City Council - Regular Meeting

and I'd like to just have our invocation done by Albert Ruffet.

Good evening, everybody. If you'll please stand for a word of prayer.

Thank you, Jesus.

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come before you this evening. We thank you, Father, for your love, mercy, and grace. We thank you, God, for a city and for city leaders, Lord, that invite such an event like this and an invocation in their meetings. and father i just know that your blessing is upon our city and upon everything they set their hands to you will cause them to prosper we thank you that you do give them the wisdom of solomon and the strength of samuel and that father you give them the courage of david that in all matters father they have the best wisdom solid wisdom solid decisions and lord we just thank you that you keep our city safe and lord we do even in this moment lord we're mindful of others that have been affected by these floods we pray for their provision uh we just pray god that things will come together smoothly and quickly for all of them that there will be a quick resolve and a smooth resolve in jesus name we pray and amen next we have the pledge of allegiance by um by our mayor mr reynolds

Thank you. You may be seated. Okay. Can I have a roll call, please?

Vice President Crawford.

Here.

Councilwoman Cerise. Councilman Miscavige. Here. Councilwoman Huffman. Here. Councilman Rubio.

Here.

Mayor Reynolds.

Here.

President Smith.

Okay. Mr. President. Yes. I move to excuse President Smith and Councilman Faith Cerise.

Absolutely. Do I have a second on that? A second. Thank you, Mr. Miscavige. Okay, so I have an approval for the... I need a roll call.

Vice President Crawford?

Aye.

Councilman Miscavige? Aye. Councilwoman Huffman? Aye. Councilman Rubio? Aye. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Motion carries.

Next on the agenda, let's have approval for the minutes of the July 23, 2026, the regular meeting. Are there any corrections or additions?

Mr. President, move to approve the minutes.

Thank you. Mr. Reynolds? I'll second. And roll call, please.

Vice President Crawford. Aye. Councilman Miscavige. Aye. Councilwoman Huffman. Aye. Councilman Rubio. Aye. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Motion carries.

All right. Tonight we have a special presentation. Erin Jeffries of the Miami Valley Community Action Partnership for a presentation, please. And thank you for coming.

