Council - Regular Meeting

It is 6:30. I'll call this meeting of St. Mary City Council recorded. Roll call, please. Here

all rise, please join Pastor Dennis in a group of prayer.

Father, it is with a great privilege that we gather this evening, Lord, uh just to come and govern the affairs of this community. Lord, I thank you for each representative here of each ward and family that they represent. Just pray, Father, that in all things considered this evening, Lord, that uh we would acknowledge you in all of our ways, Lord, that there would be a fear of the Lord that would be upon us and that we would just uh make decisions with a clear conscience before you and before men. I pray, Father, that just this during the season of thanksgiving, Lord, that we would each one consider the blessings that you've bestowed upon us, the blessings of life, the hope of eternal life that we have in your son, Jesus. I pray, Father, that uh uh again, Lord, that just your hand would be over the things that take place this evening and that all that would be done would bring you glory. It's in Jesus name I pray.

Amen. Amen. Please join me in the flag to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. You all received a copy of the minutes of the uh last meeting. Are there any questions or comments from council? If not, may I have a motion to accept, please? Mr. B, Mr. LS, I'll accept, please.

What you think? here. So, all right. And I see a show of hands there. There we go. Okay. Retry. Nope.

Okay. May I see a show of hands of those who accept the minutes? All yeses. Thank you. Under petitions, communications, uh, I've been informed, Mr. Noble's here to inform us about the hotel for Barbie. Mr. Noble, Mr. President, members of council, I just happy to inform you that we closed on the uh Fortaction a week ago last Thursday. So that property has transferred ownership and the city is completely out of um involvement there. Uh basically the deal went down pretty much as I had outlined to uh council the last time I appeared here and I'll just reiterate a few things. I think the charge that we had was that the city did not want to own the property and uh uh but we wanted to hopefully maintain it as a uh residential structure and preserve as much as possible as the we had invested in it and essentially this was accomplished. Uh there was a lot of moving parts and this took some time to put it all together. Uh just to mention a few would be the Fred Schwab estate. Mr. Schwab passed away a year ago somewhat precipitated this action. Um the Huntington Bank which had a mortgage rotor which had a mechanics lean and they filed a foreclosure suit of course the Trip County Treasure real estate taxes. Um the Ohio Housing Finance Authority which has covenants on the building. uh this council uh CIC city administration and the tenants

union we all had to come together to make this transaction happen and I'll be happy to take any any questions. Yes. One question. Do we still have the master lease on the store? No.

Okay. We as part of the transaction uh the city was reimbursed for the balance of the mortgage. If you may remember, some of you were involved. The city loan the CIC $150,000 to make improvements on the storefronts that had been paid down over the course of approximately 10 some years. Uh and the balance of that loan was paid off as part of the closing. But in order to facilitate the uh new owner has control now of the storefronts. Uh so we were made whole on that and also the CIC had spent about $19,000 to um do some damage control somewhat like rotor did but we the CIC was reimbured and whole for that and uh so that was the situation there and we received a significant sum on our revolving loan fund that the state had basically given us a free hand to do whatever he wanted there. So, uh, Huntington Bank took a haircut, if you will, and so did Roarrooer. Of course, the taxes were paid in full, so everybody had to give and take to make this transaction happen. Uh, so the new owner has uh is a gentleman, Eric Rice is his name is through his um CI or his LLC and will be taking over. I think he's already started um cleaning there. Uh there's been several dump dumpsters full and he'll be working on that over the next few months. So,

are there still 10 minutes?

Yes, that's right. Now, there I think still seven. This was a lot of things happened to make this happen. There were various times the water was shut off. Uh the gas was shut off. We had to scramble to make that happen. Uh we did some lock repairs that was reimbursed and yeah there was quite a few things seemed like every day some new issue arose to put a roadblock but we managed to move forward through all those and extremely happy uh the day that it did close. So um and hopeful that the building will be uh you know improved. Of course that's up to Mr. Rice and his future there. Um you know it has a lot of possibility is one of two structures in the city of St. Mary's that is on the national historic register. So there's possibility of some historic tax credits there. and I think he's indicated he wants to apply for a facade loan that the city has maintained over the years uh to do that. So, you know, a lot of work to be done there, the elevator, uh the apartments and that type of thing. The covenants, um the Ohio Housing Finance Authority did release the covenants on all except the occupied units. So, that gives Mr. rice a freer hand and some of the unoccupied units to do with as he wants to there but there's still those expire in I think three years so but they were very cooper the estate I Mr. the attorney for Mrs. Schwab who was very cooperative in doing this. Essentially, we bought the CIC exercised this option the day before the closing.

