City Council - Regular Meeting

I DID NOT KNOW THE CONVERSATION WAS GOING ON. OKAY.

WELCOME TO COUNCIL COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE. IT IS TUESDAY, MAY 26TH AT 5 P.M., 5.01 P.M. TONY, WOULD YOU CALL THE ROLL? OKAY. TONY, WHO IS HERE? I'M HERE. and Josie and Chief and and here's Hattie. Hattie's not really here. So we have a lot on the agenda today. We're probably going to go for a few hours THEN HOUSING AND BUILDING. 45 MINUTES PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT. 30 MINUTES. PUBLIC SAFETY AND HEALTH, 30 MINUTES. AND THEN WE END UP WITH ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES. OPEN ENDED. I OPENED IT. REALLY OPEN ENDED. AND THEN MAYBE SEE IF THERE'S ANY OTHER.

COUNCIL BUSINESS. SO INITIATING. COUNCIL PRESIDENT. SO PUBLIC SAFETY IS GOING. PUBLIC SAFETY IS GOING.

is here.

Would it be okay if that were second on the agenda? I have no objection. Just let me ask counsel. Yeah, I was working off the same agenda.

Okay. So that works for me. I think we'll do that, but let's start with finance. Thank you. Vice President.

Greetings. Greetings. Welcome to staff of finance and human resources. Somebody has the financial report update for March, April? We do.

And we actually emailed it out before the meeting and we was hoping, instead of printing all of those copies, we were hoping Addie would put it up. We do have it. Oh, you have it? Okay, great. Thank you.

You know, I would ask, you could even do that when they're ready, just email them to us. That would, in my mind, that would be even better because then we get a chance to look at them. So when they're ready, if you don't mind, Everybody's approved them and they're ready to go. That would be wonderful. Absolutely. Thank you.

All right. So presenting the year-to-date financial statements as of April 30th, 2026, we're looking at the unencumbered fund balance. Our beginning cash balance, which remains the same as 91.9 million. Our year-to-date revenue, 36.7 million. which is a variance of 3.9 million compared to prior year. We have our year to date expenditures of 34.9 million, which is about 220,000 compared to prior year, which leaves us a cash balance of 93.7 million. Our open encumbrances are 22.4 million, which is about a $13 million difference. So our unencumbered fund balance as of April 30th is unfavorable by 18 million. Overall, we have a stable financial position with revenues performing strongly and our spending growth is being managed responsibly. And looking at the unencumbered fund balance, it actually reflects a return to a more typical pre-ARPA level comparable to 2022 before the city received its ARPA funding in June of 2022. Next, looking at page four, where we go into the detail of the revenue and expenditure history. I'm just going to... call out some of the higher variances. I won't go into all of them in detail. Our property taxes, we are favorable close to $605,000. Our state levied and shared taxes, we are favorable to prior year by $323,000. Our charges for services, we are favorable by $459,000. This is mostly due to the CDBG-led abatement. This was in planning. Our intergovernment contract revenue, we are favorable $2.1 million. This is largely due to a $734,000 homestead rollback tax we received from the county. $665,000 of that is also from CDBG. And we also received $769,000 from sewer maintenance reimbursements under Department of Planning. Charges for services, we are favorable by $459,000. This is $324,000. I might have said that one. This was a CDBG-led abatement. And our interest earnings, we are favorable by $344,000. Interest earnings. No, I'm sorry. Yeah, we're favorable.

It looks like we're down.

No, yeah. Which one am I on? I'm sorry.

I'm on other revenue. No. forgive me, the small print, $344,000 for all revenue. This is primarily the $114,000 in foreclosure bond deposit, $86,000 for the special assessment for the ring road resurfacing, and $73,000 for the Coventry Special Improvement District. We touched on this last month at our meeting. The interest, we are down $512,000, and that is due to the FARPA funding.

So I'm sorry, Tiffany, could you just go back those three things, the ring road? Sure. Can you just give a little bit on each of those?

Sure. So the $114,000 foreclosure bond deposit, I believe we received that from, I think we received that from the county. And the $86,000, the special assessment for ring road resurfacing, I believe that was from the county too. The $73,000 Coventry Special Improvement District funds, I'm not exactly sure the source of that funding. I can get back to you on that one. But we did discuss this in our last meeting.

That should be the SID, the Coventry SID amount, yeah. So this is extra money or this is in addition? For any of the special assessments that's typically an in and an out, Because with the SIDS and the Coventry, we receive those funds. Anything that we receive, we turn over to the SIDS. I see.

And the Ring Road resurfacing, you said that, and the foreclosure bonds, those came from the county, and that's also just a pass-through?

So the foreclosure bond deposit, I'm assuming, but I can get back to make sure it's a pass-through. Okay. Looking at our expenses. Before we move on. Sure. Property taxes.

Higher default rates.

Yeah, or higher late rates, people unable to pay their property taxes. I've heard countywide that that's been an issue, that the rates of people unable to pay the higher levels are more this year than in years past.

So we would have to do an analysis on that, reach out to the county and get that report. They typically don't send that with the settlements, but we can request that and take it. Okay.

All right, moving on to our expenses. Looking at our personal services, we have a variance of $1.7 million. This is labor-related expenditures. $522,000 is public works. Again, this is the local H-60 pay increase. $224,000 is fire department. This is added staff. 132,000 is community relations and it's also added staff. Other than personal services increased by 795,000, 594,000 of that is from top of the hill. 164,000 is our liability insurance and 112,000 are our election expenses that we were billed for this year. Election expenses are the average

Where you have to put it in the newspaper?

No, so those are billed by the county. So whatever our portion of holding our elections.

Chief Harry, how many, I think, what are we at, six firefighters? We added six firefighters.

So that was to cover the difference.

And how many have been hired of the six that were allocated? All of them. Good for you.

So looking at where we stand with revenue over expenditures, we are a positive $1.8 million year-to-date for April. Any additional questions before I move on to the general funds? So our revenue is in line compared to prior years for all funds except for the ARPA-related funding. It's a little bit higher. All right, moving on to the general funds. Our cash balance as of 2026 is $23 million. Our year-to-date revenue is $23 million, a $1.1 million increase. Our expenditures... are about 20 million, which is a 2.1 million increase. Open encumbrances are 3.6 million, which leaves us, and I'm sorry, the variance is 3.6 million. Our unencumbered fund balance is 20 million, which looking at our, compared to prior years, we're pretty much in the same. It was a higher in April of 2025. as well as of April 2023. But looking at April of 2022, we're about the same.

Tiffany, do you have a way to analyze those open encumbrances in a report from the full office system to see what encompasses $5 million in open encumbrances? Sure. When you get a chance.

Are those the same as account receivables? I guess like what? I GUESS MY QUESTION IS, YES, BUT IS IT INCUMBRENCES BECAUSE OF MOVING MONEY AROUND OR IS IT ACTUALLY, I GUESS THAT'S MY QUESTION, RIGHT? IS IT RECEIVABLES?

TYPICALLY INCUMBRENCES FOR CONTRACTS THAT WE HAVE.

MOVING ON TO PAGE 6, OUR MUNICIPAL INCOME TAXES ARE ABOUT which is $169,000 difference compared to prior year. Our shared levy taxes are 967,000, which is a $310,000 difference compared to prior year. This is primarily due to the 225 adult cannabis use tax that was what we didn't receive in prior year. ALSO LOOKING AT OUR INTEREST EARNINGS, AGAIN, WE'RE AT 1 MILLION COMPARED TO PRIOR YEAR. WE'RE DOWN 514,000. THE SAME AS ALL FUNDS, THE FED RATE AS WELL AS A DECREASE IN ARPA FUNDS. AND OUR INTERGOVERNMENT CONTRACTS ARE AT 619, I'M SORRY, OUR VARIANCE IS 619,000. WE'RE AT 752,000 THIS YEAR.

And that is also due to the same as it was for all funds, the 700.

No, I'm sorry. That would be the homestead rollback, the 734 homestead rollback. Overall, if you just look at our general revenue compared to the prior years, we are

27,000 IN OTHER LOCAL TAXES. THE FOURTH LINE DOWN.

Do more research on that one. Because the variance was so small, I didn't prepare for that for this week.

I'm only asking because we had $61 in 2022 and nothing since.

So it's a little bit of a windfall. It may be a matter of something being classified differently or being reclassified from where it was last year. So we'll look at it and let you know.

LOOKING AT OUR PERSONAL SERVICES UNDER EXPENDITURES, IT IS THE SAME THING AS WE HAD FOR ALL FUNDS. AGAIN, LABOR-RELATED EXPENDITURES, PUBLIC WORKS, FIRE DEPARTMENT, AS WELL AS COMMUNITY RELATIONS. OR OTHER THAN PERSONAL SERVICES OF 6.2 MILLION, WHICH IS A VARIANCE OF 1.2 MILLION COMPARED TO PRIOR YEAR. The same as all funds, the $594,000 on top of the hill, the liability insurance and the election expenses. And looking at our capital, which is $193,000 more compared to prior year in the general fund, $92,000 of that is laptops and $52,000 is replacement mobile data terminals for police cruisers. This is pretty much the same as it was in March of.

2026 that we reported.

And our revenue over expenditures is 2.9 million. So just looking at the bar graph, we're pretty much moving, we're in line to where we were at for prior year. And as a matter of fact, with an increase in revenue.

So personal services is up about 700,000. Let me look again.

So

So could we extrapolate out from that that we'll be about a million and a half last year by the end of the year? As if we don't do any hiring. I take it that we still have, I don't know if you want to call it a freeze.

So it depends. There was some staff that were hired the end of last year. So the expenses for 2025 will begin to increase as the year goes along compared to, so we might end up breaking even if compared to 2026 only, I don't want to say break even, but really get close to 2025 because a lot of the hiring, not a lot of the hiring, but some of the hiring that was done was done towards the end of the year.

And I could see how that would change the projection. But we know we're paying people more this year than we did last year.

And then we have to also factor in the 3% increase that was not incorporated last year. So you see what I'm saying? Like this year is compounded with additional 3%. So year over year is going to be a little bit higher.

It's definitely going to be an increase. But right now, what we're comparing to last year, we didn't have as many expenditures as we did at the end of 2025. Okay.

Are you optimistic when you look at the chart? Because that's a really good graphic to see revenues versus expenditures. We're seeing a narrowing of the difference between the two on a graph. And we're also, when you look at the numbers, it's also... a narrowing of the difference between the two. So do you think June will be a point at which you could give us a projection as to we're going to be looking good for budget season? Or I don't want to ask more than we have data on, but there's some trending happening there. And with a word of caution to all of us, right?

I would say June, July. We should definitely leave the extrapolate out. Give us enough data for the year to leave the extrapolate out for the 2027 budget year is typically what we've done in the past, yeah. Thank you. And then we can start forecasting.

Yes. All right, that is all that I have. The last page is just the fund balance report for all funds.

And it just lists beginning balance of all funds, revenue, expenditures, encumbrances, as well as our year-to-date ending unencumbered balance as of April 2026.

I only saw one negative account, although it's small, so forgive me if I missed one. Down at the bottom, it looks like it's the flexible spending account, which I presume that the money will be coming in from the employees during the year. It's timing issue. So everything else is in the positive.

So congratulations. Just for clarity, it was two accounts that were negative. It was the Milpac and the Neighborhood Stabilization, wait, no, one before the Let's Save program. And that's just has, that's just a drawdown timing. Yeah.

Now we're ready to go on to the listing of funds. Do you still want to do that without Director Brzezinski here?

We can do that. The other thing I wanted to go over, if you don't mind, is just the bonds. I know you had asked, I think Councilwoman Cohen had asked for that. So I just wanted to go through the bonds really quickly. Okay, so I think I updated that schedule to provide for THE PURPOSE OF THE VARIANT BOND ISSUANCE THROUGHOUT THE YEARS. THE FIRST ON THE LIST IS THE SEVERANCE RING ROAD IMPROVEMENTS. AND BASED ON MY RESEARCH AND OUR RESEARCH, IT LOOKS LIKE THAT WAS A REFINANCING OF A PRIOR 2014 REFINANCING OF 2004 BONDS WHICH WERE ORIGINALLY ISSUED TO HELP PAY FOR IMPROVEMENT TO RING ROAD AND DISCONNECTIONS TO MAYFIELD AND TAYLOR ROAD TO SEVERANCE TOWN CENTER. IMPROVEMENTS INCLUDED REBUILDING THE ROADS AND SIDEWALKS, CURBS, RETAINING WALLS, LIGHTINGS, ET CETERA. THE NEXT IS THE PARKING DEBT REFUNDING. THAT DEBT ISSUANCE WAS FOR REFUNDING OF 2015 REFUNDING BONDS FROM 2008 DEBT ISSUED TO BUILD AND EQUIP THE MULTILEVEL PARKING DEBT AND THE SURROUNDING SITE. I LOOKED THROUGH THE TRANSCRIPT. I COULDN'T IDENTIFY THE LOCATION. BUT BASED ON JUST WHAT I CAN DETERMINE INTERNALLY, IT SOUNDS LIKE IT MIGHT BE THE CEDAR LEE. DIFFERENT EMPLOYEES RECALL THAT BEING BUILT AROUND THAT TIME. SO WE'LL DO MORE RESEARCH ON THAT TO KIND OF NAIL IT DOWN. BUT I COULDN'T FIND THE EXACT LOCATION IDENTIFIED IN THAT TRANSCRIPT.

