City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to Athens City Council. Today is Monday, August 24th, and we are in committees this evening. We will begin with the Committee of the Whole. Committee of the Whole includes all council members, and our first topic is recent flooding. I know that recent flooding has been something of concern for a number of residents, particularly those who've experienced water in and around their homes and their businesses. Tonight's purpose is to understand what has occurred, to hear what residents have experienced, learn what the city already knows about at this point, and identify questions for follow-up so that we can understand next steps. I also know that several people may have come with the intention to speak specifically on the topic of recent flooding. If you could raise your hand in the audience if you plan to speak on the topic of recent flooding this evening. All right, that's just to give me an estimate of how much time we'll have for committee topics. We tend to try to keep them to 15 minutes, but we will extend that so that we have an opportunity for everyone who came to talk about flooding to be able to do so this evening. At this point, I will remind folks that the sequence of speaking terms we use for committee meetings will begin with this kind of introduction from me as the chair of the Committee of the Whole, and then we'll move on to the mayor and then to the public before coming back to council for discussion. That means council members may need to make note of any questions they have as they are listening to the mayor or to the public. At this time, I'd like to turn things over to Mayor Patterson to offer any initial remarks.

I'll defer to when Council makes some remarks because I do know that Council was at the meeting last Wednesday evening at Fire Station 2. I think it would be good for the public and those who are here to hear Council's perspective on those things and then I can follow up with the city's course of action as it pertains to both Richland Avenue and East State Street.

I think that would be helpful because I do understand that not only our ward representatives, but our at-large council members have been hearing from business owners and residents. So I believe I'd like to just offer all council members who'd like the opportunity to comment on the types of concerns that they've been hearing or suggestions that they've been sharing to do so. Do we have any council members who'd like to comment on the topic of recent flooding to get us started? Member Stazer? Go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I was one of the people at the meeting last Wednesday. And for the couple of weeks prior to that, I'd gotten a lot of communications from business owners on Richland. And so I thought that it was a good thing that people from the city could come and meet with concerned people. business owners and hear sort of what they're experiencing and then try to work together to find a solution. And several possible solutions or ways to address the flooding were talked about last Wednesday and I think that probably Mayor Patterson will highlight some of those when we're done with this part.

Thank you members taser a member swing. Did you also attend the meeting and have some thoughts to share?

Yeah Yeah, I attended the meeting. I'm gonna be very very brief because We have in our audience this evening some people who are going to speak from a an expert point of view Also from an experiential point of view, and I think it would be best to, in my opinion, to hear what they have to say first before council weighs in on this. I will say this, and I think the mayor would agree with me 100%. The meeting we did have at the Richland Avenue fire station, fire station number two was one well attended. Many opinions were heard. And as a former high school history teacher, I wish I had a video of the meeting because the civility in the room was what public discourse is all about. And I'd just like to say publicly, because I know there are people at home watching, I would like to thank the business people who came and expressed their concerns, which we're going to address this evening.

Thank you, Member Swank. Do we have any other council members who'd like to offer any initial reports? Member Wood.

Can I ask a point of order? Yes.

Will this be our only opportunity to speak and- No, we'll be able to entertain some comments and questions from council after we hear from the public. Yeah, okay. Would you like to wait until then?

Yeah, I mean, I'll add in just that I think that this has obviously been an ongoing issue. We've been talking about it for some time and we've had water issues on my ward for some time. So Richland obviously is not my, the flooding there is not in my ward. But we do have things on that side of the hill that I've heard more about as well. Recently I heard more about the water coming down The road that I cannot recall right now, above Devil's Kettle and bringing water into that on the steep side there, Terrace, thank you, on Terrace Drive as well. So, hopeful that we can also address some of those ongoing issues that are going on in my ward as well.

Thank you, Member Wood. Do we have any other council members who'd like to offer preliminary comment? All right. I will say that one of the questions I've been hearing is indicating that the public doesn't always have a general understanding of how we attempt to do maintenance on our sewers. So some folks have asked, do we do maintenance? And the answer is, of course, yes. We do have a team of dedicated staff members and employees, but it's a small team. And I will turn things over to the mayor to further comment on how the city works to address these issues.

Thank you.

I'll start with Richland Avenue, the Richland Avenue corridor. And some of the outcomes from the meeting that we had were threefold, a short-range plan, a mid-range plan, and a long-range plan that may sound familiar to Councilmember Swank because we had a conversation about something like that. Short range plan at this point is that we are going to dredge underneath all of the bridges along Richland Avenue, the Richland Avenue corridor, as well as some of the culverts that feed into it. That'll start in September. Things do need to dry out a little bit or else we're just pushing muck from one side to the other, and that's not effective. We have done this before. We did it in 2025 to where we did dredging, but unfortunately, because of access on properties, we were only able to get so far with that project as we were removing sediment that was building up underneath several of the bridges. The bridge I refer to as the Stop and Cop Bridge, the Summit at Coats Run Bridge, as well as the bridge further up by the South Y near Pete's BP and Classic Gold Realty that's in that area. So we have that as the short range. The mid-range plan is to put more expensive elements along the corridor, most notably industrial strength, trench drains that would be put in place. We're currently looking for the most proper type of trench drain because we have a lot of cyclists that run in the area and we don't want to install something that is going to significantly impede or harm any cyclists. But we are confident that we will find something. We have strategic locations for something like that. And then the long range plan, which know this, it is a long range plan, is to explore putting in some large, deep detention tanks along the Richland Avenue corridor. That's gonna be expensive, but it's something that we are exploring. But I wanna be really clear. Both, or all these plans, whether it's a short-term, short-term, short-range plan, a mid-range plan, or a long-range plan, when you have three to five inches of rain coming down in a very short period of time into any hauler anywhere in the Appalachian region, it's going to produce flash flooding. So we feel that this will help mitigate the flash flooding that is taking place in that corridor. Now, as I mentioned at the last council meeting, When it comes to East State Street, one of the things that Engineering and Public Works is going to start doing is smoke testing, where they use smoke in the storm as well as the sewer mains to see if they can identify any areas where there may be intrusion of other waters into either system and to see what is creating the overpressuring that may be going on in that particular corridor near Kindred Market, near the residents that live along there as well. So the Department of Engineering and Public Works is working on doing the smoke testing in that area. Historically, when you do smoke testing, at times there is smoke that will come up through someone's downspouts because that house may be of an age in which back in the day they would literally tie your downspouts and the clay ductile pipe into the sewer system. Because that's what they did back in the 1830s, 40s, 50s, whatever. And so therefore, during this testing, people may notice that there is smoke coming, potentially, coming up from their downspout, which can be alarming. But we will make sure that everyone in the affected areas, that they are notified when the smoke testing is to take place. and hopefully give ample notice that this is what's going on. You can sometimes see it coming up from the catch basins and other things. Again, it's certainly going to have an odd look to it as we're doing that level of examination in that area. Again, to see the amount of rain that we had twice in roughly a 30-day period of time, Is a challenge I mentioned this at the last council meeting when I look at the three feet of water that Crooksville Up in Pike County up in Perry County Had to endure and we had did send watercraft and firefighters up there to assist but we also had a number of safety service providers here in the city of Athens our police department and stationed to help out where was needed when people did not turn around—thank goodness they did not drown—but when you see high water anywhere in the city of Athens or elsewhere, don't attempt to forge through it. You know, it tends to lead to something worse than you thinking that you're just going to plow through this thing and get to the other side. It's dangerous.

Thank you. Mr. Mayor, are there any other areas of the city where you're seeing flooding impacts that you'd like to address right now, or are you ready for us to move on to the public?

I'm glad that Council Member Wood pointed out Terrace Drive and the water that must have been sheeting down from that corridor. I was not tracking any significant flooding on Columbus Road, but to hear that from you, I appreciate that. Something that we can look at as well. So it's going to be a process, but that's our plan, and we intend to stick to that plan to get these things done so we can identify areas in which we can make some improvements.

Thank you, Mayor Patterson. We'll now move on to public input. Would you please raise your hand if you intend to speak on the topic of flooding, just so I can get an updated number? All right, wonderful. If you would please, if you're willing to approach the podium first to be our first speaker from the public, we'll have you sign in and introduce yourself. And any of you may go first. We'll just have you approach the podium. Thank you. Thank you. And when you sign in, if you wouldn't mind letting us know your name and if you live in Athens, and if you're representing yourself or an organization.

I am Dr. Natalie Cruz-Daniels. I do not live in the city of Athens, and I represent myself. I hold a doctoral degree in civil engineering and geosciences and have decades of experience in hydrology, nature-based solutions, water management, and flood mitigation. Most recently, I was the lead author on a flood mitigation plan for Floyd County in eastern Kentucky, which has been devastated by floods. for the past several years. And additionally, I was the faculty advisor on the study that was referenced in the Army Corps report that recommended green infrastructure options for the Richland Avenue corridor. And our group also shared water level data with the Army Corps during the development of that plan for calibration of their models. So as with a lot of hydrologic change, there's a lot of factors that influence where it's gonna flood and when it's gonna flood. And that also then gives us layers of different things we can do to address it. Alongside those increasing threats of climate change, and intense rainfall driven by that, we have these warmer sea surface temperatures that drive more atmospheric moisture, and so we see these really intense rainfall events. So for this region, what we expect in a changing climate is dry, dry, and wet, wet. So these really intense rainfall events are things we expect to see again. That's layered on top of the highway construction in the headwaters of Coats Run, the development of Courtyard and Summit on the bridge tops, the high percentage of impervious areas on the Richland Avenue Business District, and then the construction of the access bridge to Summit upstream of the Richland Avenue Bridge right by Purple Chopsticks, which has basically a nine-degree bend. The stream has to go around between those two in a very short time. very short space, and water doesn't really love doing that. So the flooding ends up being a result of that interaction between storm intensity, design, and the actual level of service of bridges and culverts. Operation of stormwater detention up on the summit and courtyard, storm sewer capacity and maintenance, which can't necessarily deal with that high intensity, right? We have to figure out what to do when we do have that high intensity because we should expect it, right? And then soil moisture from those preceding storms. So this summer, we saw rainfall intensities were about a half percent chance of happening in any given year, so about a 200-year recurrence. That doesn't mean it's not going to happen for another 200 years. It's an annual recurrence. And we know that frequency is changing. So in the Army Corps report on the Richmond Avenue corridor that has been referenced really heavily, it's a really strong basis for planning in the city. But I want to zoom in on a couple of things that are in that report that I think are important for the council and the public to understand. So if we zoom into the area near Stop and Crop and Purple Chopsticks, the Army Corps analysis shows that both Summit and Richland bridges both overtop at a reasonably low storm recurrence. So they overtop at maybe like a 10-year recurrence. In some of the models, it showed a five-year. Bridges and culverts are generally designed for a certain recurrence interval of storm. So that means the probability of that storm happening in any given year. Typically, a bridge will be designed for a design recurrence based on the level of traffic, how important that road is, things like that. So an interstate is going to be higher than a township road. Typically, that's going to be a 10 to, I know, I'm sorry.

Would it be possible for you to finish in two minutes?

Probably, yes.

Okay, please continue.

I practiced. Thank you. So typically that's 10 to 25 years.

Sorry, sorry, not that two minutes, okay.

I'm going to get the hook next. Thanks. In that Army Corps report, what we saw is regardless of what the level of service those bridges were designed for, That at a two-year storm or a 50-year recurrence, or 50% chance of happening in any given year, so a two-year storm, that those bridges did raise the water level upstream of the summit bridge, where Purple Chopsticks is, by several inches. That doesn't sound like much, but it probably matters. A couple inches matters to Purple Chopsticks, right? So that's the difference between the dining room and the patio. And that at a five- to ten-year recurrence, which is 10% to 20% chance of happening in any given year, those bridges overtop. And so we also know that the Army Corps modeled the summit bridge as built, so it's full size. But as the mayor referenced, dredging has happened and has to be repeated, which makes us wonder, how can we do more sediment management and erosion management in the watershed as a whole to limit that effect? So if I were to lay out a management plan today based on the information I have, I would say in the short term, we know it's going to flood and we need to reduce the impacts of that flood. So we focus on reducing impacts to those businesses by first deploying temporary flood barriers and having a data-driven plan for when we would deploy temporary flood barriers to protect a business like Purple Chopsticks, which is likely to flood. We would, I would evaluate if the stormwater infrastructure at Summit is operating as designed or whether there's maintenance needed there and develop a planning process ahead of forecasted larger rainfall events. We know who's gonna do what and when, what the communication is, who's checking to make sure things aren't clogged, things like that. Then I would look at dredging, of course, looking at reducing parking requirements in that corridor to give space for more pervious surfaces for more infiltration and develop a nonpoint source implementation strategy for that watershed to open up the door to 319 funding for nature-based solutions for for flood control. In the long term, I would look at sediment management and plans to manage sediment input, look at changing the bridge design to look at hydraulics rather than passage. I know, I'm sorry, I have two more things to say.

Dr. Cruz-Daniels, we appreciate you taking the time to do so. Would you be willing to make sure we have your contact information?