We the CIC owned it for one day for a sum of $100 and then we turned around and sold it for $350,000 which then was allocated among the different parties. But the attorney Mr. Schwab actually owned several of these projects throughout the state. This this wasn't the only project the I think there's another one in ADA and several others throughout the state. So be happy to answer any any questions. Any other questions for council? Thank you for the good news, sir. Thank you. Y thanks. Thanks.

Okay. Under communications, this is the opportunity for people from the audience to address council. Is there anyone in the audience wishing to address council at this time? Okay, moving on. Reports of city officials. We have the auditor's report. Just the reason I have no corrections or any questions or comments from council. Next, we have the treasur's report. Uh not here tonight. And she has no questions. Any questions or comments from councel? Next, we have the dire director of public service and safety report, Mr. Fox.

Uh, Mr. Harris, one thing I'd like to add is just a reminder that we will be closed Thursday, Friday for the holiday. Other than that, I'd be glad to answer any questions that we might have.

Okay. Any questions or comments from council? Moving on, we have reports of committees of city council. We have the finance committee. Uh, Mr. Fitzgerald. Yeah, we met on November 17th. Um, basically the finance committee got a chance to get it first look at the budget for 2026 and had a chance to review all the documents in in the budget and we're tasked with the committee to go back and review and bring back any questions for the next for the next uh review of the budget and I think we have the uh set date for the next meeting so next Monday. So other than that, the court stands on its own. Any questions or comments from council? I would encourage other members from council that are not at the finance meeting, you may want to come in and sit in and see how this process works out. And it does get involved. So uh under the readings ordinance and resolutions under third readings we have ordinance number 20252.3 an emergency ordinance establish the fees to be charged in the zoning subdivision regulations of the city of St. Mary's questions comments for council if not this is for third reading may have a motion to pass please Mr. Chris Mr. Apparently, council vote to pass, please.

Okay. May I see a show of hands? Those who motion. Okay. All yeses. Thank you. I wonder if the receivers's dead. Excuse me. I wonder if the receiver's dead. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what a receiver is, so maybe it's dead. If one didn't click on, I would say they're they're clicking their transmitter, but none of them are clicking on showing up there. But I would defer to Mr. Burke Holder. He's the tech guy. We'll have to play with him tomorrow. There's your answer. We can we can get through it. Don't worry. Oh, yeah. Got through worse.

Next under orders 2025 uh to approve execution of the efficiency smart schedule with American District Power, Inc. and declare an emergency. Any opport? If not, may I have a motion to pass? Mr. Fitzgerald, Miss Children, council vote to pass, please. All yeses. Thank you. Next, we have resolution 2515 in the matter of documenting the position of the city of St. Mary's regarding any of addressing authority within the jurisdiction of the city of St. Mary's. This is the uh third reading. Any questions or comments from council? If not, may I have a motion to pass, please? Mr. P, Mr. Lums. All in favor, raise your hand. All yeses. Thank you. We have no second readings. Under new legislation, we have an ordinance number 2025 26. May I have a motion to read, please? Mr. Chrisman, Mr. Aqua, all raise your hand if you're in favor. All yeses. Ordinance number 202526, an emergency ordinance setting forth wages and benefits for the fire chief and other fire department employees not represented by the collective bargaining agreement. Miss Bax, I think this is your

I will uh if I could, Mr. Here's just a few things. The next five pieces of legislation deal with employee wages and benefits. All five of these can be read three times. So, we're we're comfortable with that time frame. I am going to talk about the first three, but back to talk about the last two. Um, just as a kind of a little bit background information, especially for our new council members. We we currently have 102 full-time employees. All of our employees, including me, are either covered by a union contract, a collective bargain agreement, or they're covered by legislation. And all of that is approved first through council. So, the vast majority of our workforce is covered by five unions. We have three unions in the police department. The dispatchers, which is our smallest union, the patrolman, the police sergeants, then we have our firefighters union, and then we have our utility workers union, which is the largest. So the vast majority of our workforce is covered by that those five agreements, those those union agreements. The rest of us are either it's the police chief has an ordinance, the fire chief has an ordinance, then there's a one for the non bargain, and I'll talk more about those as we get to it. This particular one is for the fire chief. Uh it also would apply to um auxiliary firefighters if we had some, but we do not. So it simply is going to apply to him. The only change in the fire chief's um legislation is is the wages and his he will receive an increase of three and a half%.