Thank you so much for having me. My apologies. I stood too close. Hi, good evening. It is truly a pleasure to be here. My name is Aaron Jeffries. I am with Miami Valley Community Action Partnership. We are the community action agency serving Montgomery, Dark, Green, and Preble counties, and we have one of our office locations right here in Xenia. We wanted to share tonight a little bit about our organization and share some of our accomplishments from 2025. as we've recently released our annual report. You have a copy of that in front of you. So, tonight, we just want to share our impact in Greene County, particularly our work in emergency shelter, transitional housing and housing stability work. I also want to highlight how our presence and investment in Xenia will grow during the coming year with some additional programs that we're taking on. And I'm joined tonight by my colleague Brent Robinson. Brent is our Greene County director, and I will introduce him more fully in just a few minutes. So, as I said, Miami Valley Community Action Partnership serves four core counties. Green is one of those four counties, and some of our programs, such as weatherization, they extend to even additional counties outside that service area, an additional seven counties. We've been around for over sixty years. We're headquartered in Dayton, but as I said, we do have one of our offices here in Xenia on Dayton Avenue. Although we have the resources and the expertise of a regional organization, our services are delivered locally at each of our local offices. People often come to us during an immediate crisis. Maybe they're facing homelessness, a utility disconnection, or an unsafe home. And we help to address that urgent need while helping each person or family build greater long-term stability. Our work across our service area includes utility assistance that can help with direct payments to the utility on your account behalf. Weatherization services where we come in and do improvements to your home to bring your energy down, the energy bill down by about 30% right off the bat. And we offer emergency and transitional housing and also housing and financial counseling. So, what we've seen at is that housing instability is 1 of the most difficult crises a person or family can experience in green county. We are pleased. It's right outside senior city limits, but we are pleased to operate the Donnellan emergency shelter. The Donnellan transitional shelter and the Harding place transitional housing, which is in Xenia. Um, the emergency shelter provides immediate safety for up to forty five days. Transitional shelter gives residents a little bit more time to find that stability that they're looking for with some additional case management support. They can stay up to six months in our transitional housing facilities and with party place, which is a program for single individuals. They can stay up to twelve months. In 2025, the number of people we served was significant. We provided 8,087 nights of shelter through those programs. There were almost 1,500 nights of emergency shelter and 6,600 transitional shelter nights. So if you think about the number of people who have to be joining us for those nights to be able to achieve those numbers, it's pretty astonishing. but shelter is only the beginning our case managers help the residents address barriers that have contributed to their housing crisis and that case management might help with restoring income or helping them to seek the benefits that they're eligible for it might help them find employment in the area address any health or treatment needs that they have obtain identification that they need to access the services they're eligible for or locating permanent housing and our goal at mvcap is is not to simply provide a place to sleep the goal is to create a pathway to lasting housing stability i want to share a story with you that you will find in our annual report We had a client named who led the war in Ukraine after seeing rockets fly past her apartment. She eventually ended here in Xenia and was living in some temporary dormitory housing. But when that arrangement ended, she faced homelessness. A friend brought her to our office in the summer of last year, and she was navigating a housing crisis while also having to deal with different languages and an unfamiliar system. This was all new to her. My colleague Brent and one of his team members, Nick Trimbach, worked with her to help find a solution. And by mid-July, she had moved into our transitional housing facility called Harding Place. from there the team helped to re-establish her social security income obtain a housing voucher through green met and complete the process of securing an apartment and last december she moved into her permanent home so her words on the slide here i just enjoy the fact that bombs aren't flying you can lie down peacefully and wake up peacefully these words remind us what stable housing can mean the ability to lie down peacefully and wake up peacefully So this outcome, it required more than shelter. It required a lot of wraparound support. So with that, I just want to introduce formally Brent Robinson, our Greene County director. He leads our Greene County programs with tremendous ability, tremendous capacity and a deep commitment to helping people move forward. We're really proud of Brent and the entire Greene County team. So, empty cap, as I said, we are a 4 county service area. Our local work is strengthened by the fact that we have this additional support that we're a little bit of a bigger organization. This allows us to have some specialized expertise on the team and resources across the whole agencies that support the work here in Xenia and green county. um just to share some of those statistics in 2025 mvcap processed more than 10 000 heap applications heap is one of the acronyms we use for utility assistance in more than 10 000 pip applications pip is the percentage of income payment plan we can help people to reduce their energy bills to about 10 of their monthly income which can really help to increase housing stability and reduce that energy burden Um, across our service area, we weatherized, um, six hundred and sixty nine homes and we made those homes safer and healthier and more energy efficient to help people be able to stay there longer help to keep them affordable. We also counseled three hundred and ninety two perspective first time home buyers on things like budgeting credit, affordability and sustainable home ownership. So these are agency wide numbers, but the green county and senior residents benefit from having this structure in the capacity outside of of this county. So, together all of our team members across our whole service area are forming a continuum that helps us to respond better to emergencies helps to preserve people's housing and helps to build greater stability. And. Fiscal stewardship is more important than ever. And so we just wanted to take a moment to share a little bit about the accountability that that has. So, in twenty, twenty five, eighty seven percent of our expenses went directly to programs. So. Just under thirteen percent of an administrative cost. Um, and that is with an eighteen point four million dollar budget. Um, that budget included almost seven million dollars in direct assistance to individuals and families. And more than one million dollars invested in weatherization materials. So those are things like, um, insulation, caulk, um, flashing. anything that could help to keep a home more secure and those dollars are invested locally because we're buying from local sources so we are investing in the economy and trying to strengthen that as well when we say direct assistance we're not giving financial benefits directly to an individual we're doing that on behalf so it would be to their landlord in some instances the utility companies doing the work of weatherization those kinds of things And the cap is also subject to independent audits. We've had clean audits for years and we are monitored multiple times a year by the state of Ohio for all of the different grants that we operate. We work very carefully to ensure that all the resources that we have are used efficiently and effectively so that we can reduce waste, fraud and abuse. So, this year has also brought significant change and opportunity for us as an organization on July 1st at the state level, the programs that we operate that were previously overseen by the Ohio Department of development. They transition to being overseen by the Ohio Department of job and family services. And we're really excited about that, because we think that the Ohio Department of job and family services really understands the needs of our client and has a mission to treat each 1 with dignity and with compassion. So we're very excited about this shift, but it has been kind of a rocky transition as transitions are. We have been committed to making sure that our clients have not felt any change during that transition. and our team has done a great job with that. The services that we provide to them are what matters, and we've held those steady despite some of the challenges. At the same time this year, NVCAP is going to be assuming the lead agency role for the Homeless Crisis Response Program, Region 15. That includes Greene and Clark Counties, and Brent here will be leading that. And this expanded responsibility will bring new funding and new positions here to our Xenia office. It will also allow us to strengthen our housing crisis response, improve coordination among other homelessness and social service providers and expand the support available to residents across green and dark counties. So we see this as a really important investment in Xenia and in our region's housing stability network. With that, I just want to say, thank you so much for allowing us to be here and allowing us to share our work with you. A strong community depends on residents having access to safe housing, reliable utilities and effective support when emergencies occur. NB CAP is really proud to be located here in Xenia and to have a presence in Greene County. We appreciate so much the leadership that you provide to the community and we look forward to learning new ways that we can partner together to better serve our community. So thank you so much for your time. If you have any questions, Brandon and I would be happy to answer.