Yes, so I'm happy to talk, I'm happy to answer questions, I'm happy to serve as a resource. where I can, this is what I do. So yes, I'm happy to share my expertise with the city, however that's helpful.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come and to share that. If we could have our next speaker approach the podium. Anyone who's here to speak on the topic of recent flooding, we'll have you approach the podium and introduce yourself. And based on the projected number of speakers on this topic, it does look like if you've prepared remarks that take just a little bit more than three minutes, we should be able to accommodate that. But in general, we'll be setting our timer for three minutes per speaker. And if you would introduce yourself, letting us know your name, if you live in Athens, and if you're representing yourself or a group.

Thank you. My name is Frank Fugate. My address is 1900 Bedford Road, Columbus, Ohio. I have a property at 536 Richland Avenue, so that's why I'm here. We all know about the flooding. What I'm here tonight is to approach council about, and the mayor, thank you for our meeting that we had last week. For me, it was very informative. I think it was also informative for the folks, to Councilman Swank and the mayor and the service safety director. I think it was a really good meeting. Moving on quickly, extended study. As I've been waiting for a long time, it's finally come. I'm a little disappointed. Like the lady spoke, I don't know who she is, but they talk about to make things right, you have to take all the bridges out. The only thing that works was the fourth plan. It just, the plans they came up with is not gonna work because the corridor's already been developed so much in the floodplain. I like what you said about retention and getting things under control that way. I think that should be our first step. Andy Stone, Service Safety Director, last year applied for Hazard Mitigation Grant. and was not able to get it. I think he needs to apply again. I think council should push him on that again. I don't know why that brings up a smile, but I don't know if it exists. I don't know anything about it. The properties are also in a qualified census track, which would allow community development funds to do some of the things that I overheard her say quickly about temporary or permanent flood prevention barriers, and that could be something that could be done. Even engineering could be done with community development funds. One of the things that Mr. Stone has talked to me about, he says when I get the time, I send crews out, they straight stuff out, they pull logs out, they dig a little bit. And they've done most of their work down by the Richland Bridge and the Coppin Stop, that area, which the report said that was the most impacted area, which is good. I'm at the other end of it. The study didn't go that far. And the old bridge that's there by Paul Palta's and the log cabin, That bridge is really backing up water, and it's getting worse because there's a slug of sediment coming down. So we need to get focused on that, in my opinion. We leave the choke points. One of the most important things that I didn't know about is a lot where the old Morrison School is, and if you don't know where it is, Google it, is a choke point. And this choke point is created by ODOT. The hillside is slipping down.

Will you be able to finish in the next two minutes?

Yeah.

Okay.

The hillside is slipping down. ODOT has done some mitigation of doing something with bladders at the top of the hill, but that is a choke point. We need counsel. We need the mayor. We need the service director. We need to get to ODOT. We need to get to District 10 because that's what's flooding a lot of the people that's South, which is crazy, which is south of the school. That really needs to be addressed so that we can get a flow in there. That's about all I have. The last thing I have. is I really would like to see, I don't want this to get swept under the rug. I've been owning the property over 50 years with my parents. It's been swept under the rug the last 10 years. It's time that maybe we get a budget item, coach run maintenance, where we have a small budget or a large budget, that we go in annually, monthly. There's a budget there showing where we have gone in. We've cleaned out debris, we've dug out things, and there's kind of a status report, and we're kept up to date. The property owners are like, we can find some place to look to see that this work's been done. Thank you.

Thank you so much. If we have anyone else who's here to speak on the topic of flooding, please approach the podium and use the sign-in sheet to leave your contact information. We'll ask that you introduce yourself with your name and whether you live in Athens and if you are representing yourself or an organization.

My name is Heather Eubanks. I live at 283 East State Street in Athens. I'm here because I feel like somebody that was affected in our neighborhood needs to be heard by the council. I'm glad to hear from Mayor Patterson that they have Said they're going to do smoke testing. We bought our house in September of 2021. The first time I called about an issue with the sanitary sewer in front of our house was June 2022. June 2026, the water and sewer poured into our basement at 415 in the morning, flooding our entire finished basement. Our bedroom was down there. Due to the water containing sewage, all of our belongings that were in the six inches of standing water and sewage could not be salvaged. Our furniture, our belongings all had to be disposed of. Our flooring was removed and our walls were flood cut four feet to mitigate the damage. We lost our bedroom, my husband's office and his music studio, our laundry room, our second bathroom and storage areas. Our ServPro bill loan was $17,000. That didn't include the removal of all our belongings and we placed them ourselves into a dumpster. We're not sure where to go from here. Our concern is paying large amounts of money to refinish our basement again when we're not sure that there isn't an issue and this wouldn't happen again. So we would just like updates from the city and some kind of commitment to make sure that there's nothing wrong with the sanitary sewer that flooded our basement.

That's all I have.

Thank you for taking the time to share that personal perspective. If the next person would like to speak on the topic of recent flooding could approach the podium. Please take a moment to sign in and then we'll have you introduce yourself. If you'd please begin by sharing your name, if you live in Athens, and whether you're representing yourself or a group.

My name is Mark Spezza. I do not live in Athens. My wife and I have a business at 530 Richland Avenue, Classic Gold Real Estate. I've owned this business for about 35 years. We bought the building in 1991. The building has been surveyed and certified to be one foot above the floodplain. Since the US 33 on and off ramps were installed, approximately 2003, every year I've seen more and more rainwater running down Richland Avenue. These on and off ramps have created acres of additional rainwater pouring onto the entrance of Richland Avenue. You can stand there in a storm and just watch the water pour down these ramps onto Richland Avenue. This is really where the flooding starts. The first time my building flooded was July 20th, 2013. At that time, Rainbow International, Did the water and mud cleanup, Dave Seeger power washed the building and cleaned the lot. Since then I've had mud and water in my building three additional times, June 4th of 20. June 18th of 26th and August 11th of 26th. These flooding events have cost my business $9,000 out of pocket expense. But for me, the real cost is the disruption of my business. I'm sure all of you have seen the photos and videos of the flooding on Richland Avenue. A lot of this flooding is preventable. I have some photos to share with you. I'm not going to do that now. At the end of my presentation, I will give them to you and we can discuss them if you would like. I believe that all the flooding starts on two choke points. the Pomeroy and South Richland Avenue Bridge. These bridges were built in 1935 to handle a certain volume of water at that time, which they no longer can handle because of development and lack of maintenance. The silt and debris that has built up in Coast Run has gotten to a point where even a modest rainstorm can overwhelm the bridge capacities. There are There are obstructions under the bridge you will see in some of these photos and I think ultimately that's where we start is cleaning under the bridges, but there is also a lot of capacity that can be utilized by removing the buildup on the sides of the bridges. These bridges no longer have a full span opening, they have been choked down with as much as five and six feet of silt and mud over the years. With these two bridges, I think this is where we should start. I think cleaning between these two bridges can minimize a lot of the flooding that's taking place on Richland Avenue. I would personally like to invite any of the council members that have an interest in the flooding to come and see what I'm talking about. I can point this out. I would like the Mayor and obviously Andy Stone, the City Service Director, to see what we can do to minimize this flooding. I think that this really is work that can be done pretty much immediately. Some of this Some of this blockage can be removed whether there's water in the creek or not because it's really outside the main little flow of water that's in there now. So my pitch to you is come see what we can do. I think there's a lot of work that can be done almost immediately. I have some photos that I'll give you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And we will have your contact information as well. So, thank you. We can move on to our next speaker.

Actually, I have some more photos. Sorry.

It's okay.

Feel free to bring those on up.

Drop those off while we have our next speaker come up. Anyone on the topic of flooding? Thanks to SCAN. Thank you. There should be a sign-in sheet there for you to leave your contact information.

Okay. My name is Diane Spezza. I'm with Classical Real Estate in Athens. And Mark is my husband, and he explained it. Perfectly, I think. All I wanted to do was let you know about a most recent event that happened that I just found out about later today. One of our neighbors across the road, the EMS transported her out of her house and The reason being that they had determined that the air in her home has proven toxic. And she has health issues, so she had to leave her home. We've heard a lot of stories this past week at the meeting. And they were really heartbreaking, especially the renter that is two doors down from us. And they can't live in their home at this point. So anyway, thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Do we have any other members of the public who've come to speak on the topic of recent flooding? We should have a sign in sheet for our phone number or email address if you could. If you introduce yourself, please let us know your name, and if you live in Athens, and if you're representing yourself or group.

My name's Jack Stauffer. I live on Elmwood Place on the Near East Side. I got a lot of things to say. It's gonna take five and a half, six minutes. If I get cut off, maybe somebody will call me back up to finish. If anybody up there doubts anything I'm going to say in relationship to my communication with the city of Athens over the last 10 or 11 years, there are letters to and letters from the city here that are going to prove everything I speak is 100% accurate and true. I need to speak slowly enough so you guys can understand the elected folks and the citizens need to listen closely and use some common sense to string all this together. As I said, my name's Jack Stauffer. I'm a lifelong resident of Athens County. I have lived in our sweet little town, City Limits, since 1970. I'm here because I love Athens. I want to contribute what I can to help inform the public and remind the political folks of their responsibilities and the citizens and taxpayers of their rights as I understand them. My professional and personal experiences. My experiences as a homeowner on Elmwood Place and as a licensed master plumber and owner of Strong Plumbing for many years. I have over 31 years of professional experience in residential and light commercial applications. A lawyer, I am not. But in my 31 years of experience, I have always been under the impression that the property owner's responsibility stops and starts at the city right of way or the curb line on any given street that your house faces. And this has been the way the city has addressed these issues in the past. An example, if you have a clean out on your main sanitary sewer line near the curb, which you should, Not everybody does. But if you have a clean-out near the curb and the line plugs up and the clean-out at the street has water standing in it, that means the city line is plugged up, not the homeowner's line is plugged up. The line becomes plugged past your clean-out, then the problem is on the city property and therefore the city responsibility. With a call to the city service department at 593-7636, they will come unplug the line because it's their line and their responsibility to clean it at no expense to the homeowner. So consequently, if that's the truth, and it is, when water backs up through that same pipe from a source other than the house that is discharging water, it's the responsibility of the city of Athens to take care of the problem. as they've demonstrated, by taking care of the problem. When their line is plugged, they take care of the problem. When the line backs up and floods my house or these poor people right here who really have problems, it's an issue. It's a personal issue. It's your home. It's your valued possessions. It's your money. It's your things that can't be replaced. And in some people's case, the Eubanks, I guess I would take for example, since they're sitting here and they're the latest, biggest victim. So now here it is. It's out here in the public. We all know about it. One of these days, these folks are going to put their house up for sale. And they're going to get a disclosure form and it's going to ask them questions about the house. And if they answer it honestly, they're going to say, well, we've had flooding. That's going to run down the price of their property and the attractiveness of their property to all future owners, unless something is done to correct the problem permanently. Now, if you keep all that in mind and employ some common sense, Let me explain how that connects to our current problems on East State Street. Recently, residents, I don't know how many, I'm aware, but have never met the Eubanks until moments ago from 283. How many other houses got flooded down there? I'm not sure. I know I saw a dumpster in front of two houses a while back. I know that I talked to Larry Young, who owns... The Kindred Market and Bakery building, because I had heard that water got in the bakery and was very close to getting in the store, Larry said he didn't want to come up here and speak like most people don't, but I do. We'll have to have you wrap up, Mr. Stouffer. Excuse me?

We'll have to have you wrap up. I'm not done. I'm afraid your time has ended, and if you have additional comments, we would need to have you follow up at another time. If you have just another thought, I could give you that, but you've had as much time as everyone else.

Now as it relates to my own personal life, I purchased my home on Elmwood, did a complete remodel, and moved in on April 17th in 2015. On June 20th, 2015, we were having a storm, and I happened to be down in my basement, where my office is, and a lot of valuable stuff, and my sewer began to back up out of my washing machine standpipe, flooding my basement. The lines were overwhelmed with rain and storm water, infiltrating the sanitary sewer system and backing up into my house and flooding it. Because of my history with plumbing, I knew to run out to the street, uncover my clean-out plug, screw the plug off, and kept my flood to a minimum level. that time.

Mr. Stauffer I'm afraid I have to stop you at this point. I do understand that you've been personally impacted by this and that you're also speaking on behalf of other people who've been personally impacted. We just need to make sure council members have time to provide additional input and for the mayor to do so. So I appreciate you but if we have anyone else from the public who needed to speak on the topic of flooding we need to move on at this time.

I hope somebody up there has enough courtesy to call me up to finish my presentation because I have more to say and this should not be swept under the rug as that gentleman said. This needs to be exposed and corrected. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Stauffer. Do we have any other members of the public who are here to speak on the topic of recent flooding? Seeing none, I'll announce public input on that topic closed and move on to council input. Hearing from the mayor and from members of the public, do we have any council members who'd like to share questions or comments at this time? Member Thomas.

