City Council - Regular Meeting

These

are each different. I one guess thing he wants us to each look at.

It's 07:30, we're gonna go ahead and get started. Hello and welcome everyone. We did start early tonight with an executive session to interview applicants for boards and commissions. As such, we will now resume our normally public meeting. I'd like to take a moment and welcome everyone who is here this evening as well as anyone who is watching remotely via the HCTV video feed.

Therefore, we will continue with section three, the Pledge of Allegiance. Will you please stand and join me? I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, and to the republic stands, one nation under God. Thank you everyone. We will close section three and move on to section four for the roll call. Mrs. Wheeler, will you please call the roll.

Doctor. Byrd. Here. Mr. Brezovich. Here. Mr. Ramo. Here. Doctor. Goetz. Here. Mr. Sutton? Here. Doctor. Weinstein? Here. Mr. White?

Here. You, Mrs. Wheeler. We do have a quorum tonight with all seven members of council present. We'll close section four and move on to section five approval of the minutes. Item A is number 20. This will include the 03/03/2026 council meeting minutes and the 03/10/2026 council workshop minutes. Do we have a motion from council to accept the minutes as provided?

I move to accept the minutes as provided.

Thank you, Councilor Brezovich. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Council President Byrd. Is there any discussion on the minutes as provided?

Seeing none, Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote.

Mr. Brezovich? Yes. Mr. Ramo?

Yes.

Doctor. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? Yes. Doctor. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Doctor. Bird?

Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The approval of the minutes as provided passes by a vote of seven in favor to zero against. We'll close section five and move on to section six for public comment. Again, counsel myself value and respect comments from the public aligned with the City Of Hudson codified ordinance 220.03

titled rules item G subtitled decorum. Kindly asking everyone in attendance to remain respectful of the process and display courtesy professionalism and order at all times. Please mute your electronic devices if you have

not already done so. You must leave the room before the completion of our meeting, please do so as quietly as possible. Also per ordinance 220.03 and sub item G public comments are to be kept within five As a reminder, there is a device on the lectern that has three lights on that, it will turn green when your time starts, it will turn orange at one minute remaining and it'll blink at twenty seconds and it will turn red at the end of that five minutes time. Therefore, per the City Of Hudson Charter Article three, section 3.02, if there is any resident of the municipality here tonight who would like to speak to city council regarding any topic that's relevant to the City of Hudson, kindly raise your hand, gain my attention and as you are verbally called upon, please approach the lectern, state your name and address and council will hear your remarks. Is there anyone here tonight who would like to speak to council?

Ms. Curtin.

Good evening. Well I'm here to talk about that issue that

Can you

just state your name

and address?

I'm sorry about that. If you don't know me, I'm Cynthia Curtin, 1102 Cutler Lane, longtime Hudson resident and former planning commission chair. So as I said, I I'm here to talk to you about that very important issue that's on everybody's mind, which is the proposed District 11. I know I'm not opposed to development, and I would venture to say that most Hudsonites are not opposed to development, but it has to be the right development. The proposed legislation includes a residential component and includes a mixed use component, and other commercial ventures, but the comprehensive plan does not make any mention of residential component, in that area.

In fact, as you may know, the comprehensive plan was a very long time, took months to do, a lot of input data data gathered, and what was boiled down to a document. The vast majority of residents said they do not want any more residential development. So, that should tell you something. The comprehensive plan is according to the city charter, section nine, is the operative growth management policy for the municipality. It is the guide for council to use with respect to physical development pertaining to the city.

If

everyone, if what you were proposing was good for the city, it would be in the plan and it's not. So that should also tell you something. I frankly would like to know what the motivation is for counsel not wanting to follow the comprehensive plan. What is counsel's motivation for not following recommendations? Or alternatively, what is counsel's motivation for not, follow what was recommended by planning commission?

What is your motivation for wanting to change the comprehensive plan? And if you're trying to change the comprehensive plan, you haven't gone about that in the right steps either. There there doesn't seem to have been any good reasons why council wants to make a one eighty turn on this proposed new district. I don't think any of those reasons have been put forth to the citizens. It just seems that it's something that was studied by the subcommittee and now all of a sudden we want to take action on it.

So urgency? What is the rush? There's nothing in the comprehensive plan that says this has to be decided right now or it has to be decided in May. I think that you should give this issue more time, send it back to Planning Commission, let them do what they do, perhaps get more studies, more citizen input, but clearly this is not the right move for the city and I'm sensing urgency that you are putting upon the issue that it doesn't really need to be. I think we just need more time to look at it and like I say, have planning commission, do their thing on it.

And finally, I've talked to a lot of people about this issue since the last council meeting and it is a hot topic right now. My sense is, in that after talking to, so many people, that should this, rezoning go into effect, the citizens will take every measure to have it overturned, and that's what Hudsonites are known for. That's what they do best. They stand up for what they think is right. So with that, I hope that, you will, vote down this legislation come May and, continue to seek more input about it.

It's not right for the city, it's not the right time, it's just not a right combination of development for what we wanna do down there to support the downtown. Thank you.

Hey Ms. Skurton. Public comment, I saw somebody with their hand up, sir. Just state your name and address, sir, please.

First of all, evening Mayor Manzavino and City Council. And happy thanks Thanksgiving, right? Saint Patty's Day. My name is Dan Crum. I'm a resident of 2,130. And, they've asked me to represent the, property owners of 30 Acres in consideration for this

resolution 25.185, which I think you'll address later tonight. I'm gonna make four points and I'll keep it fairly simple. I feel kinda like I'm in College Bowl. I'm thirty seconds to answer the question. My first point is this, several residents of

3030 Acres, are present this evening and they wanna voice their concerns about this resolution twenty five one eighty five. Council is being asked to make decisions regarding our properties based on drafts of documents that were unsigned and therefore unapproved by the property owners. Our concern is that the city city's approval of that resolution could be used to coerce us to support that said, easement that's in the resolution. Point two, the city's requirement for the continuous easement which includes the city as a beneficiary came after, I wanna underscore that word after, a long time litigation, mediation, and final legal settlement that was signed by all parties in December 2024. Because of this timing, the proposed amendments in front of you were not addressed by the settlement agreement.

Point three, all residents of 30 acres are opposed to signing the amended and restated driveway easement document because it contains inaccuracies and discrepancies with the legal, the actual legal settlement in the agreement. In fact, the property owners were advised by their attorney not to sign the amendment and restated easement draft. Point four, my last point. The property owners of 30 acres continue to allow 30 Pines access to the undeveloped 18 acre parcel in question. However, the demand, of an amended easement and changes due to the city being named as beneficiary would result in restricting access to the front entrance of one of the homes, which would cause a liability for the person who has limited mobility that lives at

that

address. So those are the four points in summary. I wanna thank the city council for considering our concerns, and it's our hope that as residents and citizens of this community, that the council give serious consideration to the consequences of resolution 25,185 for the property owners. Again, wanna thank you for your time and the privilege to speak to you openly. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Crum. Additional public comment tonight? Mr. Revita?

Hello, Anthony Revita, 1746 Edgar Drive. I hand her over to some readouts on what's been going on. I guess my main concern would be Mr. Pittsford, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr.

Hannon. I think I sent you some information that between the three of them, Mr. Pittsford and the prosecutor, we're paying about $970,000 for information from these people. I would have to believe that this information would have to be as accurate as possible since we're paying such a premium for it. But that's not the case.

I got a message that said, when crime which mister Foster had made a false report, a false report a police report about myself. Mister Pittsford, I had made him aware of it. I I told the prosecutor they they just ignored it. When when exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. The first page that I sent you, it says seeking a default judgment.

Mister Pitchford, seeking a default, charged the city 42 to $45,000. The invoices are right here with Mrs. Wheeler. It's amazing how much there is. But this judgment was that he was supposed to send my lawyer the case.

He didn't send my lawyer the case. He sent supposedly, he sent me the case. That wasn't the that isn't what happened. So basically, came July, mister DeSauser told me that there was a case by the city. I didn't know that because my other lawyer did not get that information. Mister Pittsford went forward, tried to do a default judgment, and we talked to the magistrate a couple weeks ago. I said, let's just go off the merit of the case. Mister Pitchford hasn't got back from me yet. Mister Pitchford, if you understand this, the bottom line that says C. C.

Is my lawyer. He knew that I had a lawyer, but he did not send it to him. So he's playing a game with this lawsuit. Mr. Sheridan, I went to see about two days ago or two weeks ago, and he put together a paper that I gave you guys.

And basically saying in this paper that Amanda Krikovich and Mr. Hannan did my revision, which in the history of anybody's doing any projects, the city doesn't do your revision for you. If there was a revision be done, it was BB, my architect, my fence guy, but he's saying that that was the case which is a lie because I talked to Amanda, she didn't do it. The other one speaks for itself. You'll see the literature on that.

Today Mr. Hannon did a site plan. Mr. Hannon not only did the site plan, but he postdated it. He used it as an exhibit six months after fence was put together.

After that six months, he then postdated that exhibit, made an exhibit the actual site plan, and then gave it to the court. Again, if you look under one of the papers I have is for the timeline. If you look under Madakrykovich at 08:32 twenty three she completed it, there is nothing about doing a revision at all. Even in Mr. Hannan's make believe chronology, that's the next page, on August 29, Amanda Krikovich notes HPP defense will be our role away from the polls.

Nothing about a revision, nothing about doing anything that was

Amanda didn't do that. You have thirty seconds Mr.

Ravida. Joe Granda. This was another page that I asked Mr. Sheridan for. He said that I asked for George. He ended up knowing it was Joe. He said, Joe, in this paper, was was never at my house. And if you look under the at the timeline, it says he was at my house. And then the next page actually, he gives a note that he was at the house and proposing a fence or closed property.

Mr. Avita, your time is up. I'll let you finish that sentence.

Okay, thank you. Last one is a picture. The picture is on top is the Google Street View. Mister Hannon told the court that he could see that I cemented the post from the Google Earth, which is absolutely impossible. Thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it.

Thank you Mr. Revita. Is there any additional public comment tonight? Seeing none, we will close section six and move on to section seven, which is correspondence and council comments. If any council member has correspondence that hasn't already been generally distributed and or council comments, we will hear those now. Please gain my attention and allow me to verbally recognize you and assign you the floor. Are there any comments from council tonight? Councilor Durema.

Last Wednesday, we had our first meeting for a public safety ad hoc committee. Many cities have such a committee, but this will be the first for Hudson that will include several different assets of public safety. I met with our city manager, public works director, and the chief of fire and police, along with council president doctor Byrd and, councilman mister White that will be, make up the board with myself. We are currently beginning to discuss areas of public safety, including traffic safety as well as bus and pedestrian safety. Of course, fire, EMS, and police will be of utmost importance. For this year, we will meet quarterly with plans to begin having speakers for residents to attend relevant to public safety and hopes for involvement of residents in the coming years. Thank you.

Thank you, councilor Dremo. Additional comment from council tonight. Councilor Gatz?

Thank you, Mayor. I'm a member of the Clinton Crossing Subcommittee and we have decided that we're going to give the public information from our subcommittee so that we can be seen as very transparent. There were some residents that came to this committee and it was also clear that people have not been paying much attention to what's been going on. If you start back 04/22/2025, it was presented at City Workshop, a concept drawing for Clinton Crossing which is the old phase two And then on 05/27/2025, the staff presented a financial analysis of what we need to have there to be able to cover our costs. And then on 09/23/2025, there was a proposal to rebrand it to Clinton Crossing and staff went into a long discussion about why we were doing that.

And then on October 7, we voted to have that happen and that was with our old council, not this current council. So, what we've done is formed a subcommittee to look at how can we use that area. First bullet point is the council is, this committee is working through in the council, a legislative process to enter in a contract with some architects and a sub consultant for assistance on the concept site plan for Clinton Crossing. RDL showed the strong approach to public engagement and OHM was a consultant on our comprehensive plan. So what the staff did was put together an idea, a diagram and we're then going to have a designer look at it and then bring in public many, many times to get your input.