CAN I JUST ASK YOU ABOUT THOSE TWO? I MEAN, IT LOOKS LIKE IF WE WERE If the Severance Ring Road were bonds from 2004, so now we're 22 years later, and if the original amount was $1.68 million, but we still, at the end of this year, will have $900,000 outstanding, do we know why it's taken us 22 years to pay off $1.68 million?

Probably what occurred is that the original issuance was much larger and we just refinanced a portion of that. And so once we did that, that restarted the clock.

So the 20, so the 2021 refinancing was on the last 1.68 million is what you're saying. It sounds like it.

Yeah. Or a portion of that thought we could take advantage of to refinance, to get lower rates or to restructure the,

Well, 2021 was definitely the time to refinance, but then can you, I'm sorry to keep, but can you find out what the total, I'm just really, I can't believe we're paying off bonds from 22 years ago. It's a waste of money. Right, and the road is a disaster, right?

Well, it's been recently repaired.

Right, well, now, yes, yes, to the administration's credit. And then the same, you would say the same is for the 2008 debt on the parking garage. In 2015, we refinanced the $3 million that we see there as like the original amount is what you're saying. Yes.

Okay. And you want us to find out about that as well, find out the original? Yeah.

Would Director Brzezinski and staff be looking at this to see if there's any opportunities for us to do any refinancing IN THE INTEREST RATE MARKET FOR THAT? PROBABLY THE INTEREST RATES RIGHT NOW ARE MUCH HIGHER THAN THEY WERE IN 2021 AND 2022.

SO AT THE TOP OF THE YEAR I POSED THAT QUESTION TO ONE OF OUR DEBT CONSULTANTS AND THE ANSWER WAS WE'RE PRETTY LOCKED IN AT LOW RATES SO IT WOULDN'T MAKE SENSE UNLESS WE DROP A PERCENT THAT WOULD KIND OF ABSORB SOME OF THE DEBT FINANCING COSTS. SO SOMEBODY IS WATCHING IT FOR US.

THE ONLY OTHER QUESTION IS WHAT'S NOT HERE ARE THE INTEREST RATES. And I mean, at some point, like this debt is so old. I mean, the question is we do have, I mean, we do have a rainy day fund. We have the general fund. I know we're still waiting on how much we need in there as, you know, a baseline, but we, maybe it's a conversation for, you know, this year of like, do we just want to retire some of this debt to avoid the interest payments? I, I, even if it's two and a half percent, if we have money sitting,

Yeah, I'll have to look, but I believe we may be receiving more interest. So it may, we'll have to look at it.

Right, that's what, right. So that's what, I mean, just to understand what the position is.

But if that's the case, then that's an easy decision. Right.

So then let's see, Top of Hill refunding. This was debt issued to help pay for buying part of the Top of Hill project site and redeveloping it. Improvements include, of course, apartments, retail, public parking, gathering in green spaces, sidewalks, et cetera, to support the project. We had some various purpose rebonds from 2021. this debt was issued to reconstruct and resurface and improve city streets, rebuild Monticello and Taylor Road. We purchased some motorized equipment, vehicles, and equipment for public works, both the sewer and forestry divisions, and we purchased some mobile radios for the police department.

I just want to state that I don't understand why we were issuing debt for that in 2021. I mean, we're talking about a million dollars. Why wouldn't we just... unless it's 0%. I don't understand why we wouldn't just pay for it. Maybe it was. Maybe it was. I mean, I would like, I guess I would like to know, I mean, this seems like normal operational expenses and now we're going to be still paying on it for another four years.

We would also have to look at the fund balance at that time. I know at one point it was a little lower, much lower than what it is now. So. Maybe that was I think the interest rates were the key to the story. Yeah. Let's see the vehicle, 2018 vehicle acquisitions, we acquired some vehicles and related equipment for the sewer division. And then last but not least, we had some various purpose bonds from 2020, where we refinance older debt, again, we refinance debt to save money, the older BONDS WERE ORIGINALLY USED TO PAY FOR SEVERAL CITY PROJECTS, INCLUDING VEHICLES, STREET ESCAPE APPROVEMENTS FOR THE CEDAR LEE AND CEDAR FAIRMOUNT DISTRICTS, HVAC SYSTEMS, IMPROVEMENTS IN THE LYNN SOURI PARKING DEBT, RENOVATING CITY HALL, ET CETERA. SO THERE WERE QUITE A FEW PROJECTS INCLUDED IN THAT DEBT ISSUANCE OR THE ORIGINAL DEBT ISSUANCE THAT WE REFINANCED. in 2020.

Are you, since this is a public discussion this evening, would it be acceptable when you post the financial statements to put this information on the website?

I don't see any issue with that. I can run it past you, but I don't see any issue.

This is really interesting information and I'm glad that you asked for it. So I think it would be good to share it with the public.

Okay. I mean, we are going to be paying off through 2037 this refinancing of $12 million in bonds. I mean, we're stuck with a burden that probably shouldn't have been.

And so that is all the bonds. So we can move on to the funds if you all would like. So I think at the March meeting, we left off at fund 205, just based on going back and looking at the finance committee meeting. We have about 57 funds in total. We went through six. I don't know how you all want to do it tonight.

I can go through the next 10 or... Yeah, let's do that because then it will give us five minutes for the ADP conversion. Then our time is up for this particular section.

Okay. You can go home.

Damn.

All right. Okay. All right, so we're starting with Fund 206, which is the Law Enforcement Fund. And that's on page three. And this particular fund is to account for and report fines from seizures by the law enforcement officials, restricted for expenditures that would enhance the police department. Main sources of revenue include confiscated funds, intergovernmental revenues, evidence room receipts. We had an unencumbered fund balance at the top of the year, 465, budgeted revenues of 71,500, We look to expand about 105,000, and we project about a little over 400,000 at the end of 26. The next one is the Drug Law Enforcement Trust. Similar kind of fund, I believe this one is more restrictive in what it can be used for. But again, it's to account for and report fines and seizures from criminals by law enforcement. SIMILAR KIND OF SOURCES OF REVENUES, THIS COMES FROM CONFISCATED FUNDS AS WELL AS FEDERAL INTERGOVERNMENTAL REVENUES. TOP OF THE YEAR, WE HAD 625,000. WE'RE PROJECTED TO BRING IN ABOUT 190 WITH 214,000 GOING OUT WITH THE ENDING BALANCE OF 600,000, ROUGHLY $600,000.

When you get a chance, would you share with us what the restrictions might be on those two funds, 206 and 207, in terms of expenditures, please? Thank you.

Next up is the Community Development or the CDBG Community Development Block Grants. This is to account for and report restricted federal grant monies for expenditures as prescribed under the CDBG program. At the top of the year, we had about $571,000 in the fund. Projected to bring in $4.5 million. We're projected to expend about $4.9 million, and that would leave us about $143,000 at the end of 2026. you've gotten all the budget items out, people have their money, right? Right. Ideally, at some point, we should hopefully get to zero and be able to just clear it out and start over, but yeah. The home program is the next, and that's fund 211. Again, that's to account for restricted grants available through the county's housing consortium, restricted for the home investment partnership program. The unencumbered fund balance as of 1-1-2026 was 140,000 roughly. We expect to bring in about 1.3 in budget revenues. And we budgeted the same for the expenses with the projected unencumbered fund balance of 140, which is where we started at the top of the year. Fund 2-12 is the FEMA fund. And this fund is actually dormant. We haven't had any activity since 2023 in expenses. And the last revenue that we received was from 2024. And that's to account for and report federal and state monies restricted for the restoration of areas hit by natural disasters. Again, at the top of the year, we had about $159,000. We didn't budget any revenue, no expenses, and we expect to have the same. And this is one of the accounts that Joe will be looking into. We can repurpose or whether something was, you know, misclassified. So we'll have to do some digging into that one. Fund 213 is the police facility improvement. And this particular fund was set up to account for and report administrative fees collected by the police department committed to repair, rehabilitation, improvement of the city's police department facilities. The main source of revenues are background check fees. We had about $30,000 in the fund as of the top of the year. We anticipate another $22,000 coming in with roughly the same going out, so we'll probably end up at the same spot that we were at the top of the year.

I have a question about the departmentally designated funds. Are those handled in terms of approval expenditures through council as any other expenditure, or does the police department have discretion over how those funds are spent?

So I believe they have discretion, but it still goes through council in terms of approving. Fund 214 is the local TV programming fund. This one is to account for administrative fees collected for our cable franchises and other expenses associated with the city's audio visual. 1.2 million at the top of 2026. We're estimating 322,000 inflows for 2026, 440,000 going out the door. And at the end of the year, about $1.1 million in that fund.

I'm sorry, is this revenue from rental of cell phone towers and things like that?

Yeah, I believe that's what it is. And then the expenses, from what I can see, it looks like we have various consulting contracts that flow through this fund. Fund 215 is, of course, Cane Park, and that's to account for the revenues and expenses for the Cane Park facilities, sources of revenues, the ticket revenues, concession fees, and we do transfer in from the general fund to help subsidize that fund. Unaccommodated fund balance at the top of 2026, and this does include a transfer with $700,000. Our budgeted revenues were $2 million. And that also included a transfer as well. Our expenses are expected to be around $2.6 with the ending fund balance of around $70,000. Can I just go back to the local TV programming fund?

Can we find out if we're able to use... I mean, it would seem like if it is revenue from... THE USE OR RENTAL OF CITY PROPERTY BY COMPANIES, THAT WOULD NOT NECESSARILY BE RESTRICTED. IT WOULD BE REVENUE. SO CAN WE FIND OUT, BECAUSE THIS SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF MONEY TO SIT JUST FOR CITY'S AUDIOVISUAL. AND IF THAT MONEY REALLY HAS TO BE USED FOR AUDIOVISUAL, I HAVE A LOT OF IDEAS ABOUT WHAT WE COULD DO.

QUESTIONS BEFORE WE MOVE ON? AND THIS IS ON THE CAIN PARK. I've got a question about that too. So in looking at this, is this your projection for the year end as to where we're going to end up?

dollars with 69 so the deficit will be the difference between the revenues and expenses about what is that about 600 yeah 620 would be the shortfall but because we did transfer funds in we're expected to be at a positive fund balance at the end of the year

And I take it we don't know what our ticket revenues are going to be yet.

So, not for the year, but the last report that I was copied in on from Suzanne, she said that we were 50%, this was in April 16th, we were 50% of the way through our $1.45 million goal, and this was through April. so she's expecting us to exceed the revenues for the year.

Okay, but we have twice as many shows, so that doesn't exactly... Okay, the first thing on the unencumbered fund balance, we didn't make money last year, so how do we have a balance?

Because we transfer funds in at the end of the year.

Right, but wasn't that already expended out from...

It was expended out from the general fund and it went towards revenues and towards the fund balance for Cane Park, the Cane Park fund.

Okay, so that $697,000 was to seed this year.

To see the deficit for last year, we had like a $250,000 deficit last year. And then we had a deficit anticipated for this year. And so we see that, yeah, we had to clear out that deficit for last year for estimated resources certificate. And then we also had to see to clear out the deficit for this year.

So Craig, so when we look at this, HAVE TO TAKE ALL OF THIS INTO ACCOUNT BECAUSE OTHERWISE, IF WE DON'T LOOK AT THIS WHOLE THING, WE'RE NOT LOOKING AT THE WHOLE STORY.

ANNUALLY, THERE'S PROJECTED REVENUES AND EXPENSES. SO FOR THIS YEAR, THE PROJECTED DEFICIT IS $627,000. SO THAT'S PROJECTED FOR THIS YEAR REGARDLESS OF THE BEGINNING AND ENDING YEAR BALANCES.

YEAH. GO AHEAD. four million, that

there would be almost a $700,000 deficit there. So we are actively trying to manage that to reduce it as much as possible. But when we reviewed and passed the budget, we were aware of that.

That sounds good to me. I'm sorry. That sounds good to me having a conservative estimate and then with twice as many shows concessions. Well, we'll see.

Well, it sounds like if my numbers are, I'm doing the math correctly. We, make another million dollars in ticket sales, we will have broken even. Right? Because we're $300,000 less over the anticipated revenue.

Yes. So the deficit plus $300,000 is, yes, break even.

So Suzanne gets a million dollars more ticket sales.

But not necessarily. I mean, you could have.

They have twice as many shows.

Well, not only that, but with the Cleveland Orchestra playing for free and consider concessions just from that, it's already sold out, right? I think I heard.

Yes. It was sold out like the day of.

I would like to suggest that one of the things that you asked for and that we'll look for in the budget book is that breakdown of exactly revenues and expenses line by line as much as possible.

to double the deficit we it only makes sense to double the budget if we are able to reduce the deficit by increasing the budget you create economies of scale that allow us to reduce the deficit we have to think carefully this year about a model that actually works for k park i mean the the i think the plan was and this was in my little three months i mean the plan that we put in place

And let's price the tickets, you know, accordingly. And I mean, of course, we're in the we'll see stage. We haven't had a show yet, but that is supposed to make things work. That was the point.

I think that it depends upon us selling the number of tickets that were anticipated and that budget together, how many tickets were estimated for each performance. So I don't know if they were saying, okay, if we get 40% of the seats filled and we charge this amount, we're going to break even. I don't know what those projections were.

Well, here's what I could tell you. There was a projection for each show that was booked last year.

