Telecommunications Committee - Regular Meeting

Okay, ready.

Oh, that's why. I was wondering why they gave us extra time. They're waiting for Lisa to get ready.

Do you have a pause button too?

Seriously?

Good evening, and welcome to Green City Council. Today is Tuesday, July 28th, 2026, and I'd like to call our committee meetings to order. First item on the agenda is the approval of minutes. We have TMP 5421, approval of the June 23rd, 2026 committee meeting minutes. Move to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion?

Call the roll. Mr. Neugebauer?

Yes.

Mr. Noble? Yes. Mr. Brandenburg?

Yes.

Mr. DeVitas? Yes. Mr. Humphrey?

Yes.

Mr. Spate?

Yes.

And Mr. Maker?

Yes.

Okay, motion carries.

Thank you, ma'am. And now we will start our committee meetings with the first committee to meet this evening is Finance, chaired by Mr. Humphrey.

Thank you, Mr. President. Finance will meet this evening. All members are present, myself, Mr. Neugebauer, and Mr. Spate. First of all, we have the... We have the income tax report for the six months ended June 30, 2026, and I'll recognize our Director of Finance to go over that with us.

Thank you. So as you can see, overall, the city's income tax collections remain essentially flat through the same period in 2026 as 2025, decreasing only 0.20% compared to 2025. The good news is withholding tax collections increased 3.23%, indicating continued strength in local employment wage growth. while individual income tax collections remained essentially unchanged, decreasing just 0.33%. These gains, though, were largely offset by a 12.5% decline in net profit tax collections, suggesting that businesses continue to maintain payroll, but many are experiencing lower profitability, likely due to slower economic growth or higher operating costs. So overall, the good data is that the city's employment base remains healthy, but business profitability has softened a little bit comparatively. We will continue to monitor net profit collections closely throughout the remainder of the year to determine whether this trend persists or it gets better. So with that, you will see. that for the six months ended 6-30-2026 compared to 6-30-2025, income tax collections decreased $33,675.31. If we compare the second quarter of 2026 to second quarter of 2025, it decreased $37,548.05.

All right, what percentage was built into the budget in terms of the increase in revenue that we were budgeting year over year from 25 to 26?

I believe it was 0.5%, but I would have to go back and look at the budget and confirm that.

Okay. If you can provide that number, because I think that will help also put this into perspective. Obviously, it's pretty flat. We're trending a little bit behind, but a lot of it's going to have to do with really where we are in terms of our budget and whether or not we're going to have to pull back on spending. for the remainder of the year, and so a lot of that remains to be seen. Any questions by committee on this? All right, so we'll move into the other items of legislative business. We have a third reading of 2026-15. This is an ordinance authorizing the mayor to enter into a contract with the regional income tax agency, A regional council of governments organized pursuant to Chapter 167 of the Ohio Revised Code. for the administration collection and enforcement of the municipal income tax of the city of Green and declaring an emergency. At our last meeting, our director of finance and also the mayor walked us through the due diligence process that was followed in looking at what it would look like for the city not to have an income tax department per se, but outsourcing this to Rita RETA is used by many other municipalities across the state of Ohio for their income tax collection. We heard from the director of RETA at our last meeting. We also heard from the administration that there are projected savings of $300,000 to $350,000 a year. And I think when we read this in conjunction with the financial report that we just saw I think that we see that whenever we can save dollars like that, that we have to seriously take a look at those. One of the benefits that we saw and we heard about during the presentation last time is the ability of RETA to match up federal tax returns with reporting. for those taxpayers in the City of Green, and if there's a mismatch, to be able to follow up on those. Our income tax department did not have the opportunity to be able to do that because they didn't have access to the data. Rita having the data is gonna put us in a lot better position to make sure that all of those who are supposed to be paying taxes in the City of Green are paying those, so all of the expenses in the City of Green are not borne by fewer taxpayers, they're borne by more taxpayers. The other thing that stood out to me during the presentation at our last meeting was Green's cost of income tax collection was 2.5% and Rita's was 1.04%. That's a figure that's arrived at every year by taking the cost of collection for whatever municipalities are using their services and dividing by the expenses and then allocating that based upon the income tax collections on a proportional basis to each municipality. And so it's a very fair way to be able to do it. Really, the biggest downside is the 3% retainer during the first year, which is rebated among RETA members. There's going to be a period of time, a couple of months. Is it two months? One month of collections that on an ongoing basis we will be behind because you have to have some beginning point. And so that will be a little bit on the balance sheet of the city, but we have significant reserves in order to be able to deal with that. So this time I'll open it up to committee if there's any questions or comments. open it up to council, any questions or comments?

Mr. Brandenburg. I think I had two questions last time and I think we're kind of still floating out there. I had asked Rita, right, if one of their provisions, right, in their rules says that our tax rules have to be the same as everybody else's tax rules for that to work. And I would ask the question if we looked at that and the reader respondent said that will be done after we sign the contract, which seems a little backward to me. I know a month has passed and I wondered if anybody had a chance to look and see are there any conflicts right now that we would expect to fix?

Yeah, actually, I got an email from Rita today where they had gone through our tax ordinance and there are places that right now our tax ordinance is not matching the Ohio Revised Code. So they are suggesting that we update our tax ordinance to make sure, obviously, that we are in compliance with the Ohio Revised Code. And So that is going to be something that comes to City Council this fall, that we need to update our income tax ordinance so that we are matching the Ohio Revised Code and so that they can effectively administer the income tax on behalf of the city. In regards to, I know you had asked about the student credit, they have said they can do that still um it would not be able people would not be able to file electronically to get that student credit refund but they would administer that if it's in our ordinance and that is something that the city wants to continue to provide you know to our residents um so we are going to have a i am going to be bringing you know if this were to pass tonight legislation regardless we shouldn't our our income tax ordinance should match the ohio revised code And so you will likely see legislation very soon where we are correcting some of those things that they have evaluated. And I can forward you the email that I got from them today.

Okay, I appreciate that. So I'm just wondering if we're out of compliance with the Ohio Advice Code, is that because we've chosen to adopt different rules?

I think there were law changes over the years that at that time legislation should have been brought to City Council to update the tax ordinance and that wasn't done.

Is there any penalty for that?

Not that I'm aware, but, you know, it is good practice. And, you know, luckily going forward, Rita will then be telling us, hey, guys, you know, the Ohio legislature, you know, has changed the Ohio Revised Code and you need to update your tax ordinance as well. Normally that would, you know, that was the responsibility. When I was a tax administrator, I had to make sure, you know, I was in a tax administrator's group and I knew when those things were happening to bring legislation, so...

that was unfortunately just something that fell by the wayside over the years okay appreciate that all right um okay so we'll be updating and then we'll be in compliance with what they require and no other changes besides the credit okay that's helpful

And there was nothing, I mean, again, it was all very, I had a feeling that was gonna be the case. And because our tax ordinance had not been updated in a long time, but there was nothing in their recommendations that, it's all standard stuff.

Right, to the code and not something specific that we had that will be lost. Okay, good. All right, and then I think the second question, so Mr. Humphrey referenced, right, we're going to, for 2027, we would defer a month of revenues and 3% of collections each month. Do we, was there a discussion, has there been a discussion about how we're going to cover that amount since we like to keep the general fund at six months of operating expenses?

You know, that's going to be part of the budgeting process going, you know, into 2027, right? Dealing with the mayor and the department directors, you know, where can we cut things that are possible? But, you know, it's very possible that because of just general inflation, especially, you know, in, especially with personnel costs, that it will likely have to come, you know, partially from the reserve. But We've been looking for all areas of cost savings. We went out to market on insurance recently, did a lot of work on that. We're saving $80,000, $70,000, I think, on insurance. So I am looking at every avenue to save money for the city, knowing that certain things are going up.

Sure. I mean, it'll restore in 28, of course.

Yeah.

But I didn't know if we intended specifically to issue debt or if we were planning to cover it in a reduction. No, no, no.

We were taking a break from a... Okay. At least that's my hope, right, Mayor? Right.

Okay. And then the last matter we typed on, and I'm not sure if we can discuss it here, but have the personnel issues been resolved, the personnel questions?

We are working with legal counsel and the union on that. We really can't expound on that, but those are continuing negotiations that we're working through. Okay.

All right. I think those are my only questions at this point.

Thank you. All right. Mr. Mager. Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. I'm definitely sympathetic to the fact that even with cost savings, there is maybe a hit to the residents of our city. I know we receive some people saying, hey, I've had bad experience at Rita. I've had family members have bad experience at Rita, although I'm not a tax preparer. So what I did was I reached out to tax preparers that I know of, both big firms and small firms, and I just asked the question. I said, in your opinion, is Rita as good or better than municipalities that run their own tax department? They said, we actually prefer Rita. And what they're saying is with Rita, it's a centralized – company right and you can call in even if it's automated outside regular business hours and pull information that's important for them to complete their taxes or help their customers with their taxes so to me it's a little bit reassuring i do hope the city continues to bear in mind at least for these first year maybe first couple years to kind of have a transition plan with respect to residents that say hey i'm having trouble with rita and maybe kind of help them maybe we don't have a designated person i know we talked about having ALTERNATIVE METHODS, BUT I WOULD JUST IMPLORE THE MAYOR, I KNOW YOU GUYS HAVE TALKED ABOUT IT, TO KIND OF KEEP THAT IN THE BACK OF YOUR MIND, BUT WHAT I'M HEARING FROM PROFESSIONALS IS WE ACTUALLY PREFER RITA, SO I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE THAT I PUT THAT OUT THERE.

I CAN TELL YOU IN MY TIME NOW SUPERVISING THE TAX DEPARTMENT, YOU KNOW, We're not always consistent. I know some of you have received complaints about our tax department. Unfortunately, there's nothing feel good about tax collection, whether it's Rita or our department. But Rita consistently enforces. and follows, we'll make sure that they're following our ordinance and make sure that our ordinance is in compliance with Ohio Revised Code. And I think that that's really important. And obviously they have that federal tax matching tool to make sure that everyone is paying that should be paying and that the city, you know, everyone's paying their fair share.

And I guess my last point, if I may, Mr. Chair, is there a way we can sit down and have a conversation, Rita, if this does pass now or in the future, to kind of put some brackets regarding their ongoing service to the city? I don't want a bunch of audit letters going out for the past three tax years because Rita uncovered something and then everyone is giving us a call.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

This is 2027 forward. I don't want you auditing people last three years. I mean, if the city didn't audit people, I don't want just a mass audit going out. And then I get called from everybody saying, why did you, you know, hire this company? Now I'm getting audited.

No, absolutely. We have, you know, talked to them about having a soft. implementation, right? There is potentially taxpayers that, because we did not have the tools that they have, that we have been missing, right? And we don't want this to be a shock to the system, to the citizens of the City of Green, right? We want to use this as more of an educational, oh, you didn't realize you had to be filing tax return with the City of Green, you moved from another state and this wasn't a thing. So definitely we have the ability to control how aggressive they are, but we can say, we do not want you to come out very aggressive. We wanna use this more as a communication tool and a learning opportunity and to get people compliant. So totally understand. And that was one of the concerns the mayor raised with Rita during many of our meetings and that we discussed with other cities when we were going around talking to other cities because that was not something we wanted to occur here. But we can definitely set up a call and we can have that conversation with them again, especially as we're working towards implementation.