The subcommittee wants to have a working session soon with representatives of the Planning Commission and the Architectural Historic Board of Review to get their input into the initial site concepts. So we're bringing in those groups to give us ideas. The subcommittee wants to hold unique public engagement opportunities such as in person events right at the site to get people's ideas looking at the land, having potential office hours for residents to stop by city hall to ask questions about the project to staff and to, we'll have a rotating group of council members. The subcommittee is aiming to have a concept plan completed for the September Planning Commission meeting. A developer would complete the preliminary and final plans after the city completes a concept plan.

So we're doing it differently than what was done before. A developer would develop everything and their whole ideas and come to us, we're doing it the other way around. The subcommittee is determining when to engage a developer on the site design and there's a strong desire to keep this as a community led process but we'd need to involve a developer at an early point to confirm that a concept is feasible. Several site studies are anticipated as part of this project. Traffic, parking studies, and city staff will seek an appropriation for site studies in April.

Four residents attended that subcommittee on March 13 and all noted that they appreciated the opportunity to learn more about the project. The city staff will also post a project website this week with details on the site history, information about the Clinton Crossing name and descriptions of the concepts that are proposed. Available. We strongly encourage residents to visit the website to learn more and to provide input. So we wanna make this as transparent as possible to get as much information from people as to what they would like to see down at that area, the old phase 2 area.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Gaetz. Additional comment from Councilor Sutton.

Thank you. Tring Commission met on the twelfth. The arborist noted that his tree trimming contract is currently capped at less than his budget. So he may need to come back to us and raise that contract, but he wanted me to note ahead of time that it's not he's not going above his budget. He just didn't issue the contract for his full budget at the time. Earth Day, they'll have 200 saplings available at the tree commission booth and Arbor Day will be on the April 24 at Hudson Police Department. That's it.

Thank you, councilor Sutton. Additional council comment tonight? Councilor Brezovich? Thank you. I attended the Park

Board meeting last night, Leadership Hudson class of 2024 gave a presentation. Their project is the Hudson sign similar to those signs you may have seen it many other communities in the area, most well known probably is the Cleveland sign, white script. The Hudson sign will be more of a block letter look. I do have that presentation if members of council would like to see it, but they gave their presentation that will be at Veterans Way Park and their plan is to move forward with that this year. I'm really looking forward to that.

I think it'll be a great entrance into Hudson as you come off our new bike path once that comes in and ends at Veterans Way. Otherwise, summer prep is underway, storm cleanup is occurring, there was no serious damage from the storms this weekend to any of our parks. I do have a comment that from the park board that they heard that the Barlow Road connection over the railroad had been approved. I know we had budgeted it for this year but there was a lot of conversation with the railroad still to be done. So I'm not sure if that's completely accurate, that's their current understanding.

Finally, was discussion on the potential name for our new playground at Oak Grove. Several ideas were given but none have been decided yet.

You, Councillor Bresoway. Additional council comment tonight? Councillor White?

Yeah, I'd just like to thank Tom, Kevin and all of your teams for the efforts over the weekend to drive urgency with FirstEnergy and the power outages. Also want to thank Senator Weinstein for his and applying additional pressure to FirstEnergy. These coordinated efforts made a difference and I just wanna share my appreciation on behalf of the residents. So thank you. It's a windy weekend.

Thank you, Councilor White. Additional comment from council members who have not spoken yet?

Council President Byrd. So I just wanna thank city staff who have been working on a D11 information sheet that will be going out to the public in the next two, three days, if not sooner. I think this will be very helpful to kind of address a

lot of

the misinformation that's out there. You know, Some ways, so right now D8 would actually allow a major big box retailer to come in. D8 would also allow heavy industrial and would also allow adult businesses. So in many ways D11 is actually more restrictive than what D8 now. And then secondly, Sam, I might have misheard, you said something about bus safety Or do you I think you meant say bus or bike?

I think I think you also meant bike safety. And we have some very passionate and interested and dedicated bikers in the community. And I know that we want sure that their viewpoint and their concerns are addressed in from a safety standpoint as well.

Thank you, council President Byrd, Councilor Weinsen, have not spoken yet. I'll give you the opportunity if you choose. Okay, thank you. Just two quick things from my side. I did attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Harmony Project at the Hudson High School on Monday evening for their new orchestra room. We have some extremely talented students in the performing arts here in Hudson and it was my pleasure to show and provide my continued support to these amazing young adults. So that will be underway very shortly. My other comment is just in regard to our schedule moving forward. Council is on recess next week. And then while the March 31 is also a Tuesday, that is the fifth Tuesday of the month.

So council meets four times generally so we will not have a meeting on the thirty first the next regularly scheduled meeting of council will be on April 7 which will be a regular meeting so FYI to the public. Any additional comments from councils we go into round two? Councilor Durema?

I just have an email from a resident to read into the record. Hello city council members. This is to express concern about the Hudson Bandstand. Yes. It's a bandstand not gazebo. The 07/1976 Hudson Bandstand Commission created it. I am curious why the Bandsand was not included in last week's AHBR agenda. At their previous February 25 meeting, their agenda said this, and a screenshot was included from the agenda. I'm sorry. Small.

Which includes alterations to downtown gazebo submitted by the city of Hudson. Points a, b, c, d, and e. The proposal for the gazebo renovations have been updated in response to both comments made at the 02/11/2036 meeting and to community wide feedback. The revised scope of work would include the following, in kind of repair of the existing structure, landscaping, drainage improvements, concrete plaza with alternate permeable concrete and an ADA accessible lift. At the southeast corner of the structure, city council has requested AHBR feedback on the revised proposal.

Staff notes the proposed ADA lift would require AHBR approval. At this time, council is only requesting feedback from the AHBR. Staff anticipates a formal AHBR review of the ADA lift would follow, which would include to scale elevations. Staff has provided three lift products for AHBR comment, LiftUp FlexStep, lift LiftUp EasyLift, and the Hercules vertical platform. Staff notes the proposed ADA lift would require the approval of AHBR.

Staff anticipates this formal review. Since the Bansan was not on last week's AHBR agenda, when will the aforementioned formal AHBR review of the ADA lift and a two scale elevations be presented if if it is now listed on the council agenda for tonight third reading. At the last council meeting, city manager Sheridan said that since the plans for the bandstand work have simplified, the timeline is not so urgent. So why is he now declaring an emergency in bypassing the AHBR? The bandstand is one of our two most iconic community structures situated in the core of our downtown historic district.

Proposed changes to any structure located within the Hudson's National Historic Districts are required to be reviewed by the Architectural and Historic Board of Review. I don't understand why the city is not following its own regulations. Thank you for your attention to this. Barb Breeden, Vann Blarkin. 422 North Main Street. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Duremo. Additional comment from any council member in round two? Seeing no additional comment from council, we will close section seven and move on to section eight, report of the city manager. I'd like to assign the floor to Mr. Sheridan. If there's anything you'd like to provide to council, there is an item listed item A25-one 185. So Mr. Sheridan, the floor is yours and or for your staff to provide any updates to Council. Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor. This item I asked for to be pulled up to the Council meeting tonight is actually on the workshop, but in our discussion last week in the agenda meeting, I wanted to have the city solicitor here to answer any questions about the legal components of this, and that for anyone on council to obviously ask questions, and then Greg's gonna give a quick overview of how we got to this point, and then Marshall, as I said, can answer any of the legal questions. If that's okay with everybody, Marshall said, we should be able to do this under city manager's report. All right.

This is item A25-one 185, Mr. Sheridan?

Yes.

Mr. Just for a brief orientation and reminder and then glad to assist with any discussion and comments. There is an existing 18 acre vacant parcel present at the western terminus of the existing 30 acres shared private drive easement. The property owner at the terminus has proposed some minimal roadway improvements and a revised recording of the easement to comply with appropriate fire access and drive requirements per land development code. The revised easement would authorize governmental entities and would expand the easement area at the current landscape island where existing pavement does not properly align with the recorded easement dimensions.

The city would not be a stimulatory of this easement but would be a beneficiary of such. And as was noted in comment this evening, there was a previous court settlement between the property owners and the vacant parcel at the terminus and this proposed draft easement is related to that settlement and again, the city would not formally sign but would be a beneficiary. I turn it over to Mr. Pitchford for anything additional.

Happy to answer any questions, but let me just amplify a bit what Mr. Hannon discussed. Council's role with this particular piece of legislation is to accept or approve the easement as it's been presented. I wanna make sure that, everybody understands that this is not the city, speaking terms to the landowners. In other words, this is not a scenario of eminent domain where you're not telling them this is what must be, by way of an easement.

There are certain requirements ultimately that will be imposed if the parcel at the end of this driveway is developed to allow for fire trucks. And I think that is what's been going on as far as with the current landowner at the end and all of the other landowners. But as far as what you have in front of you, we were led we as the city, the administration, were led to believe that it embodies, what you will see. The settlement agreement, has been attached to the agenda. There is a section under there, paragraph four, that talks about an easement modification.

The city administration was led to believe that what was presented to counsel, was in conformity and that all of

the

land owners had agreed, although they had not signed it yet. And and it's one of those scenarios where, you know, it's the chicken or the egg, everyone kinda negotiates it, but they're not going to sign it until the city approves it. The city, we were led to believe that everyone had approved it, they just hadn't signed it. And so at this point, I think that the residents accurately stated, if they're not in agreement with it, simply no reason for the city to to to weigh in and and adopt something that ultimately is not going to be signed. So if we can we can proceed as you as you want, happy to answer any questions.

But again, just to emphasize, it was the city's understanding that the easement had been approved by the landowners and because it has not, there's really nothing for us to do, you know, at this point.

Mr. Sheridan or Mr. Hannon, any additional comments before we see if council has questions for either the three of you?

Nothing.

Any comments from council or questions to staff on this topic? Councillor Gatz?

So we can just table it

or? Yeah, in

a word, yes. We can table it if and when the landowners, all of them are able to to work out this situation, right, they've all come to a settlement. Right? It's in the agreement. They've signed it. You know, it's up to them to decide what that section needs. We are not a part of that lawsuit. We're not a party to this easement. Once that's decided and once they have an easement that they can all agree to, it would be presented back to the city to make sure that the fire department supports that and approves it. I mean, that's that's the whole reason that we wanna be the beneficiary so we can provide safety protection, fire and police protection to the property at the end of the driveway in the event that it's developed.

So again, doctor Goetz, yes, we can table this until the landowners have agreed.

And for clarification, missus Wheeler, maybe you can clarify and remind me, this was postponed previously to a date certain it was in May, I believe.

April.

It was April, okay. So when that comes back up then to your question Doctor. Getz and Mr. Pitchford's explanation, there could be a motion to table it. If that motion passes, then the legislative item essentially gets laid on the table. Council would then have to, in the future at Ingheim, make a motion to bring it back off the table, so it essentially sits there indefinitely. So just just to clarify, it doesn't kill it, it doesn't end it, it just is an indefinite hold until council wants to or has means or information from the residents to bring that back, so for clarification. Councilor Brezovich?

To kind of follow-up on that train of thought, if we were to, when it comes back to vote in April, vote the motion down, would that leave us in a situation where if the residents do eventually agree, we are now not a beneficiary or would they have to resubmit it and go through the legislative process again?

We would resubmit it and could prepare a new resolution at that time. If we go the original route that was talked about, it could be placed on the table and then when brought back, we would simply amend the resolution and swap out whatever the new easement is or we could at the time, if we voted down later on to bring back a new piece of legislation because it is a slightly different topic because you'd have a different exhibit. Either mechanism, either alternative will be fine.

I would just add that that would then start the process all over.

Right, so tabling allows us to pick it back up and pass it quicker, but it does also have it sitting there theoretically indefinitely if in theory the agreement is never reached, if another thing comes back to us, do we ever have to logistically pick it up and vote it down or can it just sit

there in perpetuity? My understanding is it can sit there. And back to your other point, if it was voted down in April and the process starts all over again, then it'd have to be introduced back again at a workshop and go through

three ratings. Got it.