Any questions or comments for council? If not, I guess this will be backwards. Yeah, we can read we can read them all three times. Okay.

Next, we have ordinance 202527. May I have an or motion to read, please? Mr. Fitzgerero, Mr. Lungs. All All in favor, raise your hand, please. All yeses. Ordinance 202527, an emergency ordinance providing for wages and benefits for the city of St. Mary supervisory personnel and nonrepresented employees. Okay, Mr. Harris, this resolution involves our department heads except for police and fire, uh, superintendent, supervisors, and non-represented. The non-represented employee would be someone like Deb or a Gadin. They're not supervisors. They're administrative staff, but they're not represented by a union. There's 21 of those employees, and I'm not included in that group. So, the supervisor like this bag, Mr. Burkholder, it includes them. So, again, the wage will be 3.5% 3 and a half%. There were some clerical positions that um somehow had gotten behind a little further than I thought they had. So, they had to receive additional increases to be competitive to bring them up. Also, we eliminated two positions uh titles. The first one is the superintendent of solid waste operations. We now have a supervisor of solid waste operations. I felt best in talking with Doug Best when he left and mayor and personnel director that the solid waste department was not a standalone department. So, it's been folded into general services. So, general services is is John Maker. He has that department, parks and solid waste. So, we took it from a superintendent position to a supervisory position. and that's reflected here. Also eliminated was the technical operations coordinator. We we no longer have a need for it. We'll be back in the next meeting or two with a different position. We're still working on that, but we know it's not going to be this.

Okay. Any questions or comments for council? If not, this will be back for its second reading at the next meeting. Next, we have ordinance number 202528. May I have a motion to read, please? Mr. about uh Mr. Chrisman. All in favor, raise your hand. Noes. Ordinance number 202528, the emergency ordinance setting forth the wages and benefits for the chief of police and other police department employees not represented by a collective bargaining agreement. Mr. Fox,

Mr. Harris, this would include our police chief. It also includes our custodian of record, code enforcement officer. Again, one of the reasons that the fire chief, the police chief have separate ordinances is because we tend to extend to them the same type of benefits that have been negotiated by their people. So, for instance, there's wine memberships that they get that the non-bard don't. So, that's why they have separate documents because we try to tailor fit it to each department. So, again, police chief will receive a 3 and 12% raise. Um, again, we found out that the clerical positions there have gotten a little further behind than I had thought they had, and so we're simply bringing them up to competitive wages. But those are the only changes.

Thank you. Any questions or comments from council? Next, we have ordinance 202529. May I have a motion to read, please? Miss Children, Mr. Luns. All in favor, raise your hand. All yeses. Ordinance 202529, emergency ordinance adjusting the salary of the director of public service and safety. Um, Mayor Herlbert spoke to me about the the salary of the director and he is recommending a 3% increase. That would take his salary from 111,413 to $114,755 annually. Um, so and just to note too that this is less than our neighboring communities and we need this three readings.

Yes, sir. Okay. Any questions or comments from council? Okay. This will be on for a second reading. Next we have or 202530. May I have a motion to read please? Mr. Chrisman, Mr. Bton. All in favor raise your hand. All yeses. Thank you. Ordinance number 202530, an emergency ordinance setting forth the rates of pay and provided for certain fringe benefits for the city of St. Mary's dispatches represented by the Ohio Patrol Association. Um, this sets forth the tenative agreement that council agreed to at the last meeting. Any questions or comments from council? And you're good with three readings?

Yes, sir. Okay. This is a little different than what I'm used to. Well, we we know that you get beat up sometimes, so we're trying to plan ahead as best we can. So, I do appreciate that. Okay, this will be back for a second read. Uh, next we have resolution 202516. May I have a motion, please? Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Aquaro. All in favor, raise your hand. All yeses. Resolution 202516, an emergency resolution authorizing the disposition of city property through internet bidding. Mr. Fox,

Mr. Harris, this is annual legislation. This is the process in which we get rid of unwanted items, vehicles, equipment through internet bidding uh through GV deals. We started this relationship with gov deals in 2013, so this is our 14th year. To date, we have sold 919 items for over $690,000. Uh this piece of legislation will be for year 2026. Okay. This has been working out rather good for us. It is. Yes.