Okay. Thank you. All right. A couple things came out of that that I want to make sure I touch base on. First of all, Rita is not a business per se. They're kind of a quasi-government entity. They're governed by Ohio Revised Code. So there's not a profit motive. There is an ability for them to use the economies of scale to be able to keep expenses lower. But I think that's, for our taxpayers, they need to understand we're not out engaging a business. This is a quasi-government organization. It's not a business per se, and I think that that can leave the wrong impression in people's minds. And so I think it's a very important distinction. The second thing is we can have our own income tax ordinance to the extent that it complies with the Ohio Revised Code. So we may have a different income tax ordinance than another surrounding municipality that uses RETA, and they will enforce our income tax ordinance. So if we want to change that, they will apply our law to whatever their enforcement mechanism is. The third thing I want to say is with Rita, we're always the customer. And so we can always say we're not happy with the service. This is not the way it was sold. And we can always change course. Rita has the incentive to keep the customers, the municipalities that they serve, using their services so that you have that economy of scale spread out across all the municipalities that use them. And then the final thing I guess I would say is I'm not sure I agree with the idea that we don't want to have Rita look back within the audit window and say if taxpayers were not paying for the last three years, no harm, no foul. I mean, I feel as a taxpayer that if you haven't been paying your taxes for three years, everybody else has been making up the difference. And one of the reasons, one of the benefits that Rita brings to the table is that they're going to be able to see if people have not been paying their taxes or businesses have not been paying their taxes now that they are paying their taxes. I see that as a net benefit. You can do that in a strong way or in a controlled way. I don't want them to be out of control with it, but I don't want to give up revenue that the city's entitled to. I don't know that that's what you were suggesting, but I don't want to have that.

SO THANK YOU, MR. TRUMP. I GUESS JUST TO CLARIFY A COUPLE OF THINGS. THE IDEA OF CHANGING COURSE IS GOING TO BE VERY DIFFICULT. I THINK ONCE WE GO THAT RITA PATH, THERE'S NO REAL COMING BACK TO RESTARTING OUR OWN INCOME TAX DEPARTMENT. I THINK THAT'S A SLIPPY. I DON'T THINK WE'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO RESTART IT AGAIN. IT'S A HUGE EXPENSE. IT'S GOING TO TAKE A HUGE HIT ON OUR BUDGET, RIGHT, BECAUSE WE'RE SAVING MONEY. THAT MONEY IS GOING TO BE SPENT SOMEWHERE ELSE IN OUR BUDGET TO RESTART THE INCOME TAX. IT'S SOMETHING I DON'T THINK WE CAN UNRING THAT BELL, IN MY OPINION. AND I And then I guess my other point is I wasn't saying if they didn't pay your tax. I think you understand what I was trying to say is these technical, maybe some minor issues, didn't claim something, whatever. I don't want them getting in the weeds, which every resident could theoretically get something and say, hey, you didn't do this right. And then that's when my phone's going to blow up and say, what are you doing? So I just want to make sure we put some... some guardrails in place. And it sounds like the administration did it. But yeah, absolutely. If somebody didn't file their taxes or didn't pay their taxes for the last three years, absolutely, they should be receiving it on.

But we want to send them a nice initial, like, hey, reminder, you didn't find all your taxes instead of, you know, a subpoena. Like, you know, that's, I think, going to be the educational, like, where we can... we can set the tone on the letter series, you know, so that the first communication they get from Rita is not an aggressive one, but rather, you know, more, you know, you know, you got to file.

Having a liaison, at least for the first year or two, would definitely be helpful. Can you give any color as to why Lakewood went back from

It was back in the early 2000s. Essentially, Rita did a large software conversion in the early 2000s, and it was not going well, and there was a lot of costs that were being passed on to the member municipalities. It was a much smaller organization. They have obviously worked through that and have come back better, bigger companies. better than they ever have been you know serving over 400 municipalities at that time they were serving a handful of municipalities in northeast ohio um so that was why i think at that time lakewood decided that they were going to leave the cog the council of governments and go back you know and administer their own tax but that was because of a failed software conversion

And that's kind of been my biggest concern with the way the contract is written. It's basically you share a percentage of what the costs are to run the RETA program across the board. So there's no real cap, but we saw based on their past performance, it's steadily coming down.

Mm-hmm.

Well, like one bad data breach, one big software sale. I mean, it could be an increase that exceeds what we're currently paying for our own internal income tax division, whereas we know ours is kind of stagnant over time.

But, I mean, we have – I had – you know, again, I had an audit finding because there was an MFA on city tax, you know, an audit, a management comment in our audit. I mean, we – again, have issues that need to be addressed in our own tax department. So, you know, that would cost a substantial amount of money. The software we have is not a state-of-the-art software. I can tell you. I'm in it. It's painful. So that, at some point, would need to be upgraded. But you know what the problem is? Nobody's developing software in this realm because everyone's going to Rita. So there's not even a good... solution to go to because this is an industry that is transitioning to regionalization nor is there somebody that's administrator that could take on that job there's fewer jobs like that out there

Excuse me. That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. All right. We'll make sure nobody calls Mr. Meager, Mr. Meager. If you want to give us your cell phone number, we'll make sure no one ever calls you about this.

I don't mind if you will call me.

I just know when this happens. You can just shoot him to me.

All right. Any other comments regarding Mr. Nijabaur?

Just real briefly. I, like you, CJ, have had people talk about Rita experiences negatively, but I've been approached by a couple community leaders in the last couple months since we've been considering, and they brought it up, like, oh, you're joining Rita. And both the individuals were like, yeah, you're going to really like the transition. So I find that those who have made that transition really value that decision and that it's really made things a lot better for their community. So that's my rate. Thank you.

All right. Any other comments regarding this piece of legislation?

Mr. Humphrey, I just want to reiterate something as well, and that is I did some due diligence as well behind the scenes with a colleague of mine who is a former council person, former mayor of one of the local communities that made this transition a number of years ago. And when this person was on council at that time, when they make a transmission, when they made the transition for the communities that they became mayor of. You know, he's a little skeptical of it at the time, but they went forward with it. And, you know, the response from the person was glowing, really, that they would never, ever want to go back to doing it because of all the benefits of the larger organization and brought to the community for tax collection. it was just a glowing response. He did mention that the first year there were some growing pains, right? And I think we would expect that. It was talked about. But nothing that was like red flags, hey, we shouldn't do this. It was just sort of normal things of changing an approach, right? And so reaching out and getting that information from someone I know who, served in public administration for many, many years, and I highly respect that person's opinion.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Noble. Well, this is on third reading, so at the appropriate time, I'll make a motion on 2026-15. The next piece of legislation, we have a first reading passage request, and that is the first reading of 2026-R40. This is a resolution modifying appropriations within certain funds in order to provide sufficient funding and declaring an emergency. If you go to Exhibit A on this piece of legislation, the memorandum total is in the amount of $200,000, and Director Goodrich, I'll recognize you, and then to the Mayor to walk us through that.

Yep, let me go to that folder. As you can see, this is a supplemental appropriation. I'm asking for a first reading passage, and the mayor will kind of explain the emergency need for that. But we are asking for $200,000 in contracted services in the Street Construction Maintenance and Repair Fund. He'll give a little more detail on that request. And then we're just moving some budget around. Obviously, we had the road striping bid come in under budget, and we are moving that to material snow and ice removal, and then some concrete repair funds to material snow, ice, and removal. We found out that ice prices are going up. I'm sorry, salt prices, not ice. Prices are going up about 15%. So talking with service, they wanted to go ahead and purchase some more salts and get that stocked at this lower price. And because we had saved money in other areas, I'm requesting just to move some budget around so that they can go ahead and purchase more salt. Okay.

Then Mayor, do you want to discuss the appropriation, the $200,000 for contracted services?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So that first line item of $200,000 comes as a result of what happened on June 25th of this year in Twinsburg. Most of you, I think, know that there was a gas explosion when a utility provider was doing horizontal drilling and struck a gas line that resulted in the really very rare occurrence of an explosion that took out a house and set others on fire. When that happened, the next morning I got on the phone with the contractors who were laying fiber in the City of Green and instructed them that we were going to take a pause and use this opportunity to step back to make sure that we had reviewed safety policies for all those doing directional drilling within the city and that we kind of reiterated our expectation of safety that we had been talking about all along. So in the weeks that followed during that pause, we looked for other communities because this is a regional problem. Cities across Northeast Ohio and the state are in this same sort of construction. And so we had lots of people to talk to and compare notes. We also, and I reached out to Councilman Neugebauer, who provided me with some companies that we have used in the past at the city. I spoke to, for example, EDG, Answer, a company called Hill, and QCI about best practices in the industry. And with our engineering team, which was led by Paul Pickett and Caleb Dick, who's been our kind of feet on the ground boots on the ground when it comes to taking a look at the work that's been happening in the city we had a number of meetings with ourselves with these other cities on the phone with providers and contractors and approached Loomis with really three things that we want them to see going forward that we want to see from them going forward The first is a commitment to use hydro excavation, which is think of a power washer. It's kind of how it works. It's safer around utility pipes than sharp utensils like a shovel and is less likely to rupture a pipe. The other thing that we've asked Loomis to do is pay for QCI to be safety inspector, not as a project inspector, because frankly, Loomis has been responsive to issues and moving the project along. Where we're concerned about is making sure that everything within reason is being done to avoid gas strikes in the community during the project. And so QCI is going to be paid for by Loomis to inspect the project at different key aspects. So they'll be on site to kind of make sure the flags are appropriately marked, that there's visual inspection of the utility before drilling happens, that if there's a concern about where a utility is located, that the contractor does not proceed until it's identified. And they have been working with Summit County in the Summit Connects project. And the last thing was to ask for the availability of a new technology. It's not new, but it's kind of emerging, called ground penetrating radar, which is a technology that allows you to find utility pipes if you can't find them through other conventional methods. Loomis has agreed to proceed under our current permits that have been issued to them under these three primary conditions. what this um legislation does is it allows us to create an account and appropriate the money so that we can pay the contractor directly who is working for the city and then loomis will reimburse us we need council to create the account and appropriate the money in order for that contract to be effectuated So that's the ask. Basically the city is a flow through on that. Loomis will reimburse us and we'll be taking that a step at a time. Since we're on the subject, they said they need about two weeks to call their crews back and to reorganize. They are currently about 70% through the city. this will likely slow the project down and frankly in the name of safety i think that's what needed to happen and with regard to all the other contractors that are doing directional drilling on a smaller basis we have sat the engineering team myself and all the other resources that i have shared with you including some of our elected officials casey weinstein our State Senator has kind of become a clearinghouse for a lot of the complaints because he serves in Northern Summit County and has had Been contacted by a number of cities So he's been a great resource also to kind of double-check our approach and I spoke to them today To him today, and he is basically proposing legislation that mirrors the things that I'm explaining today So it kind of confirms. We're on the best course to to have the best possible safety going forward. I will say, and I'll say this to council and residents, there's no silver bullet. There is no 100% full safe way that every time I can promise there'll never be a gas strike. But I think our obligation to residents is to make sure that we're doing everything in reason to minimize that risk. And I'm confident that these procedures will do that. So that's why it's an emergency where we want to keep the project going. Frankly, we don't want to drag this out more than it needs to be. They have their crews on pause and are ready to be engaged again. Are there any questions? Thank you.

So I think it's important. So when you look at Exhibit A, it has all of these dollar figures on it, but the long and the short of it is it will ultimately not cost the city any money because on a couple of these, money's just being moved from one account to another account, which we're required to do if we're moving funds into a different fund than was originally budgeted for. And then second, this $200,000 wasn't part of the budget. We have to create a line item in the budget for that. But because it's a pass-through, we might put out money for it, but we're going to get reimbursed for it. So obviously, with that, it's going to be a zero cost to the city. So it's not like we're adding to the expense of the city with this piece of legislation. ANY ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS BY MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE? MR. NIJABAUER?