Perfect, thank you. Additional questions for staff, Council President Byrd.

So Marshall, our normal process would be that we would never get one of these. We would never see one of these until everyone signed off on it. Correct. Right? They should never come to us in the first place.

The the idea there is that we we don't necessarily get them when the paperwork or the easement is signed, right, but we were we are assured that the parties are in agreement. I've not been in a scenario where we've been presented with an easement where the parties have not been in agreement. We've never been presented and told something that was less than accurate, let's say. Thank

you, council president Byrd. Additional questions for staff from council on this topic? Seeing none, mister Sheridan, anything additional from city manager report?

No. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that we clarified that in the council while the solicitor was here. Thank you.

Thank you, mister Hannan. If there's nothing else mister Sheridan, we will close section eight and move on to section nine for appointments. Council president Byrd, do we have any appointments tonight?

Yes, we do. I would like to nominate to the part board for full full full term, Megan Higgins and Brian Canterbury.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Do we have a motion to approve the appointments as nominated by Council President Byrd? I move as such. Thank you councilor brezovic do we have a second to that motion to approve the appointments second thank you councilor gatz are there any comments from council on the motion to approve council president Byrd's appointment of megan higgins and brian canterbury to the park board for a full term Seeing no comment, Mrs Wheeler will you please roll call a

vote. Ms. Zuraima? Yes. Doctor. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? No. Doctor. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Doctor Bird? Yes. Mr Brezovich?

Yes. Thank you, missus Wheeler. Megan Higgins and Brian Canterbury are hereby appointed to the park board for full terms by a vote of six in favor to one against. Council president Byrd, are there any additional appointments tonight?

Yes. One more. To the b z b a, I would like to nominate Bob Dyer to a full term. Thank you

council president bird do we have a motion to approve the appointment of bob or robert dyer to the b z b a for full term as such thank you councilor brezovic is there a second to that motion second thank you councilor white is there any comments on the motion to approve the appointment of brobert dyer to the bzba for a full term any comments from council seeing none mrs wheeler will you please roll call a

vote doctor gets yes mr Sutton

yes

doctor Weinstein yes mr White yes doctor Bird yes mr Brezevich yes mr mr mr Remo

yes

thank you mrs Wheeler that motion to approve the appointment made by council president Byrd of Robert Dyer to the b z b a for a full term passes unanimously by a vote of seven in favor two zero against. Council president Byrd, are there any additional appointments tonight? There are no others. Any additional comments on future openings or appointments that you would like to make sir?

No future, no current open, I'm sorry, we have one more, two more boards commissions to kind of finish up this this round and and hopefully we will have done at the April meeting. First meeting in April. There will be our boards and commissions coming open. I think in June and July and we will get notifications out to the public when it's time to submit applications for those.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. We will close section nine and move on to section 10 for the consent agenda. Council members, if there are any items on the consent agenda that you wish to have considered separately, please allow me to read the item, gain my attention and state your wishes. We do have many items on the consent agenda tonight, so please bear with me. Item A on consent is number 20 six-nineteen, a motion to acknowledge the timely receipt of the February 2026 monthly financial report.

And B on consent is 20 six-thirty five, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a professional services contract with Cuni and Panichi Incorporated for the preparation of the city's 2025 annual financial statements. Item C on consent is number 20 six-thirty six, a resolution authorizing advances of local taxes. Item D on consent is 20 six-thirty seven, a resolution authorizing the city manager to advertise for bids and to enter into a contract for the Veterans Way retaining wall project. Item E on consent is 26 dash 38, a resolution authorizing the city manager to advertise for bids and to enter into a contract for the replacement of 48 inches storm sewer from the north side of State Route 303 South to an existing box culvert beside Rosewood Grill and declaring an emergency. Item F on consent is twenty six-thirty nine, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a local public agency LPA federal local let project agreement with the Ohio Department of Transportation for the Hines Hill rail grade separation project.

Some GCEP Hudson Hines Hill Road PID number 121034. Item g on consent is 26Dash40, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into an agreement with the owner of a property located at Parcel 32 Dash 50 for the exchange of property located at Parcels 30 Two-eighteen 41 and 30 Two-eighteen 44. Item H on consent is number 20Six-forty1, a resolution authorizing the city manager to authorize the lot split and consolidation of city police and fire EMS stations and declaring an emergency. Item I on consent is 20 six-forty two, a resolution amending resolution 20 five-forty to change the purchase price and reauthorize an agreement with Daniel Steidl for the purchase of 14.75 acres of Parcel 30 Two-two Thousand 675 located on South Main Street and declaring an emergency. Item J on consent is number 20 six-forty three, a resolution authorizing the city manager to retroactively enter into a contract with the Summit County Public Defender's Office and declaring an emergency.

Item K on consent is 20 six-forty four, a resolution authorizing the city manager to revise the professional services contract with Virtual DataWorks for the annual Microsoft Government Community Cloud, GCC, subscription renewal for the citywide use of Microsoft three sixty five and declaring an emergency. Item L on consent is number 20Six-forty5, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a professional services contract with Hall Public Safety Upfitters for the upfitting of two fleet vehicles for police operations and declaring an emergency. Item M on consent is 20 six-forty six, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a contract with for an integrated body worn camera and in car camera system and declaring an emergency. Item N on consent is 20 six-forty seven, an ordinance amending codified ordinance chapter two ninety seven, Military and Veterans Commission to comply with the newly created charter section 8.09 and declaring an emergency. Item O on consent is 20 six-forty eight, a resolution retroactively authorizing an agreement with Summit County regarding animal control services and declaring an emergency.

Item P on consent is 20 six-forty nine, a resolution authorizing the city manager or his designee to submit an application for a reworks community assistance recycling grant, CRAG for short. And the last item on consent is item Q number 20 six-fifty, a resolution authorizing the city manager submit an application to the Ohio Department of Transportation, safe routes to school grant. Thank you, counsel. Do we have a motion to suspend the rules to allow passage of the items on the consent agenda? I move as such.

Thank you, councilor Brezovich. Do we have a second to motion?

Second. Second.

We'll take that as council president Byrd. Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote on the suspension of the three reading rule?

Mr. Sutton. Yes. Doctor. Weinstein. Yes. Mr. White. Yes. Doctor. Bird. Yes. Mr. Brezovich. Yes. Mr. Ramo. Yes. Doctor. Goetz. Yes.

Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The rules are so suspended on the consent agenda by a vote of seven in favor to zero against. Do we have a motion from counsel to approve the consent agenda?

Move to approve the consent agenda.

Thank you, Council President Byrd.

Do we

have a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councilor Weinstein. Are there any comments? Seeing none, Mrs. Wheeler, will you please roll call a vote?

Doctor. Weinstein? Yes. Mr. White? Yes. Doctor. Bird? Yes. Mr. President? Yes. Mr. Ramo? Yes. Doctor. Getz? Yes. Mr. Sutton?

Yes.

Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The consent agenda has been approved by a vote of seven in favor to zero against. Thank you. We will move on to section 11 for legislation.

The first item is item A number 20 six-thirty two. This is a resolution authorizing the city manager to advertise for bids and to enter into contracts with the lowest and best bidders for the gazebo legacy project and declaring an emergency. There is updated language for 03/03/2026 and this is a third reading and actionable tonight. Council can enter a motion to pass as originally accepted or a motion combined with the substitution of the updated language if they so choose. This council wish to enter a motion on legislation 26 dash 32.

So I believe I want to I move that we pass the legislation as amended.

Two six dash three two with the language dated 03/03/2026. Councillor Bresby?

Correct.

Thank you. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Thank you councilor Byrd. Council president Byrd. Is there any discussion then on the motion on the floor to pass 26 dash 32 with the language dated 03/03/2026. I do want to start that by potentially offering that to Mr. Sheridan. There was information you sent to counsel before the meeting that was not included here. Is there something that needs to be discussed from staff standpoint to help counsel with the discussion?

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to go over where we left off in February, if that's okay with everybody on counsel and kind of give a brief update.

That'd be helpful.

Since our meeting in February, Council had asked that we put the revised plan that we submitted to all of you back to the ARC Board. We did that on February 25 and we got some comments from them. It's one of the attachments that is part of this. We did not submit I'm just kind of adding in some of the language I heard tonight with the letter. We did not submit anything in March because we had gotten everything from February 25 what we needed.

ArcBoard, we had our city's community development staff look at this. ArcBoard will be reviewing the lift, the stairs, the adjacent railing and then the types of railing that could go on the lift stairs as part of their review. The item you have before you tonight is just asking for us to advertise and enter into contracts on this project. That was the original intent and we also wanted to give counsel some ideas and show them what we were thinking of doing. And as you all know, we kind of progressed to this point.

So I just kind of wanted to give everybody just that little bit of background. The staff did submit to our architect and Brian if you can leave it right there. The one rendering the council wanted at the last meeting in February was what would this lift set of stairs look like on the Southeast side. So Brian, if you can highlight that, there you go. That would be like where the stairs would be, which would turn into a lift also.

That That was one of the items that was required of us. If Council approves of the plans that are in front of you, and I have a number of questions that I'm going to ask here in a few minutes. But basically, this will go to ArcBoard in April, April 22. So we're not I know one of the comments was that we are bypassing the process and the regulations. We're not.

Again, keep in mind what this legislation is asking for to go out to bid. We're trying to get counsel's input on if we're going down the right road or not. So we started off, if you recall, with a lot of ramps and a lot of infrastructure and we've narrowed it down to something that we feel gives accessibility to everyone. And then we also squeezed in the pavement. We will be doing the pavement if it's approved with our concrete sidewalk program.

The steps that will need to be repaired, the existing steps, that's a sandstone material I believe, and that will be done with Public Works under one of their maintenance contracts. The maintenance to the painting and the repairing of the wood would be a separate contract with Public Works. All of those are below the $25,000 threshold, except for the concrete, which is part of our already approved sidewalk program. So we don't need to go out or ask for permission to go out for any of those items. It would just be the lift after ArcBoard reviews and approves of it, they any changes they would like to do, and that'll be in excess of $25,000 So it would have to be formally bid.

Moving down just real quick here on my list. This has gone through three readings. I want everyone in the public to know we're not trying to pull anything. It's all being transparent with everything we're doing. We've had multiple meetings workshops and in council.

And showing the renderings, like I said, that showed the steps on the three renderings and then Brian, if you could go real quick to the site plans that were revised. And I did go out there right before the council meeting and staff has been out there several times, but I did notice the corners actually of this existing sidewalk has been expanded. It's two different types of concrete that's out there. It's already been expanded in the sense. There was just sidewalk around the perimeter of the gazebo, and you can tell from the texture, and you can tell from the expansion joints, and you can also tell the concrete mason stamped the new concrete which was kind of, you know, wow, they've already added to this probably since 1976 within that red area.

So I just wanted everybody on Council to know, I just found that out tonight when I was walking around seeing the difference in the concrete. A couple of things that came up at the last meeting was my first question. We talked about the banding around the gazebo concrete and I believe Brian if you scroll down, there you go. So we kind of have about an 18 inches wide to two foot wide brick colored concrete banding. The color would match the clock tower.

Brick is what I would recommend if we were to do it And brick pattern I think would be the way to go and it very similar to that course you see there in the lower right would be what it would look like. So I guess my first question everyone on council is, again, we're trying to get input so we can give this to the architect to design. Do you like the banding and do you like the way the architect has shown it that you had asked for last meeting?

Comments from counsel? Councillor Weinstein?

I like the banding. Just want to say appreciate the conversations that everyone and the input and getting to this point and the feedback from I know the, Hudson Heritage Association and the Architectural Review Board, I like that the banding, ties it in more with the clock tower and I think it's a and I've also walked it recently and this is an update that needed to happen and so I'm really excited about it. I think it'll look great.

Thank you, Councilor Weinstein. Additional Council comment? Councilor Goetz?

Is this proposal for, we talked about there being permeable concrete, it's more expensive or is this proposal for just regular concrete?