Any questions? What is the Homeless Crisis Response Program?

I'll turn this over to my colleague.

Uh, we call it for short. Um, so in our continuum. And all of our regions, the homeless crisis response, uh, as the housing stability grant for rental assistance, deposit assistance, utility assistance. Um, for anyone who is at risk or literally homeless by definition.

You know, I work very closely with the population that, um, need services, but.

yeah okay so we can you you can utilize 211 uh we're considered an access point we are one of two access points here in green county so you can literally call our office um and we can do what's called a screening tool okay we'll fill that out send the referral to the case manager case manager will reach out to the participant or family and set up an intake great

I'll probably follow up with you later, but I just want to say I appreciate everything you guys do. I've been working with CAP for many, many years, and you guys have always been a good partner and a good organization to have in the community, so thank you for what you do.

Thank you. We appreciate your work as well, the council and with eMERGE.

Yeah, thank you.

Very nice. Any other questions?

Just one statement. I think you guys do a great job, whether it be HEAP or the summer... know crisis program uh i think it's awesome you know i appreciate all the work you do i know it's kind of thankless sometimes being you know in this space but you guys do great work so thank you thank you very much i'm sure you appreciate it just even and i just want to say your program has rescued quite a few people that i've known i've known as well as tenants that were in they were struggling truthfully struggling i i do have a question about your

your programs, are they income based and how are they income based? What are you basing that income qualification through?

Sure. Um, across our agency, I'll ask you to speak specifically to the programs here, but across our agency, each of the programs has a little bit of a different income requirement and we do have those listed on our website. Most of our income, all of our programs are income based and most of them are based on the federal poverty level. A lot of them have an income threshold of 175% or 200% of the federal poverty level as defined by Congress. For a family of four, I'm looking to Sharon. Roughly 54,600 for a family of four this year.

Thank you for that. That's helpful.

That's 200%.

Yeah.

Talk a little bit about our homeless program.

for our transitional family shelter, you have to be under, I think it's 150% of AMI, which is average medium income. But you have to have income to qualify for certain programs as well. particularly HCRP, when you enroll into that program, you can have as much income as you want. But after a 90-day review, if you're over 30% of AMI, in some cases it's 50, once we get some of the information back, we'll have a better number, because I think they may increase it. But after that point, then you wouldn't qualify for any more services.

Very nice. And these are rookie questions. Are you 10 99 in these, these clients or what do you, how are you, how are you tracking? How do they get, is, is IRS requiring a 10 99 on them?

We are tracking every client. We have a variety of different systems that we use to track client services depend upon dependent upon the program. But anytime we are making a direct payment to a vendor, we are 10 99 in that. So at the end of the year they will receive that statement. Those are audited. Um, And, um, but a lot in most cases they're going directly to a utility company like AES or center point, um, or bulk fuel.

For your services to our community, you're well needed. Trust me, you're well needed. All right. Thank you. All right. Um, All right, next I'd like to move on to old business. I'm sorry, any audience comments for anyone out there? You have three minutes. I see we're kind of thin out here, so I'm sorry. Any audience comments? Anybody want to speak?

For the president. Ladies and gentlemen, the Zena City Council and administration. My name is Thomas Scribbins. I still reside at 725 Lexington Avenue here in the City of Hospitality. Ms. President, I rise from my seat this evening to address the council regarding the three and four year positions that we had recommended by the Charter Review Commission. This Charter Review Commission that was seated this time, not only did we look at this issue, we looked at it four years ago, five years ago, and we recommended the same thing. And at that time, council did what you guys planned to do, and that's a waffle. At some point, each one of you have to subordinate your own interest for the interest of the community. The community wants to be represented fairly and the way we have it now is it's a bit unfair and we understand that you want to maintain your positions and you want to move on to higher higher up positions, but you have to look at what's best for the city long term. and at this point i'm quite chagrined that you guys are are four square against staggered terms the way we recommended them uh i just don't see you guys looking further than your own desk in terms of how we elect officials here in the city i also like to address the so-called market district and uh we've been toying with this thing for you know five or six years now and i'd recommend it quite a while ago that we go ahead and make it official that we call the whole development hospitality square I get tired of everybody asking me, what's going on downtown? There's no signs, nobody says anything. But we have to communicate to our constituents what's going on. And you guys have been very much silent about that. There are a couple of you who live on one of the worst streets in town, and it's quite surprising as well as appalling that you're not strident and vociferous about getting the streets done. I think you guys are sliding back into mediocrity when you don't stand for square for improvements of these streets in Xenia. So with that being said, I'll be watching and waiting and we'll see what the revelation will be. Thank you, Mr. President.