MR. CHAIRMAN, I HAVE A PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM WITH THIS APPROACH. TYPICALLY INSPECTION SERVICES ARE INCLUDED FOR ONE THING, AND THAT'S TO ENSURE THAT PROJECTS ARE BUILT TO PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS. typically the owner of the project would pay for that service to make sure that what they've asked for to be built, what they've put in the contract to be built, is actually built. examples examples and no you're fine examples in the city you know when we do major projects like Arlington Road right now you'll have an inspector there to make sure that when it calls for eight inches of of you know a certain type of gravel to be in a layer and then perhaps six inches of an asphalt layer that you get the proper thicknesses and that that the subgrade is compacted sufficiently so that the road reasonably would would persist and if you don't have that inspection service then perhaps the contractor might try to cut corners maybe not do all the things that are necessary perhaps use substandard materials all those things and so that's really the the point of construction inspection was to make sure that you you're getting what you paid for what that does not do is dictate means and methods We can't tell them how to do the work. We don't tell them when to do the work. We don't tell them what sequence to do the work. When they bid our project, they said, this is what we're going to do. And we basically accept that they're going to do it, but they have to do it for our specifications. So we don't dictate means and methods. I am somewhat philosophically opposed to getting involved in somebody else's project. in this case, Loomis' project. So we're not the owner. So I have no real interest in making sure that the content they use meets the specification, right? That's not important to me. I'm the owner of the right-of-way, but I'm not the owner of the facility. So I don't really have a role in getting what they're paying for. That's not our job as... as a city and quite frankly, I don't know why we'd interject ourselves into liability by being a partner to something that could lead to a dangerous situation. First of all, we can't prevent it because we don't dictate means and methods. We can't stop them. We don't have the illegal authority. And so we're going to interject ourselves in the process when we don't have the authority and just add ourselves to the liability of a project when that's really not what's going to happen. We cannot prevent accidents. I think to put it in perspective... I'm thinking about automobile accidents. And, you know, 41,200 people die a year from auto accidents, right? That's a lot of people. People who die from gas explosions in a year or seven. The point isn't that the seven lives are, it's not important, but the point is that With traffic safety, we have 42,000 people that die a year, but we don't have cities saying, we're not going to let people drive on the freeway system. They have to slow down to 15 miles an hour. We don't make our own rules to say, this is how we're going to ensure nobody gets hurt in an auto accident, because God forbid you take away somebody's right to drive. But the magnitude of difference between the danger driving an automobile and the danger imposed by construction. The other problem I have is if you get Loomis to agree to this, that they're going to pay these services, but I don't have Dominion who does larger directional boring. I don't have the dozens of other contractors who come into our city and do directional boring for drainage projects and all these different things. We've singled out one contractor to follow a specification, and we're going to get involved in the procurement of that work, and we're going to get involved in the liability of that work. And for those reasons, I think this is a really bad idea for the city to interject ourselves into that process. I'm all for... ensuring safety, and there's ways to do it. And I think Mayor Juergen had a great idea earlier on when they had some strikes. And mind you, these happen a lot. Strikes happen a lot. I'm not going to say they don't happen, but typically they're not dangerous. I mean, they're potentially dangerous, but typically they're not. So he had the idea that to help improve behavior, that they would have to pay for our safety services response when we get called out. And he did that, and they actually improved behavior. So he set a safety standard that actually was measurable, and they took the steps to improve their issue, and they significantly reduced the number of strikes that they had. And I think that is probably the best way that we can ensure safety in our community. But I am not accepting of us getting into the flow of this work.

So let me ask you a question there so I can understand. So in a situation where the city is doing a project, we have a project coming from engineering, and engineering puts out the specifications, and we have contractors bid on it, and they have to follow our specifications. then we're speccing out the project saying, here's what we expect, and as part of those specifications, we can ask for anything that we wish. We're not on the ground advising them how to go about it, but they have to meet our specifications, which is one reason why you inspect it. But that's not the case here because Loomis isn't working for us. They're doing a project in the city in our right of way. So isn't that a significant difference being an independent entity that's coming and working in our right of way versus we have a project?

And they don't, we don't hold a contract. We're not part of that contracting. So we don't really have a role in the integrity of what they build. We do have a responsibility to ensure public safety. There's no question, but we don't direct them how to do that. We don't stand there and say, do this, do that, do this. And the reason we don't is because we can't pay for that. The minute you tell a contractor, you're not gonna do that today. They're gonna say, it's fine. We'll send our guys home and you'll pay us because whenever you're ready to go, you'll pay us for our time and we'll come back and we'll keep working. And that's as the owner. Right? And that's a contract we hold that they're gonna pay for that. And we don't even hold a contract with this with LUMOS.

So in this situation, if the things that are being specified by the administration, let's say they increase safety on the project, other than doing it this way, what way could you go about doing the same thing to make sure that that project is as safe as possible for the residents of the city?

Well, I already explained that he gave a financial disincentive for them to have an accident, right? So he's charging for emergency services when they have a strike, because the emergency services are called out when they have a strike. So he's provided that, and that was effective, right? And I fully support that. That's an excellent way to get them to comply and to improve public safety.

Okay, I'll open it up. Thank you, Mr. Nijabar. Appreciate your comments and questions. Any other questions or comments on this? All right, go down to the end, and then we'll come to Mr. Noble. Okay.

I was going to ask the same question as Mr. Neugebauer, but I guess I'd like to redirect to Attorney Dean. Is what Mr. Neugebauer said correct? If we take the contract and Lumos reimburses us, are we on the hook if something blows up and someone gets hurt?

so thank you for um because i heard a lot of like words like liability contract and other things like that and it was making my skin crawl um so um i so first of all our authority comes from our ordinance our ordinance allows us to charge back anybody who works in our right-of-way who has been given a permit by us first inspection at our um which we do right now using um city employees is free, but then after that we have the right, if there's cost to us, to charge that back. And that's, I think, I don't want to speak for the mayor, but I know he became aware of the cost it was to us, the time that it was taking for our employees unusually so compared to others who are working in the right of way. And so I believe that's where this all kind of started from, is just enforcing that part of our ordinance. And I'm gonna get to your question, but I wanna handle a couple other things. My understanding is this is not particular to Lumos. We don't have a contract with Lumos, but we do have as our own ordinances. And it's going to be applied to anyone who works in our right of way. And that is particularly so with fiber optic companies who are coming through in making strikes, as Mr. Niederbauer said, for the benefit of the residents and the safety of the residents. I mean, I understand gas strikes may happen, but I don't think anybody here was comfortable with the thought that their own home could blow up. And so I frankly, I don't usually weigh in on this, but I frankly applaud the mayor for stepping up and multiple other communities throughout the county put a pause on digging until they got a better handle on it. And he mentioned Senator Weinstein, he's actually proposed legislation that would then make it. So we do have the authority to say how the digging should occur. So back to your question about whether or not we would have liability. First of all, this council has approved a three-year contract with QCI. It was one of our standard engineering contracts that you approved. And so they're already approved contractor by you. I'm sure that if there's something they do or don't do, that creates the liability, that would be their responsibility. So I guess I'd have to look a little bit more at the contract and think a little bit more about it, but I think ultimately who's causing the situation is who would be liable. And I would, especially since we're on the record, I would tend to say that is the contractor who's working in the right of way.

So you would say they have liability insurance already for their work. Yes. And that that would cover anything that occurred as a result of their negligence.

Which, again, what are they doing? They're inspecting. They're not doing the actual digging. Right.

Understood. Thank you, Ms. Dean. Mr. Noble.

Okay, I think there's a lot to unpack here, but I think my first question really is, what is the scope of what we are asking QCI to do? And I'd like that answer because we're using the term safety inspection. So let me couch this a little bit, what I'm interested in understanding. ARE WE TALKING ABOUT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE ONE PERSON WANDERING AROUND THE CITY MONITORING THIS OR IS IT MULTIPLE PEOPLE? IS IT EVERY KIND OF SITE? HOW IS THIS BEING, HOW ARE WE PROPOSING THAT QCI STAFF THIS SITUATION? And then secondly, from a safety standpoint, there's a lot that you can make note of if you saw these guys out there working, okay? So, you know, there's OSHA compliance issues. I mean, I see guys digging holes and they're down into the holes, you know, past their shoulders with no protection at all, which is completely not safe. in accordance with OSHA regulations. You can't dig a hole and jump down in a hole. You can't. You see stuff on the news all the time where people die in trench collapses. And so I think people have used the term the Wild West to describe kind of sort of how these guys go about doing business. So we have this OSHA compliance piece. And then the other piece that I've observed over time is just traffic control. We've had guys set up zones out there. We've got flaggers. And Having flagger zones, there's rules associated with that. I'm not convinced that the people have the correct safety gear or the training or anything else to do what they're doing out there some of the time. And so the real question related to that is, what are we going to really be monitoring? Are we going to be able to go out there and say, we don't think this is applying... in compliance with OSHA, stop, right? Or whatever. So I'd like that as a starting point. And then previously, we had a conversation. It's kind of a separate issue but related issue of the notion of a performance bond associated with these teams. And we thought we were going to be seeing something, and we never saw it. And so I know there's things in the background on that I'd like to hear about as well. And then thirdly, it's almost a note, we're kind of sort of focusing on gas here, but when these guys were digging in Robbins Trace, different group, it wasn't Lumos, it was the other group. We had gas hits, but it's not just gas, by the way. They severed a bunch of people's water lines to their homes, and so we had people out of water for days. They hit their own fiber optic cable and knocked everybody's internet out in the neighborhood or whatever for a while, and so so the act of directional drilling is an art okay and the longer you do it the more you've been involved with it the better you are at it okay and And so the inconvenience we have to people is not just gas. It's other things that happen that people get upset about. Life safety issues are one thing, but when you turn your faucet on or you try to turn the news on and you don't get the news, people, they get just as upset about that, right? And so there's a lot of things that can happen that are that... that doing these operations really impacts. So I'm going to stop there. I guess there's a laundry list mayor or whoever I'd like to try to understand.

Yeah, let me try to address your issues in order. First, I think it's important for council to know that in March of last year, Loomis started this work in the city. And at that time, I think we had never seen a project of this scope that basically is going from border to border, north to south, east to west, and is in front of everybody's house all over the city. And our engineering team knew that we were going to need to be involved to respond to resident concerns, to follow up on restoration issues, to be a liaison between the residents and the workers, that there's no way to simply as a city walk away and let residents fend for themselves, that that's not an option. It's never been and was never from day one. So what happened is Caleb Dick in our engineering department has been that person. And every week that this project has gone on, he has devoted between 10 and 30 hours of his time on our clock to be that liaison, to be that person, to do what we can to make sure they're being responsive, that they're being safe, that they're following our expectations. That has been from day one. During the course of that time, I asked my staff to send me the problems because I want to be aware of what our residents are going through and not speak about this theoretically, but because I'm talking to the residents every day. I'm talking to the contractors every day and seeing what's happening. So over the last year and a half, there have been gas strikes. and there were to our judgment too many and so the first thing we did was not rush into saying you have to have safety oversight but we began to have meetings and review with them what the problem was because it's very concerning to our residents particularly particularly giving our history with the nexus pipeline um and we felt it was our responsibility, and mine particularly as safety director, to review safety matters as these unsafe things were happening. So I tried lots of things. I tried the mean mayor thing, where it might be hard to believe I get mad and get mean, but with these guys I did because I felt I needed to based on what was happening. we did the thing that Councilman Neugebauer suggested. We said, you know what, we're gonna, we haven't done this before, but we're gonna bill you for fire runs when we have to deal with the gas problems. And we started doing that, and that did make some difference, and yet the strikes continued. And all along, what was happening in my judgment is that this independent company was making a judgment that they're getting the job done quickly was more important than safety. Then Twinsburg happens and makes it abundantly clear that there is a possibility of grave danger when these things happen. Now that's very rare, but it does happen. And that gave us the opportunity to step back and say, you know what really makes more sense is not to have our people being oversight and checking with them and making sure things are safe when it comes to construction, but having a professional who is experienced in horizontal drilling and the laying of this type of fiber on hand. If that's your concern to keep residents safe, that's really what you want. And I took that lead from Summit County, who is using QCI in this way. And Summit County is a little different animal because they weren't in neighborhoods. They were along major streets where I think the utility grid is less complex. But they were having really relatively few strikes. and what it ultimately came down to is having somebody with the professional experience to blow the whistle and slow the company down when it needed to be slowed down that based on everyone i talked to that other cities our senator, professionals in this industry, that that's what it came down to. Talking to Enbridge, who was struggling to keep up with marking the pipes because of man shortages, that really, speed was the key. And our personnel weren't getting through to them. It wasn't sufficient. And we have a track record of that for more than one year. So, This position, what I'm proposing to counsel is not something that I crooked up overnight. It's really based on our experience and coming to the conviction that if ultimately I want to keep the residents safe, this is the way to do it. And so that's what I'm asking council to do. It's ultimately not at our cost. I think that this will be the most effective way to slow them down, to require due care, and the most effective way to protect our residents, and that's why it's before you.