I just have some questions for the mayor or coincidentally, Mr. Stauffer. I think we covered Richland really well. I have questions. I know the sanitary sewer. won't be helpful in this area but I'm wondering about people that are getting stormwater in their basements how effective backflow valves are and yeah I know our house has one I know older homes have them and I think educating people on those existing in basements especially if they're renters could be helpful as a preventative measure in the future and finding some ways to highlight that I know like in our home the sewer stack is inside and I don't believe we have a street clean out so we can do that inside but I think some of those things obviously the major things are not going to impact things like the u-banks but some of these smaller ones that we're hearing about or that it is fully stormwater coming back up you know our neighbor when we moved in educated us after the first time we got heavy rain as to why we had this wheel in our basement And so I think getting that information out as to what that is, if you've not lived in an older home, or you can have them installed in newer homes, could be an effective way just for the stormwater. The sewer situation is a different one, obviously. And I don't know if Mr. Stauffer has any, he could probably help people after with his thoughts on that. I know he's... his plumbing days and then I have a question for the mayor like when you talked about the Richland Avenue the short-term midterm long-term plans and anything happening on East State Street is there any idea how long those would take or how big those projects would be because it's going to involve more road closures and I think that's something that whatever we get into with the projects we have to talk about that upfront doing all this work is going to close a road, and there's just not a way around that. I think talking about that on the front end would be good.

Member Thomas, if you wouldn't mind letting the mayor respond to that now? Okay, Mayor Patterson.

As I understand it, the smoke testing isn't going to lead to the closure of any streets for the East 8th Street corridor to do that level of testing. What it may reveal, though, is if we find that there is something minor or major, then it could lead to some more disruptive corrective actions to take place, just in full disclosure on that. But the smoke testing won't. It'll just be to identify where there's intrusion. For Richland Avenue corridor, Again, we don't anticipate there being any disruption to do the dredging underneath the bridges to remove the sediment. And again, that we have in plan to start in September. So today's the 24th. We'll be starting that in early September with our street crews to get in there and start removing silt. The medium range and the long range, as was mentioned, And I'm really glad that you came tonight to talk about this as a hydrologist. My father is a hydrologist, too, but he's not with us anymore, nor did he ever live here. Is, again, at the end of the day, with the issues that we're experiencing, these downfalls, and as... Mr. Spezza was saying, you know, we just looked at some photographs earlier today. When I say we, the service safety director and I looked at photographs before US-33. For those of you who remember, US-33 used to be Pomeroy, all right? It was Tulane. I remember it like it was yesterday. And when you look at the aerial images from 2011, 2005-2006 through that corridor, the change of hard surface that feeds down ultimately to the South Y into Richmond Avenue is vastly different than what it was prior to the 33 Bypass. I know you asked just for a short explanation, but I felt compelled that that does need to be said. We're looking to possibly, because it is in the city proper, to put potentially trench drains at the 33 westbound off-ramp as well as the on-ramp because of the sheeting that comes down from those two in particular. If you think about it, the new 33 bypass where you have the exit ramps, the on-ramp and the off-ramp, I too have personally seen the volume of sheeting that comes down, not just from that coming down the hard surface, but also coming down from where they had to carve into the hillside. So it's having to, that whole hillside is not absorbent or not as absorbent as a foot of soil is going to be. Instead it's adding to the sheeting problem along there. I do want to mention, since it did come up Mr. Fugate, thank you for talking about the choke point, as you indicated, where there's been some slippage of the 33 bypass behind Morrison Gordon, as well as behind the car wash, which is right next door. That is part of our mid-range plan. We will be working with ODOT to hopefully not put in a box culvert or anything like that, but instead put some pilings or some piers along there to hold the hillside, the ramp, hold it back, but also widen some of that choke point. It gets very narrow behind where the car wash is, and a lot of that is because of some slippage on the ODOT bypass. So that's the mid-range. And again, I certainly want to work with Ohio University in looking at things that could be could certainly help with mitigation in the long-range plan. I have to say the word mitigation because I cannot say that any of these things are going to permanently solve it. When you look at the complexity of that Corps of Engineers plan, it spells it right out there for you in black and white and color. The problem is so multifaceted. I look up Mulligan Road. I look at Hickory, I look at Canterbury, I look at really the waterfall that was coming down from up above Lamar. For anyone who's familiar with the Southside area, Lamar is a street that runs off of Canterbury and there are catch basins up there. We will be looking to see are those catch basins doing what they're supposed to be doing or is it just leading to cascading water coming down behind Mr. Spezza's business, behind Mr. Fugate's property. When I spoke to the engineer that works for Mike Knoll, and his office is in Morrison up on the third floor, and he was there when the heavy rain came down its hardest at 9.30 and 10 o'clock in the morning, he said he'd never seen waterfalls literally pouring down from up above And I knew immediately, we've got to look at the cul-de-sac that is Lamar, because it does have a cul-de-sac on the one end. But, you know, it was indicated it is a multifaceted problem when you've got these torrential downpours coming with a higher level of frequency. And I would contend, you know, because I have seen many of these high-water events. I remember... I believe it was 2020, watching someone literally kayaking down Richland Avenue, is that, as was explained, it's the sheer volume of the water that is coming down in a short period of time. In particular, on the most recent flooding event, and again, I'm not making an excuse. I'm just telling facts as they occurred on that evening. I remember waking up at 1.30, 2 o'clock in the morning to thunder, and then I'd recognized that thunder and lightning wasn't stopping, which tells me that it's saturating the soils as they exist, and then that 9 o'clock to 10 o'clock deluge that we received on the Richland Avenue, or the city. I mean, it's everywhere in the city. I shouldn't keep talking about Richland Avenue. Everywhere in the city. When you've got saturated soils that can no longer tolerate, you've got hard surface that is not permeable, that is contributing to sheeting coming down into that area, and then you get a significant rapid downpour is when the flash floods happen. The city will look at everything extensively, both East State Street and looking at Richland Avenue. We have been talking, when I say we, the service safety director and I have been talking, we mentioned it, it came up during the Richland Avenue meeting, is working with council to look at putting a budget line item in that has to do with flood mitigation unto itself, to where we have that, to where we know that there are projects that need to be done, and in some cases, I dare say attempted, because what would happen if we had, this is going to sound crazy, but look at the world that we're living in these days. If we had a six to seven inch downpour in a short period of time, we could be doing a lot of mitigation all the while, and it would likely, as the Corps of Engineers report states, there really isn't anything that we could do to have the bridge top over. It would just just overwhelmed our city, much like it did in Crooksville on that same cell that came through.

Thank you, Mayor Patterson. I'd like to conclude this conversation in the next six minutes. Do we have additional questions or comments? Member Wood?

I want to defer to Paul and Matthew Evans.

You know what? I'm seeing we're not going to be able to do this in the next six minutes with all those hands. All right, Member Wood, would you start us out?

Sure, I guess I'll take back my punt. Okay. So, one, thank you to the mayor for having this and to you for having this special session. Thank you to Dr. Cruz-Daniels for coming and sharing that professional background. Thank you to the U Banks and other folks from our area sharing how they were impacted. I've often also talked to the Hunkler, the Balta family over there on State Street and the Ealing family as well. They wanted to come, but they could not. So thank them for their time and sharing their experiences too. I did want to share one other thing that happened that was positive as well. The Rolands on Congress have had a storm train that's a nightmare behind them. And they reached out to say that Curtis Mail from the city came and did dredge that. That storm drain is a problem, but I wanted to say thank you to the city and Mr. Mail for coming and doing some hands-on dredging right away, getting some of that mitigated. Just want to say, you know, growing up in Amesville, as I did, water and flooding was always a thing. And it was dramatic. I mean, we had a 200 year and a 500 year flood back to back. Spent summers digging out neighbors, people living in our house and in our barn. We would have water come through the walls, literally, not through the storm drain. My folks' house, we would have water literally come through the wall, which is a wild thing to experience. So you have my empathy having gone through that as well, so thank you. I wanted to conclude just by saying that I think that having this special session, having this time, these meetings, I don't know another thing that we have done that for. I can't remember another thing that we've had this sort of immediate response and extended special session. So I think that indicates how seriously folks are taking it. I think that that shows, again, just how committed folks are to doing things to mitigate this impact and to be proactive as much as possible. So thank you all for your patience and for coming tonight.

Thank you, Member Wood. And previously you were trying to punt it to Council Member- I was going to follow this up first. Okay, Member Isherwood.

I just have sort of three quick questions that—just for some clarity, to add some things that—and again, I was at the meeting on Richland last Wednesday, and it really was civil discourse in action. It was really—you know, this is a great city. Dr. Cruz, you mentioned about temporary flood barriers or something. Would you be willing to elaborate on, so property owners in any of these places, is there something that they can do or something that the city can think about? Because I don't know what that is exactly.

Dr. Cruz, would you mind approaching the microphone? Sorry. That's all right.

So temporary flood barriers are a newer product that's on the market. So it wouldn't help with some of the problems with sanitary service backing up due to infiltration, but where we have water overwhelming coats run or coming down off a terrace or where we have a lot of sheeting, temporary flood barriers are an option to keep water out of structures. Okay, bear with me for a second. I'm going to try to describe it. So you know those concrete construction barriers that are like, and they can stack them or link them up? They're like plastic ones, those that have a long foot. And so the flood water is actually what keeps it from tipping over. So your building would be here, and you have an L, flood water sitting here, and they are lightweight. One or two people can set them up. They're stackable. Typically they're about... two, two and a half feet, two or two and a half feet high, like a single course one would be, they can be interlinked, they can be tied into a building so you can deploy them when there's a forecasted rain event that is likely to affect somewhere like Purple Chopsticks or Devil's Kettle or something like that to either divert water around that building or to keep it from entering the building in the first place. If you look at pictures from like inside Purple Chopsticks from the 11th, you're probably talking about about six, to eight inches of water outside that building. And so setting that up could have kept water out of the building for that next time period. And so that's one of the styles. There are also inflatable ones or curtains. But I think those are the ones that are like, if I were to buy some, that's what I would buy.

Thank you, Dr. Cruz-Daniels. Member Isherwood?

Another thing that was mentioned was the idea of sediment management. I know, Mary, you talked about dredging. That seems to be a thing that you would do once we did it in 2025. Is there ongoing sediment management that could be done to help alleviate the need to regularly dredge? And again, I'm not a hydrologist. Mr. Mayor, can you respond?

I will attempt to. Silt is a natural thing that's going to come from any slope side that has either exposed soils or depending on how hard the rainfall is, you could have a grassy hillside and you're still going to get sediment that's running down. Sediment, I'd often thought if we could, and we'll likely do this, is put out a annual or multiple times in the fall, and then again in the spring, is make sure you're clearing debris from your yards, leaves, sticks, branches. But with that storm on the 11th, the wind shear that was coming with it, you could have people picking up all the sticks, twigs, branches that you want to. When you have that much shear coming down, it would have been knocking down dead branches, and it would have been flowing into the same tributary and acting as strainers and catching everything else that's of large size. But it's something we can attempt to do. I mentioned this at the meeting on Richland Avenue is much like we just had on the 22nd, a river sweep where everyone goes through and picks up debris and helps clean up the Hocking River to do one in a corridor up Richland Avenue to where we say, hey, everyone, let's join in and clean out things like you find pieces of plywood, you find pieces of railroad ties, all kinds of stuff that certainly isn't helpful in the Coats Run corridor with the Coats Run stream when we do have a flash flood event. So those are the kinds of things to do. But the short of it is, Council Member Isherwood, we can do annual... silt or sediment removal along there, but to find some bigger plan to stop the silt from getting into the creek bed itself, it's next to impossible, other than putting construction silt fences all along the corridor, and that's not going to sit there and be that effective, nor look attractive.

Thank you. The last question is, just for the folks on... East 8th Street, once the smoke testing is done, what does that lead to the next stage of that conversation in terms of the information that that gives you?

Again, it'll help us identify, based upon the results of the smoke test, what we need to go after and take head on.

That's all I have. Thank you, Member Isherwood. Member Cloudfelder.

I also would like to thank the Eubanks and the couple from Richland Avenue, everybody who has spoken about flooding, Mr. Stauffer, and in particular, Dr. Cruz-Daniels. And I think your offer to share your expertise on these issues is really valuable, and I would be delighted if the city could find some way to, you know, get your advice, talk to you about it, because... You may know more than anyone in our whole community about these issues, and it was really kind of you to offer to share.

Thank you, Member Cloudfeller. Member Swink.

What we have before us really are two issues. One is the flooding on Richland Avenue, and the other is infiltration of stormwater in our sewers. Dr. Cruz Daniels and I met, full disclosure, about three weeks ago. And she was gracious enough to spend an hour and 20 minutes with me. And I learned in an hour and 20 minutes what probably most people would take a whole semester to learn. It was put in such clear layperson's terms that a history major knew exactly what she was talking about. And the mayor has hit on it, and people in the audience have hit on it. But Natalie, if I may, when you were listing some things that you would do, there seemed to be two or three others at the end that you were going to share with us. Could you share those with us, please?

I'm just here to get my steps in. So some of the long-term things that I would recommend. Updating bridge design to focus more on hydraulics than road passage. Development of guidance that dictates retention and permeability in the watershed as a whole, not just on the bottom. Reduction of parking lot space in the Valley Bottom with particular focus on the Morrison Building, potentially Alders Old Office as well to both increase retention and detention, but also to deal with some of the choke points caused by the on-ramp. Installation of underground detention for overwhelmed stormwater systems and actually that can be an approach for overwhelmed sanitary sewers as well. It's something that a lot of cities who have combined sewer systems do to avoid some of the issues that the banks have experienced. Partnering with ODOT to add detention along the corridor. And developing land over incentives or public projects to increase storage, so catch basins, detention basins, etc. Upland, there's not an awful lot of space on the bottom to do things. So we have to sometimes look uphill, but it all connects. And I can also email you what I wrote down.