Okay. Any questions for comments from council? If not, this will be back for the second meeting at the next meeting. Next we have resolution 20 2517. May I have a motion to read please? Mr. Chrisman, Mr. Bop. All in favor raise your hand. All yeses. Resolution 202517. emergency resolution authorizing appropriation and transfer of funds to the refuge revenue fund.

So I will start off Mr. Harrison and then Mr. Reason will pick up if if I forgotten something. Uh first I'll apologize I know that the legislation reads a little confusing with the numbers but just to explain it our our solid waste operations are funded through 616 is the numbers we use 616 that fund primarily funds our solid waste operations. Below that is a fund number 617. That fund number is for solid waste improvements. Well, obviously what we've done over the last couple years is improve how we do our collection system. So right now the 616 the primary fund has a native balance of a few hundred,000 that we need to close. And this is one of the ways we do this. My guess is Mr. Reason and I have talked we'll probably have to move money from the general fund to cover the the shortfall in that account at the end of the year. So right now in 617 there is $60,000 $60,8383. $20,000 of that has already been appropriated by council. What we need to do is appropriate the balance of $40,8383 and then once that's done transfer the entire amount to 617 to help offset that negative balance. I do apologize. I know that's a little confusing. Uh but the money's right there. um we just simply didn't pay attention to it when we were doing some of the upgrades. So that $60,000 has been sitting there all year. There's been no revenue. There's been no expenses. It's just sitting there for us to use. And so that's what we would like to do. This piece of legislation, however, we would request be passed under suspension of the rules. I know Mr. Rezen is watching this very closely to see how far we can get this down so we know exactly what we need to transfer at the end of the year.

Okay. Can we Okay. Uh for the new members of council, u being this time of the year, you're going to see sometimes where we're going to be moving money like you're seeing right now because the law says we have to have the books balanced. So um any questions or comments for council? If not, we have a request to suspend the rules. What is council? I'll make a motion that we suspend the rules on resolution 2025 D-

motion to suspend by Mr. Lun, second by Mr. Chrisman. All in favor raise your hand. That being the case, may I have a motion to pass them. Mr. Quil, Mr. Fitzgerald, all in favor raise your hand. Thank you. Yes. All yeses. Next under scheduling miscellaneous business and closing. We have requests for finance committee for next Monday at 5:15 for review of the 2026 budget. Good with that time. Good with that.

Good with that time. And any other member who's not on finance committee, you are welcome to attend. I matter of fact, I would encourage you to attend if you if you can. I know you've got you got day jobs. Uh, next on my list is I need a motion to excuse Mr. Yulan. I have a motion to excuse Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Carl. All in favor? All yeses. Thank you. And then we have a request for executive session to discuss collective bargaining for fire. Will there be any action after?

Yes, sir. There will be. The fire uh union, the EMS has voted to ratify the tenative agreement. We will present the executive summary in this tax bill in in executive session. Once executive session is over, we return to regular session. We will need a vote to accept it or or reject it. Before we go to executive session, I have one thing I'd like to address. Okay. So, while we're talking about committees, yeah, um I can report that I can sort of fill fill everybody in about committees.

Okay. So, as we know, over the past few weeks, um I've reached out to several other law directors across the state of Ohio. I've reached out to the um attorney general's office. Um my research, first of all, says that uh it's it's not clear one way or another what the correct way that committees should be should be running, whether there's four people on the committee or a committee of the whole. Um although I can say that several communities and m municipalities across the state ha have committees as a whole as part of their the way that they run things. That being said um I don't want us to be the test case and I don't want us to uh set precedent for any reason. Okay.

I think that uh so my recommendation is that we convert our streets and sidewalks committee from the four wards to the three at large members. that I think is an easy way to take care of that particular issue because we have the three at large members being represented the entire community as well. Um I think that the committee as a whole that we've traditionally done if we want to have a committee of the whole I think we need to have a special council meeting where um we only discuss the item on the agenda. It's very similar to a committee at whole. The biggest person that it affects unfortunately is Deb because Deb will need to be here as a as a clerk for a special counsel meeting. But I think that's I think that's a better I think that's a best practice way of having a a meeting of everybody. So a special council meeting instead of a committee of whole would make I think make more sense. In my time on council, we had one committee of the whole and I had to ask you, can we do something like that? That's when you came to me and said we can have a committee of

that is the only time I've seen that happen. Right. It doesn't happen very often. I I can see it though as we become more active on uh committees. it just becoming more more of a thing because people want to come to, you know, we have a uh refuge committee where we're going to discuss rates. I know that everybody on council is concerned about that and hearing about that and so they want to show up and talk about that. That's that's another part of that is that our committee meetings need to just be the three members on the committee discussing and debating the issues. if there's gonna and I think there's plenty of good reasons to have all of all of council come to a committee meeting to discuss an issue, but I think it should be run as a as a special council meeting if that happens. Committee one,

which is it's a committee of the whole, but we're going to it's it's not a committee of the whole anymore. It's a special council meeting of the of the of the city council. Okay. Can I ask you to put that in writing so we can Sure.