And it depends upon us meeting that.

Absolutely. But this wasn't like, you know, It was always a projection based on a lot of numbers that were gathered by the past performances and so forth. They averaged it out and said, you know, I mean, there were acts that were only projected to bring a thousand people in. But again, the price of the ticket and everything was different.

I'M GOING TO MOVE ON. JUST A QUICK QUESTION. CAN WE PUT A PLACEHOLDER FOR SEPTEMBER OR OCTOBER TO HAVE SUSAN AND THE ADMINISTRATION COME TO FOCUS ON CAIN PARK? SEPARATE, NOT JUST IN THE FINANCE.

WE NEED THE SEPARATE.

YOU WANT ME TO MAKE NOTE OF THAT?

PLEASE.

SORRY. I JUST DON'T WANT TO FORGET. Thank you very much for that fund account. We'll call it at 2.15. We should be able to finish them up maybe next time. Anything on the ADP conversion? Is it moving forward?

IT IS. THE HUMAN RESOURCES AND FINANCE DEPARTMENTS CONTINUE TO MAKE SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS TOWARDS THE CITY'S TRANSITION TO THE ADP PAYROLL AND TIME KEEPING SYSTEM. THE OFFICIAL ADP GO LIVE DATE IS JULY 24, 2026. SO THAT'S WHAT WE ARE WORKING TOWARDS AND WE ARE MOVING IN THAT DIRECTION. AS PART OF THIS IMPLEMENTATION, THE ORGANIZATION WILL ALSO INTRODUCE THE ADP TIME KEEPING PORTAL AS NOTED. which will allow designated employee groups to electronically clock in and out. So before when we presented to you all last, I want to say November, if I'm not mistaken, it was a matter of just the payroll system, which is called Workforce Now. We now have the central timekeeping piece, which includes time clocks and things of that nature. So it's all under the ADP umbrella. So with this, we're also looking to, let's see, to support a smooth and accurate conversion from the current payroll system of New World and ADP, we're moving up the deadline. So we have to incorporate a number of deadlines, or timelines, we should say. Additionally, we'll do training and all those types of things for the organization in June. We're looking to do that. But with doing that, it'll help with our data validation and system testing payroll accuracy and compliance, timely payroll processing during and after implementation, and alignment with the ADP strict payroll transmission schedule. So it's not just our schedule where we can keep pushing and pushing. ADP has a strict timeline. So that's why we're going to be incorporating different timelines for the various departments to abide by. So that creates some standards and everyone being on the same page.

How many parallel runs will you do?

Payrolls? We have, before we go live, we have at least, I wanna say it's two. Three pay periods. Well, three pay periods. Yeah, that's true. I think the first one is July or June, the end of June. So we do have some parallels going. We have had some key achievements. As noted, this has been long going. If you notice, we said our acquisition was in November 23, but we're definitely looking to come to an end in that respect. We do have what we call a path to service call, which is our official, you could say, kickoff on July the 14th. We currently meet with the team, including our various department leads two to three times a week regarding ADP. So we are really looking at amping up our meetings so we can have a smooth transition for July 24th.

Is there anything the council needs to know about this transition in terms of our payroll?

Your salaries?

You know, you will absolutely be included. So, yeah, usually our finance team takes care of all those types of things. But we'll definitely be sure to let you all know as part of the training environment as an end user when we get there. Not at all. We'll be sure to be all inclusive for everyone.

Any questions? Because I'm going to move on to... Yeah, let me just...

Thank you. NO.

OH, OKAY. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR COMING. OKAY, THANK YOU.

APPRECIATE IT. OKAY, SO WE'RE MOVING PUBLIC SAFETY UP TO THE NEXT TOPIC. IS EVERYBODY OKAY WITH HAVING PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT AFTER?

I THINK THAT MAKES THE MOST SENSE.

WELL, DIRECTOR ZANDT SAYS THERE'S PEOPLE. SO, OKAY. NO OBJECTIONS? or nobody's listening. I'm looking at turned heads. Okay.

the portions, the agenda items for police and fire first.

Absolutely.

Do we, when was, okay, we got everyone. Okay. All right. So let's start there and then we can let people go home.

So.

of these smoke detector installations so as you probably know uh planning and development got a grant um for i think it was about sixty eight thousand dollars was a dual purpose grant and some portion of that was to be for the roper lock boxes residential keys for our crews to do damage and quickly, obviously we would support that. So we jumped in with them and we're building up the program as we speak. We got the shipments in and we were already getting calls for requests, which is a good thing. So we've done about 20 already, 20 installations. We did have a meeting last week with Madeline. Amanda. Thank you. Amanda from Office on Aging to kind of work on all the ins and outs of that. They're going to be like a partner with us, an intake. And I'm going to have a meeting hopefully this week with communications. We're going to blast our website, hopefully the city website, the recreation website. those things out. Like I said, we've done about 20 already. This should be fairly easy. Most of them are over the door. There's going to be people that just can't have that, so we'll have to fasten them to the house or somewhere else, maybe on the garage or something like that. And I'm not sure how many we're going to do, but people are already hearing about it, so I'm assuming we're going to get And we'll pump those out as we get them. Numerous people will be doing the installations. As far as the smoke detectors. How many do we have? Oh, boy. Boxes and boxes and boxes. I'm not even sure. A couple thousand. We have a lot. I mean, we have them in boxes in the chief's office. We have them in the fire prevention office. And I think.

staff that, Chief? Do the firefighters, when they aren't on call, do that?

So that's been a sore spot for us for a long time. We've increased call volumes over the years. That on top of the smoke detectors, that's kind of why the smoke detector program was starting to fall apart. It was ultimately killed by COVID. We used to schedule a battalion chief to two for a resident and as call volume went up and up and up it just you know it was it became impossible you know they'd get a call for a fire or a fire alarm or something else you know on top of all their other um their call volume is their daily activities training and all the station stuff so it became unreasonable you know somebody would take time out of their day to schedule perfect time for them or their family member to meet with us and it would fall apart. So it was trending downward. And as I mentioned, COVID kind of killed that. It just, you know, it was dead in the water after that. So we're going to reinvigorate that program as well. I've been speaking with the administration about, you know, a little increase in overuse schedule it off duty, you know, and then between some of that and fire prevention and myself, you know, we'll go out and we'll crank out as many as we possibly can. Same thing with the lock boxes.

Are the lock boxes just for senior citizens or for anybody?

I don't think they're specifically only for senior citizens. We would have to check the grant language, but I can't see how that would be that

and inspectors going out. That could be a time when there might be some collaboration to get that installed. I don't know. That's just a thought.

We kind of have to do it because we have the key and we're very, very particular with that key. We actually have this same program for commercial occupancies called the Knox Box program. And we check those keys. We account for them every single day. If we lose one, it becomes a huge problem. I see. So yeah. But when somebody does transfer a residence, that's not a problem for us. We can hand the keys back over and lock it back up and either take the box or leave it for the next residence.

Okay. Thank you. Just thinking about communications, because you said you were going to discuss with the communications department, since this is targeted for seniors, can we, and maybe city administrator Reese, you can also help with this, but can we ask communications their thoughts on mailing? Like if we can segment our resident list by name, age or if the community of agent the committee on aging has a particular demographics on her list. I'm just thinking that like social and email is not the best way to reach the

true oh also pertaining to that we're going to have a stack of flyers and they're going to have the people at the desk in the office on aging for those people that aren't digitally are coming in right and are not going to see the social that's great i'd like to see a knox box and every person that needs one you know and i'd like to see smoke detectors on every floor of every residence it would be good if we could find out if they're

any restrictions so that the people with disabilities that really need to have something. That's perfect for them. Fire alarms, smoke detectors put in. It would be good if we can make it even more inclusive.

Just on the increase in overtime, I don't think that's something we're more dollars worth.

So timing is crucial in terms of when you roll out the emphasis then for the communications?

If I might, I found the legislation on these lock boxes and it's more than two years ago and according to the legislation we purchased 2,300 lock boxes.

I feel like we got two, possibly three different shipments of them

What's involved in installing them? How long does that take?

If it's an over-the-door lockbox, it's not a big deal. door key those just slip over it's like a little u-shaped bracket goes over the top of the door and as long as that door can still close it's just a matter of opening it up getting their keys in there locking it up putting it over the door having them sign our form to to meet the grant you know because they just got to make sure we're not just selling them or anything And sometimes those doors are a little bit tight or of a different width. So we actually bought a tool kit so that we can go out to the residents with those if we have to alter them a little bit to make it fit. Or if we have to abandon that and fasten it to the house, then it's just a couple of screws, you know, a couple of wood screws into the frame or maybe some tap cons into the concrete or brick. That's a little bit more involved, but it's not going to be like a five-hour installation.

My sense is it's going to take us some time to get 2,300 of these installed. Probably, yeah.

Well, the good thing is we don't have to do it all in a year, but it's just part of the program that we can have going forward. And maybe later on down the line, we'll just – but keep it rolling.

Any other questions? All right, thank you very much. Thank you.

Yeah, you want me to start? Sure. So we've had some meetings the past several months, and we've heard that this is a future. lookup search, if we just hit that button and we participated in that, it was reciprocal. So when I looked at the organizational or network audit, it was part of that program. You can see how out of state had that. So once I removed us from that program, So we've really limited who has access to our cameras. It's really regional now. There's still work to do, but that's a big step. I did that back in April.

Can you clarify the difference between our one-on-one sharing agreements and then the national and state lookup agreements?

So the one-on-one agreements would be, I would reach out to an agency and say, hey, can I have access to your cameras? And they would reciprocate and say, yeah, can we have access to ours? And when we initially started that program, I'm thinking missing people, sometimes they go out of state. And we've had a couple examples of that. So when I wanted to search, we did nationwide. You run a plate, it comes up in the local area, and I hit look up on the bottom of the screen, and it runs it nationally. And really, the vehicle's probably only in a three-city area. but I know in a couple of cases we had missing people that were in Michigan. One was in Michigan. One was in Pennsylvania. We're able to say, Oh, okay. There they are. It's very rare that happens. So after some research, um, who went through it, I took us out of that and it hasn't really slowed us down any. So just having it, we know who has access to our cameras now, uh, removing the state and national lookup really took out a lot of, um, This one is very specific, and it really hasn't hurt us when I do a national lookup. Because if I have a plate that's involved a missing person in a national lookup, it's going to look like I ran the plate in Missouri when I really didn't. I just hit lookup to see where they traveled.

Okay, thanks. And then specific to 37G agreements?

We'll have to do some research on that. I removed a lot of sheriff's departments in the... We have a neighboring city that's looking at some sort of legal letter to send out to other agencies and do some research and have them agree to that. And then make sure that no one's using it for that. I did set the filter for immigration. find a way to make it a little better.

So just to clarify that for if someone is searching for using the search terms immigration or reproductive care, they're not going to be able to access our network based on those search terms.

I have a follow-up question. in their request?

I'm not sure. I mean, we just remove, if we find out, we can remove access. Generally, most of us locally, we're not, we're just looking for shootings, robberies, missing people, thefts. You can even hit skip access just locally the majority of the time.

So we started this conversation maybe about two months ago, and I really appreciate Captain Young's willingness to talk through this and consider some legitimate concerns that people might have. So sort of in summary, we have severely restricted the number of departments that we share the data with. They are now almost entirely in the immediate area. We have disabled the nationwide lookup. We have disabled the statewide lookup. and we have turned off filters for immigration and reproductive rights cases. We also, as he mentioned, one of the neighboring communities, in an effort to try to suss out anyone who might have a 287G agreement, we learned that a nearby community is sending letters to departments that they share their data with, and so we're actively exploring that so that we can confirm that those Our intention is to request in writing that a department does not have 287G agreement in place and that if they do, they'll communicate that to us.

And so in the future, if someone requests access to our system, then we would seek to understand whether they have a 287G agreement? Correct. Okay. Yes.

Before providing access.

Right. Yes. We also, we are also trying to look at our existing contract to see if there are areas where we might be able to strengthen protections. And so we don't have an update on that at this point, but for council's awareness, we're actively working on it. Okay. Questions?

I do have a question. I'm trying to understand What you, Captain Young, see when an agency reaches out, because I saw the demonstration of software, but what is that accessing agency seeing on their screen? Do they have a form they fill out that gets sent to you in terms of having a 287G agreement or anything like that? Or do you end up having to determine if they have a 287G agreement?

So they have access now. I might, Sunday we had a crime into a geographical area. We had a developed suspect car, ran it, saw it was in a neighboring city, a few cities over, ended up finding that car and arresting two people, finding a stolen gun, and that within two hours, which is kind of, it's much easier if I don't have to ask that agency, it can have access. it's at now and it's almost like having a real-time crime center that's less intrusive because it's actually just it's just gathering it's a red car went through or a gray car without a license plate and when it's gathering a license plate it's not gathering anybody's personal information it's just gathering a picture and it's organizing it by it's a sedan or a truck and either you search for the license plate but it's not I don't know who's driving that truck I don't know who's driving that car it's just basically a video camera that captures images and then organizes it.

You probably have familiarity by now as to which cities are cooperating with the federal agencies and which are not, right?

Some. That's why I limited really locally, and we still have work to do to better filter out. Now I look at the network audit quite frequently now to double-check. And that's something before that used to be, I mean, we're talking a big data set, almost impossible to go through. And now it's a much smaller data set. It's kind of easier to watch or look.