I'll get to that next, that's my next question, if you wanna use porous type concrete, which would be pervious concrete, but this actual banding would not be.

Right, right.

So around the perimeter it would not be, but the actual gray area would be. That's one of the options besides standard concrete.

So we don't have to make that decision tonight or do we?

No, we do. I just wanted to know, I'm trying to pick these off one at a time, so if there's anyone against the banding, I just need to know and if everybody's for it, that's kind of what it's gonna look like. And we can tell our architect to finalize that, so by the time it gets to the art board, they will not need to review this, but we do with the set of plans and to have contractors know what they need to build.

We'll just add for clarification, so the proposal from staff at this point is with the enlarged footprint of the concrete patio, if you will, I'm not sure what the technical term is, with that shape and design, that's up for discussion as to whether or not that is something this council wants as well as then the banding options as the first point of discussion that you had brought up Mr. Sheridan.

Yes, the size also as the mayor is mentioning, if we want to jump to that next, it sounds like the banding is good. Is everyone in favor of the size of this?

I'm sorry, I jumped ahead of you when I

No, no. It's a lot of stuff and I apologize. I really tried to think of how to ask all this, but we really need these answers and we've had multiple meetings on it. I think we're narrowing down to that. I apologize, but again, this was probably the best way I felt we can do this. Last but not least, mainly was do we want to use regular concrete, which is out there now. They have these I didn't ask for this, but I mean they have the crosshatch joints showing that and he had different styles. If Brian slides through the different sides, you can actually see the joints are different. Basically the ones that are out there are five foot by five foot. Normally people don't even notice those, so I wouldn't make a big deal about it.

But back to the surface, as Doctor. Goetz has mentioned, we have a price for regular broom finished concrete, which is similar to what is out there now. The additional concrete too, by the way, adds a thousand square feet of impervious area above the red line. So the inside what is existing, we're adding about a thousand square feet. If you would like to use the pervious, the pervious is like almost like a stone field and it's porous and it has little voids in it so that the water is able to go down through it.

We put in an under drain underneath it. The Public Works Department has already put the under drains in that area of the grass and they ran it over to the existing plaza so that we can tie onto that if we want to go with pervious concrete. It's not a problem in the sense, but it is a little bit more expensive. For example, all things in considering, you know, if we look at the wood replacement and painting, the new replacement of the steps, the lift and the steps, and the video camera and security, total $68,000 and each of the options. So the standard concrete would take it up to 116,000.

If we went with a dyed concrete, which is still impervious but it's dyed, it would be $137,000 And then if it's pervious concrete, it would take it up to about $160,000 And we budgeted with the things that we pulled together on the staff report of about 180. So all of these are below that estimate. So if everybody's okay with the size of this, it comes down to do we want to do pervious or do we want to do regular broom finish.

Councillor Gounsel, if you'll hold since you had already spoken to give the opportunity for other council members. Councillor White?

I was just going to see if you could highlight where the existing concrete is today expanding on. There's been some confusion online and meeting with the Heritage Foundation the other day, they still believe that it was substantial and taking over the green where as we've seen it's not. So can we Brian, I don't if you can

It's that red line.

Yeah, it's the red line.

I'm color blind, so I can't

tell the most.

You want me

to go up and point

at it?

If you just draw with that.

Brian's going around the perimeter of it. So that red line is the existing pad that's out there.

Thank

you for that.

Additional comment from council members who haven't spoken. Councilor Durema?

From your engineering standpoint, the impervious is best because of its ability for when we have large amounts of water, is that what's more beneficial about it?

The pervious?

Pervious, yeah.

Yeah, the pervious concrete. We had heard some people speak to you're expanding it and you're taking away the green. This actually, if you want to use that, the 1,000 square foot of extra that we're using, we could use porous pervious concrete to help get that water to drain off. Concrete from an engineering standpoint, pervious concrete has a little bit more maintenance than regular standard concrete. You kind of put standard concrete in and forget about it.

It could have some heaving depending on the base or whatever, freeze and thaw effect. It could have cracks, that's what those joints are supposed to stop. But again, the porous concrete, it just has more maintenance, has to be cleaned. So usually a vac, blowers, you blow it a couple of times a year and that helps keep the voids open. Does that answer your questions? Either one from an engineering standpoint can be built to last.

So why would we pick the more expensive one? What is the real benefit? Is there any real benefit or the look of it?

No, it's just because there was some talk on Let's Talk Hudson about you're expanding the plaza, So we thought we would give counsel that option of saying, hey, you are expanding it, but basically the footprint of it, it's just acting like grass. Actually going to go into an under drain. It won't be adding impervious surface area.

Thank you, Councillor Duremo. Councillor Brezovic?

Thank you.

As far

as the pervious concrete goes, do we have any data as far as like how much this will improve drainage in the area or is it just this should be a little better, a lot better?

It'll be better on the pad obviously because it'll drain, it'll wick away. The underdrains that Public Works just added to the grass area around there, that was a complaint we had heard. It's kind of like the diagonal corner here from Town Hall and it has some trees and basically putting that under drain already in there should help dry that area out too. So that portion of it should dry the grass area and the pores will be able to wick the water away and it won't be sheet flowing off. But even if it did sheet flow off, I could catch it in like a yard drain in yard. So it would drain away also that way.

So you don't feel that there is going to be a large improvement to standing water in the grass by putting pervious concrete in? No. Okay. Mentioned maintenance, it sounds like you have a general maintenance plan. The timeline of pervious concrete versus regular concrete and to when it will need to be replaced, does that differ?

That I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if there's enough data out there right now, it hasn't been around that long.

Interesting, okay.

Additional comment Council Breza?

Thank you.

You. Additional comment from council members who have not spoken yet? Councilor Sutton? President

Byrd? So yeah, I think when stand out there, that extra amount just does not seem like it. It's not really encompassing much more of the green when you're actually looking at it. Just to me, can you just verify the cost difference again? Previous was $1.60 and the low end was $1.16?

$1.16.

Okay.

It's about a $40,000 difference.

It just doesn't seem like you're describing, I mean it sounds like it's better for drainage, the pervious, but it doesn't sound like you're describing a whole lot more benefit to it.

Did you want me to respond? Is that a question?

Yeah, that's a question.

If you want my recommendation, I would go with standard concrete, put in a yard drain, pitch it to the one side that the naked eye wouldn't even notice and it would drain into the yard drains, which it goes in the under drain and would take it over to the catch basin. And it's not that big of an area that anyone's gonna notice it downstream, it's like flooding anyone, it's not that large of an area. Plus it's in our right of way and we're not required to do storm water management in our right of way. It's still, it's not a big amount of storm water.

Mr. Do you have a comment?

Yeah, thank you. Generally, I do think even though the expansion is not much, it is unnecessary. Tree Commission has also expressed concerns in the past, not specific to this project, but in the past that the greens are overdeveloped, serious root compaction puts a lot of those trees at risk that are already on the green, and they've expressed a lot of concerns about anything we do on the greens. The former arborist, Kurt, gave me a call today. I don't wanna speak for him on on the expansion of the concrete, but I got the the general vibe that he wanted to see a smaller concrete footprint.

But specifically, he wanted to advocate for at least three shade trees added to the western edge of the bandstand area. He has some species recommendations and he's willing to work with the city manager and our current arborist that he thinks will improve the area and provide shade for people watching events. That said, the feedback I've gotten is mixed. I appreciate the iterations we've done on this. I do think it is much better than where we started.

I'd say it's probably feedback's probably sixty forty right now that I've received on just the overall project cost is too high. It's just not a priority for a lot of residents right now. They'd rather see that money spent elsewhere. So as it stands, I don't have any firm opinions on the design but I don't think I'll be supporting it either way. That's it.

Thank you, Councilor Sutton. We'll enter into a second round of discussion. Councilor Goetz?

A question. If we go with the original, the red line, does the cost go down? Yes. Do you know what that would be? Even though you say there's not a lot of extra, it seems to me that pervious would be more environmentally helpful, you know, whenever you can reduce anything that is solid, but if we went with the concrete, we should make it the smaller one so that we're not expanding. I can't tell what amount of space that is. Is it two feet, is it five feet on either side?

Brian, can you zoom in on that dimension there?

There was also an aerial photo that showed Church Street And 91 just to give you a full understanding of the size relative to the entire South Green or the Gazebo Green.

It's eight feet from the edge of the existing out to the outside band.

It's how much?

8 feet wide. It's gonna be eight On feet

each side, so I would be in favor of not doing that, but keeping it the original, and if we went with the concrete because we're not expanding any kind of impermeable, though I still would rather have the permeable. I think it's more environmentally.

I guess I didn't ask this question, but how does council feel about the arc? Do you wanna just cut that out?

Pastor Weinstein, sorry.

I like the Arc. Another thing that I've noticed using the gazebo now if you are, have anyone with you at all or have a stroller, getting around the gazebo is extremely tight without walking into the grass. So and I like that the extension gives you those two benches especially for people who might struggle to stand for an entire performance, least gives you a spot where those people could sit and watch a performance. So I like, it gives you just more spaces for people to be and sit and enjoy the gazebo. I think as long as we have a plan for where the big thing with the pervious services is it gives you a plan for where the water would go, would go down, but as long as we have a plan for where the water would go, it doesn't seem like the benefit of a pervious services that much.

So I like the existing footprint, I think I'm fine with the standard concrete, it sounds like the benefit as long as we know where the water is gonna go and it's not gonna be a huge issue then environmentally I don't see a huge benefit with that.

Thank you, Councilor Weinstein. Additional comment in round two of discussion? Councilor Durema?

I think it's a good point about the footprint for strollers and I think you said there's eight feet on either side, mean kind of compromising like maybe four feet on either side would still be substantial I think for kids, strollers, bikes, wheelchairs. So compromise a little bit on the size. I think the ARC adds some historical aspect. I think it's aesthetically pleasing so I do like that too, but maybe compromising on the size a little bit. Patricia, I had no idea that that was environmentally friendly.

So that didn't cross my mind. Good point. So I don't know what you guys' thoughts on just decreasing a little bit in size, four each side.

Thank you Councilor Drama. Additional comments second round? Councilor White?

If we did bring in like two feet three feet spitball like any idea what that would bring down the cost? Not gonna hold you to it.

Mean if are we talking a standard concrete?

Yes. Yeah.

20,000, somewhere in there.

So that would get it down to the under 100,000? Yeah. So expand it a bit, but not the eight feet, but maybe down to four. So kind of meet in the middle.

I would recommend just going to four. Really? I would just instead of cutting it in half, cut it in half. Yeah. And make it Sorry.

A clarifying question about that. I mean if you cut it in half, there room for the benches? Won't the benches go away then?

Well the benches can be turned the other way or angled or whatever you want. Mean they're able to be movable.

They'll still

So why did you have any other comments?

Sorry, my only other point was gonna be the arc. I do like it too, I think it looks nice. If we brought it in four, does that complicate that arc or does it just bring it in a little more too?

It'll probably size it down a little bit, Okay. Not

I like the idea of bringing in a touch. Think it meets in the middle with the folks that think it's a little too much. We meet in the middle, we bring the cost down. I think that's a good plan.

Thank you, Councillor White. We're in second round of discussion. We've had Councillor Goetz, Councillor Weinstein, Councillor Dremo and Councillor White already speak. Any additional council members? Councillor Brezevic?

Hopefully this is my last comment. I don't have strong feelings. Eight feet or four feet either way is fine. I would say go with the regular concrete as we discussed doesn't really help the draining to go to pervious. Otherwise no strong feelings, I'd like to keep obviously talking about

it but

I'm good with it. I'm not interested in talking the details any further.

Thank you, Councilor Brezovich. Additional comments in the second round from any council member who has not spoken yet. Councilor Sutton, Councilor President Byrd, if you have additional comments. Council President Byrd?

So does somebody down, does somebody wanna pull all these recommendations together into Can I

ask a question?