And do we need to do any legislation to make that happen? I haven't been able to find anything in our rules that specify that. So, I think that we as as a council can just amend the way that we're doing things and that should should be enough. If you'd like, I could I could prepare new rules which would change, you know, a section of city code that addresses committees and things like that to to to address that issue. But I don't know if that's uh necessary if if we're comfortable with just doing it a little bit differently than we have been. I'm just concerned about some people questioning us in the future on that. Uh, you know, we're gonna follow what you recommend. Yeah. At least I'm going to follow.

Yeah. I'm I'm just going to do a recommendation. I want to keep this out of court. Um, but uh you got it's up to council to make that decision. At the end of the day, um, at the committee meetings, I think it's I other meeting other members may attend, but we got to be very careful about other members that aren't on the committee discussing or debating issues while they're here at the committee meetings. If that if that needs to happen, then I get again that needs to be done as a special uh council meeting.

So whether they're sitting up here or sitting in the audience for a for a committee meeting, does that preclude council member from asking questions in regards to what's going on with the committee meeting as a whole.

Yes. Regardless of where they're sitting in the room, it when when there's more than three members that are going to discuss or debate it, that's when I'm concerned that if it starts to look more like a council meeting rather than a committee meeting. So, um, regarding where they're sitting, it's up to the committee to chair to decide where people want to sit, whether that be at the dis or in the in the audience. Um, I can see that it may be confusing to public as to who's on the committee when there's multiple people up there, but um, I can't find anything legally one way or another. So, it's up to to council to decide whether that's what how they want to

One thing that's been rolling around in my head is would it be uh advantageous to us and to the public if we have uh, like we have our name tags right now, but we ones. It says committee member to identify we're a committee member. This is a committee member. That's a council decision to make. I'm I'm just trying to give you my legal perspective. I'm sure we're going to have some more discussion on this. Get this ironed out. But yeah.

Um so yeah, those are the things that I wanted to address and let you know about. Again, I don't think that there's I don't think it's black and white. Oh, we're definitely doing things wrong, definitely doing things right. I just think that the the benefits to making the changes outweigh any you know extra unfortunately Deb might have to come to a couple more committee of the holes if or sorry special council meetings if we have this scheduled so

might I recommend to just saying when we are sitting here the only reason I say this when he's talking about the cross conversation that can happen and how that can transfer that into a potential council It does make it considerably easier when you are sitting here. We end up leaning on each other and reaching. I honestly think for clarity it does make sense that if it is a committee meeting and we are not committee members be here if we want to hear what's going on but be here in the same position as our as our constituents are in the audience just because otherwise we are encouraging whether we realize it or not.

That's going to be We're going to have to hammer out in discussion because we we we're going to have to that's why I was having that discussion because I think it's a I respect your your comments but I'm not wholly agreeing with it. So we we'll have to work it out. But I'm a traditionalist. I've been doing this. So it's I agree if it's not broke, don't fix it. But I also think it's broken. Okay. Uh, I guess we'll have to I'll have to give you Jack at some time and see if we can work out some verbage and then go from there. I just thought I wanted to let you know because we are scheduling these committee meetings here at the end of the year, too. So,

all right. Yeah, this is this is budget season and we're going to be handling that. Yep. Is there anything else come before uh any other questions for the law director? Okay, we have request for executive session. May I have a motion to uh go into executive session? Mr. Buff, Mr. Chrisman, all in favor, raise your hand. All yeses, Mr. Hilland, Miss Buchanan. We have returned from executive session. We have a request to accept the agreement. Tenative agreement.

Tenative agreement. I have a motion to accept favor. Mr. Fixer, Mr. Quer, all in favor raise your hand. All yeses. Thank you. Is there anything else coming before councel? Mr. Bob. Motion to adjurnn. Motion to adjurnn by Mr. Bob. Second by Mr. Chrisman. All in favor hand. All yeses. Thank you.