We'd appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you. From what we just heard, It's evident that this is going to be, need to be, I'm focusing on Richardson Avenue right now and other places that flood in a similar fashion because of what comes out of the clouds, is going to need to be a cooperative effort between private property owners and the city of Athens. I don't think either entity can take on that full responsibility. I was pleased to hear the mayor talk about possibly adding a budget line for flooding, and I would concur with that 100%. We charge the residents of Athens $2.50 each month for stormwater. It might be able to be tied into that. I don't know what the exact figure is. I'm not going to put the auditor on the spot, but it would add up over a period of time. But I'm glad to hear that that's something that probably will be coming through the Budget Committee chaired by Member Thomas, and I would certainly love to hear that. But the other part is our storm sewers. What happened on East State Street as a result of stormwater infiltration into sewer system water that came from the sky one of the storm sewers and somehow got into our sewers could be The downspout on your house hooked up in the storm sewer, excuse me, the sanitary sewer from many, many years ago. We don't know that. That's why we're going to do the testing. But I'd like to call Mr. Stauffer back up because what he was about to share with us from 2015 was what happened at his property and how working with the city, he was able to resolve that. And unlike the Eubanks, In the middle of the night, you start hearing thunder. He no longer has anxiety. But I also met with the Eubanks this week. I go to a lot of concerts. Mrs. Eubanks, I think, goes to more concerts than I do. And one of the things she does at the concerts she goes to is she always buys something. It could be a Jimmy Buffett hat. It could be a Pink Floyd T-shirt. Who knows what it is? She didn't tell us, but she lost all of that from 35-plus years. We're talking about two things here. We're talking about people's livelihood, the businesses. And we're talking about people's lives and their homes. So Mr. Stauffer, would you come forward, please, and bring your box. And if you could, there are three things that people are afraid of. People have a great fear of dying. They have a great fear of speaking in public, and they have a great fear of hearing the word no. Look, that really is a fourth, too, call from the IRS. But Mr. Stauffer, if you would tell us, in concise terms, if you could, in 2015, what happened at your property, and working with the city of Athens, particularly Mr. Stone, what you were able to do to resolve that situation. And if you could show us when you get to that point, that would be very, very helpful.

Thank you, sir. As I started to say, I purchased my house in April of 2015. June 20th, 2015, my basement was flooded because it was overwhelmed with the sanitary sewer, which had been overwhelmed with storm water that infiltrated the sanitary sewer system. So it backed up into my house, out of my washing machine, overflow, but again, I was wise enough to go out there, take the clean-out plug off, relieve most of the pressure, and didn't have a major, major flood. But the lines were overwhelmed with stormwater in a sanitary sewer. That was my problem. And apparently, that was these folks' problem. Now, I got a hold of Paula Horan Mosley and Andy Stone and notified them and notified Andy wrote me a letter explaining that one of the old pumps down at the sewage treatment plant had broke down so they were running at less than full capacity and they got new equipment installed and he hoped we would not see this again. He apologized for my inconvenience and let me say that if I hadn't been home and known how to run outside and open my sewer clean out, I would have had a major flood too. From that day forward, I was nervous and concerned this could happen again. On September 9th, just three months later, the exact same thing happened. I worked with Paula, Andy, and Andy agreed the city would put in a backflow valve. But first of all, the city tried to put this responsibility on me. There's a letter right here from Andy Stone that tells me to install a backflow preventer on my line, on my property to stop our water. Not my water, the city's water from coming back into my house. They want me to tear up my new $12,000 driveway and sidewalk and dig up my yard to put in one of these great devices right here.

That's not quite in the camera frame. Would you mind standing in front of the podium with it? Thank you. That's good. That's good. You got it.

This is a backflow valve. Now, they wanted me to do this at my expense. And it's in a letter in here. And Andy says, Jack, because it's you, and I know you'll go to city council, and I know you'll go to the law director, and I know you'll put in public records requests. We're going to do it. So they came down. They tore up the edge of Elmwood. They sent a crew down. They did an excellent job. I'm a plumbing contractor. I watched. This device has not allowed one drop of water to come into my house in the last 11 years. This is what saved me. This is what's going to save these people in the future. And anybody else that has water infiltration into their home through their sanitary sewer. If their gutters are overflowing and running down the side of their house, they're going to have water and that's their problem. But if it's coming back through the sanitary sewer, this is going to stop it. Here's what happens. Here comes the water right through. This is my house. This is my crap. Out to the city. This is the city. Here's their crap. Not one drop. Now, Those supposedly, and it's as simple as this little device right here.

Can you take a step to the left? Thanks.

It's as simple as this little device right here that stops the water. Now, it says in the directions, and the city supplied this, and they put it in. I bought that, and I bought this, and I bought extra flappers because I wanted to make sure that I was always protected. And it says in the directions that you get when you get this device that it should be serviced or checked every six months. After the first six months, I called the city service department. There was a gentleman over there at that point by the name of Mr. And he screwed me around and screwed me around. And finally I called him and I said, look, send somebody down to check this or I'm going to city council next Monday night. He calls me up and says, thanks for letting me know you're going to city council. So every year or so, well, every six months I go out there and pull this thing out. take my garden hose, hose it all off, and look at it. Now, there's rats in sewer lines. I didn't bring my own flapper. I got nervous and rushed off and forgot it. But one of the flappers, one of the first ones I took out that had been in there a couple years, had about a quarter inch chewed off the bottom of it. Now, if it goes long enough and there's enough rats in the area, that's going to become defective and that's going to let water through. So these things need some maintenance, but it's not a big deal. To be perfectly honest, I had Mr. Swank over to my house Saturday afternoon. I showed him this device. He said, can you show me how that works? So I went out there, and within five minutes, I popped it off, I pulled it out, I showed it to him, we looked at it, I hosed it off, we dropped it back down in there, and that's that. That's how you stop it. However, when you stop it, the water that's not coming back up my pipe coming into my basement is going back upstream maybe to the next guy's house at a similar location and it might come into their house. So is it a permanent problem for the problem? No. Is it a permanent solution for their problem today Yes. Now, it's not up to these folks to do it. It's not their problem. It's our problem. They don't need to dig up their yard. The city needs to dig up their yard or their street or the city street and put one of these things in. It'll stop their problem. That doesn't mean it might shove it on up the street and maybe another house will happen. In my case, none of my neighbors had repercussions from my problem being solved. Now, I will say to you, because it just so happens, I live at 69 Elmwood. My sister lives down the street a couple and across the street at 80 Elmwood. And when the I would need to double-check. On one of those two storms, I think it was the one in the middle of the night, because my sister's husband said he heard noise, he heard noise, he didn't know what was going on. Finally, he got up, and his washing machine standpipe was gurgling, which means there was pressure right there close to him, but they didn't get flooded, fortunately. But what I'm saying is... This isn't a Jack Stauffer problem. It isn't an Elmwood problem. It's a sanitary problem.

Now back in the 80s... Mr. Stauffer, I'm afraid I'm going to need you to wrap up. And Member Swank, if you could...

I don't think this would be as important that you'd want to know...

What you've shared is very helpful and we appreciate it. Okay, I'm done. Member Swank, did you have anything else for Jack Stauffer?

This is not the way to treat somebody or to treat a community that has a problem this large.

Let me say this, please. Let me say this, please. When we close this discussion, we're going to move on to the next agenda item. And the topic of the next agenda item is civility. I can think of no better way than to demonstrate civility, not through words on a piece of paper that have no power, but through how this elected body treats the residents of this town. Our actions, or lack thereof, speak much louder, much more forceful, and have much more meaning than simple words on paper. Mr. Stauffer, I looked up that device today. Retail price on that is $275. Servproic bill, $17,000. Now granted, it's going to cost labor to install those things, but I would like this council, and I'd respectfully like this administration to consider that in those few cases that we know in this last set of storms, that stormwater infiltration into our sanitary sewer system caused significant damage to private homes that we consider extending to them the same thing we extended to Mr. Stauffer 11 years ago, the installation of these $275 devices.

I don't want to be treated special. I don't think I was treated special. I think I was treated fairly. I want those people treated fairly, and I want anybody else treated fairly that suffered what they suffered. It doesn't cure the big problem, but it kicks the can down the road and it'll let these people sleep at night because I'm telling you, I've been in my house for 10 years. I've lived through those toe stranglers that we've had that caused all these problems you've talked about, including theirs, and I didn't get one drop of water in my home.

Jack, for our rule number 12, I was allotted 10 minutes and we just went to 11. I'll see you later. I thank you for coming up and sharing the visual aids with us today.

I will thank Mr. Alan Swank right now.

Thank you, Mr. Stauffer. Do we have any members of council who have further comment or question on the topic of recent flooding? Member Thomas.

I was just going to share, I happened to see it and then forgot that there was information on the county auditor's page about storm and sewer property damage and property tax relief. I don't know anything about how it works, but I think it's worth sharing and spreading around so people can maybe look into that.

Would you mind approaching the podium so that everyone can be reminded of who you are and what you're sharing?

Yeah, we received that letter about a week after the storm. We submitted a letter to them and asked them to come out and reappraise because of the storm damage. About two weeks later, we got a postcard in the mail that we had to email to schedule the appraisal. Mike emailed them and two days later got an email back that it was already done. If we had any questions, we could set an appointment with them, which Mike did email and set an appointment for tomorrow. Because there were two days, I believe today and tomorrow, that you could make an appointment if you had any questions. So yeah, they said it was already done.

All right, well, never mind.

The value of our house, according to them, without looking at it, increased by, I believe it was $3,000. Yeah.

Anything further from you, Member Thomas?

No, I just wanted to share that.

Member Stazer?

I just have one quick question I was thinking about. I'm not looking for an answer tonight, but maybe at some point somebody can give me one. One of the sort of, I guess, acute solutions that was mentioned to flooding, again, was putting temporary barriers up around a building. I guess my question is, one building does that and it keeps the water out of their building but it shoots it downstream to somebody else's building and increases the is there a liability there can you do that can you just block up like if there's a flooding kind of say I'm gonna block off part of it dr. Natalie Cruz Daniels would you please

So the way you install them, it wouldn't actually... The amount of space that you're blocking off that would otherwise contain floodwaters would be minimal compared to the amount of floodwaters. So you're talking about setting up flood barriers reasonably close to the building, and so really you're... I mean, I guess maybe you're diverting the amount that would have been in the building otherwise, but it's not actually... You're not diverting that much water.

Can I ask one more? Would you have to do a study? Even if it raised the water downstream half a centimeter, would you have to do a study that says, if I did this at my property?

Not generally. These have been implemented other places in the state. Many businesses in Pomeroy use them when the river comes up. Typically, no. If somebody was building a new bridge or culvert, then you have to do H&H studies, sorry, hydraulics and hydrology studies. but not for like a business, protecting their business.

Thank you, Dr. Cruz-Daniels. Anything further from you, Member Stazer?

Nope. All right.

Do we have any other members of council who would like to comment on the topic of recent flooding? I'll leave the mayor the opportunity to share any final remarks based on what he's heard from council and the public.

No, just to thank those who have come tonight. Dr. Cruz-Daniels, thank you for actually reading through the Corps of Engineers report, and only you could really do that well. Sure. But again, for those of you who have come to speak on this topic, thank you for being here.

We do appreciate all the time and input from the public and from council. We'll conclude that agenda item. Moving on to our second agenda item under Committee of the Whole for this evening. Promoting Respectful Interactions and Shared Responsibility in Athens, a draft resolution has been circulated to members of council, and this originated as an idea that numerous cities who are connected to the National League of Cities have decided that it's important for elected officials to send the message that respectful interaction and civil discourse are important topics throughout our community. I'll read the first half of the draft resolution and ask for Member Thomas to assist me with reading the second half before I open things up for discussion. The first half of the resolution reads, whereas Athens has a long history of encouraging positive community relations, respectful engagement across differences, and meaningful participation in civic life, and whereas Athens is a shared space shaped every day by residents, students, workers, families, neighborhoods, businesses, schools, community organizations, Ohio University, and the city government, and whereas the strength of our community is measured not by the services we provide or by the policies we pass, but by how people treat one another in the places that we share, And whereas the dignity grows when people are heard, disagreement does not become dehumanization, and public life leaves room for honesty, accountability, learning, listening, and repair. And whereas respectful community life is a shared responsibility across institutions and neighborhoods, And whereas Athens City Schools encourages young people to practice safety, kindness, responsibility, and respect throughout their K-12 experience, thereby better preparing them to be thoughtful community members wherever they go on to live, work, study, and serve. And whereas Ohio University's Make Respect Visible initiative encourages learning across differences, broader understanding, inclusion of all voices, and productive, respectful dialogue. And whereas respect is not made visible by words alone, but by everyday choices that help people feel safe, heard, valued, included, and to be able to belong. Member Thomas?