Motion. To

that point, was gonna ask that question and maybe refer, confer to the solicitor. We're talking about Mr. Sheridan wanting to get counsel's feedback on the banding, whether it's pervious surface, the size and the type of concrete. How procedurally should we handle this? We have a motion on the floor to pass 26 dash through with the updated language of 03/03/2026 does not cover these four topics that we've discussed. Can we have councilor Brezovic amend his motion and make a statement or With four different topics, I'm just struggling a little bit with how procedurally we would handle that with counsel to give direction to the city manager and this is a third reading and actionable.

As a legal matter, there is no specific direction that the city manager needs. Of course, if counsel wants to make a motion and give him direction, that's also appropriate, but it's not required. So if you if you want to make a motion or we could simply articulate the four concepts and state that however Mr. Sheridan would like to proceed if he wants specific direction because we've got a lot of competing views that would make sense. But if everyone feels that there is this motion is not required. Okay.

So we could go down all four of these options, have counsel give their, specific, concise details without a formal motion to that.

The answer is however council would like

to handle it will be legally appropriate. Mister Sheridan?

Would it

be possible just to table it until the first meeting in April? Let me get the revised plan of everything we just talked about tonight, and that should be it. It should be every and then you can just attach and approve that approve that matter. Yes. I wrote everything down, so I did wanna

There's a

lot of discussion. Mister Pitchford, did you have additional

I was only going to make the suggestion that perhaps mister Sheridan state specifically what he believes counsel has said, then everybody can react to what you think you've been asked.

I'm good with that too. I just didn't know if you needed to see an actual exhibit. I'm not under that time constraint anymore.

My point was even before you go and get a new diagram, say, hey, these are the things I understand we're gonna move to four feet, we're gonna shrink the arch and so on. Impervious and not however.

Ready to go.

Before that, Mr. Sheridan, just any additional comments from counsel. Counselor Weinstein, you had already spoken. I just wanna make sure Counselor Sutton, if you had any additional comment. Okay. We will go to round three. Councilor Weinstein.

I really like the benches facing towards the gazebo. So when you have entertainment, you could actually look at the entertainment there which we do a lot of concerts. So if you made it thinner, how much thinner it doesn't look like four feet you could keep a bench there. Like so my my question is like how much thinner could you make it and keep the bench there and keep it facing where towards the gazebo?

So if we move this bench, know, let's just say over to here, this is this is the halfway point right there. Okay. So we can easily move these benches over. This is gonna get just a little bit smaller.

Oh that was alright got it. Okay. Alright. I see what you're saying. Keep them facing the same way. Mhmm. Got it. I did not understand that. Thank you. That was helpful.

Proportion wise.

The benches stay facing that way. Don't have to like got it. Perfect. Alright. That's fine. Great.

Thank you. Additional third round comment before we let mister Sheridan summarize what he's heard. Councilor Durema?

Thanks, mayor. I just wanted to add because I forgot last time since we're decreasing the cost by a lot, I think what councilor Sutton said with adding the trees would be a great idea for shade and to keep the green green. That was it.

Thank you, councilor Dremo. Third round, we've heard from councilor Weinstein and councilor Dremo. Any additional comment from the other five council members? Mister Sheridan, can you, if you would, please give us your summary.

Will do. Thank you, mayor. We are increasing this landscaping as is shown here a little bit more than what is out there now. This is where the lift will go. The band would go around this 18 inches to two feet around the whole perimeter. It will match the color of that. It will be a red brick pattern as is shown here in this type of a course and we'll match it with the clock tower the best we can. We'll get a sample off the clock tower on that. It will be standard broom finish concrete. I would recommend we go with a five foot joints on it that's similar to what is out there currently right now.

We will be putting in yard drains. The drainage, we would have to go this way. We'll rip up all of this around here and we'll add any other drains around the perimeter we need to, to help with any water. And then we can plant on this is the West Side. We can plant three trees as part of this as council has mentioned, bringing the price down we'll be able to get those trees.

I don't have a tree price right now, but just so council knows, trees are typically about a thousand dollars. So depending on what size they are, but you would want something of a nice size there. So that is all I needed to know from Council in order to get this going. And then as I mentioned, the ARC Board will be reviewing the railing where it's cut out here. We'll be putting in two posts and then the steps. And then we also wanted to match this railing on the new lift to match the rest of the railing as close as we could to the actual gazebo. It looks like it's always been there. Hopefully

that's comment some of the on the size then based on the discussion?

You

Coming have that

in four feet.

Coming in four feet. So splitting the difference of the add there. So I will Does council have any questions on that? I guess we'd like to get council's comments one by one if that is something we'd like to move forward with. We don't have to necessarily amend the motion. We could do that if we wanted to. Any council comment?

Councilor Precipice. Then I move to amend my motion pursuant to the comments by the city manager today.

I will clarify those please. Broom finish, five foot joints, the red banding, standard concrete, the drains will be adjacent to the concrete so not pervious. We will look at potentially adding three trees roughly a thousand dollar each depending on size and we would reduce the size to split the difference to be four feet less. Do you agree with that to amend your motion?

Last thing I need to mention is that that'll be a brick pattern around that the color will match the clock tower on the band.

The brick banding, the red banding, yes.

Agree with all that was just discussed.

Councilor Brezovic has so amended his motion. Council President Byrd, you had seconded that originally. We would need you to agree to that amended motion.

I agree to that amended motion.

Thank you. We still can take additional discussion if council likes otherwise we will move to a vote. Is there any additional comment from council? Seeing none mrs Wheeler will you please roll call a vote on the motion to pass legislation 26 dash 32 with the updated language dated 03/03/2026 and the additional details as noted in the amended motion by councilor Brezovich and seconded by councilor Byrd.

Mr. White? Yes. Doctor. Byrd? Yes. Mr. Brezovich? Yes. Mr. Ramo? Yes. Doctor. Goetz? Yes. Mr. Sutton? Doctor Weinstein? Yes.

Thank you mrs Wheeler. Legislation item 26 dash 32 amended with the legislation dated 03/03/2026 and the details as summarized by mr Sheridan and updated in the motion by councilor Brezevik and council president Byrd does pass by a vote of six in favor to one against. Thank you. We will move on to item b on legislation. This is number two six dash three three.

This is an ordinance amending city council rules to define the role duties and excuse me, the role and duties of council liaisons. This is a third reading and actionable tonight. And just for clarification, I did review this with the clerk, I was a bit confused myself. The three attachments, the first one dated January 27 was from a workshop, the one dated February 10 was also from a workshop. Ordinance number two six dash three three listed as current is what was provided during the first reading of this legislation so there does not need to be any substitution.

We can just action this legislation two six dash three three as it stands if council so chooses to enter a motion to pass this council have a would like to enter a motion on two six dash three three

we have to pass two six three three

thank you council president bird do we have a second second thank you councilor Weinstein. Is there any discussion on the passage of legislation two six dash three three? Seeing none missus Wheeler will you please roll call a vote on the passage of legislation two six dash three three

doctor Byrd yes mister Brezovich yes miss Doremo

yes

doctor Getz yes mister Sutton yes doctor Weinstein yes mister White

yes thank you missus Wheeler legislation item two six dash three three passes unanimously by a vote of seven in favor to zero against. We move on to item c on legislation is two six dash five one, an ordinance amending codified ordinances chapter one four four six street banners this is a first reading tonight moving on to item d on legislation is two six dash five two this is a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a purchase agreement with Calix incorporated for customer equipment for velocity broadband subscribers and declaring an emergency noting that this is a first reading that was pulled from consent to the prior week staff is requesting a suspension of the rules and passage on first reading As such, does council wish to enter or consider a motion to suspend the rules on legislation two six dash five two?

I move to suspend the rules.

Thank you, councilor Brezovich. Do we have a second to that rule suspension? Second. Thank you, councilor White. Missus Wheeler will you please roll call a vote on the suspension of the three rating rule for legislation two six dash five two

mister Brezovic yes mister Ramo

yes

doctor gets yes mister Sutton Yes. Doctor. Weinstein? Abstain. Mr. White? Yes. Doctor. Bird?

Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler. The motion to suspend the rules on legislation item 26 dash 52 passes by a vote of six in favor with one abstention. Therefore, with the rule suspended, does council wish to enter a motion to pass legislation item two six dash five two? Move to pass two six five two. Thank you, council president Byrd. Do we have a second? Second thank you councilor brezovic is there any discussion on the motion to pass legislation 26Dash52 seeing no discussion mrs wheeler will you please roll call a vote on the passage of legislation two six dash five two.

Mister Ramo? Yes. Doctor. Goetz? Yes. Mister Sutton? Yes. Doctor. Weinstein?

I'm abstaining due to a conflict of interest.

Mister White? Yes. Doctor. Bird? Yes. Mister Brezovich?

Yes. Thank you missus Wheeler legislation item two six dash five two does pass by a vote of six in favor with one abstention and the emergency language does carry as that required six of seven affirmative votes which we did obtain tonight. Thank you. We will move on to the last item on legislation which is item e number 26 dash 53. This is a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into a professional services contract with RDL architects for the downtown development concept site plan and declaring an emergency this is a first of three readings tonight that will close section 11 on legislation we'll move on to section 12 for adjournment as there's no further public business covered by this regular city council meeting do we have a motion to adjourn move to adjourn thank you councilor brezovic do we have a second

Second.

Thank you, councilor White. All in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, this regular council meeting is so adjourned at 08:59PM on 03/17/2026.

Please note we will be taking a ten minute recess and then continuing on tonight with a city council workshop meeting. Thank you. I think we have everybody back. We will continue to move on here. Thank you.

I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is a duly noticed workshop meeting of Hudson City Council held in accordance with the Sunshine Laws of the State of Ohio, section 21.22, and the City of Hudson Charter article three section 3.02 for Tuesday, 03/17/2026 is 09:06PM. Per ordinance two two zero point zero three one titled workshop meetings in item c. I would now like to turn the meeting over to council president Byrd so as to continue through the remaining workshop agenda items. Council president Byrd, the floor and workshop meeting is yours.

Alright. Thank you very much. Next, correspondence and counsel comments, anything that people haven't said already tonight at the beginning. Next is discussion items 15A26-twenty, Planning Commission recommended amendment to LDC regarding the comprehensive plan. Jesse, thank you for your patience. I apologize for our inefficiency in talking about the gazebo slash bandstand and thank you for waiting.

Absolutely.

Is it Greg or I

don't know, I thought I was just here to answer questions.

Is the Okay, alright, come

on in.

We asked for Planning Commission members to be here. Believe the chair wasn't able to make it tonight, so you have the vice chair. Okay. Again, And Greg's here if we wanna answer any other questions about the land development code, but I'll turn it over to Jesse if she has any comments on what they decided at Planning Commission.

I mean, you have all of our recommendations, we did have a memo that was sent by OHM. They were the consultant during the comprehensive plan back in '23 and '24. So we did ask them to strengthen the verbiage within our purpose statements to be more reflective and the intent of the comprehensive plan. So that's really all this is, is just a verbiage change to reflect the intent of the comprehensive plan because there was some confusion about its position, if that makes sense.

If I can add just a brief note, as noted this does provide clear direction to the reader and the staff for the connection between the comprehensive plan and the land development code. And as noted, this was worked on with our OHM consultants and also was reviewed by the solicitor.

Comments, questions about it?

I'm a little confused on the comprehensive plan. You know, it's down here under B, but why was it blacked out there?

I can touch on this. So the purpose statement A has been revised. The comprehensive plan has been removed from A and given its own standalone item B. So it's just shifting the Comprehensive Plan Connection to have its own standalone item which is letter B.

Thank you.

Other questions or comments?

Yes. I was wondering if either one of you could just kind of clarify for everyone kind of what is the purpose? What does this you know kind of functionally do for us by having this stronger connection between the Land Development Code and the comprehensive plan?

I can give a brief note. I mean this, I apologize, I was looking to see if I had a brief note from our solicitor But this was proposed to give better clarity that comprehensive plan is an enforceable document associated with the Land Development Code.