All right. Any other questions or comments? Mr. Mager.

Yeah. And I guess I'm just trying to wrap my head around this because Mr. Neuschmeyer said we're going to kind of get involved in their means or the method by which. Is that the case here? Are we saying you can't do it this way, you got to do it this way? It's more or less we're watching you do it. And if we see an issue, you're stopping or we're getting involved.

Well, they've agreed, for example, to hydro excavation. And they told us we've already moved in that direction. And that's a safer way to go. So they've agreed to that.

And that's not the machine in my neighborhood where they kept adding pipes and going underground. Or is that the machine that... Well, it's a... Can I... Do you mind?

Yeah. Yeah, please. So hydro excavation is when they actually use jet. They jet water into the ground to loosen it up. And then they have a vacuum and it sucks it up. So they're basically digging with water pressure.

This is what I saw where these pipes... Well, let me get to that.

So what they do is they try to... The utility company comes and marks where your, let's say your gas service comes to your house. They'll come mark that. And then the directional drilling company is required to expose that line. They can't just look at the mark and say, okay, we've got to avoid that. They're required to look at that line, expose it, and then drill by it by visually seeing that they're not hitting it. Okay? So... The Lumos was actually here with post hole diggers and doing those, exposing those utilities. They were using the shovel. And, you know, when you do that, the shovel could hit the very thing you're trying to protect. And so what the mayor is saying is... The other project he's referring to, Summit Connects, uses hydro excavation. The contractor just happens to use that method, and it's much safer because you don't have that metal shovel going into the ground and impacting things. The machine itself, the directional boring is... You know, it's about the size of a truck, the machine, and it has rods and it's basically spinning and drilling through underground and it drills by those all these utilities that are in the ground. And like I said, you're supposed to be able to see the utilities and you should see if you come in. They tracked ahead and they know if if there's going to be a conflict they can adjust right so the drilling is comes after they've done the exposing and The means to expose as the mayor is saying is hydro excavation That's the preferred route and that's the safer route and he is correct that that is a safer way to do it it just It's a more expensive process, but it's safer.

So the step two was, you know, Loomis looked at us and said, well, it's belts and suspenders to require a safety inspector. Basically, at the key moments, when making sure that... The lines are marked. I hate to say this, that it should be that basic, but roughly, I'm just going to throw out a round number, half the times that we have strikes are because the lines were not correctly marked, and half the times is because of inappropriate drilling. So at the time of marking, at the time of drilling, making sure there's eyes on the pipe and slowing the process down appropriately, because frankly, there's a rush on the industry and there are people are not, there's not adequate people to handle the job. So that those things in my experience now dealing with them for one year is what, where I rest in the conviction that I think this is the appropriate thing to do.

Yeah, and I think we had a council meeting. We had a Loomis representative kind of high up in the totem pole came up and said, hey, realize there's too many hits on these gas lines. We're slowing that down. Here's my direct number. I go, great, great to hear. Within 24 hours, they hit my mom's gas line in front of her house. Oh, my God. And then the Twinsburg thing happened. So I appreciate the administration, everything you're doing. I'm supporting this because, obviously, I think this extra set of eyes. But I do agree with Mr. Nushebar. We're not changing their means or methods. We're making sure they use the best method. We're having them switch to methods, but also just making sure that each step, the important steps along the way, that there's somebody putting eyes on it, either because it's getting too expensive or we don't have the personnel that has that expertise. It sounds like this company does.

So I'm okay with that. Thank you. All right, any other questions or comments? I'm seeing another revenue source for the city. We're going to make our finance committee meetings a pay-per-view event in the future because of all the excitement that we draw.

If I may, Mr. Humphrey.

Okay, Mr. Neugebauer.

So, yeah, I guess slowing down. slowing down work makes it more expensive, and it becomes more difficult to do business in your city. The potential for this is not limited to directional drilling. Anytime somebody puts a shovel in the ground, you have that option. In fact, if you go dig a flower bed, officially you're supposed to call 811, because if you penetrate the ground with a shovel, there's potential for a utility line to be there. So everybody should be aware. Call 811 before you plant your daisies. The reality is this isn't a directional drilling project. This is every contractor that does anything in the city, any project at all that involves putting a shovel in the ground has the same risk. I'm not sure even that the strike, and I don't even know if we know from Twinsburg if the strike was related to directional drilling, if it was related to potholing, or what the issue was. I don't think we have an answer. But I will tell you this. The problem is largely with the utility company's ability to understand what they have underground. Dominion is notorious for not knowing where their facilities are, and they have a number of reasons for it. mostly because they didn't take good records when they put it in the ground and then they're expected to mark so they send somebody out there who has basically a high school education and a piece of equipment making probably eighteen dollars an hour to locate these facilities when it's probably a lot more important than that and so that's what dominion chooses to do through a company called benchmark so then they mark the thing in the field and then It may or may not be correct. I don't know. Mr. Pickett, do you recall what's the requirement? Eighteen inches on either side is what you're expected. So the contractor goes out. He's he's nodding in affirmation in case you didn't see that on camera. He's so the contractor goes out there and they say, oh, we got it. We got a paint mark here. So they they used our post hole diggers and go dig down and try to find it. And it's not there. Well, the law says you have to go 18 inches on either side. So they expand their hole. They dig with that postal digger this way and this way, or if you're advanced and you use hydro excavation. They dig 18 inches, and then they're like, yeah, it's not here. We dug down, you know, a foot below where the directional boards, and it's not here. So what do we do? Let's drill, because it's not here. Well, they drill, and then they hit it, and it's 10 feet off of where Dominion said it was. So what's the answer? Well, the answer could be that you would tell them, you keep digging until you find it. Just keep digging across their yard until you find it. So eventually it's gonna be there. I've seen cases where it wasn't there, that they dug up the whole front yard because, and they never found it. But that's really the way to ensure public safety would be to dig the entire way. In fact, you may as well just put the drilling machine away Because the way Dominion marks, you can't use it much because you're going to have to dig across their front yard. And so that becomes another issue. So directional drilling was supposed to be a means of not impacting as much. So if I drill through a neighborhood, I don't hit Mr. Knapp's driveway and have to repair panels in his driveway. Not only is it unsightly, but it's expensive and it's an inconvenience. So I can drill under there and I don't have to disturb his driveway. But wait a minute. Maybe his gas line's under there. So what do I do? Well, I try to core a little hole, and then I go look for it, and it's, well, it's not there. Well, I drill another hole. It's not there. That's the business. Dominion has no idea where their stuff is. And then you talk to Dominion about putting in a directional drilling, because they want to put in gas lines the same method. And I guarantee you, they're not going to be sitting there saying, oh, yeah, we're going to pay the city to watch our drills. I guarantee you, they'll be the first one to say, we're not going to do that.

Mr. Neugebauer, I would agree it's a common problem. The thing that makes it uncommon, I think, in this situation is the scale of it because of all of the more directional drilling you have, the more different crews you have out, the more lines that you're putting in, the higher your incidence rate of a strike is going to be.

You're doing every street, every mile of road, right? Yes. It's a large-scale project. It's a large scale. There's no question. And if we had an engineer, as Mr. Mayor said, devoted 10 to 30 hours a week to ensuring safety in the public, it had no impact. Yet he's telling us by hiring some other firm that's going to have an impact. I just don't get it. I don't believe it.

I'd rather... Well, first of all, we're not spending the money. We're requiring the contractors spend it, and all they're going to do is amortize the cost over the next 50 years for those lines to be used. So from their perspective, the cost is minuscule. We're not paying for it, and I would rather as a council member say... I approve the use of those extra contractors, and boy, I'm glad we didn't have a strike versus I didn't approve those, and boy, I wish I had approved that so that that contractor maybe could have caught that. We're dealing with a lot of unanswerable questions, but I would rather be on the position of saying I made the requirements a little higher, I made the bar a little harder for them to get over to make sure that it was a little safer for the citizens in the community than not.

And I think just slowing them down, I think this person being there is going to slow them down. I think, to me, that's the most important. But I understand what you're saying, Mr. Neuschbauer.

Well, this is a first reading passage has been requested on this. So at the appropriate time, I'll make motions on 2026 R40. Moving right along. The second piece of legislation that the administration has requested first reading passage on is 2026 R41. This is a resolution authorizing the City of Green to enter into a building lease agreement with the Board of Education of the Green Local School District for the lease of a portion of the bus garage and storage facility on parcel 2817723 and declaring an emergency. And just to put this piece into context, we have another piece of legislation that the administration is also requesting first reading passage on that kind of goes hand in glove with this. So who from the administration wants to address this?

I will.

All right, thank you.

May it please the council, you may remember that we entered into a cooperative agreement with the school district April of 2025 for purposes of consolidating land and then building, we are calling it a school bus garage. I hope you go take a ride out there and take a look at it. It's actually not a school bus garage. It's a garage, and there's two buildings, but located close to the Greensburg Cemetery by Kleckner Park. So we consolidated that property into one parcel, and then the school district contracted to build two buildings there. One building will be... Exclusively used by the school district except for the bathrooms that will be public restrooms that will be available for Kleckner Park visitors And then there's another building that's exclusively ours the city's except for there's one bay that the school district will be using and so that's basically we had a requirement to enter into these and and pursuant to the cooperative agreement and they are completed and the school district and the city need to take occupancy. And so that was the reason for the first reading passage is because we need to make sure that they can move in in the next week or so. So that was the reason for requesting it. I don't know if there's a lot of questions about the building lease, but generally speaking, the term of the contract is 80 years because we don't expect that we're going to have, and there are ways to terminate if necessary, but we expect that it's going to be the lifespan of the building. The consideration is $1, so that's basically it. and then the city will be using, as I said, one building with the restrooms and won't generally be using the grounds that is depicted in your attachments, except that there is one area that they do want to be able to use to put material and equipment and other things. And that's depicted also. The color-coordinated map is really actually very helpful so that you can see, if you wanted to see that, what that looks like. There's general contract terms contained in here that I can answer any questions if anybody has any. And the utilities-wise, there are separate meters for the buildings. So the city will pay for its building and the school will pay for... the building that they are largely using. The city will be responsible for janitorial services for the restrooms since we will be the ones using those. There are a couple of restrooms that are for the school administration to use. Are we still cleaning those too? Are we cleaning all bathrooms?