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Council of the City of Athens, Ohio, Section 1, the Mayor, City Council, Auditor, Law Director, and Treasurer of the City of Athens reaffirm the City's commitment to dignity, respectful community relations, constructive dialogue, and civil engagement. Section two, in the interest of civility, these elected officials agree to promote civil engagement by listening, treating others with respect, acknowledging that all are striving to support and improve the community, and recognizing that people may have different ideas for achieving that objective. They further commit to help build a stronger and more prosperous community by respecting others even when viewpoints differ and seeking constructive solutions for the betterment of Athens. Section 3, the Mayor and City Council of Athens invite all who live, learn, work, gather, and serve in Athens to practice safety, kindness, responsibility, dignity, and respect in the spaces we share and to engage one another in thoughtful conversations about what respect looks like in those spaces. Section 4, the Mayor and City Council of Athens recognize that a healthy community depends on people being able to participate, raise concerns, seek support, use appropriate existing pathways when they experience or witness discrimination, harassment, intimidation, threats to safety, or other conduct that undermines dignity, belonging, or trust. Section 5, the Mayor and City Council of the City of Athens encourage continued collaboration among the City of Athens, Athens City Schools, Ohio University, boards and commissions, community organizations, residents, students, workers, and families to strengthen belonging, respectful dialogue, and shared responsibility throughout Athens.

Thank you, Member Thomas. Per committee speaking sequences, I will invite the administration to comment. If there is any comment, I'll move on to the public before council takes this up. Mayor Patterson, do you have any comments?

I do not. Thank you.

Members of the public, do you have any comments on the proposed or drafted resolution on respect? Seeing none, members of council, any questions or comments? Member Stazer.

Everything in here sounds fine. I was just, I've never seen like, you know, a resolution like this. So when I got this, whenever it was, I was kind of confused as to like what the, like it doesn't do anything. I mean, like, you know, I'm sorry, like, you know, I work at the university. They can put the make respect visible banners on every light post on campus and it like doesn't do anything. So are we just passing this as a, Like a goodwill thing?

So then to Member Stazer's question, what is the purpose of resolutions? Resolutions are one tool that the council can use to express views or values or to uplift a cause. And this isn't asking for any specific behavior from council members other than to role model respect and civility. Do we have any other questions or comments? All right. Member Spank.

Yeah, I just have one on Section 1. I think it would be appropriate that we have the auditor, the law director, and the treasurer sign off on this. And the reason being, it reads, the mayor, city council, auditor, law director, and treasurer of the city of Athens reaffirm the city's commitment. I can't speak for any of those, but what happens if one of those doesn't? We kind of need them to sign off. We can't speak for other elected officials. The only people we can speak for as an elected official are the seven voting members sitting up here today. So I think we need, and I'm not going to ask Member Thomas. That would be inappropriate to ask him publicly. The law director was not asked to come today, so she's not here, and the treasurer doesn't have to come either. this council even considers passing this resolution, that those people sign off on it. I know if I was in one of those positions and you were doing something without me signing off, I would not be real happy.

Thank you, Member Swank. Are you proposing a formal signature when you say sign off?

Yeah.

That's an interesting idea. I appreciate it. I will share that all those officers, those elected officials that you mentioned, have reviewed and approved this. And if you have further suggestions, please feel free to share them at this time. Reviewing and approving are one thing. Saying I do is something else. Member Swank's recommendation is that we invite those elected officials to say, I do. And I will invite other council members to share any questions or comments in response to that. All right, seeing none, I'm going to check with council to see if there's any objection to this moving to a single reading, one reading resolution at our next regular session, which wouldn't be until Tuesday, September 8th. Do we have any objection? All right, seeing none, I will conclude that item and announce the Committee of the Whole adjourned at 8.30 p.m. We'll now move on to Finance and Personnel Committee. That concludes Chair Jessica Thomas, members Claudefelder, Stazer, and Wood. All other members of Council are invited to join the audience, and I will turn things over to Finance and Personnel Committee Chair, Member Thomas.

Thank you. Got, as you can see, quite a list of things on finance and personnel tonight. It's not quite as bad as it looks, I promise. I sent all this information out to the committee, and we'll start with the first item of sewer appropriations. And these are going to be split as we get down through them into kind of two categories. The first appropriation listed is we'll need to appropriate money to the storm tunnel for a failure on Kern Avenue. Kern Avenue? Kern Street? Kern Avenue. For $40,000, a section of the floor of the storm tunnel on Kern Drive failed, and this requires that section to be replaced and needs immediate action. Part of the reason we asked for a special session tonight was for these first three items that I'm going to go over, specifically because they all need immediate action. The second item is the influent pump failure. One of the three influent pumps at the wastewater treatment plant has failed and will need to be replaced. And that will require $75,000 to be appropriated and needs immediate action. The third of these is a failure of one of the clarifiers. There's floor heaving on one of the clarifier tanks. This impacts the arm moving the sludge and reduces efficacy. And that needs immediate action, and we will need to appropriate $75,000 for that. So if anyone has any questions on those three, and then we can move on to the others. Member Clyde Felder?

I absolutely agree that those all sound like very important needs that need to be addressed very soon. I'm curious, it's also a lot of money that's being discussed. Is there enough money in the sewer fund, I guess it would be sewer fund, maybe the stormwater allotment that could cover this, or will this need to come out of general fund money?

I believe there's plenty in the...

There's plenty of money in sewer. We will not take money from the general fund to cover towards this.

Thank you. Any other questions on these? Any comments from the administration?

No.

And any questions from the public?

I do have one question, I forgot. Yeah. We need to do an emergency resolution as well.

Yeah, when we get to special session, these will be at our first reading and I'm going to ask for a suspension, yeah. So those three, we'll move on then to the second sewer appropriations that are non-immediate. The first is a default oxygen sensor. This is how they, instead of checking three times a day for checking the oxygen readings, they can do this remotely. Director Stone did not yet have a cost on this and this could go through readings and he'll get the cost when we're ready for first reading. The second of these items is electric costs. Increased rates from AEP with multiple high water events has caused electric use by the wastewater treatment plant to move beyond the appropriated amount. Director Stone estimates that we will need about $150,000 to finish out the year. He's currently, though, looking at rates to determine if a change in supplier would have much of an effective change, and we'll bring additional information before we finish these readings. And he noted that we're currently with SOPEC at 9.5 kilowatts rates, and that is all green energy. And so we may be able to look at other suppliers that have lower rates, but it will likely not be green energy. A side impact of this is the carbon reduction resolution that council passed several years back. And so this would be impacted or not really fulfilling that if we look at beyond green energy for this. So we'll want to keep that in mind as we're looking at this going forward. And he'll bring more information as we get to first reading. Do we have any questions on or any comments from the mayor's office? on the oxygen sensor or the AEP?

Yeah, no, just a point of clarification. You know, when Member Thomas is referencing green energy, it's wind wrecks that flow through or are accessed by SOPEC. SOPEC's had a 100% renewable product since 2016. And it does fit... with the 50% reduction in carbon in greenhouse gases emission within the city of Athens under the resolution that was passed or ordinance one or the other. I think it was a resolution which initially was going to be 30% and I pushed council to take it up to 50% and that renewable energy from our electric aggregation feeds into the overall equation for hitting that benchmark of 50% carbon emission reduction by 2030.

Anything from the auditor's office?

The other thing I would mention, just because we were talking about this last week, as things come across my desk, I've been looking at a lot of the electric rates, and some of the rates aren't as high as what we were thinking last week. So the city receives plenty of electric bills for all the different properties that we own. So one thing that I might try and do in the next week, too, is just put together a little bit of an electric bill study, so to speak, as to maybe what our average is for all these different properties, not just one particular area. So we can come up with a little bit of numbers with that, too.

Anything from the public on this? And comments from council?

I just had a question. I missed something. You mentioned $150,000 for electricity to finish out the year. Did you mean that's the total cost to finish out the year? That's not the unexpected increase to finish out the year?

He thinks he needs $150,000. Extra? Yeah, extra. Yeah, appropriated on top of. And maybe it won't go that high, but that's what he's anticipating. And then, do you have any other questions on those two? Moving out of sewer appropriations, there is one that I will need to add. It's not on the agenda, but I did send it out under other appropriations. And this is the $157,121.96 from Unappropriate Balance to Fund 865, Internal Service for Immediate Transfer to Fund 866. And this was 866 was the original intended line for these funds, and 865 was mistakenly used. So this is an internal transfer. But we'll need to appropriate it so that we can internally transfer it. Any comments from the mayor's office? No. Anything from the auditor?

You explained it well.

Any questions from the public?

And member Clarkbetter? Just for the point of clarification for the public, so is this basically fixing an accounting error? Okay, so no actual money is going to be moved around?

No, it's just going to go from one fund line to the other, but because of the process, you have to appropriate it to do that.

Any other questions? All right. On these appropriations, is there any objection to moving these forward? All right. All right. The next item on finance and personnel is a healthcare MOU with AFSCME. This was a negotiation with the administration and asked me to address growing medical benefit costs through a spousal carve-out. I just sent out, because I don't think it's the most current, I had the draft version full language of it, but it would mean that new employees starting after January 2027 whose spouses have access to other employer-provided healthcare coverage must take that coverage and be carved out of city-provided coverage. They would pay premiums based on the characteristics of their remaining family members, single, employee plus one family, et cetera, as if the spouse was not considered. If they were to change, they would just be addressed as they change. you know, number status. Additionally, there's more details in that that would have, they could choose to carve themselves out and then they would take a reduction and not pay premiums. Just looking at ways to relieve some of the pressure on the medical fund in the city. Any other comments or clarifications? No.

Also explained well.

All right. And do we have any questions from the public? And questions from council? Member Wood?

Yeah. This is an opportunity to bring up something else that we talked about a while back. We talked about having a medical option from the city to provide health care. I know I met with Ron Lucas about it at one point. Having an offer to find a... They put out an RFP for such a thing to help reduce our costs as well. Has there been anything more on that? Do you have any information?

I do not at this point in time, but I will double-check with Director Lucas on that. I know exactly what you're saying. With your third-party administrator or your TPA, there will be an RFP that goes out or RFQ. see what someone has, see what the qualifications are, and what their rates are. We did this same exact thing, I believe, back in 2016, in my first year in office as mayor, to where we identified a TPA that was able to perform the same functions, but at a lower rate than we had experienced before.

Just to, can I add some more detail to that, too, just to back it up, if that's okay?

Sure.

Yeah, so some cities have had success offering direct medical benefits and the like as a way to sort of cut out the middleman and cut down costs. The city of Dayton has their own provider where you can go and do that. And so it would be tough for a small city to do that fully because we don't have the pool. But it's that idea of having sort of preferred benefit thing that we could then reduce costs, provide better health care in general, and send people to one stream. So that's the thing.

All right. Any additional questions? And is there any objection to moving this item forward to first reading next week? Next, we have inter-fund transfers, and you'll see a whole list of inter-fund transfers listed there. When we did the retirement buyout previously this year, one of the options was for those retiring to take a $30,000 cash health care buyout. When those were applied to the employees who retired, the original intent was that those funds would come from each employee's department budgets. When we did the ordinance, however, that was not stated that way, and so it was all pulled from the federal medical fund instead. Obviously, this caused a strain on the medical fund, and so we need to correct that and remove it from individual budgets and not all from the medical insurance fund. So you'll see a list of $60,000 from general fund, police, personal line, to medical and insurance fund. And it just goes down, I think there's seven items, seven people that took this. Actually more because some of those are doubled, yeah. Oh yeah, my eyes are getting worse. So we can look through those, but generally that's basically what we just need to do. Any additional details from the administration?

No, you summed it up well.

Anything from the auditor?

Just to say that if anyone's concerned, we checked through each of the funds, too. There's a few where it's a little bit of a pitch form, but they should be okay. But the money that we're moving from the other funds will be okay.

Anything from the public? And I meant to add, because we wouldn't have to go back and do anything with the original ordinance from this, because this is a one-time occurrence. It's something that we're not planning to do again, so... We just have to correct this. And any questions from Council? All right. And is there any objection to moving this forward to next week's first reading? All right. That ends Finance and Personnel.

Finance and Personnel Committee is concluded at 8.45 p.m. If the rest of Council could resume to return to the dais. We'll begin our special session in just a minute.

A lot of the stuff on this agenda looks exactly the same as last week's agenda.

Are we, okay. I'll provide an introduction. Good evening. It's 8.45 p.m., and we're now beginning our special session of City Council for Monday, August 24th, 2026. A special session is sometimes called when we have a need to move legislation through the reading process, traditionally a three-reading process, in order to meet particular time-sensitive deadlines, and that does mean that Ordinances that were recently read for the first time are now on this evening's agenda for the second reading. It is the prerogative of council members to propose amendments or other changes to our process, but we will begin by- One for clarification, please.

It's my understanding the special session was called specifically or what Member Thomas just shared with us in terms of the sewer thing. Am I correct, Member Thomas?

Yeah, we need those tonight.

So a special session is called for a specific purpose. Not to lump every truck driving down Richland Avenue to piggyback on that. And I think that's the point Member Wood was making. Thank you, Member Sweeney. And I would like to see where in our rules Not past practice, because past practice is many cases we haven't followed our rules. One example tonight, not asking for people's address, which is still in our rules. So the question becomes, and I think Mr. Wood, and I don't mean to speak for you, Michael, was proposing, why are all these other things on here today and not just the single item that the special session was called for?