All right. Next, I'm going to open up for old business and this is obviously the public hearing is scheduled this evening. Ordinance 2625, 11 assessment for improvement of the streets and public ways by lighting thereof for the year of 2026. Mr. Merriman.

Thank you, sir. This ordinance represents the third and final step of a statutorily required process. that council must take to implement a one-year citywide streetlight assessment for the 2026 tax year. It's essentially extending a policy that has been in place. Council will need to approve the ordinance this evening in order to move forward and that's really the gist of it.

Okay.

I'd like to open up for a public hearing at this time. for the 2026-25 ordinance. Would anyone like to come up and does anyone have anything to say on this ordinance? And if so, please step forward to the podium, state your name, your address for the record, and limit your comments to three minutes, please. Okay. I'll close the public hearing and ask at this time if there's anyone on council that has any comments or any questions. All right, Councilman Miscavige, you introduced this ordinance in the last meeting. Would you like to make a motion?

Mr. Chairman, I move to make a motion. Mr. President.

Well, thank you. Anyone like to second this? Second. All right, Mr. Reynolds. Mayor Reynolds, thank you very much. Roll call, please.

Vice President Crawford. Aye. Councilman Miscavige.

Aye.

Councilman Huffman.

Aye.

Councilman Rubio.

Aye.

Mayor Reynolds.

Aye.

Motion carries.

Very good. Next, we move on to new business. Next, we have new business, and the first item on this is Ordinance 2626, 2026, authorizing the issuance not to exceed $1,479,233.13 of the bonds for the purpose of paying for a portion of the city's cost of water main replacements in the city, including but not limited to those at the section of North King Street from West Church Street to West Ankeny Mill Road, including all the necessary appurtenances there unto and other matters relating to such bonds declaring an emergency. Mr. Duke, do you have a staff report for this?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Vice President. In June of this year, Council approved an ordinance, 2026-38, awarding a contract for North King Street infrastructure improvements, including water main replacement as well as storm sewer. replacement. At that time we had stated that the plan was to fund this project through debt service. So there are actually three related ordinances that we're presenting to council tonight for your consideration. This is the first of those three ordinances, ordinance 26. This is related specifically to the water portion of this project. That portion of the bond issue would total $1,479,233. Ordinance 27 will deal with specifically the stormwater portion of the project. And then Ordinance 28 actually consolidates those two issues into one bond issue. The total debt service for the bond issue for both the water and the storm is estimated to be $262,720.33. That's a 10-year bond issue at an interest rate of 4.75%. We did seek quotes and responses from a variety of financial institutions, and this was the best option that was presented. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have. Again, this is ordinance 26 specific to the water portion, and then there's two more additional ordinances related to the bond issue. We are requesting each of these as an emergency. Banks typically only hold rates for a short period of time, We typically do bond issues or debt issues such as this via emergency just to meet those tight timelines so we can lock in the interest rate as it's presented. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Absolutely. Anyone in council have any questions for Mr. Duke on this?

Can you speak just a moment on what's a healthy amount of debt, the city and where we're at with that?

Yeah, so there are a lot of different metrics on what a healthy level of debt is and it really depends on what you're talking about. If it's, you know, tax-funded types of operations or utility operations. So we do an analysis of our debt service every year. We have a debt policy. that looks at things like total valuations across the city and our debt. It looks at things like the average debt per capita that's assigned and their standards for all of those things. So each, in the government world obviously, we segment these things into different areas. So you've got your governmental expenditures, you've got your utility expenditures, in this case water and storm water. Our water fund has very little debt at this point, so I think prior to this bond issue, we have a total of something like $1.5 million worth of debt, which may sound like a lot of money, but in the big scheme of things, in our budget, in the water fund, it's usually $4.5 million, somewhere in that neighborhood, annual budget expenditures for the water utility. One and a half million dollars as well within that acceptable range from a best practice standpoint as far as debt. Obviously this is adding another one and a half million dollars. I think we've got somewhere in the neighborhood of another five years of debt left on our remaining outstanding debt today and this is another 10 year issue so it's a fairly small period of time frame. The life of this infrastructure that's being installed is probably more so in the neighborhood 50 years to 60 years, maybe even longer. And so a 10-year debt service option for this type of infrastructure is well within what's best practice.

Thank you. Are these bonds available to the public to buy?