And if I could just reiterate, we disabled.

Yeah, and I just wanted to, I appreciate you both emphasizing that because I think we've heard a public comment and also in emails, a lot of misconceptions about what an ALPR is actually capturing. And all it is, is the car. and the license plate and i think that that's a lot different and and you mentioned before but maybe i'll just reiterate that flock does make different types of surveillance cameras but our contract and the ones what we use are only the automatic license plate readers so right so i don't think you can say that often enough can we say it again as well right

WHEN WE RESPOND IT IS SIMPLY READING THE LICENSE PLATES.

I THINK WHEN YOU REPORT OUT ON MONDAY TO

to have this conversation and work through this and think about how we might be able to set the system up to best meet our needs. Appreciate it.

I'm really glad you found those perpetrators.

I do not have a lot to say about the first item, the Deer Management Update. Jeff Westerfield, who is a gentleman from ODNR that has presented to us in the past, I don't think that you were on council yet, as it would have been the fall, but he is based on, excuse me, he is using the data already collected, which is the frequency of deer vehicle collisions deer carcass picked up from the city, the residential deer survey that we all had opportunity to fill out, and the recent estimated count of our deer population. Those pieces of data, plus his general overall knowledge, he's going to be providing us a deer management plan in two to three weeks. So that will be extremely helpful in terms of us making decisions about moving forward. Any questions on that part?

I have a question, but I'm gonna report out a little bit more on my council president's meeting on Monday. But I brought up to your management, there were 30 council presidents in the room. And what was interesting was Brexfield, We need to do this regionally. Brecksville, I didn't know one-third of Brecksville was metro parks. One-third of that city. So they said we couldn't really run this place without. But everybody's interested, and that's good to know, if not participating.

It's a problem for all of us.

Thank you.

So proceeding on to the next item, which is the discussion of a don't feed the deer. I sent you some information regarding how I would recommend we do a public service campaign because for the gardeners in my neighborhood and those throughout the city that raise vegetables, feed their families, that have people in the back or on either side that are feeding the deer, it's a problem. And a very, very good friend of mine who's a master gardener, it's every year anxiety about what's going to survive the deer from his neighbor's yard. And in my heart, I know that if we start to let people know that this is not a good plan for feeding Bambi. This is not a plan for feeding Bambi. This is you are feeding, you are attracting animals to your property, including other rodents and those kinds of activities that are hurting your neighbor. And that's how I would approach it. And so I would ask for help from comms, because I know Jessica can help us put out a campaign. I would like to do one that's NOT ONLY ONLINE, BUT AGAIN IN THE LIBRARIES POSTING BULLETIN BOARDS, MAILERS FROM OUR BUDGET IF WE HAVE TO. BUT REALLY FEELING SOMETHING NEEDS TO BE DONE. AND I THINK THE INFORMATION THAT I GATHERED, THERE'S ONE PARAGRAPH ON VARIOUS PIECES THAT I just want to read this because this hits home for myself and for those people that are really trying to do something with their properties other than just landscape them. This is from an organization that, let's see, this particular one is the Institute for Environmental Research. And the paragraph reads, deer are naturally adapted to forage for a variety of plants and vegetation. When humans provide food, deer can become dependent on these unnatural sources, which may lead to nutritional deficiencies and digestive problems, sometimes even fatal. Artificial feeding also reduces their ability to forage effectively and alters their natural movement patterns, causing them to congregate unnaturally in certain neighborhoods. I would hope that the people that are feeding the deer will understand that they are contributing to a situation that's not healthy for those four-legged creatures, sometimes three-legged. But that's what I would like to ask permission from council for is to work on this campaign and to get it out as soon as possible with Jessica Shuntz's help.

Thank you.

Let's let the committee talk first. So in addition to feeding, or the document

things around, you know, if a doe is laying in the back of your yard, like don't disturb it. And, you know, some behavioral issues around when young will be born and just sort of like tips around that.

So I think, you know, an even broader campaign, inclusive of eating, but incorporating other aspects as well.

I understand what you're saying, and I would like to concentrate on this as a first step, but that doesn't mean we can't have a section perhaps even in the weekly newsletter about the animals that we share this space with.

So, anyway. And then I would just say as much as possible, trying to get something authoritative from ODNR and just using that instead of trying to... on our team or coming up with something ourselves.

Would you see that first, the information I sent out?

Yeah, I think that's good. I would just think checking with ODNR if they have something that we can plug into.

Yeah, I can contact Jeff.

Okay. Yeah. I think, you know, approach-wise, letting people know at this time we're not considering after they read, you know, the educational material or what, I don't know exactly how you're going to, you know, but it would be nice to know that people could communicate with us and let us know that after we did this, we voluntarily decided we're not going to feed the deer anymore. And that way we could measure the effectiveness of the campaign. Much like a gun buyback campaign, you know, you have evidence that, you know, there's participation Are we wrapping this one up?

Not on the deer. I have another public safety. Just I wanted to bring for the next month's agenda. Is everybody okay if I proceed? So I just wanted to ask, because this is the main meeting, but we'll have two Committee of the Whole meetings in June. I was at the Noble Neighbors Festival, and something that came up in my conversation with some residents is the concern about lack of enforcement measures. of shooting off guns on July 4th, specifically, and fireworks, all of that, you know, a concern of how the police department handles that. There were some mentions that they had called the police on July 4th and they come, but they come too late or they know it's going to happen, but they don't, you know, they're not necessarily enforcing. And so I'm wondering if we might ask Chief Britton to maybe come to one of our June meetings just to discuss that.

Yeah, certainly I have complaints.

Yeah, I mean, there are complaints about fireworks, you know, and I think in many neighborhoods, but the shooting off guns, it's very concerning.

I KNOW WE'RE GOING TO MOVE ON TO PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT. THAT WAS ONE OF THE THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT WHEN I SAID WE NEED TO MOVE THOSE. I'M SORRY. NOBODY WAS LISTENING AT THAT TIME. SO COULD I ASK ALL THE CHAIRS TO WHEN YOU'RE MAKING THE ORDER OF THESE committees you know reporting out uh to to to work this out with addy because when i look at it you know my thought is i don't have a you know i don't have a particular order that you know i don't look at this and go well that should do that that should be yeah but yeah well but but my point is is that i need you all to to we've moved things twice already within this I'M JUST SAYING THERE'S PEOPLE THAT ARE WAITING AND SO FORTH. SO I THINK THE FOUR OF YOU OR HOWEVER MANY THERE ARE TODAY, FIVE ACTUALLY, WE NEED TO WORK THAT OUT WITH ADDIE ABOUT THE ORDER BECAUSE I'M LOOKING AT THIS AND IT'S OBVIOUSLY NOT WORKING FOR EVERYBODY.

I THINK THE PROBLEM IS THAT EACH ONE OF THESE COMMITTEES THIS EVENING HAS INVITED STAFF Yeah, that's true. So when Addie puts this agenda together, she's done it because she knows which deaf people are coming as well.

So I think we had a draft agenda and why we moved things was because some of us were working off the draft agenda and some of us were working off the actual agenda. So we need to have maybe more clarity when things that are posted or finalized as to, so everybody, staff, administration.

I couldn't agree more. Yeah. But just, I just wanted you to understand, I'm sorry that this got moved around, but I got a text from one of the directors during this meeting, and I'm just trying to accommodate. So, you know, I just want you to know when I look at this, I don't think, I don't have a thought about, oh, because you guys have talked about it, and I haven't been in that conversation. So,

Ishmael, oh, he tried. Yeah. Could you, are you able to get in touch with him? Just ask him to try again. I mean, we'll get started.

Okay.

So this, I mean, this might take less time, but what we wanted to do is we had some questions from residents regarding the different infill housing efforts that we have across the city. We have different parts of the city also have different programs and different efforts happening. So we asked Start Right with Pastor Jimmy Hicks is here. And you guys can come up. We tried to make some room. We have Lee Chilicote and Seth Task from Future Heights and somebody else that I don't know, but we'll have him introduce himself. And Matt Weiner also, I think, And then we have Ishmael Martin from YRM who's going to be joining shortly. So the idea here is just to get a quick kind of broad overview of what's happening. The opportunity, we'll have some time for council to ask questions. And then we have like two other quick updates from planning just to share with council. So anybody have a burning desire to go first? Okay, future heights.

Well, thank you for having us. I'm Lee Chilcote with Future Heights. I'm just going to talk broadly about our housing program, and then these guys might want to chime in and then turn it over to Seth, who's going to talk about the Enfield housing. So just a couple things. This is not on the agenda, but just so you know what we're doing with our housing program. We purchased two homes from the city about six, nine months ago, and we're rehabbing those homes currently. for that house. So those are coming along nicely. We'd love to give folks a tour once they're done and have you come out and check them out. That's what we're using our ARPA funding to do. And it's turning out great. We also got a grant from the Cleveland Foundation to do a home repair matching grant program. So what that is, is residents, homeowners, owner occupants who meet certain income guidelines can apply for up to $3,000 in matching grant within a prescribed area. So it's the area, excuse me, Cedar Lee and Kane Park neighborhoods around where we're rehabbing houses and building new infill housing. And the idea is that those funds can be used for exterior improvements that improve the neighborhood, And that some of the benefits of what we're doing accrue to the residents of the neighborhood.

And from there, do you guys want to add anything? Just on that point, is there a limit in terms of total funds? There is.

Right now we have $25,000 to give away to grants. And we are hopefully working with the city of Cleveland Heights to get some more funds to match that.

So I'm sorry, the $25,000 is from the Cleveland Foundation. So I think it was $3,000, up to $3,000 for homeowners. So that's like eight.

Eight or ten grants, right.

And was that, was the locations, I'm thrilled that the Cleveland Foundation has granted anything to Cleveland Heights. That's amazing. But were these neighborhoods privatized? the stipulation was that it's connected to like the future heights development, right? Like the infill housing and the rehab. So it wasn't like pick a spot and in the city. Exactly. Okay. I think that was some of the questions that we got around the program and we wanted to make sure that we clarify for residents.

Okay.

Do you guys want to add anything?

Okay. Hi, how are you?

New houses.

Hi, new houses. Hi to the new council people. Um, so, um, Very exciting. So as you may recall, we're in the process through an arduous community outreach program. We met with several community players. We did a big meeting at the library. We put a survey out there. Have you guys seen the survey, by the way? I think I took the survey. Did you take the survey? Yeah, yeah. Very helpful, I have to tell you. It really has sort of been the driver for some of our for um and in that survey it asks are you a resident or would you be considering buying a house those types of things too so uh very very relevant what kind of turnout did you get uh where are we at now we it's still we still ask for more of 200 for this almost 300 it was about a couple hundred people wasn't it it was over 200 it was and then what kind of turnout did you get at the library oh god that was uh well you were there it was what do you have there was a full room 60? 50 to 60? I forgot. So it was, yeah. It was like 50 to 60 people. I thought it was pretty good. We had some great feedback. I mean, you know, I had meetings with people who were there after the fact too, and that's all gone very well. We have two designs at ABR right now. In fact, our final meeting is Thursday. So once... two designs through ABR and the way those the way ABR is handling those is if if somebody picks one of those two designs we do not have to go through ABR again for that design so which you know part of the reason why we are doing it this way is we want once we you know once we ramp up and we get to a place then we can just pump out houses as long as people are buying them So the other thing that we've done, and I'll tell you about the houses in a second, the other thing that we've done is we have, and I've seen the emails, because I have to go through Future Heights to buy the land, and then I buy the land from Future Heights. That's sort of how that works. So we've submitted to take down the first two lots, both on DeSoto. one of which is going to be our model. We're going to build a model, as I had told you we were going to do. We're going to build a model so people can actually walk through a house and see and feel what they look like. I picked what I consider to be the worst of my 45 lots to put the model on. And when I say worst, I mean not locationally. I mean it's 37. Yeah. So, but I'm building what I think is going to be a real great new addition to the city of Cleveland Heights. And that is a ranch. So we're building a two bedroom, two bath, 1,060 square foot ranch provided it goes through BZA. Now that's the next step. As soon as we get approved from ABR, we have to go to BZA. I spoke to Xavier today and he, One, two, three, four, five. I think that we have, can we wait? I think we have no less than five zoning code variances in building this house. This is something that I would ask council to consider. I know you guys are working on a housing And I'll just tell you what most of those are. So one is if you build a new house in Cleveland Heights, it has to be a minimum lot size of 7,500 square feet. That takes almost every vacant lot out of new construction without going to BCA.

Right, because it's non-conforming.

Because it's non-conforming. Number two, you can't build a new house in Cleveland Heights that's less than 1,500 square feet. I'm being asked to build affordable housing or housing that's not, you know, a half a million dollars can't do that for, you know, under, you know, over 1500 square feet. Well, you can, but it's a matter of the quality of what you're, what you're getting. So I want to make sure that we can build, you know, a good product. And plus the fact that some people don't want, like there was in the surveys, there were a lot of people, they don't need three bedrooms or four bedrooms. Well, what are you going to do with a 1500 square foot two bedroom house? You don't need it. Right. So under 1500, I would, I would ask you just eliminate that entirely that minimum square footage, or at least lower it to something like 800, 900 square feet. One is a side lot variance because I have 37 feet and I still have to put a driveway in. So the left side is going to have a side variance, a side lot. It can build on three feet. It's going to be two feet and something. I control the lot to the left, which is the next lot we're taking down. So those are the two we're taking down. So because I control the lot on the left, what we build on that lot, I can put the driveway on that side so that I'll have 10 feet between structures, which is from a fire code perspective what you'd want, right? So that's the third. The fourth, garage. In order to build a new construction house in City of Cleveland Heights, you have to put a two-car garage on it. A two-bedroom house I don't think needs a two-car garage. Plus the fact, I think that... A 14-foot wide single-car garage has good storage in it. I sell lots of houses in Cleveland Heights with one-car garages. There's plenty of them out there. The cost of construction continues to rise. It's $7,000 more to do a two-car garage versus a one-car garage. Let the consumer decide.