Not theirs.

Not theirs, not the school's, just ours, okay? Sorry, there was a lot of negotiating last minute. I just couldn't remember. If there's any taxes or other things assessed, like maintenance and repairs, depending, we're using the same percentages that the council had already approved in the cooperative agreement, which is 75% to the school, 25% to the city, and... Is there anything else I think you need to know? Everybody has to obtain their own insurance related to their own personal property, and I believe they are maintaining the insurance for the building, and we maintain insurance for the grounds. We maintain the insurance for the grounds. There's two different leases, so I have to switch. Any questions? We will memorialize this with First Amendment to the Cooperative Agreement and then a Memorandum of Lease Agreement. That's the only thing that will actually get filed with the court to memorialize that. Otherwise, that's the terms of the lease. Thank you.

Director Deane, just so that people are reminded kind of how we got here, because I wasn't on council when this was entered into the cooperative agreement. So before this new building was built, and we have these offsetting leases, one a dollar for the land and the other a dollar for the building, kind of offsetting those, why was this built and what was the situation before this was built?

So the school had a dilapidated school bus garage, which I watched them tear down. It was kind of fun to watch that. And we needed more storage.

I think our storage facility.

We had a dilapidated storage facility. And so it was to consolidate efforts and save a ton of money. And the school district is able to avoid prevailing wage. and when um using um when they are building which we are not and so it was for us to join together save just a whole ton of money for all of us to work together

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that background. Pretty straightforward. Anybody have any questions or comments on this? Mr. Neutra?

Oh, sorry. I just wanted to add to Director Dean's comments. It wasn't a mutual agreement. One of the other things the schools needed is they needed property to be able to build a new garage. It looked at several, several properties. In the end, it came back to that property, so that's why they approached us. People are used to the buses going in and out of there. We had already reconfigured some things with the parking lot because of Kleckner Park. So it was a good joint effort to locate it in that area. We did have a, our building was poor as well. It was the original help me somebody ODOT building maybe before township days or was a township building. Very old, very run down, many issues in that building. So we're gonna get some storage out of it. We are gonna have an area for outdoor storage which was very important to us that will allow us to have some bins for gravel, those kind of things that we need. It's been a good partnership. We've worked hand-in-hand in it. I think the most brilliant thing was that we were able to incorporate public restrooms for Kleckner Park.

That we were going to need anyway.

Yeah, we were going to need anyway. So we kind of pushed really hard for that, and it did work out. So we're very happy that we'll have restrooms there.

Anyone who saw that property before all of this, like the state of the ground before this happened and before the new field... I mean, this is such an improvement for this area. It looks so much better.

What if some of you recall during COVID, we built two field, sorry, not COVID, after the pipeline issues, we built two fields temporarily. because we thought we might lose some fields. We ended up keeping those fields, which actually became like the catalyst to expand that park. And now we have the adaptive field, which is even better. So yeah, it's turning into a very nice park. We have a group, our leadership group is helping us going to build a pavilion. We got a grant to build a playground, not fully covered, but some of it covered. So it's going to become a real park here very soon. I mean, it really is a park already, but it's going to have some nice improvements when we're all done. Yeah.

All right, Mr. Nijaba.

I'll be brief. One of the conditions of that building, it didn't have sanitary sewer. And so our crews couldn't even like wash basin there. And the county was basically demanding that we connect it if you had running water to connect it to the sewer. So that was one. And it was. It was probably several hundred thousand dollars just to bring the sewer in. So I think both buildings had similar issues being old and under different rules, and it just made sense to collaborate and bring the sewer in for both uses.

Yeah, good point. Any questions or comments regarding this piece of legislation?

One question real quick. So we're going to talk about R42 as well. Are we discussing both at this point?

No, we'll talk about that separately. Thank you. Yeah. Committee, are you good with first reading passage on this?

Yes, sir, yes.

Okay.

Can I add one thing? I forgot to say the blessings in a backpack, that's where they're going. They're going into the school's building.

Okay, very good. Another good reason. All right, so at the appropriate time with first reading passage request, I'll make motions on 2026R41, a companion piece of legislation, 2026R42, resolution authorizing the City of Green to enter into a ground lease agreement with the Board of Education of the Green Local School District for a lease of the portion of the bus garage and storage facility on parcel 2817723 and declaring an emergency. This is also a $1 lease. Everything kind of applies from our prior discussion. So we'll open it up to questions and comments. Anybody on committee have any questions or comments on this? All right. We will go down to the end again. Mr. Brandenburg.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. I just had a couple of questions, and I think they are sort of related but probably unrelated. The cooperative agreement goes through 2057. I am just curious how we got to 2105 on this particular agreement.

The intent was just to make the lease as long as we thought the buildings would last.

Okay, life of the building, okay. And then the second question, it's sort of related, but section two talks about the initial term of this lease going through 2105. I don't see, well, and then section 15 is surrender, right, which says at the end of the lease, the city owns the building. So my question, did we consider putting in an automatic renewal provision, or to your point about it being end of life, we're just saying 80 years, we'll tear it down?

I wasn't worried about 80 years, I guess, like a renewal of an 80 years. I don't know if the building will still be there, but if it is, I guess somebody will enter into an agreement at that point. One thing I would like to point out, were you done, Mr. Vandenberg, with your questions? Yes.

Yes, that's all my question.

Thank you. So just the map just shows that in this instance, this is where the school carries more of the responsibility. So the parking lot where the buses will be, there's block heaters there, the fencing, the paving, the stripping, the patching, the parking stops, everything to do with their parking lot. That's the school's responsibility. That's kind of the meat of this agreement.

All right, any other questions or comments regarding this?

Again, committee, are you good with first reading passage? Yes, sir. Mr. Nijabower? Okay, so at the appropriate time, I'll make motions on 2026 R42. Any other items of older new business to come before the committee? Mr. Mayor, you had something, I believe, regarding the insurance savings that Director Goodrich talked to us about.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did want to mention to Council, and I'll be brief, but as you know, we have bandwidth systematically going through our different contracts, our different vendors, and looking for potential savings. And so we have sent our overall liability insurance coverage out to market through Director Shelly Goodrich's oversight and with her valuable assistance. The good news is that We ultimately got back several proposals. Our current carrier is selective. It came back at 293,871, which was the renewal quote. But Travelers, who is also through our current AG, came back at 232. So that is a savings of $61,377 less than our current carrier. and $80,000 less than budget. We have met with our agents studying the different insurance offerings. They are substantially similar. There is very little difference. We are very happy to announce that this is a way that we can make significant savings going forward. I want to publicly thank the finance team because they could have said, this is something we can put off until next year. but made room while wearing multiple hats and working really hard during a transition period with Rita to do this this year, and that's going to result in immediate savings for the city. So I'm happy to report that to council.

Excellent. Thank you, Mayor. Any other items of old or new business come before the committee? Then we will adjourn at 621.

Thank you, Mr. Humphrey. Our next committee to meet this evening is Environment and Parks, chaired by Mr. Neugebauer.

Thank you, Mr. President. We have nothing on the agenda this evening, no legislation. All members are present to do business. We have none, but the public service director asked to have the floor to talk about a couple of parks events. So, Director Carr.

So I know for many, many years there has been a request for us to be able to try to give more back to the community at the Raintree Golf Course and Event Center. So you have a flyer in front of you. This has gone out, was being pushed out today, and I told Raintree to go ahead and release it as well today. So we've worked with them and we are gonna have starting this weekend, which would be Sunday, August 2nd, I believe is Sunday. We will be starting our what's called a Sunday Funday program. So if you are a resident of Green, you will get 20% off your Green fees. If you have a tee time after one o'clock, and then you can also bring a child ages seven to 14 for free, as long as they're with a paying adult. So those are two programs that we're instilling to try to give back to the community. Another thing that will be coming out for RainTrue, probably in October, they're going to be doing an outing that will be a community-based outing. If you're a resident, you will get a discount on the outing fee, and all the money... I've got to be careful saying all. I think it will be all. I'll get a percentage to be sure. But that money that is raised for that outing will come back to the Green Foundation. So they wanted to do something also to give back to an organization here in Green. All you have to do is, when you go to the golf course, have a proof of residency, either your driver's license or utility bill. We have a slick system that we have put together with Raintree that they'll be able to verify the address. It took some doing. Our GIS people were brilliant of trying to figure this out because of all of our zip codes. So they will literally just enter your address. It'll come up valid, not valid, that you are truly a green resident. Because we do want to try to protect that if we can. Any questions about that program? Yes, Mr. State.

I would like to thank you because this has been something, as you've mentioned, we've talked about for years, having some type of resident discount, and this is definitely a step in the right direction. So thank you and thank RingTree for their hard work putting this together.

So someone did ask me when I came in today, oh, are you guys trying to drum up business for Sundays? Like, you know, is there a problem that we're not bringing enough people in? That is not a problem at Raintree. It is very difficult sometimes to get a tee time. It is a busy, busy place. And not that I don't want to give back to the residents. We certainly do. But this is not a desperation thing. We're doing very well in terms of our number of rounds out there. So we're happy about that.

In fact, you're not guaranteed to show up with your clubs and play. because it is busy, so you probably should call.

You absolutely should call and get a tee time.

Oh, get a tee time. It is busy.

It's your phone app, yeah.

Yeah. Did we have another discount for core members at Raintree also?

Yes, we already have a discount if you're a core member. That is 10% Monday through Thursday. So basically, if you're a core member and a resident, you can get all, so you can basically get a discount every day but Saturday.

Okay. Okay.

The core discount also includes the golf shop. So if you need to buy balls or a shirt or whatever, you get a discount there too. Okay.

Well, thank you for the update.

I have one more thing. Sorry. Of course. So the other event that I handed out is about the core. We do from time to time try to give back to our members. So we're having a member guest night, night at the carnival. It's going to be a carnival theme, very family friendly. There's going to be, you know, the old fashioned carnival games. There even may be a chance to throw a pie and maybe some administrators or mayor or maybe a council member's face if you want. So we're working that out. So it's going to be a fun night for our members. We're encouraging them to bring a guest if they haven't seen the Corps to check it out. We will also start our special renewal pricing for charter members that night. So if you remember our... Our fee for the core is $150. We had an introductory fee at 100, but now it's the normal fee of $150. If they renew starting in August and at this event, it'll be 125. And if they have a guest that night, we will also grant them that fee as well. So if you have somebody new you want to bring, they can get that discounted fee that night. That'll be the only time that that guest will be able to get that fee. So come out, join us, 5 to 8, Wednesday, August 12th. If you're a member now, you should have already started to be getting some alerts about it. There's going to be class demos, food, like I said, the carnival games, so a lot of fun things that night. So hopefully you can join us.

Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Hueschbauer. I know this isn't really the right spot to do it, but you mentioned the five zip codes. I was in Las Vegas this past weekend at a national retailer giving my address to ship something home, and I said Uniontown five times, and they could not find it. They said, is it green? I go, wow, that never happened. So now they're trying to pick up that it's got to be green.

Don't thank me. Thank the mayor.

I just want to state that. It was a national retailer. Now it's green. I can't say Uniontown.

Any other comments, questions? Just as a follow-up to the discount for golf, I've worked with several communities that have public golf courses, and not all communities do give resident discounts. But it was interesting, one of them gives a dollar off, and I asked them how they insured that their residents, and they're like, doesn't really matter, it's only a dollar. So I just thought that was interesting. You don't need to prove it, because who's going to say they're a resident for a $1 discount? But yeah, this is a way for our residents to get a little extra benefit from that wonderful facility. Any older new business come before committee before we adjourn? Okay, hearing none, we are adjourned at 628. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer. Our next committee to meet this evening is Public Safety, chaired by Mr. DeVitas.