I don't intend for us to get into too deep of a technical debate that we won't be able to resolve without the law director or parliamentarian here, but we do have the clerk here. And although member Swank has mentioned he's more interested in rules than best or prior practice, I would invite the clerk to just comment on past practice.

Certainly, past practice, the city council has done this many times. And since we have two Mondays that we're not going to be meeting, then some of these may need to go forward. And we had the recess in July.

Thank you, Clerk Walker.

I see- You can always table them if you don't want something read.

True, or we could amend the agenda and delete them from the agenda.

You could do that as well. No, you cannot do that. Well, yes, you can.

You could, yeah.

Member Swink has raised a point of order that extended to Member Wood's question about whether this would only be carrying over finance and personnel items from the committee meeting that we had just a few minutes ago, or if we would continue with the agenda as is. I should confirm that we do have a quorum present, and Approving or amending the agenda, I would invite any motions to amend the agenda at this time. Member Wood, you'd like to make a motion to amend?

Yeah, I motion that we strike everything except for the emergency ordinance.

There's been a motion. Do we have a second?

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Let's discuss what the implications of this, because we do have folks even from the audience who have come anticipating a discussion of the items that were on the published agenda. Do we have members of council who would like to provide comment who haven't yet spoken yet? Yes. I would like to amend. Member Swank haven't been called on yet. Do we have any other members of council who haven't commented on this? Member Clodfelter?

While I see the appeal of just focusing on what Member Thomas highlighted that needs to be addressed tonight in the sewer reallocations, I see no problem in going ahead with this full agenda as we've done many, many times since I've been on council. And I do agree with what President McCary just said, that I believe there are people in the audience who want to comment on one or perhaps an item that has been published as being part of tonight's agenda. And that we should not take away their ability to do that.

Member Isherwood.

Well, I just think the agenda has been public since Thursday. And so members of the community who There's no bait and switch here. It's just people are aware that these were things that we were going to discuss tonight. They would move forward. No objection was raised until two minutes ago. No one's here from the community demanding that we delay this. I don't know that there's any real reason to, at this point, not move these things forward.

Thank you, Member Isherwood. Just to confirm where we're at, we've had a motion to amend the agenda, and we've had a second, and we're in the course of discussion. Isn't that correct? Yes. Okay. Do we have additional comments from folks who haven't heard yet? I'm going to just go to Thomas, and then I'll go to Swank, and then I'll go to Cesar.

I would just say I agree with Member Isherwood and Member Cloudfelder. We have people that are here to speak. We can table things if we want more time to get back on the regular three-reading schedule. which would just maybe push some of these to next week where they would have been anyway. But, you know, it's 10 till 9. I hate to have people sit here for two hours and not get to speak when they came for this reason.

Just a point of clarification in response to Member Thomas' comments. We do not have a meeting a week from today on Monday, August 31st, because it's the fifth Monday and we meet on the first four Mondays of the month. And then we have a holiday the following Monday, which is September 7th. So our next council meeting regular session would be Tuesday, September 8th.

Member Swink. I'd like to offer an amendment to his motion. And that we consider ordinance for first reading as listed on the agenda. And that we also, and I'm reading the audience, that we also consider ordinance 8126 amending code fees. particularly as it relates to proposed parking fees.

To clarify, Member Swank, you made the initial motion to amend the agenda, correct? No. Okay, so then we would need a withdrawal of the original motion.

No, no, no, no, no, I'm amending the original motion. We need to act on the amendment first.

All right, Member Wood, do you have any comment on that since it was your motion originally?

Uh, I'll say I'm happy with the modification idea, uh. To Paul's point about the agenda, the time we approve the agenda is now. We can't discuss the agenda ahead of time on email. We're not allowed to do that. So this is kind of our 1 shot. Uh, so that's that's why I bring it up now. I approve, you know, I think. Fair point on talking about the fees. Fine. Great. I think having a whole special section is a lot. And so I think, yes, keep 81 and 83 and strike the other things that are not essential to the, you know, to those things. Yeah.

Member Stazer.

I can get behind that because I too understand that people have come to listen to, you know, discussion of these two with the fees. I was just, again, you know, when I saw this, I was like, wait a second. I was confused for a second time, you know, but beyond the resolution that we were talking about, but the other confusion I had over the last late week when I was looking at this was, yeah, like, if we're having a If we have a special session and we talk about everything, just move everything through the reading one more time, what's the point of the first and third and the second and fourth? First and third Thursdays are supposed to be, or Mondays are supposed to be when we do all of this. The second and fourth is supposed to be when we're doing the committees. I'm not opposed to calling a special council or special session of council. to do one or two things that are really time sensitive and can't wait, especially if we have an off week coming up next week like we do. But yeah, I don't understand why then every single thing that is pending before the City Council came up on this special session, that to me defeats the whole purpose of the first and third and second and fourth.

Thank you, Member Stazer. We'll move to Member Cloutbetter and then Member Isherwood.

Well, with all due respect, just in regard to Member Stacer's last comment, we often have, as you may recall from your tenure on council, we often have special sessions before Christmas break, before July. We do them when there is a need to move things forward before some kind of a break or after, in the case of right now, I think it does make sense to do this because of our July recess that slowed things down. So I hope that we can just make a decision and move forward and not drag out this discussion more.

Thank you. Member Isherwood, and then we'll move to conclude the motion that's on the table.

I just want to respond to Member Wood. We absolutely do have the opportunity to object to things on the agenda. The agenda circulated on a Thursday. You are given the opportunity via email. You can't email everyone, but you can email the clerk, you can email the council president. You can raise objections at that point, at which point a conversation with the chair can make a decision about removing things. Then why publish it on a Thursday and get the hopes up of community members that then come and speak on an issue? And then say, well, we're not going to go ahead and do it. I don't think anyone gets hurt by us moving forward with these issues. And if we're going to make an exception, on one specific ordinance, then why are we bothering getting upset about whether or not we're breaking our rules or not? I don't think that makes any sense. The agenda is the agenda. And none of these things are things that anyone so far, certainly on the second and third readings, has raised any objections at any point to. So I feel that we're dealing with semantics here, really.

All right, we'll be probably able to settle this by vote in a moment because Member Swank has made an amendment to Member Wood's proposed change of the agenda.

Member Swank? I'd like to respond to Member Isherwood respectfully. We cannot call and object to something that's on a regular session agenda. Because the reason it got on the regular session agenda in the first place is the chair of each committee, and you were one of those, asked, is there any objection of putting this on the agenda? If someone were to call after it's been placed on the agenda, you would be canceling out the vote or the affirmation of the members of that committee, and we can't do that. Now, that's why, back in January, I asked to add two things to how we do business. One was dismissed out of hand, and the other was to approve the agenda. And that is something we now do for every meeting. And this is the point in our session where we can legally, in open session, approve the agenda as printed, add to it, or delete from it, amend it.

Thank you, Member Swank. This was originally your motion to amend Member Wood. Member Swank has made some suggested changes to that original amendment. Would you like to state your proposed amendment to the agenda as it is at this point?

That we, as Member Thomas so clearly stated, that we leave item number 83 on the agenda. And because we have many members of the public who came to talk about code fees, specifically parking, that we leave number 81 on the agenda. 82? 81. Which one deals with parking, Member Thomas? 82. 82, okay, that would be 82, yes. 82 and 83.

I do want to check because we might have administrative implications of not handling some of this business this evening. Auditor Thomas, do you have any concerns?

Yeah, again. Because we're coming out of the break, there's a few things on here that would be nice if we could keep these things moving. I'm going to start with all the third readings, 68, 69, 74. I mean, these are to get this SIV loan and get this thing approved and done. We need to get moving on this to get that money from the state. They're not going to wait forever on us to do this. And so this is something that I'd like to see us keep moving on. So I think that 68 is one of the approvals. 69 follows it up. And then I wrote down 74 is the other third reading. This just finishes up the training center. Again, something that's been lingering for a while, lingered through the break. We need to get this done so that we can just put that project to rest. I understand with having another Monday in here, either that we're not meeting, obviously, because it's the fifth Monday, it's going to make this linger even longer. I'd like to see the three readings get done. 7626 is another appropriation ordinance. It doesn't have to be suspended or anything like that, but it's a very simple ordinance, but it has a few things in it, too, that we could get the second reading done, knowing that we're going to have to wait a couple more weeks before we have the third reading. Again, it doesn't have to be suspended or anything like that. And then, obviously, 8326 we have to do tonight. I guess my suggestion is beyond hearing you how you want to agenda move that. I think. You'd be better off. I would love to see you just table the things that you don't want to talk about tonight. I totally respect that. There are a few things on here that don't really need to be discussed this evening. But as for these 1st, 3, they were in 3rd reading, I'd like to see those just get done this evening as a 3rd reading. 76 would just be a simple 2nd reading just to keep it moving through the process and then the 83 we have to do and suspend. I know you want to talk about the tickets too, so however you want to handle it.

Thank you, auditor. Mayor Patterson, do you have any comments on the implications for moving forward with the agenda as published or amending?

I think the auditor so eloquently suggested why it should happen to go through those ones and I support the auditor.

All right. I'm going to try and move us to a vote. We have a motion and a second to amend the agenda. All in favor of amending the agenda as Member Wood proposed, please say aye. No, that's not what we're voting on.

Member Swank, do you have a point of clarification? Yes, that you will follow Robert's rules of order. We have an amendment to Member Wood's suggestion. So here's what I'm going to say, if you'll bear with me a second. I think you're absolutely right. And on second thought, I think when we get to the parking thing, let's deal with that big time and let's just whiz through the rest of this stuff. So I will withdraw my amendment to Member Wood's motion. Yeah, to Member Wood's motion.

I think for clarification at this point, Member Wood, it'd be helpful to just state, would you like us to entertain a motion to amend the agenda or to move forward by just tabling the items that we don't want to talk about as they come up?

Hearing the sense the room we table the items as they come up. I think that I would say the July recess thing is a false False economy. It's every year We have we have this every single year Pretending like it's a new thing is is a weird item. So I would go for Tabling the things that we want to move on And withdraw my my current amount

Member Wood has made a motion that we move forward with the agenda as published with the opportunity for council members to propose tabling of individual agenda items. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion on this amendment to the agenda from council? All right, all in favor of amending the agenda as proposed by Member Wood, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say nay. All right, the agenda has been-

amended, so- No, we have to approve the agenda. The motion is to approve the agenda as submitted. Yeah. All right. I move that we approve the agenda as submitted.

That's right.

Second.

We have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussion from members of council on the approval of the agenda? All right, all in favor of approving the agenda as is, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay.

Nay.

All right, we will be moving forward with the agenda as published. As a reminder, council members may make a motion to table any agenda item. We will start with ordinances for third reading, beginning with ordinance 68-26, an ordinance authorizing the service safety director to submit an application and enter into an agreement for the State Infrastructure Bank SibLoan for the State Route 682 Major Rehabilitation Project, and designating a dedicated repayment source for the loan. Introduced by Member Thomas.

Yes, this is SIB loan, five years, 0% interest from ODOT. The loan would be for $499,000 with a $2,000 loan order. Origination fee from the streets fund and we'll go into the fund 589 and this is for a future resurfacing of the ODOT on ramps and off ramps between the roundabout and 3250 those cement areas That have to be done and we do not get a choice to not do it So this is our our portion of the local let I will read An ordinance, did you already read that? I mean, that's the nuts and bolts of it.

Thank you, Member Thomas. We, I'll remind folks that we use a different procedure for regular session or special session where we've had the council member who's introduced legislation comment, then we move on to administration and then to the public. So council members are first, then administration, and then the public.

I move that we approve 80- Whatever it is, I can't see it. 6826. Second. We have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussion?

Seeing none, Member Cloudfelder?

I would just briefly like to commend the administration for finding a zero interest loan on this. That's really, really good. Really beneficial.

Agreed. Any other comments? All right. All in favor of approving Ordinance 68-26, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Ordinance 68-26 has been unanimously approved. Now continuing with ordinances for third reading to Ordinance 69-26, an ordinance authorizing payment to the State of Ohio Department of Transportation to cover the local share of the State Route 682 major rehabilitation project introduced by Member Thomas.

This is just a follow-up to the SAB loan ordinance. This just sets up the payment and authorizes the expending of $499,000 to small cities ODOT fund 589. And I move that we adopt 69-26. Second.

We have a motion and a second. Do we have any discussion from council of ordinance 69-26? Seeing none from council, moving on to the administration.

Just as a reminder, this is a 2027 project that ODOT, that we have to do. I mean, we really don't have a choice in getting the 682 portion between 33, US 33, and the Richland Avenue roundabout done.

Thank you, Mayor Paterson. Do we have any comments from the members of the public? Seeing none, we are ready. We have a motion and a second. We've had discussion. All in favor of approving Ordinance 69-26, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Ordinance 69-26 has passed unanimously. For third reading, Ordinance 74-26, an ordinance amending Ordinance 68-25, authorizing design and construction of a public safety training facility, Project Number 373, introduced by Member Sherwood.

This is merely amending the appropriation amounts and finishing up the, as Auditor Thomas mentioned, the construction of the public safety training facility on Kenny Drive. And so this is sort of rounding that out and finishing that out. It's simply amending the appropriation numbers to what was actually cost, and that's it. It's really straightforward.