Well, just to be clear, I mean, they could come to Planning Commission and to reduce that requirement, but that's adding an administrative step. I mean, technically you can have a house.

So, right. So, so reason I, reason I'm bringing this up as this is that these little things are when you, as you update your, the zoning code, if you removed these or, or reduce them, I have a house. I welcome house that wants to come and build a house. It's a nonprofit. They don't want a garage at all. You know, some people don't want a garage. Some, you know, this is a very walkable area. I mean, you know, with everything that Matt's doing over there, you know, some people may not want even a garage. So I don't know. I think a one car garage would be okay. But anyways, these are the types of things that if we change the zoning code and didn't have to go through BZA, it's a... It shaves 30 days at least off the process because you have to prepare that. You got to figure out what you have to go to BZA for. You got to apply for it. You got to go through it, et cetera. Otherwise, we can have a fully entitled house without having to go to BZA for some of these things. And somebody could come order the house. depending on how fast our factory is. So two-bedroom, two-bath ranch, 1,060 square feet, and a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath colonial, which is 1,545 square feet. So I don't have to go to BZA for the size on that one.

Do you have estimated sale prices for each model yet?

It depends on, like at a base level. I mean, here's the thing. There's a lot of variables. you know, are you doing granite countertops? Are you doing formica countertops? You know, are you doing LVP flooring? Are you doing hard? I mean, there's too many variables to say. The other thing is, is that the way that we've applied to ABR is that we've designed a one-car garage, a two-car garage that's 20 by 20, a two-car garage that's 24 by 20, And then a two-story two-car garage with an ADU upstairs.

Well, we're not up to that yet. That'll be June 2nd. We're a farmer.

But I'm designing it, so... And that will be modular, by the way. The second floor will be modular.

So there's a basic model that ABR would approve, if approved. But then, like with general housing development, buyers will be able to choose... trim like for sure the variations of it and that would not need to be revisited by abr right so so there so in the submission i could can i screen share you want to see yeah don't do it all right um oh but that's ishmael so let's let him i just texted him i got it oh you got oh you got it okay great

So there are a variation of colors. So we've designed, we've put three color schemes per elevation. And then even the ranch actually has three different styles, by the way, three different front porch styles. They both, they all, both of them have front porches, eight foot front porches. You're going to love these ranches. I swear they're, I can't wait to build it. They're so cool. Yeah. I think so.

Okay, we want to keep us moving. So Pastor Hicks, do you want to share anything else from future heights just before? Okay.

Is there anyone that did not get a copy? I don't think you were there. I don't think you were at the mayor's 100.

Oh, I don't know if I picked it up. But I got this. I think you emailed it to us. I did email.

Councilwoman, within that... So we have, in terms of the infill housing, we have one house that we've completed, 961 Milaville. And it's a 1,500-square-foot home. And it is a ranch, single floor, and 10-foot ceilings. And so it really went over well. This was something that came out of the meetings that we had with the community in the Caledonia neighborhood. Interesting piece about, again, what we build, what we build is the same cost to build no matter where you're building it. So you build it in Caledonia neighborhood, you build it in Solon. It's going to cost the same amount of money to build. What does it change based on where you build it? What we have in the Caledonia neighborhood, you're talking about affordable housing. You're talking about the grants that we have applied for and some that we've gotten in order to build an affordable home. We're $250,000 at a base price or less. We did get a grant from the Cuyahoga County Land Bank and if we can't sell it for $250,000, they will assist us with up to $35,000 with that grant. you know, to help us fill the gap. That was one of the programs we had from the city council, but we never received that program for new construction. So we recently received our financing from the Cornerstone Fund, who helps nonprofits and churches. So we're at a point where we can build two houses a year so we've already um began construction on 833 needleview um where we've got our pca approvals for 833 needleview and 924 grayton and so those are the two uh that we have right now um ready to build um we have the foundation dug and it's just as he said, as we build it and sell it, then we can go to the next one. There is a demand for the single floor living facility Senior living also, but one of the things that we deal with that the other developers at the table don't deal with is that we're not Cleveland Heights proper. And when I say that, we have East Cleveland School District. And that's why these very fine developers aren't beating down your door for that area of the city. because we have to deal, that's one of the things we have to deal with, and that's why we have to be subsidized through the grants. We have application in with the Welcome Home Ohio program, and we're waiting for that to come out. You know, if we're blessed enough to get that, that's up to $100,000 per home.

Remind me how many lots you have been

Allocated. Allocated. We've been allocated three. We're the only ones at this table that applied for that RFQ or FP, RF, whatever it was, and didn't receive anything from it. And so what we received was from 2020 and that contract, but it's not the same contract that they have. That contract that we had, that we no longer had, had about nine conditions that you had to jump through hoops in order to even get a lot. And I love what these guys have because it's, you know, they're there. They don't have to be put in their names. They don't have to pay the property taxes. They don't have to do any of those things. They just have to be when it's ready to request them and are ready to build, then they can do that. So, again, we're set to build two a year. And we have the two lots already. And so we are looking to receive or to find out the process to receive more lots from the city. We talked about that. That's kind of where we are right now. And we have to work on the reverter clauses. within those contracts because we were not able to get financing with the reverter clauses within the contracts. And so we had to work with the law department, Brian Anderson, and a number of people from the city to get that off because there were no title companies that were going to, or this title company with Cornerstone. was not going to approve the loan with the reverter clauses on there. So we worked out something where Cornerstone is the first mortgage and the city of Cleveland Heights would be the second mortgage. So the city of Cleveland Heights still has an interest, but that reverter clause turned off a lot of lenders.

The reverter clause has reverting back to Cleveland Heights?

Correct.

Within how many years?

It was within, it was a short window. I don't have it within years. Brian might know more about it. I don't recall. But it was a short window. And it was, we had these clauses within the contract. You had to build this many by two years, another 10 or five by this, you know. And, you know, that put restraints on us that no bank was wanting to deal with because of the interest rates and how they shot up. RIGHT AFTER COVID. THEY WENT DOWN AND THEN THEY SHOT BACK UP RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF WHAT WE WERE DOING. SO WE'RE IN A GOOD PLACE RIGHT NOW IN TERMS OF THE FUNDING THAT WE HAVE AND THE FUNDING THAT WE HAVE REQUESTED AND THE GRANTS THAT WE HAVE REQUESTED. WE RECEIVED A $50,000 GRANT FROM ENTERPRISE FROM SECTION 4 so that we could get our pre-development costs paid for. And so all of this, again, because building affordable homes in the Caledonia neighborhood is important to us. And again, we had many barriers to building that has taken us seven years now, because we started this in 2020. It's taken us seven years to continue building quality homes in that neighborhood. And so again, we had the one that was completed and that was because she had her own law and entrusted us to build the home. And so we were able to build it to her specifications as well. I don't know. No.

I think in terms of where we are progress-wise, I think I just would agree with the comment that was mentioned. I think one of, you know, when you're talking about trying to build to affordability, one of the barriers that we hit earlier when we were going through BZA the first round, we tried to come and we couldn't go forward with that and we had to lock in with the 1,500 square foot product. So again, that is a consideration that could be looked at. I know, again, housing studies happening, zoning's happening. But again, in terms of reducing costs, that would be a huge win in terms of being able to produce a more affordable product. So I mean, I would 100% agree with

As we roll into the, I know we mentioned a little bit about the vacant homes. We're thankful for the $500,000 grant we received from the city approved by city council. We were able to rehab two homes, 896-7 and 828-7. Neil and you both were on Zillow. I think we sent those out. We purchased two homes as well, 973 Caledonia, 893 Woodview. All of those are in the book. So we were able to do a lot with those as we sell a home. Then we take those proceeds and go into the... We have three homes that we still have that we received from the city last year. So it's a process of... in terms of being self-sufficient and building capacity. We're selling the home, taking those funds to go into the other home. So it's a slow process. We're in the process of finding lines of credit and bridge loans so that people understand that this money is sitting in this home when we sell it. We'll be able to use that to pay back the bridge loan. So we're working with U.S. Bank, P&T Bank, you know, for those products. And so we have, again, we have one home that's getting ready, that's on the market to be sold. And as we do those, then we'll be able to receive more. So we're self-sufficient in the sense of we have to sell it to go into the next product. and until we receive other grants, it's a slow process for us. Ten, nine homes, you know, until we build that type of capacity or until there are grants or, again, loans that we could do that, we're in the process of rehabbing, waiting to sell to go to the next one, building, waiting to sell to go to the next one. So that's kind of where we are right now. But, I mean, that's better than where we were.

Go ahead, Carl.

Pastor, you mentioned there was money from the county available if homes weren't able to be sold for $250,000 or if... Up to $35,000 for these first two. Okay. When we get more, we'd have to apply again.

Okay.

the gap financing. It's to help us be able to keep costs low in a land bank to have a gap financing program for the developers. Do you have an AMI component on that?

Not at this point. But if we receive grants or we use One of the programs we had was from the CDBG. It was called SIL. I don't know what it means. It's an acronym with Brian. I really was here. He'd know, but we received 45,000 SIL that had a, that kind of component for AMI. Yes. And also the, with the program that you were talking about in terms of the lead abatement. We had a home that did that as well. That has that component on it too. It can't be more than, I think, 80%. So we had someone buy a house. I mean, put up an offer. We went through the process and then found out they made too much money, and so we had to withdraw from that deal.

So those are some of the things that, again,

You have to dot every I and cross every T, you know, when you get in those programs.

Okay. Sorry.

Okay.

So you could be here forever. Ishmael, can you hear us? Can you unmute? Ishmael, you're still on mute if you're... Can you unmute right now?

Oh, there we go.

Oh, there you are. Can you hear us?

Yes, just... It's going in and out a little bit, so I'll probably be a little quick.

Yeah. So what was the question?

Well, Ishmael, we just would love a couple, just an update on where you are. I know from the BZA agendas, you've been very busy there, but how many, just for all of us to level set, how many lots do you have? How many are in construction and timeline for the project?

Yeah, so ideally there were, you know, supposed to be going under construction back in March, but we didn't know that the zoning change was just making it very challenging to, you know, move forward. You know, it slows the process down. You have to go through, typically you go through architecture review board and then you go through BZA and then you go to building permits. But it was a little bit different here. You have to go to BZA first, then you go to AVR, then to building permits. which, you know, there's one month, I believe BZA meets once a month, ABR meets twice a month. So, you know, that already adds two months to the construction timeline. So ideally, we're going to start in March, building nine homes and building the remainder after that. But right now, we still haven't received approval. We received approval from BZA, but we had to go back. So those are the issues that we're facing right now.

So you have nine, nine lots that are in process of new infill housing. Yes. Correct.

Yes.

Okay. And then are there other lots that are being like another phase or is that, is that it just nine lots that you have ownership of?

There was 19 total. We drew nine.

So this is the first phase and then you would have 10 to follow?

Correct.

Okay. Any just quick information on the homes for those nine lots? How many bedrooms, baths, square footage?

Just three bedrooms, two blue baths, single family, residential.

And they're all in the Keene Park neighborhood?

I'm not sure which neighborhood they're in, their scatter site. First floor masters, any of them? They're all traditional second floor masters.

All right. Any last minute questions for any of the, this has been really helpful just to get us a general, you know, understanding of what's happening in all these neighborhoods.

Yeah. I just wanted to point out one thing. So each of the CDCs, each of the builders here are represented in all of our studies. So the CDCs are both on the zoning study technical advisory group, as well as the housing needs assessment technical advisory. So a lot of these things that were brought up today, initials also on the zoning one in particular. So I think, you know, we're getting that input both here tonight and in our various things, but I want to mention that they are involved.

all here and on the phone. I want to see if we can put the infill builders on the spot. It's kind of a good segue for none of the next portions on our agenda. Given the challenges cost-wise and price point-wise to doing this infill housing, how important is the CRA tax exemptions to the ability for you to do your work here in the city?

100%.

That's very important.

I believe that's the only reason that we were coming to the city because we needed to present the CRA to the homebuyer. But really, I don't really see the streamlined process as in other cities. I've got the paperwork, but I'm still not sure who's in charge, who to talk to, who to start the process with for these homes. So once they're complete, we can easily transition it over to the new homebuyer. So I think that would be very important. Maybe you can give me a direct contact or all of us a direct contact with someone that will be handling that CRA for the tax debate.

Ishmael, don't worry. This is Brian. Just contact me. I'm the person it goes through. That'll be the easiest part of your process, trust me.

I like hearing that. It's vital. I wouldn't do it without it. It's the easiest way I can say it. And then you have to explain The cost of, you know, if somebody were to buy a rehab home in the same neighborhood, that's, you know, everything's new. You know, if somebody, you know, is flipping the house and everything's new and done well, I think that that house would probably be somewhere in the mid to upper twos. Some of them lower threes, which is, you know, I look at every single thing listed in Cleveland Heights.