No. So these are privately placed. These aren't a public offering. Typically, on an issue that's this size, it's going to be a private issue. Until you get to around the $7 million to $8 million range, typically, you're not looking at a public issue where it would be available for our residents, for example, to purchase some of those bonds. So this is a private placement with a local bank. All right. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that.

Very good. Anyone else on the council has any comments or questions? The opportunity for refining, is that annual or can we refine? Because this is a good interest rate.

Yeah, so I think five years we can refinance if we choose. I'd have to look at the specific docs again, but I'm pretty confident it was at the five-year period that we could choose to refinance the bonds if we'd like. Right now it doesn't look like interest rates are going anywhere. These are slightly higher rates than what we had experienced five, six years ago, but they're actually a little lower than what we were experiencing a year or two ago. So while rates have come down a little bit, still higher than what we'd like, but I don't see rates moving to any great extent to the lower end of the spectrum over the next five years. we certainly can evaluate it at that time to see if it makes sense.

Absolutely. And I think it also speaks to our credibility and our credit rating with those particular lenders.

Yeah, we've got a quality credit rating that's only improved, and we thankfully do not have any issues currently at attracting people who want to invest and issue us debt.

Absolutely. Well, thank you. Thank you for that item. All right. Next, we have Ordinance 2627, authorizing the issuance.

Mr. Crawford. Oh. I move to approve Ordinance 2026. 26.

Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. And I need a second. I'll second.

The important project... I think this last week shows the importance of proper storm water with all the rain in an area that needs that.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And can I have a vote, please? A roll call.

Vice President Crawford. Aye. Councilman Miscavige. Aye. Councilwoman Huffman. Aye. Councilman Rubio. Aye. Mayor Reynolds. Aye. Motion carried.

And the next one's very similar to this. All right. Ordinance 2627, authorizing the issuance of issuance of not exceeding $586,573.87. For the bonds for the purpose of paving a portion of the city's cost of stormwater repairs, and replacements in the city, including but not limited to those sections of North King Street from West Church Street to West Ankeny Mill Road, including all necessary appurtenances thereunto. other matters relating to such bonds and declaring an emergency. Mr. Duke, do you have your staff report?

Yes, thank you, Mr. Vice President. Sorry to make you read all of these things three different times. Unfortunately, the way that the bonds have to be structured, we have to have a separate issue for each utility system. So this is the stormwater portion. As you read there, $568,573.87 is the stormwater portion of this. stormwater portion of debt services, around $72,944.33 annually. And it's, as stated previously, a part of the larger issue. Be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Anyone on council have any questions? Mr. Duke?

Mr. President, I move to adopt Ordinance 2026-27. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. I second.

Thank you, Mr. Miscavige. And do I have a roll call, please?

Vice President Crawford? Aye. Councilman Miscavige? Aye. Councilman Huffman? Aye. Councilman Rubio? Aye. Mayor Reynolds?

Aye.

Motion carries.

Okay, thank you. Next is ordinance 2628, authorizing the consolidation of up to two bond issues of the city of Xenia of Ohio and other matters related to such consolidation bond issues and declaring an emergency. Mr. Duke.

Thank you, sir. Yes, this ordinance is just consolidating the prior two issues that council just approved or the prior two ordinances that council just approved so that it's all a part of one bond issue. So we only have one set of bond documents instead of having to go through multiple iterations of signatures and documents. So this combines those two ordinances into one bond issue, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Any comments on this? All right, do I hear a motion on this?

I'll motion.

Thank you. I'll second. So did you get Councilwoman Huffman's or Councilwoman Huffman's motion? And then Rubio. Okay. Do I have a roll call please?

Vice President Crawford? Aye. Councilman Miscavige? Aye. Councilwoman Huffman? Aye. Councilman Rubio? Aye. Mayor Reynolds? Aye. Motion carries.

Next we have Ordinance 2629 providing for the election on amendments to Article 1, 2, and 3 of the Charter of the City of Xenia of Ohio declaring an emergency.

Vice President Crawford, if we could ask, we just noticed the title as it appears on the agenda is not correct. So if you could actually read the title off the ordinance itself, please.

Read the... From the agenda report. From the agenda report.

Just leave this part there. Oh, this part. Okay, so this is amending the amendments to? No, just read the whole thing. Okay. Providing for the election the amendments to 4.01G2 and 4.05A and 5.01B and 9.04 C3, Article 6, Article 7, and 13.01 of the city charter and declaring an emergency. Did I get that all? All right, thank you. All right, your staff report. I'm sorry, Ms. Fisher, your staff report.