Do we have any comments from council at this time? From the administration? From the public? All right. I know we have a motion.

Do we have a motion? I move that we pass Ordinance 74-26. Do we have a second?

Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor of adopting Ordinance 74-26 say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Ordinance 74-26 has been approved unanimously. Now moving on to ordinances for second reading. Ordinance 76-26 is an ordinance amending the 2026 Appropriation Ordinance 120-25 introduced by Councilmember Thomas. Ordinance 79-26, an ordinance granting a special right-of-way use permit at 144 Grosvenor Street to Perna and Debasi Basu owners to extend an existing front porch into the city right-of-way. Introduced by Member Swank. Good to go. Also, for second reading, Ordinance 80-26, an ordinance amending Ordinance 110-25, updating the cybersecurity policy for the City of Athens, introduced by all members of Council. For second reading, Ordinance 81-26, an ordinance amending Athens City Code Title I, General Provisions, Chapter 1.03, Code Bs Established, introduced by all members of Council. Member Thomas.

Yeah after some discussion with in the past meeting on this and then in the finance meeting with director stone and auditor Thomas I would ask to table this Do I need to ask and then give the reason a motion and then a second and it'll give the reason Second all right would you like to say more? We talked in the last meeting about doing a three-year projection on sewer increases and what those would be for the next three years. And Director Stone and Auditor Thomas think that that would be something that they would like to do and they'd like to have a few extra weeks just to gather that information. And they will have it for us by the time we're ready to adopt. So they just want a couple extra weeks. So if we would table this till next, I keep saying next week, but till next meeting.

Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you, Member Thomas. We have a motion and a second to Table Ordinance 81-26 for the reasons provided. Do we have any further discussion from counsel, from the administration, from the public? All right. Council, all in favor of tabling Ordinance 81-26, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Ordinance 81-26 has been tabled. Moving on for a second reading, Ordinance 82-26, an ordinance amending Athens City Code Title VII, Traffic, Chapter 7.09, Penalties, Section 7.09.99P, Q, and R, introduced by all members of Council. We have first Member Swink.

Before we follow the same procedure that Member Thomas correctly followed there in terms of tabling this, I think it would be beneficial that we, rather than counsel comment at this point in time, hear from the public before we consider tabling. We table it, we vote on it, that cuts it off. There's no participation from the public. I think we need to hear from them.

All right. Our normal procedure invites first comments from council, then the administration, then the public. I've heard no motions to table at this time. Do we have any other comments from council members as we begin? Member Clodd-Belter.

I found it interesting that Captain Harvey, the captain of the Athens Police Department, sent all of us, I believe all of us, I certainly got an email from him, saying that he does not like the idea of the parking fees increasing. And he articulated that well, laid out his arguments, but in a nutshell, he is not in favor of these increases in parking fees.

Thank you for that information, Member Cloudfeder.

Member Isherwood. That's not what the email said. The email said he was opposed to the graduated fees. He was, in terms of increasing the fees, I don't think he had any particularly strong view, but it was the graduated idea of that. He said there were other ways with which to deal with repeat offenders, and that that was not necessary. That was the tone of the email. It was not about changing the fees. Member Cloudfeder.

I believe that in, I believe it was paragraph three of his message, the regular fee increases as well. In a sentence that began with something like as a side note or on a side note, I felt that that was a subject change and that he was against those as well.

All right. Any other council members have input on this topic before we move to the mayor and the public? Member Swank.

I had an opportunity today to visit with a long-time Court Street business owner and the The individual brought up some things that I had not thought about. That wasn't one of them. It appears from anecdotal evidence... That we may not be enforcing, and I see two business owners out here right now who can confirm or refute this, that we may not be consistently enforcing the two-hour limit. I recall there was a recent court ruling that says you can no longer chalk tires. And that's a technique that many municipalities used in the past. Chalk had come back two hours later and the chalk hasn't moved. You always chalk it at the same place, 2 o'clock or 8 o'clock. And if it hasn't moved, they get cited for two. And it appears that we may not be doing that consistently. Consequently, there are cases where a car will be there all day long, where the person in the business simply comes out and just keeps refeeding the meter. And they never get a ticket. So that's one issue that came up that I had not thought about. And another was an anecdotal evidence. Four people go to Casa for breakfast. And four people have a wonderful conversation. And they've all put two hours of money in the meter. And the conversation goes to two hours and a half. And they come out, and they all four get a ticket. And they say to one another, man, that was a great breakfast until we got to our car. And one of the people says, you know what? I'm tired of this. We're going to start going to Gigi's for breakfast. Now, Member Cloudfelder hinted at this, that this might prevent people from coming uptown. But how we treat people uptown reflects on what our city is. We talked about civility earlier. So to suddenly to have an extended conversation or walking down Court Street where you run into somebody you haven't seen in years and your conversation extends too long and you don't get back to your meter in time and you're slapped with a $30 fine. I really don't think we want to do that. $15, okay. But $30, what kind of message does that spend? And we certainly don't, no offense to Gigi's, want our good Casa customers driving out to the planes, although the Joe Burrow burger is pretty good. So I just have a real problem with this. In terms of Captain Harvey, I would like to hear what his issue is with the graduated thing. We have graduated fines for all kinds of things in this city. We approve them every year. Why not do it for this?

Thank you, Member Swank. Any other comments or questions from members of council before I move on to the mayor and the auditor? Member Thomas.

Just a comment. I don't—this isn't a hill I would die on, and I think there's a lot of wiggle room on what we change the fines to. But I just think it's worth pointing out that the expired meters—we have a parking garage where you cannot get a ticket. You can stay as long as you want, and there's 286 spaces in it, and it's been that way for about 50 years now. And I've been telling people this for almost 30 years now. So— As just a side, the incidental times happen. We all get them. I parked my car in the street and then forgot I parked it on the street. Eight hours later, couldn't figure out where my car was. You know, I got a ticket. But, you know, the constant, we can't pay for more meter following or meter reading. if we don't have the revenue to do it. So, you know, we can make no changes, but it's not going to improve the service on that area a lot. But I would just encourage everybody that thinks they might be having a long breakfast or lunch or whatever to go to the parking garage because you will not get a ticket there. You will only pay for what you're using.

Thank you, Member Thomas. Member Swank, and then we'll see if we have any other council members who'd like to comment.

I agree with Member Thomas 100% for members of council Because we pull into the parking garage and it reads our license plate and the gate goes up. And when this meeting ends, whenever it ends, we'll go get in our cars, we'll drive down to the gate, it'll read our license plate, and the gate will go up. Unfortunately, the way the parking garage exit was designed is a nightmare. I stood there today and watched six cars, and five of the six people literally had to get out of their car to get out of the parking garage. The turning radius is incorrect, unless you have a small car or a Mario Andretti and can navigate these curves. It's not designed correctly. Therefore, there are people, particularly those who may have accessibility issues, that aren't going to that garage. So I agree with Member Thomas, and I've said it all along for years. You don't want to park on the street, go park in the parking garage. But for many people, it's a pain to get out of. It is a pain to get out of. Even if you've done what you're supposed to do, go to the kiosk, get your thing, and scan it. You can't make that turn. You get out of your car, and that backs people up. I shudder to think what's going to happen later this week. I think it's this week. at least in the next 30 days, when Lucas Nelson plays in Mim Odd and that parking garage is full. People are going to be in there until midnight trying to get out. So yes, I agree with Member Thomas. Use the parking garage, but it's a problem right now until that thing gets fixed.

Thank you, Member Swank. Do we have any other members of council who'd like to comment? Member Almeida.

I'm hung up on... the words repeat offenders. I've been trying to figure out who are they? Why are they repeat offending? I've been trying to toss around the idea of what their stories would be. The one thing that keeps surfacing in my mind is our workers uptown. I know for certain that a lot of our folks that work in these establishments that are on a schedule and they have to rotate their cars in the middle of work. They are asked to clock out at some places, move their car, drive around in circles, off the clock, losing money, paying more money for the meters, and it just seems very unfair. I also know that there's safety issues for particularly a couple women I know that work late nights in bars and they park in the parking garage and say they're at Casa and they have to walk all the way across alone. Sometimes they can have a buddy, but that doesn't necessarily happen all the time. So I just want to be mindful and create a space for our workers uptown.

I feel like that hasn't been discussed or acknowledged Thank You member Almeida Any other comments from council before I move on to the mayor and the auditor? Mayor Patterson, do you have any comments on this parking penalties ordinance?

The only comment that I have is I don't know whether council did receive captain Ralph Harvey's summation I'm seeing some head nods up and down I see some no I You know, he was pretty succinct in speaking to the escalating fee and whatnot and thinking that, you know, and he heads up parking enforcement and he feels that this is just something that is not the right thing to do, quite honestly, is his take on it. He's been doing this since 2011. He's been doing it for a long time. He's seen a lot of transition. He saw the parking meter rates increase, but also he, in his letter, addresses DETER, which is the system that they use and how it tracks people who haven't paid a parking ticket or whatever. So I would request that council look closely at Captain Harvey's letter that he sent to I know he sent it to me, he sent it on to Nick Magruder, our police chief, and on to Lisa Eliason, and I'm glad to hear that he also sent it on to City Council.

Thank you, Mayor Patterson. Auditor Josh Thomas.

The only thing I just want to clarify is just in a lot of the conversation, we keep saying fees. Fees are what you pay, are what you're supposed to be paying when you're at the meter. Fines are what you're talking about right now, is what you would pay for not paying the fees. So in all the conversation, it would be better to keep the language to fines and not fees. We're not changing fees. Fees are remaining the same. It's the fine that if you don't pay the fee, that's what you're talking about. That's all. I just want to clarify that because I didn't want anybody out there to get the idea that we're actually raising all the parking prices just to park on Score Street.

That is not happening. That's a very important clarification. Thank you, auditor. And now, members of the audience, if you would like to comment, please approach the podium. You should see a sign-in sheet, and each member of the public will have up to three minutes to share their thoughts. And we'll ask you to begin by introducing yourself. If you'd do so by sharing your name, whether you live in Athens, and whether you're representing yourself or a group, please.

I'd be happy to, thank you Mr. President of Council. Rick Wasserman, I own the Pigskin Bar and Grill restaurant in Athens. I've been a Court Street business owner continuously for over 32 years, starting in 1994. I do not live in the city. I appear tonight as a business owner because I'm concerned about the ordinance to raise the fines for meter violation. I feel very strongly that this is the wrong approach and will make life even more difficult for business owners. We're already at a disadvantage because a lot of places in town you can go and you don't have to pay to park. But if you want to come uptown, you do. The council's discussion at the previous two meetings on 810 and seem to center on what we're being told are habitual offenders hogging spaces all day, but being charged only the $15 ticket for a single violation. We're being told that we need to increase this as a deterrent. I'm sure that some of this goes on, I'm not doubting that. I'm just not sure it requires raising the fine on everybody who comes uptown. My first question is, where is the data on how big this problem really is? Where is the data on repeat offenders? Where is the data as to what percentage of the total amount of parking that goes on uptown that represents? Has anyone talked to the Voinovich School or someone else about possibly doing a traffic study uptown to determine the actual turnover or churn of spaces so that we have actual data to look at? The mayor asserted several times at the last meeting that the situation, quote, harms the businesses. And we appreciate your concern about that, and I mean that sincerely. That is very, very important. But it doesn't seem like any outreach was done to local businesses before this was proposed at council. And I'm not sure who the businesses are that support this because I've walked around Court Street now several different days and talked to about 12 or 15 businesses and I haven't found one. So I think that the businesses in the meter zone should probably be consulted about a solution such as this before it's imposed on them. I also want to just say very quickly that council person, Alameda's comment about the workers is very important because I think that's probably most of your habitual offenders. During the pandemic, we spent a lot of time recognizing people who work in service businesses and appreciating them for the hard work that they do and how difficult it is to be in those situations. And I think in this case, we may want to extend a little grace and try to find maybe a more creative solution than just simply increasing the burden on them. I think maybe that makes the situation worse and we should look for a better solution. But the real issue, the real thing that I want to say is that the message this sends about uptown is just terrible. And Councilmember Swank referenced this earlier. Locals refer to parking uptown as a tax. on going uptown. You'll see it on Facebook comments all the time. People talk about it as, I'm going to pay the tax and go uptown and eat. It's a tax people don't pay when they go shop the big box chain stores or the chain restaurants on East State Street. We should be welcoming to people. It's hard enough. Oh, sorry. We should be welcoming to people uptown when we want them to shop small. Tell them all the cool stuff we have. We have an independent bookstore. We have creative stores like the Ohio shop that Tim Martin has. He wanted to be here tonight, but he had school stuff. And I think that when we're talking about raising the fee, not just raising it, but doubling it, that's going to be the headline. And that any benefit the city gets or the businesses get is going to be significantly outweighed by the PR problem that you have with this. But if we do believe that there's a problem with repeat offenders, and I'm sure that there is, hey, we're in luck. You've got not one. but two laws already on the books to solve that problem. Both the mayor and the law director stated at the last meeting that it is an additional violation for every hour that someone stays in a space after they've been cited the first time. So if someone parks for seven hours, they could get as many as five tickets. That's a pretty significant number. That's $75. That's a pretty good deterrent. You also have on the books, as we've discussed, a two-hour law, which carries a fine of $20. So when you add all that up, It seems to me that you already have the answer and you don't need to double the fine. The casual uptown person that comes to park, they're going to get that $30 ticket, they're going to utter a few choice words, and they're going to vow that they're never bringing their car back uptown again. And the truth is that that doesn't affect anybody else in this room except the people that own the businesses. That's our burden. We have to live with that. It's hard enough to convince people to come up. And I think that that's just really going to make it worse. So I'll end my time and thank you very much for listening to me.