Thank you, Mr. President. Myself, Mr. Humphrey, and Mr. Neuserbauer are all present for public safety tonight. We do have one item. It is on its third or fourth reading. Any fourth? 2026-R26AA, a resolution authorizing the City of Green to enter into a second amendment to the policing contract fiscal years 2024 to 2026 with the Summit County Sheriff to include flock safety cameras to enhance services within the City of Green and declaring an emergency. So this was introduced back in June. There have since been a few amendments. Before our long break we had in July, we did take the time to have some discussions amongst council For our law director, we were able to send whatever concerns we might have about this legislation to the sheriff's office or the Summit County. And they were willing to take a look at some of those concerns and address some and not agree with us on a few others. I'll get into that in a minute. So that's where we're at right now. So we do have the amended legislation reflects those changes. Just a brief synopsis. This is a two-year reimbursement contract with Summit County, reimbursing $84,000 for the operation of our flock cameras that are in the city right now. I believe there's 14 of them, right? And these are used to take snapshots of the license plate slash rear bumper area of cars as they pass in and out of the city. put into a database which can potentially flag for a criminal activity. This data is retained for 30 days at a time on a rolling calendar and is deleted after that 30-day period has expired. This data is retained within our sheriff's office and flock safety is the private entity that is the one providing the service. our sheriff's office uses to have this ability this tool in their toolbox so just looking at the amendments again this these were presented through our law director to the county i know i was one that put him for i don't know who else on this council submitted comments to her but reflecting some of the changes we were hoping to see from the sheriff's office slash county level that in my opinion would have made this a, I guess a package that was, had more safeguards with regards to privacy and data retention for our residents while still giving the sheriff's office the ability to use the tool. There is seven points that were added to this resolution. And I walked through those. The Sheriff's Office did agree with two and kind of three. But basically, one of the, I'll just start at the top. One of the changes requested was that a vehicle that is associated with some sort of flag in FLOC's, or the Sheriff's Office database for potential criminal activity can retain that retention period of 30 days for their data, but data and footage for all other people coming in and out of the city who may not have committed a crime should be deleted after 24 hours. Basically, the idea behind that was to protect the privacy and data about movements, comings and goings of just your daily passersby into our city while still giving the police department the ability to use this cameras as a tool if there is someone that came into our city with a amber alert, stolen car, or a warrant out for the arrest, things like that. The county denied agreeing on to that point. The second point was that data and footage should only be used as a tool where a notification has been issued flagging a vehicle for potential criminal activity. Otherwise, all restrictions to law enforcement activities in accordance with the Constitution of the United States apply. So that's kind of like the idea that anybody who is not already on a list for something like a warrant or a VAMBER alert, they would need a warrant to access that data. Number three, the county did not oblige to that statement. Number three, the county also didn't agree to this one. is in their contract that they have between Flock. Again, they're the ones that are doing the dealing with Flock Safety. We are just reimbursing, but we did make requests to some changes. So point three is that section 5.3 of the contract between Summit County and Flock Safety would have a line struck out that said that footage should not be released for the expanded purposes of Flock's good faith belief. but only when required to do so for law enforcement authorities, government officials, pursuant to lawful processes that are subject to the law and Constitution of the United States. My personal issue with that is that we are told by FLOC this is the customer's data, right, so the sheriff's office alone, but that little sentence right there gives them the ability on their end to share this data if they have a good faith belief to do so. I did not want that removed, or I did want that removed. The county did not agree. That may have been at the request of FLOC Safety's legal counsel. I don't know the inner workings of that. One thing they did agree to was that data and footage may not be retained or released for revenue generating purposes. They also agreed that the county will comply with their own standard operating procedure or their policy which is number 4.8.0, topic license plate reader. So that gives us in writing that they're governed by an internal policy on how to use this. They also agreed to that any changes in the contract between the county and flock or changes in the use as a result of technological developments must be timely reported by the county to the city. So that keeps us in the loop if there's any sort of technological changes with how AI analyzes the vehicles or if it had expanded features such as detecting fronts of vehicles or facial recognition, whatever, anything like that, that we would be made aware of that. And then the last point that we requested that was denied by the county is that should an assignment of the contract occur where FLOX sells or assigns this contract to a successor vendor, the city shall have the right to terminate this contract. They did not agree to that. The county does have the right to do that, but we were requesting specifically as a city that if any change in ownership happened to Flock, that we would have the ability to cancel the contract on our end. That about sums it up. So I know it's a lot of changes, a lot of things discussed. I believe we're going to have plenty of discussion tonight. I know we have Chief Brown from the Sheriff's Office here, as well as the other members who were here a couple meetings ago discussing this matter. Before we get into that, we do have one signed in from the public. I'd like to give them a minute to talk because they've waited an hour and a half. Seamus Lee, if you don't mind stepping forward, say your name and address and feel free to comment.

THANK YOU, MR. DEVITAS. I AM SHAMUS LEE. I LIVE AT 1150 EVERBRIGHT DRIVE, WARD 3, GREEN OHIO, OBVIOUSLY. GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL MEMBERS, GOOD EVENING, COMMITTEE MEMBERS. PLEASURE TO BE HERE AGAIN. I'M SURE SOME OF YOU MAY REMEMBER ABOUT A MONTH AGO I CAME HERE TO SPEAK OUT AGAINST FLOX SYSTEMS AND I'M HERE ONCE AGAIN TO DO THAT AND ENCOURAGE YOU TO VOTE AGAINST FUNDING THEIR CONTRACT FOR THE NEXT FISCAL YEAR. While I may not have any fancy presentations or great talking skills like the FLOC members who came last time, I have been spending this time away researching some issues with FLOC and perhaps if you don't mind, I would like to enlighten you on some of the details I found. I've been using a website called library.kansas.watch. So if any of you are curious to look this up afterwards or just on your leisure, I encourage you to do so because they have been tracking the issues with flock and some other ALPRs for the past few years. So I want to start with a rather famous misuse of flock that happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin back in May when a second former police officer was arrested for stalking an ex-girlfriend using flock cameras. Now I do say a second police officer because a nearly identical case happened back in February again in Milwaukee. Now while we could argue that maybe Milwaukee, Wisconsin has their own issues with their police department, this is far from the first case that has happened with Flockhammer when it comes to stalking and police departments. In February, an ex-Riverside County Sheriff in California was sentenced to six years in prison after using flock systems to stalk his former fiance after their split in summer of 2024. In March, again in Wisconsin, a Kenosha County Sheriff resigned after using 16 flock cameras to stalk a co-worker of whom he had a relationship with. In Monroe County, Florida, the same month, the sheriff used flock systems in an attempt to manufacture a traffic stop so he could meet up with the stranger he met on the set of the Apple TV show Bad Monkey, unsolicited. April in Jerome County, Idaho, a sheriff searched his white vehicle more than 700 times and flocked systems within four months. Bonner Springs, Kansas, an ex-detective used flock systems to stalk his spouse. And finally, in Thornton, Colorado, the police are still investing a case where an unidentified flock count had searched their community's cameras more than 19,000 times over the past two years. I can go on, but again, I know your time is valuable, so I won't spend more of that. Again, I used a website called library.kansas.watch if you care to search that up. Now another point I want to touch on is that, since I feel it was an important topic of discussion during the last meeting, is Flock system security. Flock obviously handles a lot of sensitive information and privacy. And by being an ALPR company, one would expect them to guard that data pretty personally and diligently. However, that is not the case I found. From my source, I'm using an investigation committed by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, who actually found a lot of areas in flock systems that are actually very lacking and cause for concern. In this investigation, it was found that a secure multi-factor authentication was not required to be used by law enforcement, making officers' accounts vulnerable. While this is concerning by itself, it's made worse through the use of FLOC's, quote, national lookup tool. It's a tool that law enforcement can enroll in that allows all of their cameras data to be searched by any other flock accounts that are also signed onto the tool. It's estimated that about 75% of agencies in the US are signed onto this tool. And because of that, any outside threats who could possibly gain access to any Flock account enrolled in this tool can then gain access to all of the cameras signed onto this tool therein. This includes hackers, foreign spies, criminals, anyone with the technical savvy. Furthermore, Flock offers but does not require MFA, which is a reliably safe cybersecurity practice, set to be one of the best measures against cyber attacks. Instead, they offer a system in which a code is sent to phones via text messages. If you ever need to sign into Amazon, you know what this is. However, what isn't widely known, at least the flock, is that this system is extremely vulnerable to phishing and interception, something Senator Wyden notes is against FCC and FTC requirements and is an illegal business practice. Because of this, billions of photos of Americans' license plates can be accessed by unknown personnel at any time. In fact, Wyden's office purportedly received dozens of screenshots from security researcher Ben Jordan of a dark web Russian forum selling Flock accounts. Furthermore, he also revealed at least 35 Flock passwords had been stolen at the time of the investigation about a year ago, placing the data of millions of Americans at risk just because of poor security measures and because they happened to pass in front of the cameras. If you ask me, that's a bit concerning. Now I understand my conversation here went a bit beyond the boundaries of Green and Summit County and perhaps some of you are more concerned with the safety of our city, which I understand. However, I said it before and I'll say it again, Flock is a safety risk for our city and the people living here. While many might believe that because they haven't committed a crime that they have nothing to worry about, the fact matters that regardless of whether or not you are a criminal, the fact you have passed through the camera makes you vulnerable. It certainly doesn't help that the systems are ran through the county and not green, which just adds another layer of ambiguity. Now, I must reiterate, I do not want to make law enforcement's job more difficult, and I'm not trying to disrespect anybody here who has used the system before. But as a citizen of this community, I am obliged to call out obvious risks to not only our privileges as green residents, but also our constitutional rights, as elaborated on in the Fourth Amendment, as to our right to privacy. For a system that we have no choice in being a part of, Flock is a dangerous and reckless company to have so involved with our streets. Because of this, I humbly request that the council votes against renewing our contract with them. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Lee. Appreciate your input. Is there anybody else from the public that would like to make a comment before Sheriff's Office comes up? All right, hearing none, I will give our sheriff's office some time to speak on this matter, and then we'll discuss it amongst committee and council.

Chief Brown, Captain McCutcheon, and Sergeant Hostetler. I missed the last meeting when this was discussed, so I know there were some questions I guess they didn't have answers to or what was going on with the flock system. The county is the executive's office. It's not the Summit County Sheriff's Office. The contract was set up through the City of Green through them. That's how it was set up when we did the contract, or it would have went through the City of Green. So there is no deceit between the two. We've been dealing with lease set through legal and with FLOX contracts. So there is no hiding or anything whatsoever between the sheriff's office or the executive's office and the city of Green. I didn't think that I implied that. I mean, I said we had open, we had discussions. Well, about what we can and can't do with the contract and the discussions on what we would or wouldn't do with the contract. So the 24-hour retention for law enforcement is not enough. We need the 30 days for investigative purposes. It is a very useful tool for law enforcement. If you cut the political out of it, for law enforcement alone, it is a huge tool. It's a deterrent. It is a very useful tool for tracking criminals, anything coming into the City of Green, anything that we enter leaving the City of Green. We've utilized it daily. I do rely, I understand the political aspect and the information is ours. We don't sell it. We don't do anything with it. It is destroyed after 30 days. Um, unless they find out something any different. I know that's some philosophies, but that has not been factual yet. Um, but there are other districts that we're patrolling that also want the flock systems. They're looking into adding flock. There's either grants, which are difficult now to get, or they don't have the funding for them, but they are also looking at utilizing them in other districts. But as it pertains to green, it's been a very useful tool for the Sheriff's Office. Obviously, that's not our choice. It's yours. You're paying for it. It is a tool that you're enabling us to use. But again, as for law enforcement itself, it is extremely useful for law enforcement.