Me too.

You too. I look at it and it's amazing. What's that? But I mean, if a $300,000 house without tax abatement, that's $12,000 a year in taxes. A $450,000 house new with tax abatement, so we can build a house for $600,000. Hopefully we can build a house for less than that. $250,000, my lord.

Well, I mean, here's the thing. That house that we built and sold for $250,000 and there's some other things that we did. It now appraises over $300,000. And so because we have the 15-year and they can't sell for those 15 years, that type of thing. We even put a a second mortgage on that if they needed to, if they sold, they would have to pay that back. So there's some other, I mean, again, we have to do what we need to do to rebuild and reinvest in the north side of Cleveland Heights. And so we just have to, we have to find a way to do it.

Yeah. I think it's also apples to apples too. What are you building versus what?

Yeah. And I would say, I mean, the CRA as well, you know, when you're doing home buyer education, allows for some additional maneuverability. So again, looking at some of the challenges that we have in terms of school districts, one of the things that we can, when we are talking to home buyers and doing some of the home buyer education is, hey, some of the savings that you're saving in your tax, maybe if you're looking at a private school education for your kids, or again, if this is the challenge of the school district is the challenge, you know, again, using that financial literacy piece. So I think without the CRA, we lose some of that through the financial literacy piece alone.

Okay. Thank you so much for coming in. I feel like we're much better situated to understand what's happening. So thank you. You don't have to, don't feel like you have to say.

I have to go get my son.

Okay, but we're just maybe just like 2 minutes on the CRA or the grow. Program, because the other, the other thing we've had a lot of questions around the development in the city, how abatement in general, and we have this grow home improvement program. I don't know where Brian is going. Thank you, Rishnell.

On the zoning update, there's a point at which we want to have a workshop with council about the hot topics that work to date.

And it's looking like that's . So I want to double check with our team, knowing that recess . So we'll get back to you on that. But certainly before we start having a lot of public engagement, we want to have the mayor

So this was not designed as a two minute presentation, so we will see how the efficacy of this presentation is going to be, but I will do my best.

Can we post this?

So we wanted this to be an overview, maybe not as in-depth as we would have liked to originally, but given the history of this program and CRAs generally in the city, and I'm not sure we have anybody left on this council who was here when we stood this program up in 2017, 2018. So just really quickly, what are CRAs? Under the ORC, a community investment reimbursement can grant property tax exemptions. CRAs per the ORC can only exempt increased property taxes that are generated through new investment. So it doesn't touch any of the current value or taxes associated with the current value of a property.

And ORC is Ohio Revised Code, which means the state law.

Correct. Yes, thank you. Prior to 2018, we did not have a citywide CRA. CRAs were pursued on an as-needed, essentially as projects popped up and were needed. It created a very patchwork system, wasn't terribly efficient. It created a lot of work internally to prop up a new CRA, which is not the easiest thing in the world to go through all that process. So this is what the old patchwork of CRAs looked like. in the city once upon a time before we instituted the current citywide CRA. You'll see like they're just, they were very project specific and driven that way. And some of these were CRAs that never actually saw the projects happen. Which led into the discussion starting in 2016 and 17, culminating in the policy that was passed in 2018, you know, in order to do a better job of fostering investment of all types in the real estate here in the city to look at a citywide policy, you know, it was a very extended policy. multi-year process involving staff and council and public hearings to come up with something that would work for Cleveland Heights. And the outcome of that process was what the CRA policy we have today. And it was with the goal of really supporting all types of development, single family, multifamily, owner-occupied rental, renovation, new construction, multiple housing typologies. And in order to do that, with some sense of equity and recognition that we have different housing markets within the city, we created our tiered system, which I do believe we are the first in Ohio to do so. Others have followed suit since then, but we were the first ones to roll out a system where it responds to driving the most needed and conversely areas in housing markets that might not need as much incentive, you know, would get lower amounts of tax exemption and tax abatement. You can read the original ordinance. It kind of, you know, sometimes the whereases really are a good snapshot of history of understanding, you know, what kind of the thought process was behind it, but I'm going to keep moving. So this is the CRA map that we're at today. And that shows the three different levels. The blue areas offer the lowest levels of tax abatement. The yellow are sort of a middle tier. And the red or burnt orange offer the highest levels of tax abatement. And again, those were calculated based on 10 different metrics to score those areas. You're never in a million years going to be able to read this, but this sort of breaks out by the left-hand column is new construction, the right-hand column is rehabilitation, and then it's further broken out by housing typology.

And this is on the website?

It's all on the website. And it gives you a breakdown of the different levels of abatement offered. This map shows all of the properties that are currently receiving a tax exemption through the CRA. You can see they are dispersed throughout the city currently. And then just for an additional snapshot, overlaid across the zones, you can see we've seen activity in all of the zones, including a not insignificant concentration in some of the red zones, which historically would have been areas that have not seen much, if any, investment previously. I have some examples, I know we're short on time. I can go through these or we can come back to this another time. But just showing different types of projects in different areas of the city. This is a new construction in one of those blue zones. So this is a 10 year, 50% abatement. This is Reverend Hicks' home that he talked about earlier. So.

Not his actual home.

No, no, no, the one he talked about that they built. So, you know, in that area of the city, they qualify for a 15-year, 100% abatement there. You know, these are just some other examples. These are all renovations or additions here, you know, in different areas of the city that have all, you know, gone through the program. And this is a two-family even that went through it. So, you know, this really does, you know, hit a lot of different areas of the city. And this was interesting. I'll end on this here. You know, we all, you know, besides wanting to see new investment, we are curious how that investment lasts over time. So this was one of the first homes that went through the CRA. You can see it was not in great shape. And when it, then it went through, obviously it has been improved and renovated and it's maintained, you know, that condition now is, you know, almost not quite 10 years into it now for them.

Do you feel like you get the publicity that you'd like to see to make sure that enough people learn about this program and take advantage of it?

Yes and no. I mean, we can always do a better job of that. I think we've made good inroads with the realtor and home builder community. There could be better, I think, probably general public awareness of it, especially for existing residents, how it applies for

considering in their you know existing homes or if they're looking to either downsize or upsize you know for their next homes as well and and that's one of the things that i brought up and i'm so grateful for the administration's willingness to work on this with me is that prior to this administration if you were to go and pull perm you obviously have to do the work legally if you're going to be getting the abatement you have to pull permits it has to be i believe a minimum of ten thousand dollars of work so you would come to the city to get your building permits but the building department wouldn't necessarily tell you, oh, by the way, you can see Brian because you've pulled over $10,000 of permits to explore the tax abatement. So thanks to city ministries and Mayor Petras, we're fixing that. And now when you come and pull permits for what should be a potentially abatable reconstruction, the city will help guide you to Brian to facilitate that process.

So the map is based on census track.

Yeah, can you go back?

Have you done an analysis of whether that map still makes sense? And if you re-ran all of the criteria, would you come up with the same map?

That's another great segue. So I think, you know, all of this leads into a potential update and or revision or modifications of the CRA. And that is one of the things we're already in the process of running the new numbers and get a sense for what an updated map would look like, as well as starting to think about a really good job when we set up this program. But when you're doing something without a net, you don't know what you don't know. So I think there are some, you know, administrative and just time issues you can make changes to programs to make them better.

And that was just, sorry, Sarah, just one, that was my impetus for really bringing this forward. And one of my overarching goals is that this program is now eight years old. And you can see from the map that we may want to Incent more, you know, more abatement in areas that we feel have been struggling. I mean, this is we had COVID in between since this program was developed. And so this is really meant to be a kickoff of a much longer process to recon to review the program together as counsel with the administration and see how we might update it for our current market conditions and.

bringing those both into alignment.

What do you mean by standard?

I think I would like to start from like a clean slate, like what, you know, everything's on the table. That'll make it probably a longer process, but I think it's worth with so many changes.

And I would also I think given the fact that neighborhoods do change because there's been investment in them, it'd be worth just deciding whether some of these neighborhoods still need the level of support.

Which is why we want to rerun the data. So the program is eight-ish years old, which means given when we started the process, the data is probably 10 years old at this point. Yeah. And I'll just say, I think, you know, I know what component you're talking about. You know, going back to the ORC, when we created this program, we went to the maximum that the ORC allowed for rehabilitation at the time. They've since increased that amount. So that is one of those areas that we can come back to and, you know, have on our radar.

Okay. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. Thanks.

It wasn't quite two minutes, but I did my best.

You did.

If you could look at the memo that I sent you via email, this is going to be a guide for our discussion. We are going to be discussing guidelines and policies relating to developing ordinance to regulate short-term rentals. These are commonly Airbnb properties. And what we'd like to do tonight, rather than digging into the draft legislation, before we get into the final drafting stage. So if you have a, you know, Director Hanna and I just spoke before the meeting, and Director Zamp, and we're just sort of gonna march through these questions one by one. Some of these will be easy to deal with quickly. Others may require more discussion.

Are you talking about the...

This one.

Oh, okay, not the... Not the legislation, we're not... Not the little cutouts that we... No, no, so...

you want me to just go ahead sure okay so um these are some of these are as i said quite simple questions um one question that came up as we've had people review the grant is we really are putting the mayor in charge of this program the mayor meaning the mayor or whom he designates to be the individual who would grant or renew or deny registrations it really the administration the greatest flexibility to make that determination.

I just want to air that. So my question is, what if you have a mayor who is making this decision and we know people in the, you know, we know residents here and I raise this as a concern about, you know, mayor might retaliate or unduly revoke something, not this mayor, but one mayor in the future might abuse the authority. So if that, how do we protect against this being a purely one-person administrative issue? But it's a designee. It could be. It could designate the housing department. Oh, well, that could be. Could be, but.

No, it could be housing department. It could be building department. You know, it could be a community developer. I think, and it's a legitimate concern, but, you know, there are courts that exist to guard against those things, both in terms of seeking criminal penalties and also in terms of abusing a process with regard to the civil enforcement structure that exists.

So you feel like this is either insulated from impropriety or there are recourse for an owner?

Until we have a, until Grok can be a We've got human beings involved in all these situations. And yeah, I think that the structure allows for the most appropriate person to be designated for different roles within the enforcement regimen. And yeah, that works well. And I think we looked at a number of examples of other ordinances over the last couple of years.

will, that is pending, and there are numerous other municipalities in Ohio that have defined what a short-term rental is, and for the most part, that definition is a rental property that is offered for less than 30 days. After that, it tips over into a regular rental. And we've had some discussion about limiting the other end, making a minimum, you know, defining a minimum stay. And I've both spoken with the community police chief and the law department, and we wonder about the enforceability of, for instance, doing away with one-day rentals or saying that you cannot rent a property for one day. And so one option that we would consider that we think would really insulate or deal with the problem that this is intending to deal with, which is parties, one-day rentals that get out of hand, is to have an occupancy standard. In other words, to say that the MAC define occupancy by maximum occupancy by two individuals per bedroom in the house plus two more, which is an immediately enforceable standard. If a police person is there on scene and there's 50 people in the house, that's easy to figure out versus how long did you rent the property for. and the notion of the occupancy. Anybody have thoughts about this?

Well, first of all, I approach this as like, what if the house was next to me? You know, that's what I think about. And I also, just kind of an overview, I look at this as, you know, you certainly don't want to do anything that would hinder law-abiding property owner's general problem with. you know, okay, you got three bedrooms, so you got six people staying there. They invite, you know, 20 other people to come over. Is there some restriction on how many people they can have over as guests? I mean, currently there is not, but that gets into- That's what the occupancy, that's what, by the way, what Cleveland-

And it's one of the things that's challenging to deal with in this context overall, meaning that a lot of times it's not necessarily the fact that it's a one-night rental that creates the problem. And if you have somebody who's determined to throw a huge house party, you know, and maybe they're collecting money from people who are coming to attend and, you know, these things happen. In a different community, I had a situation where... that was going on. And people were renting out this very large, lovely backyard and pool and patio and charging money for people to come in and having huge parties. So analogizing that here, you know, somebody who's going to have that kind of a party saying that they can only rent for three nights or more may not stop them anyway. They might say, fine, you know, we'll rent for three nights and we'll use it the night that we want to and throw our party and move on. But we have existing ordinances in the city that help to address those nuisance problems. We have some additional standards already in the ordinance that are stricter, such as the requirement that noise not be audible off the perimeter, outside the boundaries of the property itself, which is stricter in most cases than the typical noise violation ordinance would require. So it's an imperfection. We haven't yet sort of reviewed the Cleveland draft systematically. That's one of the things we want to do before putting more final language together. That gets at the same issue, and it seems like a reasonable way to try to manage the occupancy, but you're not wrong that it's not airtight.

I mean, my preference is to eliminate the possibility of it happening, you know, which is, you know, out of town, you know, property owners with a property manager that's managing hundreds of properties, you know, and not going to be available, you know, renting them out one night. They don't even know what's going on. The other thing is I've talked to the police about this, and I've talked to, like, there was one house that constantly had college parties in Royal Heights. I have all these, like, memorized emails that came with regularity. And, you know, if I could repeat the refrain, it was, yeah, the police come, and they quiet down for 15 minutes, and then it's bedlam. So, I mean...

Well, the penalties, as we're beginning to talk through, they're swift. You get cited and you lose your occupancy permit for six months. So not only would Cleveland Heights revoke their registration, but Airbnb, at least in the discussions I've had, they will pull them off the platform.