Yeah. I guess I was just confused. For example, the date of this 12/19/2025, I believe that was a memo. Right? And that wasn't I know we'd seen this before. I guess, are we just restating some of these things? I guess I just don't really get I don't understand, honestly.

So it was sent back this was sent to Planning Commission back in December and we made the revisions after OHM came to present to us and provided that memo and so we're sending it back to you for acceptance. Okay. Thank you.

Maybe for one additional item of reference, per the Land Development Code, the Planning Commission has the responsibility to give City Council recommendations for Land Development Code amendment considerations. However, the Charter, it's up to City Council if you wish to advance and commence with that code amendment. If you wish then you would direct staff to prepare draft legislation and have a first reading and refer it back to the Planning Commission for a public hearing.

I guess for clarity's sake, our goal was to be clear and not have any misunderstandings about the purpose of the comprehensive plan. And it was felt that the purpose and intent statement was not very clear. Therefore we pulled out to Doctor. Goetz's point item B, the intent to include the land development code with the comprehensive plan as its separate item. So that's what we're all we're trying to do is clarify the verbiage.

All good. On the note then of the comprehensive plan, Planning Commission, Land Development Code, the way I read this, it is kind of Planning Commission's Part of Planning Commission's purpose is to be the body that interprets the comprehensive plan and its meanings and take its meanings and put it to legislation. One, I suppose, that an accurate description and two, if so, do we feel that that is clearly stated?

So planning commission's role is more about the Land Development Code and applying the Land Development Code. The comprehensive plan is the guide in which we should be applying the Land Development Code and that's where I think the confusion lies which is why we suggested these changes.

Yes and I understand what you're saying and I guess to apply the comprehensive plan to the land development code, it is therefore your responsibility to interpret the meaning of the comprehensive plan.

So I think if we took some time to look at the comprehensive plan, you'll see that the maps that are there and the information that's provided is fairly clear so there's not a whole lot of interpretation there. I was on the comprehensive plan, I know that I'm probably more familiar with it than most. But even describes on I think it's page two of their memo, the future land use map is to be the tool, right, to provide context to the text above. So when you're looking at the map, it tells you very clearly what the intent is for those future land uses and then the text adds more information to it. So I think maybe understanding how the comprehensive plan is supposed to be read might be part of the confusion I think is kind of the question you're asking.

But overall, I feel like the comprehensive plan is fairly clear.

So it

doesn't sound like you feel that way but

It's not that I don't feel that way, it's just that when you have a document of that size, anyone you know, you can interpret text many ways no matter how clear you feel it is. So I guess I was just trying to clarify, to me the purpose of and we're getting you know maybe too far along this but that that was just my understanding is Planning Commission wants to take the comprehensive plan, interpret it and translate that into the Land Development Code.

We want to apply the Land Development Code using the comprehensive plan. Does that make sense? Yes. Going the opposite direction I think is what you're suggesting and it should be the other way around. So if we're using the comprehensive plan as the voters of Hudson's, their suggestion and their priorities and taking the land development code and applying it based on those priorities that have been stated by the community of Hudson. Thank you.

It's gonna be around two for me. Okay, sorry. Just wanna clarify before I speak. So one thing I'm curious of how do you think about is the comprehensive plan was clearly, know, this sample, a large sample of residents. And, residents don't always agree and residents can say this thing, but it conflicts with this other thing that residents say.

And I do think that we see some of that in the comprehensive plan, right? We see, residents saying that they want a diversity of housing for all life stages. But then we also see, we want increasing housing options, but we also wanna maintain density, right? So some of it, there are statements in the congressman plan that I find to be kind of at especially with the planning commission that is this quasi judicial board who's I know the board itself calling balls and strikes, right? So to put more emphasis on the comprehensive plan which does seem to be at odds in some places, I guess I worry about what that means, does that open us up for more suits?

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking because we can't change the comprehensive plan for

No, not many yet. Years

You're asking that. So

I think the conflicts that you're thinking of are actually outlined very specifically in the community responses. So yes, we got an assortment of responses but the majority is what was discussed, right, and what was implemented by the comprehensive plan. But that's not up for Planning Commission to decide other than to implement what was there and written in the actual comprehensive plan.

Do you see

what I I'm do but I'm like

so in the specific answer, can you tell me if I misinterpreting or not getting right? Like the comprehensive plan says we want a diversity of housing options, we want housing for all life stages and we also want to maintain density, right? So and maintain the charm and an emphasis on single family homes, but how do you get housing for all life stages and how do you have increased the diversity of housing while also maintaining density? I don't find

You can't but I think taking two separate questions and trying to apply the same answer to both. If we, I don't know if it's possible to pull up the comprehensive plan and the questions that were given in the statistically valid survey. It would be at the last third where some of the questions were asked, again I'm paraphrasing. If you were to move in the five years, what type of housing would you be looking for? Other questions were things like how do you feel about the current rate of development for housing in the city of Hudson?

So the answers are different because we ask different questions. At the end of the day, when the OHM, our advisors put everything together, we discussed ad nauseam, the 19 of us, what does that actually mean? And so that was interpreted by the 19 people on the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee. Mr. Sutton could probably share on that too but at the end of the day, it was the steering committee that took the advisement from OHM, the results from the surveys and discussed at length what does it actually mean.

But some of the questions about the types of housing, townhomes and condos were low on the list. Single family homes were the top couple responses for desired. There were single family ranch, age in place type things but the first two responses were single family homes for the majority of what people wanted. So I think again, what question are you asking or are you asking or were you looking for the answer for it, they're very different depending on what what was being asked at the time.

So that kind of so if you're applying it to the land development code and decide you're gonna use it based on this question to answer this, know, application but you're gonna refer more to this question to answer a different application, it could be I worry it could be seen as inconsistent which question you're kind of applying applying a land development code I'll say.

Sure, I think it depends on again what question are you asking. If we're talking about our future land use maps, it's very clear on what was what should be considered where, right? So if we're talking about new development which would be the role of Planning Commission would be new development, we have to refer to the land use maps first and foremost. And then the text within that particular segment for that land use map would dive into it a little bit further.

I guess I will. To that last point, Mrs. Obert, the land use map that is in the comprehensive plan.

Which one? There are multiple?

For, I guess, in regards to the D11 discussion, I was looking at that specifically for what does the comprehensive plan say for the land use map in what is currently District 8 and looking at what was proposed for the boundaries of potential District 11 and if I'm remembering correctly, does the comprehensive plan it just had two colors? Is that the land use map that would be applicable to this last discussion? And I believe that was commercial and light industrial.

Correct. So at the time of the comprehensive plan, there was some question as to the longevity of Joanne Fabrics. We did talk about it for multiple, meetings and, ultimately the steering committee decided that the front parcels, highlighted in red there, would be an extension of what we see from that southern quarter, let's say from Stony Hill I think was our cutoff going south, that the parcels in front of Joann Fabrics could reflect in nature what we already see street facing in that area. Could be retail, could be small restaurant, but it would be a limited number that those would be parceled off. The rest of the area indicated in light purple would remain income generating light industrial commercial spaces.

It was never discussed or I should say never accepted to be any residential in that area. Outside of what exists already in Darrowville where you already have some mixed development of residential, commercial, retail in that southern portion all the way down to Norton Road.

Okay, thank you. I think that's helpful. That was what I was looking at as I was filtering through some information that was coming in from residents and other things.

Sure, we had lots of heated debate on where residential could go primarily because the number one concern off of the survey was traffic. So every development map that we looked at, every discussion that we looked at residential was highly debated on is this the place for it and some people having stronger opinions than others but it was certainly discussed but was never accepted in that particular area to ever be residential.

Thank you.

May I ask Jesse your personal opinion? So the big factor is the residential component of D 11, Joann's, would you say?

Are you asking as Planning Commission?

In

terms of the changes to District 11, the Planning Commission has had multiple questions about density and acceptable density in this area based on this particular map and if residential is going to be a part of it, what does that mean because the map does not show that it's permissible.

Why did it call it a mixed use development then?

Light industrial, commercial, and potential retail restaurant in the red would be considered mixed use.

But mixed use can also mean residential and you could go down that road you could Doctor. Say that and

Goetz, thank you for bringing that up because part of the things that we've been running into on Planning Commission is the definitions of the Land Development Code are not clear which was part of why we requested a ninety day moratorium to try to clean up some of these definitions to be more accurate within the Land Development Code. Since we did not have that time, we were kind of trapped in a rock in a hard place. Your definition, my definition, the definition of the old land development code or definition of the new comprehensive plan, it's very, I agree, it's very confusing. Thank you.

Yes.

Did the comprehensive plan do a survey of businesses like they did a survey of residents?

I believe Ms. Banky actually did a separate survey to businesses and business owners around town. I don't know, it wasn't a statistically valid survey if that makes sense but she did give a presentation to us about business from businesses to the comprehensive plan steering committee.

Are the business survey responses in the comprehensive plan the way the resident survey ones are?

No because they were not statistically valid. We also did, for lack of a better we had Zoom meetings with Western Reserve Academy students in academia. We actually went to the high school and we interviewed and discussed comprehensive plan with students at Hudson High School as well. So all of that was considered. We had, I think we had four or maybe five separate small group Zoom meetings with business owners in in addition to miss Banky's work that she was doing on the outside.

Was it ever did it ever come up to do a statistically valid survey of the businesses? I

don't know that that was advisable from OHM. It was more of a question from city staff and us, what is the business interpretation or feelings?

Because I also worry that a lot of land development code is about what business you can do. What business you can, what business you can't, why we have a purpose there, why even in the District 11 kind of why would you want some like with the red, why would you want some retail similar there because it could help the office in the back. Yes I'll just say yeah so I do have some concerns about applying it a development code that's for residents and businesses but didn't have representation in terms of like a statistically valid survey from businesses.

Well a lot of businesses aren't residents, they're not voters here so I'm not sure that their opinions could necessarily hold the same weight as a Hudson voter that's a taxpayer that lives here. Not that their opinions are not valid or important but it can't be weighted the same as people who are our neighbors. Yep,

that's fair. I'm kinda think on that from the economic development standpoint of like the tax base, right? So when we're thinking about economic development and fiscal responsibility and the tax base, most of our income comes from income generating purposes. So how do we also think about that in terms of our comprehensive plan and our land development code and guiding our city when our city is mostly funded by income tax.

Oh listen, I think that's the number one reason why we did not want residential in this area. The City of Hudson website now actually has a graphic that shows where the property where taxes come in from the city showing that they come from income taxes solely at my request to several of the previous council members because that question kept coming up. There were members of our steering committee that also did not understand it at the time. So yeah, that's exactly why residential was never considered in the purple area.

And did you survey businesses and ask them if they in their view like would it help them you know attract them and bring offices and industry to that space if their workers could live nearby?

That would not have been something that our steering committee did, no. That would have been Mrs. Benke. We don't have access as the commission member, committee members to reach out to business in that in that capacity.

So then what the next step is that this comes to us as legislation or we just

That's the next step before council. Council may wish to request this commence as legislation and I think the one other item that we noted is we do anticipate considerations of some additional code amendments in the coming months. We know that AHBR is looking at some potential changes to the design standards that they would like to consider. And there may be a couple of administrative items. So this can certainly chart now and start through those readings or it could be grouped with some more administrative based items and come to you in a package in probably sixty to ninety days.

Sorry, I have another one. Could we at some point could we hear from the solicitor just his feedback on this? What does this open us up to more lawsuits? I mean, land development code seems very clear. You could like you have maps, you can put this here, you can't put this here. I think the comprehensive plan because we're residents and we're humans is less clear. I think maybe you would even agree that it's not as clear as land development codes, a little more black and white. So I just worry that this opens us up just to lawsuits.

I would actually objectively say that the land development code is very unclear. Specifically planned developments is one paragraph. And we debated that just this last week. How is such a significant portion of development like a planned development I. E.

