFERENCED, KIND OF ACROSS FROM METSKET, BUT THEN THERE'S TRIBUTARIES THAT GO OFF. SO IF YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT ALL OF IT, IT'S DEFINITELY GOING TO BE A MULTI-YEAR PROJECT. We'll, of course, continue to make progress with what seems, as Daryl said, knock on wood, which seems to have a very positive effect on the water coming out of the banks, but it's going to be a process.

Just for landmark reference points, the first phase of it took us up almost past where the out here so they're yeah thank you so they're about even with that that's the first phase of it but like he said that was us going all the way down to the border the city limits down there and starting there and working our way up past the sewer plant and starting heading north from there

I don't know that I remember a summer where at some point we did not have flooding over Main Street and Chapel. That's what we very fortunately have not had this year.

Yeah, and we all have that. So there's that level gauge that's on the bridge there that runs over 44 on the north side up there. So a lot of us in the service department, you can get alerts for that. you can sign up to get an alert when it goes over a certain threshold we've all been kind of waiting to get an alert that it's gone over that threshold and it just doesn't it hasn't yet so again knock on wood but hopefully that's good news okay well that that almost seems like an ongoing project i would think right i mean well i i think so

And Darryl, tell me if you disagree. I don't know if this has ever been done before as far as cleaning or the bed clearing, which is what the Army Corps of Engineers calls it. I don't know that it's ever been done. There are probably trees in there that have been there 50 years.

Yeah, I don't think it has. And those largely due to the fear of touching any of it. For the longest time, what can you do? What are you allowed to do? And it wasn't until the Army Corps of Engineers, they came in and did their report. And they said, hey, this is the best bang for your buck here is to clear the dead stuff out, clear the debris out of it. That's adding capacity in itself to just get that stuff out of the way.

Certainly not that it would require maintenance over time, but ideally we would never be in this position again.

But just looking at a really, really small sample size of the tributary, I mean, I had about 300 feet in my backyard of the Broad Monarch. And for 25 years, it looked different all the time. I would clear it out and something else would fall or come down. you know, from the west, it was kind of constant. So if you're only looking at 300 feet there of a tributary, I can't even imagine over the course of 25 years what the Nimshon Creek would look like. There's a lot more area to cover. There's a lot.

Daryl, do you guys haul it away, or do you just put it out far on the banks where it couldn't get back in?

So what they did was they brought in a wood chipper. Okay. And a lot of the bigger stuff they had to haul away, but then as much as they possibly could, they were just chipping it up and just spraying it off away from the bank there.

Okay. We're paying a company to do it. Our service guys are doing it. Got you.

yeah i'm sorry i probably should have clarified that but yeah it's the tree company that's coming in to help so and did you see an advantage at the water treatment plant of like excess water that it's pumping through there or no you just saw that we haven't been flooding not not yet but i'm not entirely convinced that that the two are 100% related. I'm sure there's some crossing over there, but not to get off on whatever, but I think that's got some other issues there, why we're seeing those high flows. I think there's other issues contributing to that. It's a high flow, and then it drops off. So that indicates a big rush of water above, not necessarily below.

Okay. And that's one of the many projects that the service department is pursuing to address that so that we can get that processing rate a little closer to the number of gallons of water that we produce. Correct. Okay. Very good.

Chief?

I don't have much. It starts tomorrow, so my SROs are back. And we need crossing guards, if anybody knows anybody. That's what I heard. Yeah, yeah. And second?

The retirees are probably the best. I know, I know. I agree. Still in good working shape, but with the time to be able to serve.

I agree, I agree.

Are you talking about Roman? Yeah, that's right, that's right.

I want to ask back to school you know obviously on my mind how many issues do we have with people in the city

not too often and honestly the the buses are really good they have a reporting system down with us on how they can report it to us and if we can get it on camera and then make contacts so it is it is not often that there's an issue and honestly most of the people who do they don't do it on purpose they may just not realize or not have knowledge

I know it's a little bit different in a city with a lower speed limit than out in the townships. Correct. Or roads where people are flying.

Correct.

Things like that. But, yeah, I know some other cities seem to be having issues with it, or they looked at different ways. But I never heard it brought up. I haven't heard it brought up by schools or us.

It's not very often that they contact us. So it is not an issue for us.

All right. I know it's a hot topic, and I talked to you already about it. Did the flock cameras that got taken down, did those get replaced or repaired?

We're working on it, and I talked to Detective Clark because he runs our flock camera system. I thought it would be better for him to – he's going to come to the next council meeting and try to explain how it works because he runs it and then reports to me. It's just – I think more beneficial if you hear it from him because he can answer all of your questions. It's been, people have actually been coming into station and asking questions and we've been very open about what we use the cameras for, how it works and how it's monitored and then when people leave they have a little more assurance They're reading stuff that isn't always accurate. So he'll be explaining that. Yeah, he's going to do a PowerPoint for you whenever he has.

Love it. Was that part of the over $3,000 expenditures that was on that list? Yes. That was one of the reasons why?

No, that's just how we paid for it.

But did you pay for it because of the problems that we had with that?

No, that's not. It wasn't related? No.

Okay. Did the ones that get vandalized, did they get replaced yet?

They're going to.

They're going to? Yes. Okay, so North Canton had several as well, so I guess we're not the only ones in the area, I'm sure.

I think that's a good point, like when finding those people. Yeah, they're very beneficial for us for plenty of things. He'll do a PowerPoint, but like stolen vehicles, protect the victims. If there's somebody who has a warrant and maybe a domestic violence victim and they leave in a car, we know what car they're in. We've used it to find elderly people who drive off and may have a medical issue or mental health issue, and we found them counties away or in our city. If another county's looking for someone who may be missing, I know it's been used to find abducted children, missing children, missing adults. We actually had a, speaking of school, someone that worked for the school have a medical issue and we were able to locate them in Cuyahoga County because of the plot camera and get them an ambulance and to a hospital. So it's done a lot of really good things for us.

Well, it'd be interesting to know what you didn't find because some were vandalized or stolen.

Right, right.

Yep, so I would encourage anybody who has questions, you know, or they're curious about plot cameras. Next meeting.

Next meeting or, I mean, honestly, people come in. We're open. You can come to the police department if you have a question on, you know, what we use them for and how they work. And I think the big concern is how they're monitored. So people get a lot of relief when we explain, hey, You have to put in a case number, you know, our detective monitors who puts in the case number, what it's used for, and then I monitor, you know, when the detective uses it so that it's used for actual cases that are open. We're not just putting in plates just because we feel like it.

Tristan Stutler had a great post on that.

Yes, he did. I appreciate that.

Okay. All right. Can't wait to hear. Okay. So I will just entertain a motion to move us into executive session for the purpose of discussing confidential economic development information and for the purpose to consider the possible purchase of real estate for public purposes.

So moved.

Second. Let's go ahead and vote. Yes.

Johnston?

Yes.

McAllister-Atkins? Yes. Street?

Yes.

Algiansic? Yes.

Okay. No business expected to follow. Have a good night, everybody.

Mayor, can we move into the other room that way?