You know, I'll go with the majority on this, so to speak, but I will tell you that if there are continued problems, I will be asking to bring it up again and, and, and, and then legislation because, because I already know it's a problem. It's not a hypothetical problem.

Do you mean having them at all?

Having one night rentals is a problem. It's just, it's, But that's what people take advantage of.

I think that that approach, though, of, you know, to some extent, a number of aspects of this ordinance probably are a little bit wait and see, because we won't know until it's underway, you know, which parts are functioning to accomplish the city's goals and which ones maybe need some tightening up or some amendment. And I guess that's most of it. And the issue about the suspension or revocation, that is really the more substantial penalty for the person who owns a bunch of these and is trying to make money on them. And it's also related to the requirement for the designation of the responsible person. at least 18 who lives in the county. So there will be somebody who's reachable and that the city can, you know, deal with. Will it immediately solve every problem? I'm sure that it will.

I mean, I'm very concerned about anonymous LLCs that are just, you know, there's just no way to reach them. And that's the real reason for that requirement.

And that takes us then to the next point, which is the discussion. The individuals who are involved on the ownership side, there is the owner. There is an operator who may be, it says may be a person who holds a short-term rental out. And then there is the responsible person, which is an individual who may be assigned and must be available to be contacted. One of the things in the statute, and I'm probably just going to turn to Bill,

a little bit about those three roles well right so i think you you describe them accurately i mean the owner is the person with you know title to the property person meaning a natural human being individual or an llc or some other entity but the responsible person is an actual human being of a certain age who lives in the county. So it may be that, you know, John Brown owns the property and operates it and is also a but it may be Jay Brown Co., LLC, out of state, et cetera, in which case you just keep drilling down. But we thought that it might help to clarify those roles if we expressly provide that it may be the same person. And also, I think this was in Councilwoman Cohen's comments on a... on this draft, but sent a little bit a couple weeks ago. We can also provide that, you know, the operator only needs to be specified if it's different than the owner. You know, we can do some things in the application form that would help those three concepts work together in a more clear way.

But the only person that can be sanctioned is the owner, correct? No. Okay, that's good to know.

If you have an owner who is just a name, which, as I said, is next to me, who's going to do that drilling down to find out more information about the owner? Does the housing department do that? When they apply for the registry, is that when that happens? Is that they've got to give you full information about the owner?

Yes, yes.

And I'll just add that I put in the red line that the owner shall be the registrant for precisely that. reason right because it should like they could designate some random operator and they'll go through this whole process and you'll still never know who owns the property so that was my feeling and just distinguishing and agree that they could be the same person if they are but if it's not and if it is an llc then it's that's where that suspension revocation mechanism becomes more

incentivize them, even as an LLC, to toe the line.

And they're the ones that will file the registration.

Moving on, we talked a bit, I know these are small issues, but we want to make sure they're aired. We talked about the parking infractions related. People are concerned about cars in driveways and cars on the street. We tried to mirror the parking regulations for the city of Cleveland Heights and also call out that there can't be more cars than the property owner's listing provides for. And Councilman Posh had previously brought up remedies if the GOES AND PARKS IN SOMEBODY ELSE'S DRIVEWAY. SO WE WILL INCORPORATE ALL THOSE ASPECTS INTO THE ORDINANCE, BUT I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE PHILOSOPHICALLY IN AGREEMENT WITH THAT APPROACH. ESPECIALLY WE'VE ALREADY GOT IT IN AN ORDINANCE.

to park your car in someone else's driveway.

It may be of use to an owner that may not be in town to know that that's what's in the schedule.

I think that's the issue. You're right. I mean, it's illegal and somebody should be towed and cited for that. But that doesn't necessarily, unless we have it here, again, implicate that suspension or revocation penalty. So what we're proposing is to put that, and it would include parking, but it would also include other unauthorized entry onto a existed. So other than that provision, it incorporates the city's existing parking ordinances. Yeah.

There's a list of the list of certifications that has to be attested to by the owner who's registering. We have like, I think that 749 is what I just want to make sure parking is in there, which I think it is. But if not, you know, let's make a note that they should verify.

I think you had also commented about the Chapter 553 nuisances.

I just put in the code reference. Yeah. Because I think it was just listed as like the nuisance ordinance.

Well, and also, you know, the way that it's written, I think we would end up revising it a little bit to say as applicable, familiar with, and as applicable in compliance with.

Yeah.

probably gonna be in compliance with all of the disorderly conduct type ordinances at the time you're submitting the application, but down the road.

Okay, we are good on that. So moving on to registration.

or annual kind of registration. There's some advantages and disadvantages

Yeah. And, you know, the other thing is that if you, with the no registration fee, do we have a registration fee like for businesses or any, like when businesses, do we have anything like that? So, I mean, this is essentially a business in someone's home. So I think there was a suggestion from staff for no registration fee. I mean, I think we need to give some sort of...

I think I think the conversation here was more fee versus the excise tax fee is one way to do it, but it's got its own challenges. We're talking about 140 properties. So the, you know, nominal fee is not going to do the same thing. Yeah. So is that true? We do we know

models generally, right?

We do not have that information from the other platforms. That's what we have from Airbnb.

That's presuming that if you want to have a short-term rental, you have to list it on Airbnb. Right, right. Pretty good.

Yeah, but there's

level of liability insurance. In many of the states, across the states, it's $300,000. Cleveland just added $500,000 level insurance. We've had suggestions for higher amounts. It's your pleasure, counsel, on this one. Do you have an opinion? I know you had recommended even higher than the million that was in the contract.

Does anybody have an idea of what a premium would cost for a premium?

No way of knowing. There are some but I think the proposed legislation also allows the owner to rely on Airbnb.

That's a million-dollar policy.

That's a million dollars that they provide.

So we would be consistent with that, then. They've already got it in place with their...

It allows you to use Airbnb's insurance.

I would offer that maybe that incents people to actually list their property on a platform versus doing it a cottage and just, you know, like their own business. And then we would be able to benefit from the Airbnb, you know, kicking off the platform.

Yeah, I know I disincentivized them from registering in general because I want them to register, so.

allowed within an apartment building and a multifamily home. And in general, the theory behind these many options is half and half, no more than half. And I don't know if you would like to talk more about this.

Sure. And Director Zamp and I went through this a little bit further earlier today. And I think we would, when this comes back to council, subject to any specific changes that council may we would probably reorder this to have it from lowest number you know single family up to a multiple dwelling unit of more than four units that way everything is easier to follow but um there is a little bit of inconsistency currently with regard to two families and um one of the approaches that we had kicked around previously and i think this afternoon felt like it was it generally, unless it's an owner occupied two family, in which case there could be two rentals. So somebody might have a bedroom that they ran out in their unit and, you know, and then the separate unit, the theory being that the owner is there to monitor and babysit and guard against, you know,

Well, that's right.

We're right. I mean, it doesn't require that they're present.

It's not sublet because it's under 30 days. Well, it is.

You could ask somebody every 30 days, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My strong preference, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. My strong preference was specifically around a two-family home having only one unit. be allowed to rent for precisely that reason because you want to make sure that you're not turning the house into just everybody's renting the house. I would agree.

And what about the 270 days under the current definition to be considered.

I just think you're, I mean, I just think you're asking for problems at that point. If you have a two family house, I could see somebody saying, you know what? I have a two family. I'm not, I don't, I'm open to people coming in and out. I like meeting different people. I want to make my second, instead of a year long rental, I want to make it an Airbnb, but the chances are,

I just wouldn't worry about it. I mean, it's just, I, you know, who's going to torture themselves?

No, but then, but it's only 270 days. You have 352 days in a year. So that person is not there. And then you're renting the room and they're part of the two family and you're having an Airbnb in the second part. You're basically creating a high density, random stranger. And frankly, I'm maybe concerned about the safety of that too, to have two different renters in the same room.

building and the owners does not have to be present at the same time that I mean hotels do it well hotels have staff and I mean as a woman I would be there yeah I would chime in that I don't know that the two family really matters that much to me I think if we wanted to say where our current problems and where we're having them they seem to be the issues are single families with the parties yeah so It was originally designed as a rental unit for the most part throughout its existence. Limited to one or 50% of it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

Can I describe any way that council wants to go on that?

I'm fine with what you said. Let me describe one of the problems and then I'm going to apply it for this. So there's a house on Grandview that has four units in it. Two of the units are year leases. Two of them are Airbnbs. What the complaints that have come my way are, people coming in at one o'clock in the morning and taking their luggage up, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom. That sound of luggage being dragged up and down stairs. That is a problem. You know, and there's, I'm going to just go out on a limb here and say, I don't think there's anybody who rents, who wants people coming and going like that. I just, I just don't know anybody like that. It's like, yeah, the more people coming in and coming out, the better. I don't know anybody like that. So when we look at this, it's those are the ones, the mixed ones, where we really need to think about the people that live there year in and year out. You know, restrictions on when you can come in. I mean, I know this is a part of this particular legislation. You can't have people coming in and out. RESTRICTIONS ON HOURS OR ANYTHING.

WOULD THAT PREVENT ANY SHORT-TERM RENTAL IN ANY MULTI-FAMILY BUILDING THEN?

ANY MULTI-FAMILY WOULDN'T PREVENT IT. I'M JUST SAYING THAT'S WHAT NEEDS TO BE REGULATED. I DON'T SAY OUTLAW IT. Okay, if you're going to do it, if you're going to have mixed rentals, I mean mixed rental and Airbnb, that's where I think you need to get into more regulation.

I think that's going to be hard to regulate.

And I don't think it's walking in and out. It's checking in and checking out. I think that's the thing that you want to regulate in those kind of situations. I don't think it's an apartment building. If it's an apartment building, I don't think you have those. I don't know if you have those.

What was the scenario that you just described? Was that a four-unit?

Four-unit house. Oh, a house.

It's a house. Okay.

You have four units in it.

there too.

Yeah. And, you know, that's a problem.

I don't know, to Councilman DeWitt-Foy's point, I don't know if you can regulate to that specificity, because the enforcement pieces are around like the nuisance and like violations of codes. And we don't, we don't regulate hours that people can enter and exit their homes. So it would have to be a noise complaint that would rise to the level of a nuisance that would rise to a police being called and citing them.

Or a matter between the landlord and tenant. Right.

That's what I was thinking. I mean, there's a long-term solution isn't the right answer, or maybe it is, but a long-term process that could play out where people have a hard time renting and then they cut back on what they're doing.

This is the problem. I mean, this I mean, these things get out of hand.

But if he has tenants, he or she has tenants, yeah. It's challenging, but so the current language would allow two short-term rentals in a four-unit property. And if council wants to address that differently, we can draft it up that way.

Would there be a spot in the, OWNER HAS TO MAKE SURE THAT THESE PEOPLE COMING IN DON'T ENTER LATE AT NIGHT.

I MEAN, WE CAN GIVE THAT SOME THOUGHT. I MEAN, SOFT-SIDED LUGGAGE, YOU KNOW, NOT COMING IN OR OUT.

CARRYING IT UP INSTEAD OF PUMPING IT UP.

CAN THEY BRING ROADS IN, YOU KNOW, AS OPPOSED TO SO I'M NOT COMPLETELY CERTAIN HOW IT WORKS, BUT WE COULD GET SOME THOUGHT TO THAT.

LET'S LOOK AT THE CLEVELAND

No, four is commercial.

Four is commercial. Okay, so then I think that's the right cutoff, four and up.

So then you don't cross over into two until you get to four.

That's a defensible.

And then above four, there's a formula in here, which is two plus one for every five units.

So we will clean that. I think that's great. Okay. All right. LAST THING, SORRY, GO AHEAD.

THERE'S ONE THING THAT WE WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT. SO THERE CURRENTLY IS A REGULATION HERE THAT SAYS BASICALLY A GRANDFATHERLY PROVISION. THE GREATER OF THE UNITS THAT YOU HAD IF YOU'RE AN EXISTING ownership versus one year, two years.

Yeah.

So we want to look at that a little bit more. Okay.

Okay. Right now it's open ended. And as we kick it around, that doesn't really, there's no reason for that. You can prohibit them at least, you know, pending any state action. Right.

And then this other thing, just for, just to say it out loud is there should be a conversation going forward about how these characters are treated.

Correct.

Are those considered legal? to like if there's a single family home and an ADU, is that considered?

I would just put that in your, for your consideration as you're drafting this.

We want the public to know that it's something.

Well, that's one of the reasons that I think it's going to be helpful to have this in process when ADUs is considered, that the council is attending to the short-term rental issue. So we're going to leave the penalty discussion until later because there's more work to be done on that. And I would just say the, There's also, in the legislation, there's a whole tax component. I've continued to work with Director Brzezinski and with Airbnb about the collection of the taxes, so we are not going to be dealing with that today, but we wanted to. There's been a lot of redlining in this statute, so we can get it cleaned up and hopefully coming back to you then with the whole statute at a future meeting.

I appreciate you having that conversation on finance because it is a fascinating issue.

Well, if we are successful with Airbnb collecting the tax and just remitting it, there will be less work. We don't know that.

So far, has he been optimistic about it, Director Prosinski?

I have not been able to get a second of his time. He's doing some research with other cities before we have our conversation.

Cincinnati, one of them?

I do not know, but he's reached out to other cities. Anything further from you all about this?