Thank you. This is, as you know, council appointed a charter review commission late last year. Our charter requires that you do that every five years for the charter review commission to go through and see if they have any recommended changes to the charter. The charter review commission filed a report with you in June. You as council under the charter have the authority to decide which of the recommended amendments you want to present to the voters. You can't change any of the things, you can't modify them, but you have the choice of which of the amendments, if any, to present. Council did spend a lot of time going over this. You did go through these with a fine-tooth comb. at both your July 9th and your July 23rd meetings we had work sessions you did go through every section the sections that council chose to present to the voters are included in this ordinance and if you look at the ordinance you'll note that the way it works of course we can't put the entire amendments on the ballot. It would just make the ballot way too long. So typically what is done is there's a summary of the proposed amendments that is put on the ballot and then what is required is the text to be actual amendments and that's what's attached to this ordinance is exhibit A. Those have to be posted at the polling place. So if a voter has not seen what the actual text of the amendments are before they go into vote, those are posted at the polling place. Now we do also advertise the actual text of the proposed amendments. Those will be published in the paper and on the city's website. But if you look at Section 3 of the seven amendments that you are proposing, there's a summary of what each of those are. And I can't guarantee the Board of Elections will exactly follow the language as we've suggested. They didn't do it on the last two income tax levies that we had. They kind of went their own way. I'm hoping, as this is city charter, this isn't state law, that they will follow what we recommend. But this is just, this isn't council voting necessarily that you approve or agree with any of these. What you're voting on is whether or not you want to let the voters decide on these amendments. So you did go through them. You picked the ones that you thought were appropriate for presentation to the voters. What this ordinance does is authorizes that presentation in November. It will be one ballot item containing all seven amendments. We have a window of 120 to 60 days for you to take action to present. It is not at all unusual. almost 30 years of doing this. I've seen many times where this is done by emergency, so it's not unusual for you to do that this evening should you choose to pass this. If you pass this emergency ordinance, what this does is this gives us time to get this to the Board of Elections before the September 4th deadline. However, because emergency ordinances automatically stand repealed as of the 61st day of their passage, you will also have to introduce this as a regular ordinance, if you will, following adoption of this emergency. So if counsel does pass this emergency, this ordinance then we will ask you to also introduce and follow the regular process and that's just to make sure that the ordinance stays effective that we have an actual effective ordinance authorizing the placement on the ballot before the november election i'd be happy to answer any questions that you have i hope you all had a chance to go through exhibit a you'll see it contains the amendments that you approved none of the ones that you didn't and this would just allow these to then be presented to the voters for their approval or reduction thank you mrs fisher um anyone on council have any comments or questions yes sir mr crawford um i just want to say thank you to the net and our charter committee for reviewing the charter obviously not all

subjects were taken forward but i know a lot of work a lot of time dedicated from them yourself uh than that and then obviously council reviewing it real property i think that section is great a lot of great sections in here so i just want to thank them but in regards to a section uh you know uh that was taken out, I just wanted to make sure to clarify for my sake, uh, you know, I believe voters should have the greatest opportunity to hold their elected officials accountable. And I do believe that we should make it, we should make it easier for voters to vote, not harder and that they want to make a change. They can make that change. The city belongs to the people. And that's why I was in favor of keeping the current system at four three. So, you know, I'm always forgiving the voters, more power, not less. So, and with that, I move to adopt to ordinance 2026, 29, declaring an emergency.

And do I have a second? Thank you, Mr. Rubio. Can I have a roll call, please?

Vice President Crawford?

Aye.

Councilman Miscavige? Aye. Councilwoman Hutchman? Aye. Councilman Rubio? Aye. Mayor Reynolds?

Aye.

Motion carries.

Okay, very good. All right, finally, we have Ordinance 2630, providing for election on the amendments to the articles. Did I just read that? Yeah, it's the same thing. Whoa. We're on. We're on. Right here. Just read the section right here. Just read that. Okay. All right. This is Ordinance 2630, providing for the election amendments for the articles. This is what you just read?

Yeah, separate. The one's an emergency. This one's an introduction.

Okay. Just read it. Providing an election on the amendments to Articles 1, 2, 3, and the Charter of the City of Xenia of Ohio, Mrs. Law Director.

no that it actually should be providing for election on amendments to section 401 g2 section 405 a section 501 b section 904 c3 articles 11 article 11 and of article 12 and finally section 1301 of the denis city charter yeah right here gotta read that part all right

So on the 2630, providing for the election of the amendments of and to 401G2 and 4.505A and 5.01B and 9.04C3 articles 11. in Articles 12 and 13.01 of the City of Xenia Charter. I apologize for this confusion here, guys. All right, Danette, your comments, please.