What they're what is intended here or what's being discussed here, only one paragraph of limitations and rules that seems pretty shortsighted. So I think again objectively the Land Development Code has a lot of things that are misrepresented or conflicting within itself, not unlike the definitions therein which over the last several years Planning Commission prior to me being a part of it had been working on pulling out certain items to make the corrections to be a little more clear.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, appreciate you being here.

Next is 15B26-twenty 1 Hudson Public Power Overview.

Thank you Doctor. Byrd. While Kevin gets situated, this is just another update like you saw Perry's. I wanted to kinda go over the key departments that work for the city and give the the council a background. And also, it just so happens with the windstorm last week, we had a lot of power outages. So we added that also to Kevin's report tonight. So with that, I will turn it over to Kevin.

Good evening, thank you for having me. Wanna be respectful of your guys' time, but I've got this broken into some various components. First will be kind of a structure of HPP. I want to talk about the metrics as to how we benchmark our operations and processes. I was going to talk a little bit about our joint action agency AMP.

I had actually attached that to the agenda so you guys could see that. Then I was gonna talk a little bit about our interactions with FirstEnergy, previous communications with them and meetings we've had and the outcomes of those. So to get started, Hudson Public Power, give you a little idea of our infrastructure, we got 190 miles of infrastructure, about 88 miles of that is overhead lines, about 102 miles of that is underground. We have five substations with two delivery points to the national grid. One of them is a 138,000 volt connection, the other one is a 69,000 volt connection.

We have 7,000 currently we have 7,111 meters slash customers in our system. The department is staffed with 24 people, three of those are supervisors, we have 11 linemen, we have two apprentice linemen and then we've got six that fill like a utility inventory GIS various roles in the department and then we've got two fiber personnel that's actually reported at location as well.

Kevin, real quick, since meter replacements are so expensive, what's the life of our meter replacement in the city?

So the life of a meter replacement is right around fifteen, eighteen years somewhere, we're nearing the end of that cycle. We have on the budget for next year to do AMI meter replacement. This year we're going to do a study. We're to look at some other AMP communities, other products that are out there and try to zero in on the best product for us and that would incorporate the water meters as well. The AMI would be more of an automated system.

It's going to give us a lot more for the residents. They can look at their usages, we can get them a lot more data, we can do a system. There's a lot of benefits that we would get from that. Utility billing currently does a process, we call it move in move out. If somebody either moves into a residence or moves out, we've got to out there and do those readings so they're getting billed for the utilities that they've used and not at the end of the month.

So there's a lot of that stuff that we can do remotely through AMI. Another turn offs for non payment, that is something that can be done remotely from the office versus actually having somebody go out there and pull the meter out back out whenever they do pay and turn it back on. So those are things that we can actually streamline efficient. So that will be coming to you guys. We're going to do our work on it this year.

We'll bring that to you next year for approval. The last things I wanted to talk about on the infrastructure side is our tree trimming program. We divide our system into four quadrants that basically have Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, Southwest quadrants of the city. We do one quadrant a year. Currently we're using Davie resources, Davie Tree for our tree trimming.

Our budget is around 500,000 a year. By doing the tree trimming program that we do that helps us weather the storms that we've seen just as of just recently, that gets us through those without all the major damage. Have some damage because we can't take all the trees down, but that helps us fare very well. On some of the metrics, we're a member of the APPA, which is our association. We use a product that APA puts out called eReliabilityTracker that is used by all the APPA members.

We enter our metrics into the eTracking software that's done at the start of the new year for the previous year. So we're entering all of our data from the previous year and then that comes out with a report that we'll see probably towards the April. Based on the different types of utilities are part of the public power world, they break you into classes and regions. So our region would be region number two, which consists of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and then the class is based on your number of meters. So we're a class three, which puts us between I'll call it 3,500 meters and 7,500 meters.

There's 120 utilities in that class nationwide. Based on our information on the class and region, there's different metrics they use. They refer to one as SADI, which is going to be your average duration of interruption. So this is how long a customer typically would be without power. And then if you look at your class or you look at your region, can get kind of national or localized metrics to see how you're comparing to those.

So if we're looking at the SADI for instance, our region would be a ninety eight minute outage and versus the class would be a ninety four minute outage. Hudson Public Power is typically is a forty three minute outage. So we're in that aspect. The SAFI is that's going to be a system interruption frequency. That's how many times somebody would expect over the course of a year to have an outage.

Once again, region is 0.72, class is 0.78, we're at 0.48. So if they consider an outage anything greater than five minutes, so you're gonna have equipment in the substations that there's operations they call them. So if something, if a line hits a, or if a tree hits a line or a burr or something like that, you're in an instantaneous cycle which it'll drop power and it brings it right back. There's basically a sequence on these relays that give you a number operations. Ours are set to three.

First one's almost instantaneous, it's like a quarter of a second, a single cycle. The second one is a couple seconds and the third one's a little bit longer and what this does, this allows any type of an obstacle that's into the wires to fall clear and then it resets. So because of those types of operations, that's why they set the standard for what is considered an outage as a certain time threshold. Trying to get through some of this here. I talked to you a little bit about power as well.

Let me step back into the APPA thing real quick. Think this is kind of a neat metric. We can look at the causes of our outages throughout the course of the year and the top three would be animal squirrels are probably our biggest that we had 22 outages last year, swirls, trees caused 20 and underground equipment failure caused 13 of them. Now getting back into power, we're a member of a joint action agency, which is American Missile Power that started in 1971. We're an early adopter of that.

Power is delivered and there's basically three different charges for power. You have your energy cost and that's a variable cost. That is the generator's cost to sell you power that they generate. And then you're going to have the transmission cost. The transmission cost covers the basically it's the lines that come from our municipality to the generator. So there's a cost that's calculated into that and then there's what they call the installed capacity cost. That is the cost to allow these generators to be ready to produce power when needed. So there's a cost that they encourage just to be available. Energy portfolio, I had forwarded that to you guys, you guys could refer refer to that in advance. I don't know if you guys had any questions on it.

One thing that I did not have in there because it's not a resource in '26, it will be 01/01/2027 is Tallgrass. Is a green energy, it's basically a heat recovery process from natural gas compression and that heat generates steam which generates the electric. So that will be coming on in and that's about 6% of our power portfolio and that's another green energy resource. All right, I got through all that. So now I'm going to talk a little bit about our interactions with FirstEnergy.

I got kind of a chronological timeline here of talking with them, trying to come up with some resolutions to some of the areas in town that's experienced a lot of power outages. In September '23, we'd reached out to FirstEnergy regarding providing mutual aid for some of our areas in town that we're seeing longer than normal outages where we had our system up and running. Our crews are available to help if FirstEnergy would allow us to. We can't just go work on their lines because there's safety constraints and we need to have somebody from their facility or a supervisor from FirstEnergy basically with us and tell us what we can and can't do. We reached out to them.

There was really not an interest on their part to allow us to perform mutual aid for them and it was relayed to us that if we were to become a contractor of FirstEnergy, would be just that. We'd be a contractor, we couldn't give preference to the citizens of Hudson. We'd be put into their standard rotation, we'd be shipped to anywhere in Summit County or Cuyahoga County to take care of the, I'll call it the bigger outages first because that's how they restore their outages. Their meters, they make money off the meters turning, so they're gonna try to restore the larger number of meters before they get down to the smaller outages. Back in, like I said, back in September 23, we had those discussions with them.

We didn't have a favorable outcome with those discussions. To February 24, history of outages and concerns from residents, we reached out to them again about making some improvements to their system. We actually inquired about would there be a possibility of us purchasing some of these systems if HPP were to purchase some of these areas. FirstEnergy had zero interest in selling us any of these assets. So that kind of put that aside and then we started talking to him about what can we do for improvements to improve the reliability of these areas.

That led to some more discussion in March '24, reached out based on some inquiry from at the time current counsel. We reached out to FirstEnergy to try to set up a meeting with them to get some of our council members and some of the people at FirstEnergy sit down and look at the areas. They ran some reports, gave us the total number of outages and then we tried to identify areas that were the more greater impacted areas on the FirstEnergy footprint in Hudson. Worked on that in March, we had some back and forth, we finally got a meeting to sit down with them in June '24. We had a few council members there, we had a few people from FirstEnergy.

We got them to understand that we felt there was more than we'd typically see in an area. Took some notes, they came back to us a few months later with some proposed plans to do some improvements. We had another meeting which was in the summer. Let me see, that would have been September, actually late summer. September we had a follow-up meeting.

They presented their potential improvements with us that entailed HPP doing some preventative, actually some work to change some of the poles. So we have a few areas we co locate with FirstEnergy. There are poles, but FirstEnergy is on those poles as well. Some of the improvements they talked about, it was going to require some changing route, basically changing the routing of their wiring. They're try to get some of their wiring off the bike path and run it along the road.

We changed a number of those poles. We were being told that that work would be '24 came and went, work wasn't done. Reached back out to them in the '25 to find out the status of that. We were going through some struggles internally. They had some restructuring and stuff.

Government liaison actually was replaced. They reorganized Summit County and put Summit County under one person. We made contact with that person, we got the discussions going again and that resulted in a meeting in '25. At that point, we were told November '25, those improvements would be done and we're in '26 and the improvements are still not done. So we've still reached out to the liaison, they're trying to get another meeting together to see what we can do to prompt these along and actually get something done.

The events that unfolded this past weekend actually is Friday the thirteenth. Guys are aware of the wind storms that we had. HPP fared very well in that we had less than I would say a 100 of total outages. We had everything restored by 07:30, 08:00 Friday night. We had one area where this is along Lincoln where first energy lines fell down that caught a field on fire, which actually burned some of our conduits and wiring. We got that stuff repaired to burn up a pole. Contact with First Energy throughout the weekend. We had crews out. We refer to

it the

linemen going out and they're looking for the problems on the system. They walk the entire system, they make note of it, locations, take pictures of everything else. So we had staff in doing that. We met up with First Energy representatives, relayed all of our information, they knew of most of it, but there was still stuff that we pointed out to them they weren't aware of because time at the end of the windstorm at the time that they were looking at, some things had changed. So reaching out to our government liaison, we were able to get them to, I don't know if they moved up because we were pastoring them, but long story short, they were talking about a nine to 11:00 restoration time Sunday evening.

The power was restored by four p. M. On Sunday. So that kind of gives you an overview because I'd be happy to answer them.

Prairie State has been a thorn in our side for a long time and you keep hearing different things about the state of Illinois talking about shutting it down. Where does that stand at the moment?

Some changes in EPA law, there's been some changes in some of the mandates to Prairie State. As of right now, they're thinking that debt is gonna be paid off from Prairie State in the 44 to 45 range, which would end the term of the contract as well. Right now, they're pretty optimistic that we'll be able to continue using Prairie State. There's some mandates, I think it's in '35, that you've got to have some reduced carbon emissions and they feel that there's technology out there that they can install that would make us meet those requirements.

It sounds like you're trying to get more green energy that gets us up to about 30 some percent?

Yeah, so currently if you look at the portfolio, the numbers that are on that chart are if all the resources are operating at optimum operations. Are

there other ones you can look at soon so that we can increase more green energy and decrease

Yes, there's actually something on the agenda tonight that I'll talk about and I'll get to that when we come up with that specific item, but I've had some discussions with our consultant, our power consultant and he had some reservations about going with the current offering versus if we want to do something ourselves, But going back to your comment about the portfolio and stuff, we've got a bunch of if you look at just the nameplate ratings on everything on our 25% on renewable energy. But like I said, that's if everything is operating at 100% efficiency. With the hydros, they run basically what they call the run of the river. It's optimum water levels and that water level is not optimum all the time, so they don't give them a full 100% rating. So depending on the time of year, you're going to get nameplate out of it, other times you're not and the difference is being made up on the market.

Solar is the same way. If you have solar and you're buying it off of a location not behind your meter, you don't get solar capacity credit for it. They only give you a 40% capacity credit because of the availability and the performance of solar arrays. They don't always perform on a 20 fourseven or even on a three sixty five margin to hit those marks. It's like an intermediate pop up on cycle, we're a member of AFAC, which is the AMP Fremont project, 75% capacity credit towards that.