I don't want to cut aside everything else, but... Like I said, last month... Can you use the microphone?

Thank you. Sorry.

And just like I said last month, just to emphasize, it's an investigative tool that we use for public safety. That's all the sheriff's office does with it, and it works extremely well. As you can see, some of the things that have been in the media, missing elderly folks, crime solved. It's a great help to us. I'll just say that. And we have the sheriff's office policies that we go by. And I think you have seen the copy of that. But it's audited. We use it strictly. under our policy, lawfully, ethically, in an appropriate manner, if an individual is found to not be doing this, they are disciplined internally or criminally, as anyone else would, just as they would with the LEAD system or any other system we use.

Captain McCutcheon, does your policy have safeguards within it to prevent the potential abuse by one person. Obviously, we all have trust in you guys as our, you know, Sheriff's Office deputies, but, you know, a bad one gets in there every once in a while across the nation, clearly. So, I just, what are our internal policies or guidelines that can prevent that from happening? Because, you know, we don't want to just be reactionary in case something horrible happened, right?

So, the deputies are trained on what they can and cannot do with the system by Sergeant Hosteller and his Once they have access, they have to fill in the drop-down boxes as to why they are searching for a specific plate or person or what have you. Sorry. Monthly audits are done for the hot list. Annual audits are done as well. The hot lists are basically the searches that a deputy would do.

For a license plate if they're looking for it, they put it on their hot list so they get alerts for it So I know hot lists were a big topic the last time we were here obviously we sat down and reviewed our policy after we spoke and Made some significant changes to it One of those was that The hot list now, a deputy can only add a plate to their hot list and set it for an expiration at seven days. FLOC actually allows you to have no expiration on it. Our policy placed that at seven days. If it's anything that goes beyond seven days, it has to be discussed with an administrator, and one of us will make that determination on whether or not the information is valuable enough to leave that active on the hot list. I think I told you before that myself, Jenna Terry, who is our analyst, she's another administrator, we're the two that basically are in it the most as far as the administrators go. Flock has set up the notifications for that. And honestly, you asked if we'd seen that before as far as the safeguards for the plates and stuff. And until we went back in and looked at it, we had not seen it before. Jenna's an analyst. She works with our drug unit, so she runs a lot of plates. So I actually saw my first... notification with her, but obviously we know what that is. It's just for the drug unit and stuff like that. But to prove to you that that does work from Flock's change on their platform. Actually, just as of today, Flock sent out notifications to its customers. The hot lists have been changed, so on August 18th of 2026, Any hot list that is set to a no expiration, FLOC will automatically change that to expire a year from that date. However, I've already gone in and deleted the hot list that were a year or two old. I've already changed all the expiration dates on our hot list. And that's definitely something that we are monitoring much closer. So it was a valid point. I'm sorry, what else was your question? I kind of lost track there.

internal safeguards to prevent abuse.

Yeah, so hot lists are reviewed every month on a monthly basis, and then an internal and an external audit is done every year. We recently just had our first public records request from a... I don't even know what I want to call it. It's an organization, I guess, for the records from FLOC. So Jenna and I, mostly Jenna, worked pretty hard at pulling what they wanted, and it is... a huge file. So it's a lot to do and try to get out to them. But we're working with our records department to try to get all of that and maintain all of the public records laws as well.

But... But it is also an investigative tool. It is not just because it's a hot list people are getting stopped and arrested. It is just an investigative tool. But with that, I can tell you just over the month of July through the Fugitive Task Force, we picked up several murder warrants just off that flock system alone. So it is the city of Green, but also the surrounding agencies also have it, which is extremely helpful.

One of the things you had mentioned before, Mr. DeVuze, was that people could... Like we could essentially track a vehicle through the city using all of our fly cameras. And I wanna make sure that it's clear that you have to have a reason, right? You can't just go in and search. I can go in and see, I can check a camera and see what vehicles went through that camera. But to search the vehicle and to search it across the city and all of that stuff, you have to be able to put in a reason, They have a search reason, they have an investigation type. Flock makes you put all of that in. You can't even search that anymore without it. You used to be able to just type in investigation and it would let you go. Now they have a drop-down menu, so there's requirements that they've added to safeguard that as well. It's not as if I can see you hit the camera know 619 and mason road and then track you all the way through the city that's that's not how it works that's not what it's for um i know that you had some some concerns about privacy and i know through some other research and talking to other people too there's a magnitude of case law all the way up to the supreme court on public roadways and the right to privacy on public access roads and stuff like that so i'm sure all of the lawyers are very well aware of all of that much more than i am so i think flock kind of falls into that area i think there's just a lot of noise with it right now across the country because people don't have an understanding of it they don't really know what it is it's not a camera to watch people it's literally just capturing the license plate we have to have the reasons to search it there's got to be a legitimate law enforcement reason um you know like anything else I believe his name's Mr. Lee, is that correct? Like anything else that we have, any other tools, your cell phones, computers, whatever, you don't need flock to violate somebody's privacy, right to privacy, right? You can do it so many other ways. You can find out stuff about people so many other ways. If you own a home, it's on the county website. I mean, you carry a cell phone. I think you pointed it out before, Mr. Humphrey. You got a cell phone, people can hack it. People can get in there. Doesn't matter what you got anymore. possibilities that you know seems to be even across the board I mean I appreciate his efforts and what he he's trying to do here I just think that you know there there's further education that needs to be made to the public as far as what they are and what we use them for and and the good that comes with them

So was it Flock's change or your own internal change that makes you put a qualifying reason as to why you're searching the data? So that was a platform change. That was Flock. And every agency across America has to do that now? Yes. If you have Flock, you have to have the search reasons. Okay.

We added, and actually, according to what they brought out with today, as far as the hot list and all of that, the no expiration in our policy and the way I've started to instruct the deputies, we don't do that. That's not even in there anymore. There's really, short of a significant type murder situation or some sort of criminal case without any type of, they can't do it without any type of supervisor approval to do that. so Thankfully we haven't had any of those issues We also haven't had any issues with anybody abusing it stalking whatever I mean We've had police officers across the country stalk exes all the time that never even had flying before Flock is such a concern here, but You know the city has cameras All the roundabouts have cameras. The city has cameras all over the place, which we have access to. So the public isn't squawking about those, which I think are probably more intrusive than what the flock cameras are.

So I guess it's good to know that your department has internal checks and balances. And I applaud you all for the effort in doing so. And I do appreciate I got the policy or SOG or whatever and was able to review that. I do appreciate all you guys are doing. I guess my concern still stems from that just out of principle, this data is still there. It's being collected. It gives not only a pinpoint, a snapshot of your location, but that comprehensive list, if in the wrong hands, could be used abusively, I guess, or to some criminal extent, if there's a data breach, right? If somehow China, Russia, or some other entity got the data, right? I mean, of course, anything's a potential risk for security data breach, but I do think it's very significant data. I know with my schedule, there's a lot of If someone knew my schedule, it could put my family at risk. If someone knew the whereabouts with our airports and military bases, it could put things at risk with national security. So just the fact that the data exists to me is a potential for risk. I 100% understand how it's a tool, a beneficial tool for the law enforcement agency. I guess my only wish is to have it be as safeguarded as possible, to have as many guardrails up as possible. I know that might make your job harder. That's why I asked for certain things that I asked for, such as having a reduced retention period for people who aren't on some criminal watch list or whatever you might call it, hot list. Just to protect the agency, the privacy of people who just happen to be passing by. Because I do understand having that benefit of being notified, hey, this guy's got an Amber Alert out for him. He's in our city. Let's do something, right? But it's just the idea of maintaining this data for this 30-day period where it can start to show significant patterns in people's life that I think is where it starts to become a little bit more of a gray area. And speaking of case law and I know Mr. Mager might not agree with me here. I guess I'm just a layperson, not a lawyer. But I have seen some stuff that I feel like could potentially view flock and how they're retaining data as starting to be in that gray area of a privacy issue. And you talked about cell phones and the data that's associated with that, right? There has been recent case law, I think one was just last month, Chartree v. United States, established law enforcement access to historical geofence location data from third parties, which could be on your cell phone, is a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant, even if the device user has given geofence consent. So while they talk about there's no expectation of privacy on public roads, there have been some cases that show A single snapshot or someone taking a picture of a car going by is a lot different than having enough data to have patterns of life or patterns of military assets coming through, things that aren't just a brief snapshot. There's a lot that can be drawn from things like patterns and timings of things. There was a person in South Carolina who put a records request in for photos of his own vehicle. told by officials that it's a Fourth Amendment privacy infringement because, explicitly they said, distinguishing a single observation of a vehicle on a public roadway from a compilation of numerous observations into a searchable database that creates a detailed record of a person's movements, associations, and activities. Disclosure of those such compilations does undermine privacy interests, and that's coming from South Carolina directly. So that's kind of where it gets into it for me. That's why I really want to protect just your daily people coming in and out of the city. And I know that it does give you a nice investigative portfolio, and I want to make your guys' job as easy as possible. I just have a lot of personal interest in seeing this as safeguarded as possible, especially while we're waiting for the state to do something about it. I think at some point they will. You have some states on the East Coast that have put in very restrictive... qualifications for data. I guess one question I have for all y'all is Flock advertises a 99% success rate. So I just plugged in real quick on Google how many cameras there are, how many photos are taken a day, and I don't even know when this data was from, but the number that spewed out was 660 million photos are taken by automated license plate readers daily. So I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, well, that's 6.6 million errors every single day. Now, you know, it's great that most of the time, you know, my license plate, if it's misread, doesn't lead the law enforcement agency to think that I've stolen my car and taken me out. But this has happened. We have, you know, stories across the nations where someone's pulled over in a parking lot and held it at gunpoint by law enforcement because the flock system mistagged them for someone who stole a car, right? So I don't know, what do you guys have to say about that with the success rate? I feel like it needs to be 99.999, but I mean, I guess law enforcement agencies can never be 100% perfect, right? So I understand that, but.

Well, I was. Sorry, go ahead.

We wouldn't do a stolen vehicle off of a flock hit. That wouldn't be entered like that. That would be through our NCICR leads. Again, that would be an investigative tool. So that we wouldn't do. I mean, I know agencies are different throughout the country, but, yeah, we wouldn't do a hard stop like that on only a flock hit. That would have to come through dispatch. That's what I was going to say.

I mean, generally, we're not going to pull somebody over at gunpoint based off of a flock hit. But flock does not take the human element out of it. It doesn't take the officer out of it. It doesn't take the deputy out of it. They still have to do their due diligence, right? Like, whoever the vehicle, you know, if the plate is hitting with a warrant, that warrant's on somebody, right? So you have to... visually observe whether or not that person's in that car. Sort of the same principle along with a DUS. If we just run somebody through our Tyler system in Leeds and it comes up that you're suspended, the car belongs to you, you're suspended, but I can clearly see that it's the mayor driving your car and not you, then I don't have PC to make that stop. I have to be able to clearly say that it's you. So FLOC does not take the human element out of it. It is tied in with NCIC, so that's where some of the stuff comes from, but again, the deputies have to visually observe and do their due diligence before making the stop.

So, yeah, of course, it comes down to the person, but it could, I guess, potentially lead to that. But I know what you're saying.