Thank you, Mr. Russellman. Do we have anyone else who's here to talk about the parking lines?

Good evening.

Good evening.

I'm Monica Bennett with Raphael Salon. Been on Court Street for almost 50 years. And I've done hair for probably 42, 43, I quit counting. But anyway, lots of clients, lots of people traveling in and out of Athens. People from many places. And every day I go to work and I do many, many things from doing hair to keeping everybody happy. But When I get emotional, speaking is not my good trait, but when you have to worry about clients getting $30 tickets because they were out of the block this much, and then they come in time after time, and they're having panic attacks because they're worried about getting a $30 ticket. So that's one good example. Another one was somebody was at the front meter and the meter maid was there and my client's already coming back and she's worried about being late and I'm worried about being behind. And the meter maid, we had a note on her meter saying it's broke. Well, the meter maid wants to fight with the client and she wants to fight with me. And I said, I don't have time to call that number. We're just trying to get this handled. We want to pay the money. We want to take care of what we need to take care of, but I can't stand there. and worry about my customers in that kind of an extent and still try to keep everything going. And, yeah, they drive from Charleston, Sissonville, other side of Parkersburg, and I have to walk into their cars. You know, I have to calm all their nerves. But they love Athens, and they want to come, and they want to shop at Passion Works, and they want to shop at Rick's Restaurant, Keith's Jewelry Store, and we're getting beat up every day. And, you know, I don't want to go anywhere else to work. You know, I work. in the country on Fridays. And some of these people would rather drive to Meigs County and come up 143 than deal with Athens. I don't want that for my city. When you put a lot of time in this town, it is your heart. That's all we can do.

Thank you very much for those comments. Do we have any other members of the public who'd like to speak on the topic of parking fines this evening? We should have a sign in sheet at the podium.

Yes, good evening everyone. Good evening. I think I can multitask and talk and sign in at the same time.

All right.

So Leslie Schaller, I am one of the original of eight worker owners to have started Casa Nueva back in 1985. And I would say that prior to that, I had also been a manager at the previous restaurant. That if you're old like me, you might remember Casa Que Pasa. So I've been living large for the last 46 years in uptown Athens. And I think one of the challenges, and this is true of every week, probably every decade, I experience conversations with our customers. We have a lot of preconceptions about the challenges of parking. in uptown Athens, and although I do not always affirm all of my beloved customers' opinions of how challenging it is to park or visit our uptown businesses, it's something that people, quite frankly, obsess about. And I agree that if the fine is raised, especially going from $15 to $30, that is going to be what gets, I would say, emblazoned in our customer's memory. A couple things I do want to share is that I think the challenge for many of us is how to solve some of these challenges we have. Keeping business uptown and patronizing many of our locally owned businesses. small businesses. So could we have a larger conversation again about parking? I was enthusiastic when we put the two hour time limit in place, but we recognize that sometimes it's just not feasible to consistently enforce. So whether we have frequent offenders in terms of receiving fines, I do think there are, as Rick said, maybe some opportunities to think about how to address the challenges of those frequent offenders without encouraging the dialogue some of us have constantly with our customers where they feel that they have to abandon uptown. Because whether it's true or not, it's perceived that parking is an issue. And the fines, unfortunately, will just be one more way of, I would say, encouraging people to abandon and patronize our businesses within the Athens area. And I would just argue that and appreciate, I'm going to end on a positive note, the investments that have been made recently in our infrastructure, in the streetscape amenities. We recognize that the administration and is committed to Uptown Athens, so we definitely affirm of your interest and support for that. So let's keep talking about parking and figure out what's next in terms of maybe probably never reaching consensus, but hopefully moving people forward so that we can really listen to our community, especially the customers that patronize Uptown small businesses. So thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. Do we have any other members of the public who'd like to comment on Ordinance 82-26 regarding parking penalties? Yes, we do. Wonderful. In just a moment, we'll ask you to sign our sign-in sheet and then introduce yourself.

Keith Chapman. I live in Athens, and I have a jewelry store uptown Athens. I went for the length of time, it's 51 years since I first sat on a jewelry's bench uptown. It was off the street a little bit, but... I love Athens like everybody else here. And pretty much a lot of what I'm just here to do is repeat the same things that we sort of all really know. That parking is an issue, parking is hard. But we don't want to treat our customers uptown like they're a commodity. We can just get in their pocket a little more because we want to say we need the money. That's just not who we are. We'll go back to the ordinance about caring about everybody in the community, being respectful. I saw that, but this is just mean. Doing this is out of meanness. It's not out of respecting our customers. That's not who we are. I think we all know that. It maybe would generate more money. It maybe do this and that. And I really think we need to not only put this back on the back pedal, but listen to everybody that said really find some solutions just to better our uptown and better our whole community by doing that. We can do it. The people are here. The brains are here. So we just have to force ourselves to do it. One other thing I always want to comment, because I understand the idea that we have a parking garage. A parking garage, I think, is working towards better solutions. It's always been doing that since it was built, which I remember when it was built. We had one of the first reserved spaces in the basement, because we could go out the back door to our building. And it'll be a process. But the other thing we have to remember, we're not here to tell people where they want to park. As an example, my winner this year so far for a client was an age that I know of was 93, and drove around the block until they could park out front. And I'm going to tell him that he should go to the garage, and we call ourselves a respectful community if I have to do that. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Do we have any other members of the public who would like to comment on this ordinance? If so, please approach the podium and you should find a sign-in sheet where you can list your name and contact information.

Hello, I'm Grant Hampson at 46 North Lancaster Street, right up Core Street to the left. It's that big green building. I'm a student here at OU. Obviously, I work for the city. I'm an urban planning student. I'm here to oppose the ordinance aside from amending the... a window from five days to 14 days. Because I feel that gives students like me and just other people in the community in general, like, I don't know, your grandmother on her Social Security check trying to squeak by some more time to maybe fudge with their numbers or get their paycheck to pay the fine. I think $30 is way too much, and I don't think it gets at the root cause of the issue for repeat offenders. Yeah, because $30, especially right now, that's a lot. We've been facing a lot. The younger people have been facing a lot of inflation and whatnot. I mean, $30 is a third to half of some people's grocery budgets, I know. And just to have them, like, I guess, have to pay that. just to cover, like, an extra minute that they didn't get, because that's happened to me. I've turned the corner before, saw the parking ticket lady giving me a ticket because I was out getting some food. It just took a second longer, and then I was stuck with a $15 fine. I mean, $15 is okay, but it just is worsening the quality of life and mostly impacting lower-income residents the most, in my opinion.

Thank you very much. Do we have any other members of the public who'd like to speak on this? I'll give the mayor an opportunity to respond to some of the things that he heard. Mayor Patterson.

I'm glad you phrased it that way, President McCary. Responding to the things that I've heard from those who are in attendance here tonight, I am going to propose that council... I love the way you framed it, you know, giving people 14 days to pay that parking fine. I'm also going to recommend the council to strike everything else in there in terms of. rate increases. Everything that you have brought to me as business leaders on Court Street, and I know you all, and I have engaged with all of you often. I know where I get my hair cut, and that has nothing to do with this, other than we all work closely and engage often with our uptown businesses. I know that it's the administration that brought this forward because we're looking at different things in code that haven't changed in a long, long time. But in reflecting and thinking more about this and appreciating the input from the business leaders and how, and I agree that this clearly could be the tipping point to where customers are just going, I ain't going to do it. Um, oh. Come on, sweetie.

We appreciate it mayor Patterson I will consider the public comment on this closed and entertain any motions council members might wish to make to amend this Ordinance remember what we already did the 14 days.

Yes.

Yes But what we haven't done is what the mayor proposes to strike everything else Do we have a motion to do that members link?

No, I think we have four choices here. One, we could postpone to a date certain. We could postpone this indefinitely. Or what I'm hearing from the public is it might be best to refer this to committee for further study of the whole parking issue. Mr. Wasserman was very, very clear, and I agree with him 100%, where's the data? Where is the enforcement of the current rules that he cited? Come around and you've got one ticket. Come around two hours later, not only you get another ticket, you also get the two hour ticket. Come around again, you get another ticket. So what I'm saying is parking in general is something we need to do. But the fourth choice would be to strike everything from this ordinance except 14 days to pay your tickets. And then defer to the chair of the Transportation Committee to take up the issue of parking in general. And I guess that fourth choice would be my preference to delete all of these prices, as the mayor said, leave the 14 days in there, and to encourage. We don't put this in the ordinance and the amendment, but encourage the chair of the Transportation Committee to, as my wife often says, make sure you have the right people sitting at the table when you have the conversation about something. I would move that.

Member Swank, I'm not quite sure which of those options you're making a motion toward.

I move that we strike all the dollar amounts that are in red. All right. We leave the 14 days, both spelled out and in parentheses, in there, which is essentially making one change, allowing people instead of five days, as the young man said, to pay their fine, to 14 days.

We have a motion on the table. Do we have a second?

Second.

Any discussion from council on this proposed amendment to the ordinance, 81-26? Seeing no additional discussion from council, Mayor Patterson.

I would like to address what Council Member Swank mentioned about transportation and taking this up. I will also have our city planner look into this. If you recall, some of you, it predates you and others, you may have been on council. Paul Logue did a pretty thorough parking study with university interns that worked for him to look at at the use of the parking meters, and that's where we kind of came up with the three different zones and the pricing of the meters in those three different zones, because we recognized under that study, the north block up by the armory, there's always a parking space there. The south end, basically down at Court and Union, were always, had good luck finding a parking space in those parking spaces during peak timeframes, periods. So I guess what I'm saying is that the city will absolutely be involved in this, and if we need to, we can also bring in the Voinovich School to look into this. So Mr. Wasserman's point is well taken, and there's things that we can levy to make sure we do look at. how things are flowing in the uptown area. I would like to get input from the business owners as they do this as well because the one thing that we didn't hear tonight, and again, this isn't about parking in general, I would like to have part of that conversation the few 20 minute parking spaces that we still have and whether they are effective and useful or if we can potentially rethink those as well. We did those because we knew that there were some places, some businesses, where the turnover can be much quicker. In other places, we learned really quick, why have a 20 minute parking space in front of a tattoo shop on the fourth street unless you really want a tattoo that doesn't look all that great.

Thank you, Mayor Patterson. You're welcome. We have a motion and a second on the table to amend. We're entertaining discussion. Auditor Thomas, do you have any discussion on this? Okay, members of the public, do you have any thoughts? We've heard a lot from the public on this. Appreciate your patience. All right, members of council, we've heard the amendment, we've had a second, and we've had discussion. All in favor of amending ordinance 81-26 as proposed, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say nay. Ordinance 81-26 has been amended and will therefore have to go back at first reading. And this does not preclude anything that the mayor shared about willingness for the administration to meet with interested parties to provide input, nor does it preclude the Transportation Committee from taking this up in another form. And with that, I'll say that we are done with 81-26 for the night. 82. Sorry, 82, no, yep, 82-26. And we now have Ordinance 83-26, an ordinance amending the 2026 appropriation Ordinance 120-25 to make necessary storm and sewer water repairs introduced by Member Thomas.

All right, this is from earlier tonight, just amending the 2026 appropriation ordinance. Following sums, $40,000 to storm sewer fund maintenance, 755.635 for storm tunnel failure on Kern Street. 75,000 to sewer fund plant, 750.637 to replace a failing influent pump at the wastewater treatment plant. and $75,000 to sewer fund plant 750.637 to repair a failing clarifier at the wastewater treatment plant and increasing the total appropriations by set amount. I move that we adopt 83-26. Second. We'll suspend.

We have to suspend the rules. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah. I move that we suspend 83-26. Second. Discussion?

On the suspension?

On the suspension.

Anyone have any discussion on the suspension of the rules so that we can approve it tonight?

Yes. Okay, discussion number one. Does it need to also say the emergency language in section two?

Finance items don't need emergency clauses, they're automatic. Great news.

Yeah. Thank you, Member Wood. Do we have any other discussion on the proposed suspension of the rules, Member Cloudfelder?

I just agree that these are things that need to be dealt with immediately. If there was a failure of a system on current drive, then that needs to just be resolved.

Agreed. Thank you, Member Cloudfelder. Do we have any further discussion on the suspension of the rules for Ordinance 83-26? Seeing none, all in favor of suspending the rules for 83-26 say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Ordinance 83-26 has had the rules suspended.

I move that we adopt 83-26. Second.

I'll give that second to Member Cloudfelder. And do we have any discussion before we take the vote on approving 83-26? Seeing none, all in favor of approving ordinance 83-26 say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. Ordinance 83-26 has been unanimously approved. I will now accept a motion to adjourn. Second.

Second.

We are adjourned. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. We are adjourned at 9.49.