So if it's rated at 100 megawatt, they're only giving you 75% of go towards installed capacity and the installed capacity is what we pay for the generators to be available and that's based on peak. So I can get into that a little bit more on one of the later resolutions here. Thank you. Okay.

So going back to the first energy stuff and obviously the long timeline, you mentioned the squirrels and trees that we know of hitting HPP. Do we know what's causing these first energy issues? Is it trees like we're hearing about the hike and bike trail? Is it something else?

A lot

of their issues they had this past weekend were trees and I'm not as familiar with what happened in the Northwest part of town because I know there was an outage up there. But the stuff on the Southwest part of town was they had five spans of wire down along the bike path. So the bike path creates some logistics for them tree trimming and progressive tree trimming plan from them could have prevented some of that stuff.

So we're going to walk it, I think, in a couple of weeks, kind of take a look at it. Do we have to rely on FirstEnergy to handle that? Are we able to step up and do something for the residents to mitigate some

of that? That could be some discussions we have. We have to put a cost to it and see how we'd want to fund that.

We may want to explore that just We the frequency probably want get

permission for FirstEnergy to do work in there right away.

And then, I have to keep talking here, but the timeline of this, I mean, going back to September '23 up to now, and they they keep telling you it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. Can we start a pressure campaign and getting in, you know, certain resources to help us to kind of like this weekend where, you know, we we are calling them, you know, Senator Weinstein called and emailed, can we just lay it on thick constantly, where is this, where is this?

We can try. We've tried a similar approach in the past and it didn't get us a whole lot, But we can absolutely try again.

We've had counsel in those meetings in the past, but I think it's time to ramp it up to a state level.

Yeah, especially if they're promising work to get done. Mean you mentioned it would get done November 24, then they promised in '25 it would be done in the '25. They haven't even come out at all? They've done nothing?

They've gotten some right of way. They're talking about doing some directional boring along Barlow there. They haven't done a whole lot.

They just talked about they just never done anything.

Yeah and I don't know if it's, I don't know where the bottleneck is. I don't know if it's in their engineering, don't know if it's in the field office, I don't know where that is, I haven't been able to get those answers.

The people that were in these, like the mutual aid discussion, like are those people still there? Like can we discuss that again and just like see? I

brought that up this past weekend and

I was

told the same Okay. Yes.

Alright. I'll pass on to someone else for now but I'm happy to walk that area with you and then I'm ready to shoot anything at it to see what we can do for the residents. Got many calls for the weekend and I've heard this has been a problem for a very long time. So if we can they're all asking to switch to HPP and I talked to Tom a little bit over the weekend. I know it's kind of a moonshot, not gonna happen. It's too costly. They don't wanna sell to us. So whatever we can do, I'm open. We're open. Let's figure it.

The only other thing I wanna add is just in the discussions with FirstEnergy, we were telling them to clear their trails and the trees, but they were also gonna be doing a redundant line down Terex Road?

Yes. Some of the improvements they were talking about was gonna get some of their infrastructure off of the bike path. Now that wouldn't have affected this past weekend because that section of the bike path was outside of their scope of work. But this would still have an impact on reliability for a good portion of the area.

And and they do have the most power outages I think of anyone in First Energy Hudson.

They do.

Yeah. Consistently. At the top of

That area. Southwest Corner there.

They're aware of that and then they're still not.

The only thing I never saw before is it went up to Nicholson. I've never seen I've never seen it go Northeast like that. So But just so council knows that is like one of the areas for FirstEnergy we have the most outages. So I just wanted to piggyback on what Kevin said.

The tree trimming, if we handle it, we'd have to get permission to do that.

We have to have some discussions with them.

Okay, so no matter what we have to have discussions with them. Thank you.

Alright, so it looks like our percentage of our electricity is coming from about 43% coal and that's from that Prairie Street Prairie State contract. Net which is much higher than nationally. I think it's at about 16%. I think it's also higher than which is about a third. And I know there's I've seen research that the reason why it's transitioned, mean especially in even Ohio is, with increasing natural gas being usually cheaper and also happens to be cleaner. Is there have we considered getting out of that contract and moving to something that's even potentially cheaper than coal?

Are in a long term contract with them. We would do we're responsible for the debt. So we would have to find somebody to buy our share and take over the debt.

Oh, nobody wants to do that because we made a bad choice I think.

You can say nobody may want to, but you know as power costs increase, it may be attractive to somebody at some point.

Oh they might okay. Well I mean, so related to power costs increasing and are we thinking about I mean there's larger conversations about the impact of data centers and I know this has been a big issue in Dayton where they've had more more data centers and their energy prices have gone up significantly. Are we I'd rather be proactive about this rather than reactive. Are we thinking about energy generation here or even locally to potentially ward off any increases in prices should data centers come near us or in our system or even now as they're coming online?

Yeah, before we agree to even entertain a data center, we'd have to make sure we can secure resources and that would be something we'd have to either come into a contract with that volume of power off of the market because it's volatile. It can fluctuate just depending on the temperature and season.

A So data center even not in Hudson would affect our prices, wouldn't it? But a data center, even if it's not in Hudson, would still affect our prices, if they're using FirstEnergy or

It could potentially affect your price based on the ATSI zone, which is the FirstEnergy. Technically it's not first energy, but it's first energy, they own the national grid around here and whenever you see them working on the transmission lines, all those costs for wheeling that power through there gets broken up among every user of that ATSI zone system. So it would be I don't know if you'd notice the bump in the needle, but you're right, there could be a trickle down of a nominal small amount. I think I will mention is one of the things you're starting to see with data centers is, and I think this is more of a federal push to make these data centers bring their own power with them. So they have some sort of a generation on-site where they're not bleeding off of your grid.

Any other comments or questions? Kevin, thank you very much. Oh, sorry.

I just want to say that I lived in Shaker Heights for fifteen years, and we had outages like every two or three weeks and I live in the Historic District and I've been here twenty years and I can only think of three or four outages in that area and there was only one that was maybe a couple hours. It seems, at least in that area, I've been pleasantly surprised that the power's been 23

or 24 in early June, we had two of them in your area, but it's because a contractor actually dug into our lines, so it wasn't any

I don't know if that's because the lines are underground?

Yeah, they're underground, yep.

Maybe we need to do that when we can in other places, I know it's expensive.

Any other questions? Is your reliability to others, is like way up there? Yeah, actually I've

got that, bear with me just a second here. So they consider that the system, the average system availability index and this is once again going back to that APPA standard. If you look at the region, the average system availability index is 99.983, okay? If you go by class, it's 99.982. Hudson Public Power is 99.9916. So we're better than the standard both regionally and nationally.

I see we have Hudson Public Power and we we prefer it. We like it.

Just gotta do more about those darn squirrels.

We did have a squirrel effect just one time. The squirrel didn't make it.

We actually tried. We've got squirrel guards and everything else on there but you can only do so much.

No. Okay.

Thank you, Kevin. Four squirrels. What a way to go. And thank

you to all the linemen and the guys working and

Guys take pride in their work and I mean, it's think I it shows.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Next is 16, consent agenda for April 7. First one, item A, TMP dash 8,557, resolution authorizing city manager advertise for bids and to enter in a contract for the Jesse Drive stormwater pond modifications project.

Brian's here. He'll he will go over that.

This came out of one of the small neighborhood studies we did following the 08/08/2024 flood. This basically is upsizing a private property storm water management pond that's in the city's easement to increase the capacity and catch some of that additional runoff. We did a design in house, budgets 200,000 for the project, that's what we estimated at. And assuming everything goes to plan, it should be done in the '26.

Questions?

IMB TMP 8,558 resolution authorizing city manager advertise for bids and to enter into a contract for the repair of two pedestrian bridges west of the fire station and replacement of a pedestrian bridge east of Barlow Community Center.

And Brian again can answer any questions council has on that.

So the two replacement bridges are North of Ravenna Street and west of the fire station. They're in good enough shape that we can do repair work to them. The third bridge near Barlow Community Center is past its useful life. It's not repairable. So what we'll do is bring in a prefabricated bridge that's of the same size and put it in the place of the one that was there.

Item c t m p eight five four one resolution authorizing city manager utilize the cooperative purchasing program to purchase and install pickleball lighting equipment and to accept donated funding from the Hudson Community Foundation declaring an emergency.

Any questions you have on that Kevin is able to answer?

Good story. We had an advocate group for pickleball that generated 150,000 put this in. It's a great story.

Do we have an estimated installation date? The reason we're asking

for emergency language on this is so we can get the components ordered and we would hope to have them installed and operational this season, this summer.

This summer.

Yep. Okay.

Thank you.

Hudson Community Foundation will be giving them a check before we go out to bid. So we really don't need an agreement because we'll have the money in hand.

Okay. TMP 8,544, item D, resolution to approve the form and authorize the execution of Bright Mountain Solar Schedule with American Municipal Power Inc. And taking actions in connection therewith and declaring an emergency. Kevin.

Yeah. So this is, the one resolution I was referring to a few minutes ago. This is a solar facility in, Kentucky. As I've mentioned, when you buy solar through a installation outside of your region, this is not in the ATSI zone, we're still gonna pay a portion of installed capacity for this power. And as I've mentioned earlier, we don't get full credit if this is a 100 megawatt facility, you only get 40 megawatt of credit because of the type of power and the performance that you'll see out of this array.

In talking with our energy consultant, he said if we ever wanted to do a solar array behind the meter, we get all the benefits of it. We're saving on the transmission cost, we're gonna gain all the installed capacity credit off of that. So essentially, the power that we generate behind the meter never comes through our meter coming into the city, so there's a lot more savings there. So he had recommended if we ever have an appetite to do a solar array and this is only a 2.5 megawatt facility, which should be about, I'd say about 12.5, 13 acres of property, he would recommend we not go with this because of the length of the term and this is essentially a twenty five year term. So, his recommendation was if we have that appetite to do something internally, not to go with this.

So that's really, I'd lean on counsel to, if it's something we'd like to pursue to do ourselves, could do something like this if we had the land, we could do a purchase power agreement. So we could bring in a contractor or developer site, we would go into an agreement with them to purchase all the power off of it. So therefore, we're not paying anything that they're not producing and given to us. We'd lock in at a rate for by having it behind our meter versus bringing it from you know state state away.

I love that. Oh, sorry. I love that idea. I mean I know at one point we looked at or the city looked at YDC and at least you know for the part I don't know if it's along the highway where it was in the YDC but do we have I would love to hear your recommendation but also where would that where would this go?

YDC was where we were looking at previously. I know we're looking at doing some development of YDC but there's still some areas outside of that development that I could scrape up the 12 or 13 to offset what this

would generate. I know some businesses have their requirements for alternative energy, it actually can attract some businesses too.

There's other creative solutions where we may partner with local businesses and come up with some sort of a credit to put solar on their roof and then that offsets what we would have bought here as well. So there's a lot of things we could potentially do, but his caution was the twenty five year contract, we don't know what the technology is doing over the next twenty years and then you're also not getting the full capacity credit for it.

Yeah, I love the idea of something behind the meter. I know we discussed a few weeks ago the batteries that we're planning to put in just north of Hudson Springs. Would doing that in conjunction at the same location be a benefit? I know solar, it's nice to store it from during the day and have it available in conjunction with the batteries, would that be?

So the purpose of the batteries would be to charge them on off hours night. And then the real benefit of the batteries is to discharge them during our peak.

So we get more benefit from purchasing the off hours power than we would storing the solar?

Because that's where that really affects you is going back to the installed capacity as we get charged a certain amount per megawatt hour based on our peak. So if we can drop that peak number down during the same time, so they judge our peak on what we're peaking at whenever ATSI, the ATSI zone sees their highest peak. Ours was in June of the last two years has been in June. So, they had the whole purpose of the batteries and solar, you could drive that number down, which saves residents money all year long.

So drop the idea of using the solar in conjunction with the batteries at all, but could the site be used for both if you had the solar above the batteries?

That's something we'd have to look at. Yeah.