This is basically the exact same ordinance that you just passed minus the emergency language. So really all we need on this tonight is an introduction and then you will have public hearing and vote on the ordinance at your next meeting.

Do I have an introduction? Mr. President, I move to introduce ordinance 202630. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

All right. Next we have the appointed officials report. Mr. Duke, your comments, please.

Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I'm happy to let the council know that earlier this week, Joe Braden, representative from the Outer State of Ohio, stopped by my office. He did present me with the award with distinction for excellence in financial reporting for the 2025 year. Typically, in the past, Mr. Braden has come to the council meeting and made a presentation. I think after several presentations, it's kind of lost its luster. And so I don't know that he's going to be joining us this year for a presentation of this specific award. But nonetheless, it's a very important thing. It demonstrates that we have responsibly stewarded the public dollar. and um it's a testament to all the hard work that people in our organization are doing uh to make sure that we're compliant and doing things the the right way uh the lawful way and and using best practice uh when it comes to financial reporting and policy so uh this is um it's a pleasure to to present this and share this with council if council would desire that we do a picture or something we certainly can after the meeting if you want something for social media I'm open to that I don't necessarily need my picture out there but but certainly we can we can do something if council would desire if not we'll do a press release and let the public know that we've been awarded this or you don't want to be stopped at the grocery store being a celebrity for great auditing

He's probably going to tell you soon he needs a bigger office because he's out of wall space.

I think we are actually running out of frames and so we're going to have to figure out if we can match the frames that we had previously bought for these types of boards. But no, it's, you know, Jason Lake's done a terrific job with this report as he has with several others. There are a lot of us that put a lot of time and effort into this report and really just into making sure that we're following policy and adhering to procedures and best practices. And so just really proud of our organization as a whole who's doing a great job making sure that they're doing their best to do things the right way. And we don't always get everything right, but we do our best to get the big things right. I think we've been pretty successful in doing that. I wanted to share that with the council. I don't have anything else for you this evening, but I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thank you, Mr. Duke.

Great job.

Thank you. Thank you. Any comments or any questions for Mr. Duke? All right. Mrs. Fisher, your staff, or any comments?

I hope council realizes in my nine years here Mr. Duke has won this award on behalf of the city every one of those nine years. So his staff does do great because they have a great leader. He does a great job as finance director. So the fact that he's won this award yet again, that's really wonderful for our city.

I agree. Thank you. Absolutely. Any council comments? No, thank you. Well, thank you, Mrs. Fisher. All right, Mr. Merriman, your comments, please.

don't have any awards this week i do however have a couple of uh notes um first uh staff is in pre-production of a video series that we're hoping to launch um no later than september looking at a number of important topics in our community much of which we've discussed with council we will be reaching out to council members as we'd like to have your help in some of those video presentations so please look forward some request for some meetings for that as you should be aware if you've checked your email the clerk has sent out based on my recommendation to council president and vice president a request for a special session for september 1st the purpose of that will be to get into some important conversation on the council's direction involving a number of projects revenue needs and so forth so that the staff can complete our capital improvement plan recommendations for the year, so that'll be the topic that night. And then finally, I just wanted to let council know that we've been in discussions with our street rehabilitation or street repaving contractor, John R. Jurgensen, for a number of reasons, most notably weather. It is looking like the street work will be a little more delayed than we anticipated. We'd hoped that they would be doing that work yet in August. It's looking like that's going to be early September. Um, and with every day of rain, it's making that, you know, more and more difficult to get that work done. So I just wanted to give the public and council heads up that that is slated to be done, but it's probably gonna have to get pushed back a little bit. Uh, with that, I'd be happy to entertain any questions, but I have nothing else this evening.

All right.

Any, any further questions from Mr. Manley?

Do we have a roundabout starting date?

I think the second week of September is what they're slated. But again, there is a rain forecast for our locality for the next four or five straight days, and even some forecasting into the next week. So they can work in some rain, but with what we've had, it's slowing all of their projects down. Thank you. I'm glad it has. All right. I'm fortunate that's how it goes. Yeah, Mother Nature's not been kind, and I'm looking at the radar as the rain is barely toward us again this evening.