I don't think so. Did we discuss disclosure to neighbors when an STR establishes a business and obtains their registers? BECAUSE WHEN THEY DON'T KNOW, SOME OF THE PEOPLE ARE BREAKING IN.

IN MANY OF THE SMALLER CITIES, THEY DO IT AS CONDITIONAL USE AND HAVE A CONDITIONAL USE HEARING AND THERE'S A 14-DAY DISPLAY REQUIRED FOR SIGNAGE SAYING THIS IS AN APPLICANT TO BE AN AIRBNB.

Not the initial use, but the signage before they apply. I mean, the other thing, let me caution, is if someone's registering, right, isn't somewhat of that public record? Wouldn't we have a registry available?

If somebody goes and looks, though, right? Yeah, you want to let people know.

We don't have time for a discussion about civil versus criminal. I don't mean the whole gamut of it.

We can.

I just remember Pam saying that there's problems with civil.

I mean, I think the criminal division is well established and easy for courts to understand, easy for the city to work with. to understand arguably as well.

But, I mean, to me it seems like it has no teeth then. The real teeth is you have three nuisance violations and you get your vote.

Agreed.

So, I mean, I guess I was raising the question.

So that's, I don't think, we're not contemplating that going away.

No, no, no. So if I'm understanding it correctly, the whole point, Is that you get a misdemeanor or then you get three of those and it's three strikes, you're out.

But what's the, aside from everybody else doing it on the criminal, what would be the... Like failing to register, operating a short-term rental without having registered would be a new criminal offense. there that are, you know, counterparts would say the first one is a minor misdemeanor or something like that. And then once the notice is issued each subsequent day that it continues as an additional minor misdemeanor so that there's a strong incentive, even if it's maxed at the $150, you know, limit for a minor misdemeanor.

JUST ADDING TO THAT, THINKING ABOUT HOW THIS WILL ROLL OUT, THE IDEA WOULD BE WE WOULD GET THIS LEGISLATION SHAPED BEFORE THE BREAK, HOPEFULLY, HAVE THE READINGS AND PROBABLY A PUBLIC HEARING IN THE LATE SUMMER, EARLY FALL, ENACT THE LEGISLATION IN SEPTEMBER, AND THEN THERE'S A 90-DAY REGISTRATION PERIOD, AND THAT GETS US TO THE END OF THE YEAR. AND THEN THE TAX MIGHT

go into effect in 2027 after you have the registration group of people so that's kind of who enforces not non-compliance with registration who enforces that so somebody call and say call mayor's action center and say i've got an air b or is this back in there be they could report it and then yeah i think it would end up being funded through the

store neighbors running a business out of their property. And we send an inspector out. Okay.

Thanks. That's all. Thank you.

All right. So where are we at here? What do you wanna do first, Craig?

Why don't we do the executive session first? Before I entertain a motion on that, I'd like to discuss filling the vacancies on the Recreation Advisory Board. We have two and we have one vacancy on the, we have one on the Transportation and Mobility. SO CAN I GET A MOTION THAT WE GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION AND CONSIDER THE APPOINTMENT OF A PUBLIC OFFICIAL? I'LL JUST MAKE THE MOTION.

SO MOVED. SECOND.

ALL RIGHT. I GUESS WE NEED TO TAKE A ROLL CALL. IS THAT EVERYONE HERE OR JUST? I MEAN, LET'S EXPLAIN. OKAY.

AYE.

AYE. AYE.

AYE.

YES. AYE. OKAY.

So it's an opportunity to get back from executive session.

Councilman Cobb, the remaining portion of our agenda is a continued discussion of OF COUNSEL.

I SAID, YOU SAID 13? YES.

I'M JUST PULLING UP THESE.

THE AYES AND THE NAYS AND NOT YESES AND NOES.

THAT'S THE LAST, OR ACTUALLY, BECAUSE WE HAVE 30, I THINK WE ACTUALLY GOT THROUGH TO 15 BECAUSE WE SAID WE DID HALFWAY. WE WERE GOING TO START AGAIN.

Yeah.

So we're not on action of council? No, we finished that. We had a question for the question we discussed for action of council. A loophole? Yes, does it create a loophole for council members? This is because this will be the red line and the questions that we send to Lauderper.

Okay, so all right. So as long as we are, because that was.

So on 11-16, here's what I propose. Maybe we change it to preparation of introduction of ordinances and resolutions. Maybe add the word introduction. And we could start with the memo that I wrote. I don't know. Eddie probably has it. I actually don't. Actually, I probably have it somewhere. But, you know, we kind of massaged that legislative process thing. The whole idea was, you know, what you have to do, you know, in committee of the whole. Or I don't know if it would be relevant for committee.

Well, I made a new draft following our workshop, and it's with Bill.

So that is still, I don't know if that's... Yeah, but so what I'm thinking of is whatever we do, we kind of like use that as a template.

Oh, so I'll follow the agreed upon process. We can put in the rules.

Yeah, like just... Once we get this back and just use that template, I mean, I think... didn't on every point of it you know once we get it back we can I think we're going to need to revisit it to make sure everybody's okay with the language but the general idea was is that you know that we don't have people introducing legislation without some agreement that it could go forward because we don't want to tie up the law department with something that's never going to pass and then the question just became well okay what are the different methodologies SO WE CAN DO THAT. NOW THAT WE'RE DOING EVERYTHING IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE, WE'RE ACTUALLY CUTTING OUT THAT WHOLE INCUBATOR COMMITTEE THING, WHICH I DIDN'T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH.

I BELIEVE IT'S ALSO NOT IN THE DRAFT THAT I SENT TO BILL.

I do have a question, and I don't know if it even fits into any of the items that are already in there, in 111. Currently, the committees that I work with, Transportation, Mobility, and Climate Environment, they are each working on pieces of legislation. The complete Green Streets is still being discussed and analyzed, but we've already, Council already agreed to move it forward. Climate and environmental sustainability will be coming with a piece of legislation to develop a tree commission, authorize a tree commission. Do we need to include any mention in here that a piece of legislation could come out of a citizen's advisory committee to council and be considered?

I wish Bill was here. You know, they can't introduce it, but...

I think you need to find a council member that will sponsor that.

And that would not be a problem in this case.

But I don't believe that we can, that we should codify or permit any of these advisory boards to be able to. amend legislation of the law department to draft.

No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about, I come to you in our next meeting and I say, this is a recommendation from the Environmental Sustainability Committee. Am I okay to take the information, the research that they've done, the comparable cities that have this legislation, and move it to the law department? That would be the step, but I didn't know. It's a question. Does it need to be in 111 or not?

I don't think so. Anybody can say, hey, I have this great idea. I mean, it doesn't even have to be somebody on a committee. But putting something in there would preclude another outside entity with an idea. now sponsoring.

Okay. I'm happy with that. Thank you. Can I just suggest a small change to 16? It says, and this goes back to what I had suggested at the workshop, it says each resolution or ordinance when introduced shall have the name of the member introducing the same endorsed thereon. Can we say have the name of the member sponsoring and and or co-sponsoring because this is just, I mean, we end up.

So I would like something about author and sponsor because they're two different, they can be the same, you know, could be the same person.

I'm just looking from a congressional perspective where the sponsor is the lead person on the bill and then you ask people to co-sponsor.

I think those should be separated. Absolutely. I don't know how anybody else feels about that.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So how do you change that?

I would say have the name of the member sponsoring the same, endorse thereon, and any co-members co-sponsoring as applicable. And then period, and you can just say a number is assigned by the group.

Otherwise it's just too long and bulky a sentence.

I've never met a run-on sentence I haven't loved.

Is this something we need to have Bill weigh in on?

Well, he's going to weigh on everything.

The significance between introducing and sponsoring.

Well, that's why, I mean, we use sponsor all the time.

I mean, that's the next step. We do this with Bill. We send it to him, and then we sit in the room and go over it again. Like, that's going to be a blast.

It will be great.

It will be.

Okay, so that was all I had on that. I don't know if we want to move on to 17.

So the 16, is that just for council-sponsored legislation?

It's any... This is, yes, because this is council, we only have council sponsored legislation or mayoral sponsored legislation. So this is our part of the code. So the mayor would have its own.

I mean, when you read this, does it?

Yeah, upon the request of any member, what the director of law is obligated to do on our behalf.

But we're changing that, right?

Well, we have to put in something here. I made a note in the margin that we have to refer to the legislative process that but we have to figure out how we refer to that. I think that's a question for Bill. Do we have like, if we call it rules in the code, does that refer back to the rules we have?

Because this provision has been abused in the past.

It has. Because it wasn't really well defined. I think.

So the question, you give an example of that?

We don't need to, but I'll just say in the past there has been some council members that have bombarded the law department with requests which Bill was basically obligated to do something about.

I do think it needs to be clarified because right now we've sort of been, we get a general consensus to move it over, but I think there needs to be some clarity there.

You know, and moving forward, just for just get this out on the table, does not mean you're obligating yourself to vote for it. I mean, I don't know if that needed to be said, but I certainly want to say that. I mean, because sometimes it's a good idea and then maybe it comes through six months later and, you know, in the sausage making process, things get... that is, you know, there's no way I would support something like that. That's what you don't want to be moving forward.

Right. But if there, you know, is a hypothetical, but say someone is sponsoring something and wants to move it to law and two people are saying no way, three people may be saying no way, you know, there's still... Well, three people are...

If three other people are saying, I think I could support that. And that's good enough. So three or more in support of moving it to law.

Yeah. Question for you regarding... One of those pieces of legislation had a $100,000 ask. Now, do we, as the introducing counselor, have the obligation to get information from finance that says, yes, this money is available?

Well, in my process, I think I put something in there that you have to consult with the administration. Does that need to be in here? Well, that's the question I think we have for bills. How do we refer to rules that we, like, you don't need to, We shouldn't, I think, in the code, delineate every single process. But I think we're working towards a document that has a process that we will ultimately vote on ourselves. So then how do you refer to essentially what we're doing is like rulemaking.

But going back to what you were saying about Congress, that is a section.

No, well, you would have rulemaking. You delegate to... No, wait.

Let me just finish that sentence. There's a section where you have to put in the cost, the estimated cost of the bill.

So now you're talking about something you're talking about.

Well...

The process for introducing, you're talking about what has to be in the... No, no.

I'm saying in the introduction.

I don't think every piece of legislation in Congress has to have. The OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, do have to.

It's in the template that they use. I can tell you that. There's three sections, and one of the sections is the estimated cost.

This piece of legislation that I'm thinking about got all the way through the law department, came to us for a vote, and we had to ask at that point, Director of Finance, can you certify that this money is here?

So let's use the dog park as an example.

Exactly.

You can't say it's going to cost X because it's not, you know, maybe gone through that part of the process. But you have to, I think you have to, you have to have an estimate, right? Because otherwise, what are people saying? Yeah, we should, yes, I'd like to move, I think this should move forward. Really, with no idea what it costs?

So what did you be pointing out? Professor Cobb, on this, what Jessica's saying, we have, if we get our processes formalized, and that includes, you must verify with the finance director that these funds are available. Could we reference in here the rule?

I talked to Bill. I don't know that it's necessary because as long as they're unencumbered funds, I mean, council couldn't, if you had a majority of council members could.

I don't think that's the right question. I think the question is, do we want to have it disclosed before we say yes to move it forward? Because that might enter into people's decision-making.

So just to set, like I, in here we have, and this is draft that nobody's seen because I'm trying to get Bill to opine on it first, but it has a law department response and, we would um and then the idea that i had maybe putting it in the the code would be the director of hold on i lost my marginal comment say the director of law upon the conclusion of the legislative introduction process as agreed to in council's rules or something like that like then shall draft the form of proposed legislation.

Any ordinance or resolution requiring the expenditure of funds shall bear some certification from the finance department about the availability of funds or something like that.

We'll start again from the beginning.

I can't repeat that. I'll go back.

Okay, I'll go back.

As of 8.19 p.m. No, any ordinance or resolution requiring the expenditure of funds shall require approval from the director of finance as to the availability of funds or something like that.

Prior to approval? Prior to introduction. Can we? Yeah, because this is preparation and introduction of ordinances and resolutions. You're adding.

I'll also add it into the other part. And yeah, if there's unencumbered funds, Council can say, well, we've got $20 million. Surely we can use $100,000 of that. But the way that we are trying to work collaboratively with administrations I think the buy-in is the finance director says, yes, those funds are available, based on what he understands about how the mayor wants funds to be.

I think the question for Bill on what you said is, because you said certification, then you said approval. The question is, what do we need? It doesn't have to be certified, but we need something that shall require the opinion. Consultation. Okay. So I'll put in consultation, and then I'll flag it as a question.

Do you want to put a time limit on this?

You mean our meeting? You mean this evening? Because we've been here a while.

I know. I'm just like... Yeah.

I mean, I'm... My battery's run down.

I don't even want to go 20 minutes. Okay. All right. Let's do one more. Yes. Okay. Okay, maybe to, well, I don't have anything for amendments, but 1117, listen, I'm only going because I have something written here, but everybody jump in the pool whenever you want. You know, the first sentence, or the I mean, we're not necessarily doing that. I think we need to change that to May because it's, I mean, we're not going to retire ourselves to, like, I mean, yeah. But then later on, it says, except in an emergency, no resolution or ordinance shall be acted upon by council until it has been so referred. I mean, I'm okay with that shall, but you guys go ahead.