20 more Monday's till Christmas coming I can't see we'll have it done by then I mean I'm counting on sorry okay next we have council comments and reports mr. mosquito thank you earlier today we had a property community meeting we have a number of empty lot vacant lots that soon be having houses on them so that's a wonderful thing i think thank you for the staff for all your hard work on returning property to productive private use i'm glad to see the speed tables being installed on hollywood appreciate the staff's work on that and the traffic common project on belver avenue again thanks to the charter review for their hard work and i'm glad to see a number of these amendments but have an opportunity for the voters to vote on. Looking forward to helping out at the back to school bash. There will be games, hot dogs, walking tacos, and back to school supplies. This is at, I apologize, got this last minute. 436 East Main Street in Xenia. There's a church there and then the church name is escaping me, but look forward to seeing everyone come out to that. Back to school time. So I encourage everyone to leave a little earlier during the school hours. Give yourself extra time. So I did some math on the school speed limits for the math nerds out there. So In front of the high school, the speed limit will drop during school hours from 35 to 20. Please allow yourself 15 extra seconds to traverse that area and keep our kids safe. And if you're in front of Cox, it's only four extra seconds to slow down from 25 to 20. So I appreciate everyone on that.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you. Nice math. Yes. All right. Councilwoman Huffman, do you have any comments for us today?

Um, I was able to meet with Ms. Brown, Elizabeth Brown, a couple of weeks ago, and she's our community services coordinator resources coordinator. So, um, she's a licensed social worker and, um, is going to be working pretty closely with, um, the fire department and police department and, um, just going out and responding, helping respond to different calls. where people have tended to be maybe more high frequency callers and will help with establishing relationships with those folks and our first responders and just being able to have that here is really a huge benefit. It's a model that's been widely used in behavioral health and first responders across the nation now at this point. So I'm really glad that Xenia is doing that and

hoping to see a good um outcome with this pilot project so uh that's it very nice well thank you um councilman rubio yes um hollywood i was able to be there when they started i was really excited about that you know seeing seeing our calming measures get installed. I was able to drill a couple of bolts myself. I met with a few neighbors there. It was exciting to see them smile. We have a lot of work to do. I could just note You know, what it's not seen often in public is the amount of time we talk about our roads behind the scenes. And it's not well known, but it is a topic that is on all of our agendas. And I'm sure Brent sees me, he'd wait on that. No question. How much longer? How much longer? But you're doing great, sir. I appreciate that. I don't mean to be a bother, but I'm here for our folks. And our city worship. I don't know if you guys ever experienced that, but that is a great time to meet as believers in a lot of different churches and faces and just worship God in our park. But other than that.

Thank you, Mr. Rubio.

mayor reynolds all right what do you have some quick fire stuff here uh citywide worship was awesome i loved it i could see a lot of members of council and friends and neighbors it was great i wanted to also talk about this past week we had a meeting with council with all of council with congressman turner at the market district to go over some project community project funds that are been put into the federal budget. Some discussion went forward of what we might be able to do in the future, how to develop the site, what we might want to do, how to grow, change it if need be. So it was a great time with Congressman Turner. We thank him for coming out to Xenia. And then just last Friday was canceled. So this Friday at 7.30 PM is the Family Film Fridays. So 7.30 PM at Shawnee Park, we'll have free popcorn, thanks to Rule King. snow cones, thanks to Dr. Christina King, Copley Construction for sponsoring the movie and also their inflatable projector, screen, all that stuff in one bistro for a sweet treat for all the kids. So you all should come on down Friday at, well I guess tomorrow, at 7.30. What's the movie? This one is the Super Mario Brothers. So it goes Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers Galaxy, then David. So you can't show one without the other, right? So you've got to have an ending conclusion to the story. And that is all I have.

There you go. Alright, well thank you everyone for your patience today. This has been a unique day. But I want to highlight Mr. Duke, Mrs. Fisher, and Mr. Merriman. Just their business savvy, their wisdom of what they bring to the city from their perspective. Not only they're navigating the workforce, they're navigating decisions. And I know they lean upon us for council. And I just think that that relationship that we've had, we've developed over the years, has been one of significance. It's worthy for other cities to pay attention to. And I think this is a great council group as well. I just wanted to say thank you for your service, however this works out for us. I just want to, again, particularly for Mr. Duke, You're just the level of integrity by which you run your numbers by. I know you operate through that lens, and I'm extremely proud of you, just for your professionalism. And personally, I admire you in that field. Thank you. Just thank you for your service in that. Thank you. Mrs. Fisher, your support for me, regardless of my utilization of those things, or how I read your emails, I just want to thank you again. uh mr merriman again your leadership to the group well well well respected among us much to be said but um i can't say it all tonight i know uh this is going to be a short night are you all ready yes uh you would like to say something yeah the clarification of the back to school bash that's that

New Life Christian Assembly time is 1 to 4, and I will never read notes off my phone again.

You're fine. I understand there will be no executive session. Is that correct? Yes, sir. Can you reiterate that? Yep. All right. Can I get a motion? I move to adjourn. Are you moved to adjourn? I second. Do I get a roll call, please?

All right. All right.