Well, I mean, I think we could sit here and say that anything could potentially lead to anything, right? Like, we're playing a bunch of what is here. I mean, I think everybody in the room has social media. I mean, if you've got Snapchat, your friends can track you, right? Like, there's apps out there. There's all sorts of things across the internet that people can get to track you. It's just whether or not we have the policy in place to protect it the best that we do. And I think we do. I think speaking to your 24-hour thing and what the chief said earlier, it's not feasible. I mean, if you, let's just, I don't know, let's say your car is broken into and you live somewhere nearby where the flock cameras would be. You want answers, right? You want to know who did it. You want to know who stole the stuff out of your car, right? This is just a simple thing. Flock is one of those tools that we can go and we can look for specific cars that were in that area. I mean, we did it with a Cuyahoga Falls councilwoman when her son was in a crash on 77. Like, she wanted answers. Flock gave us six cars that matched the description vaguely. We sent the deputy on the chase. He went and looked and he found all the cars that he could find that matched. And the last one, sure enough, it was the guy that did it and he owned it. And it was just that simple. But again, he didn't approach the guy and, you know, it was a knock on the door and be like, hey, this is what we're doing. Are you willing to talk to us? He was.

And a lot of that's utilized by our detective bureau also, because all our crimes aren't reported right when they happen. Sometimes it's a week or two or three later, and once they start gathering that information, they can go back and they can backtrack to that date, that time, that incident that it happened. So patrol's not necessarily using it as much as the detective bureau and narcotics divisions are using the backtrack of the 30 days for past.

I mentioned it before. We used it for the city. People caused damage to city property. And the roundabouts, people drive through the roundabouts, whatever. We've gotten, we've used Flock for that. We've used the city cameras to find out the vehicles. And then we go to Flock to find the plate to figure out who it was. We send a deputy on to Canton, cite the guy. that gives the city the the recourse for restitution to replace fix the damage i mean it's not everybody's so hype on tracking people and violating rights like that's not what it's used for at all mr chairman can i ask a question that's kind of relevant to something that's just said so so it seems to me if we if we decrease to 24 hours from 30 days

what we do is preserve the burden on privacy while taking away the benefit from law enforcement to use the information that's burdened the privacy in the first place. So it seems to me to do that is to keep the burden but to take away the benefit. So all of this is a weighing function. You're weighing, is there a privacy issue involved? Yes, there's a privacy issue involved. There's a privacy issue involved with my cell phone. There's a privacy issue involved with your ring camera. There's a privacy issue involved with your Tesla when I'm walking past it and it's taking my picture. There's a privacy issue with a lot of things. The question is, is there a benefit to the burden of the privacy issue? And the benefit is that we can assist law enforcement to be able to help them to solve cases, to keep us safe, wait against the burden of the privacy issues with the protection of the U.S. Constitution behind it. To me, none of this happens in a vacuum. So if information is used against you that is ultimately incorrect, somebody made a wrong assumption, they did a wrong trace, they used the information improperly, not only are you going to be protected by the U.S. Constitution, but also you're going to have a civil lawsuit that you can file because somebody misused the information. So I think that the protections are there. So I think it's weighing the benefits and the burdens, and if we take away the ability to use it from a detective function, we've burdened the public without giving them any benefit in return.

So I guess my only delineation would be, like, you're Tesla, you're opting to have that thing, and I don't know if it's a camera you can turn off or whatever, but you're consenting to those images being taken of you. And I guess you could argue by going on a public road where you're consenting to images being taken of you.

If it's not my Tesla, I don't. So Tesla has a function that if I bump into it, a camera, if you have this function set on your vehicle, that camera can film me and say, oh, this is the guy that bumped into it. I don't consent to that, right? I bumped into the Tesla. It takes my picture. I go to the ring camera. If you have the ring door plan, It's taking your video when you go up there. So when I was campaigning, I probably had my video taken 5,000 times. So I didn't consent to that, but I went to the door.

Just be careful. There's private versus public. We're talking about a public, a government entity collecting the data, not a private citizen. There's no... 1983 action against a private citizen for taking your privacy. We're talking about a government entity having information. That's correct. That's not apples and apples.

But it is to the extent that if something happens in my neighborhood... A detective from the Summit County Sheriff's Department is going to show up and go to everybody with ring door cameras.

And that person has the ability to give it to them. They do. But I'm saying the government has this power, and that's what's protecting the Constitution, not a private citizen. If they come to my house, I just had an incident at my house where somebody got pulled over. I think he stole three cars. Ended up in my neighborhood. Cops came. I gave them my footage. I had that ability to do it. I could say no. But it's not the government has the control here is what I'm trying to say. That's not apples and apples with your situation.

That's the same thing that happens when if you had everywhere there was a flock camera, you had somebody at an intersection recording license plates. I'm not saying this could ever happen.

Which can happen. They do have that technology in police cars, cruisers. They have scanners. When they're driving down, I don't know if you guys have it in your police cars. If you're driving through a parking lot, they have scanners that scans every license plate. I'm just saying that's government.

LPRs have been around for a long time. We used to have agencies, including ours years ago, used to have them on the trunks of their cars. You could see them sitting right there. But there were issues with street signs and everything else, so they got rid of them.

So how does one party state? I can record anybody. If I'm in a public, I can record everybody if I'm in public. And that's different from what we're talking about here. This is government collecting the information. I don't disagree with you. I agree there's a benefit or a tool. I just want to be careful not saying, hey, we already have that ability with your friends tracking on Snapchat or whatever. That's private citizens. You could do that. That's your choice. I'm saying that's different here when the government's collecting information.

Yeah, but it's one step different, I think, than what you're saying because the government, through the police agency... can show up to a homeowner who's not involved in any of this and they say, can we see your footage? You don't have to give it to them. You don't have to give it to them, but what incentive do I have as a homeowner to say, I don't want you to solve a crime in my neighborhood. I know, but this is your choice, right? It is.

You don't have that choice here is what I'm trying to say. And Mr. Humphrey, I would say also to go back to that South Carolina where the guy requested his data about his own comings and goings and they said, Exactly. The Tesla takes one picture of you, right? That person's not parking their Tesla at every intersection on your route on the way to work and taking a picture of you and able to determine when you're gone and when you're back home and things like that. Just be careful with that case.

That case is government action, not private. You've got to separate the two. There's private action. Of course.

I'm just saying that whole idea of one picture versus a pattern of movement.

But who's collecting data? The private system, there is no protections constitutionally for private systems. I guess another private system. This is government-only interaction. So you've got to be very careful when you use that analogy. And now it's a warrant issue because the geofencing you can track, they have to have a warrant. That case talks about that having to have a warrant. If they have a warrant, they can do that.

I'm not talking about the geofencing warrant. I'm just talking about when a guy specifically asked for his own pictures of his own car. But I understand the law enforcement agency is different than that.

And Mr. McGregor, I think we're agreeing that because there's a government action there, there's a heightened constitutional protection that we have, which is a safeguard against the abuse of the government entity of misusing that information. And there's a right of redress if there is a misuse of that information. A hundred percent. I think we're saying the same

I'm saying if I give my ring doorbell to police officers, no citizen can sue me for giving information.

And even if you don't want to, we can always go get a subpoena search warrant.

And that's a process, right? Can I ask a couple questions? I don't mean to hijack you. So I see this as a valuable tool. Don't get me wrong. I just want to make sure we're very clear on the distinction here. My issues with the contract, and I always go back to this contract, and Director Dean, what's attached to our agenda is the contract with these addendums, one through seven. And Mr. DeVitas went through and said, hey, they didn't agree to this, they didn't agree to this. What in our legislation shows what they did agree to? Because what this shows me is what we asked for. But we didn't get any of this.

We received an email from...

I know, but it's not attached to our... So if we vote on this tonight, this is actually wrong. Yeah, it would have to be amended on the floor or brought next meeting. So my biggest issue...

Wait a minute. Let me make sure we're clear. So... I wrote this, these amendments, based upon what council gave to me, and I told the county, I have no idea if this council even agrees to all of this, but I'm throwing it all out there, what I've been asked to do, okay? They wrote back and crossed out everything they don't agree with, with us. So this section 5.3 where we'd asked for making sure that only when legally required to do so by law enforcement authorities, blah, blah, blah, blah, subject to the laws and constitution of the United States of America, that's because you guys were saying to me you're worried what if China comes in and asks for it, for example, right? So they added their own sentence or two to the contract they have with Flock, which it's in that email that I sent around to everybody, but it has nothing to do with our contract. These are terms and conditions for us. These are things they decided, the county decided, oh, that's actually a good idea, and told Flock they wanted. They added that, and then they also asked the thing that you asked for about the assignment, if it's assigned to a subsequent vendor, the county can cancel or terminate the contract. That doesn't mean we can.

Yeah, so I guess, again, I'm not saying you did anything wrong. No, I was trying to make sure we're clear. And the seven things we said, I don't agree with all seven. I agree with the things I suggested, and Mr. Diaz has his own. I think council probably falls somewhere in between on any one of these issues. But what's attached here was what our wish list was, which isn't really what we got. And what I guess we're assuming, if we're going to take a vote on this tonight, there's going to be some kind of amendment that incorporates with the

This is it. Like what I suppose, I guess, I'm sorry. Maybe I'm not being clear. Maybe I'm not following you. So what this email that we're all following, maybe I'm not, maybe, does everybody have the email?

But is the email the legitimate record or is it what's attached to our agenda? What is attached?

Yes. So I guess we're going to have to, this is where I don't know. This is what I said. I don't know. I don't know what you guys are going to do. You might all reject it, except for Clark, right? He was the chairman of the committee, so that's what I used. But you guys might all reject it and say, no, we want all the amendments stricken. So you have to tell me what you want.

Okay. No, I appreciate it. I was confused because I saw it and I was like, oh, this is what I wanted. And then I realized, I saw the email and I was like, this is different than what the email said.

Right.

So I guess if we do take a vote, what the county is willing to give us is something we're going to have to eventually vote on, which means this has to be amended and changed.

Yes.

So my biggest issue, and it's been an issue the whole time, is... You know, if the company is sold or assigned to somebody else, the county wants out, but now we don't get out. And here's the difference. Counties got different interests than we do. I mean, they offer a different budget, different needs. If somebody comes in and says, hey, we're buying these contracts, don't get out, we'll give you a million bucks to fund some kind of program with the county, they're not going to back out. So, you know, for that reason alone, I will not support this. If the county wants out, if there's a successor or a new person that comes in and buys this contract, whether it's Amazon, whoever, We have to have the same rights as the county. And that alone, I will not support this legislation. I know that it's not the sheriff. I know you guys are negotiating. It's the county. So I don't know if we all have to sit down and say, listen, county.

If you guys said the contract's violated, we want to end the contract, they would end the contract. You're paying for the contract. This is just the reimbursement agreement.

The Summit County has their own agreement with FLOC of how they're going to operate, right? They tell you, we're going to pay you back, and we're just hoping you guys hear our requests. Yeah, that's how that was set up, correct.

Yeah. I'm not saying you guys did anything wrong. It's not your fault. Yeah, absolutely. I'm saying the counties say, oh, that's a good idea, city. We want that, but we're not going to give you the same rights we want now.

Well, the county's not going to pay to keep it in green and not pay for it to keep it anywhere else in some counties.

Once we approve it to your contract, we're on the hook. We can shut them down, but we've still got to pay for it, even though we don't use them. How long is it? I'm sorry, Lisa. Director Dean. Two years. How long? Two years? Two years. So we're committing ourselves to two years. We don't have an out if they sell this to somebody else. Only if the county does. Well, if the county doesn't, I mean, they're negotiating it, I'm assuming. They want that in their contracts.

I mean, they talked with Flock, and they have an out, I believe.

We don't. And if there's any technological changes, right, they have to go to the county, and the county has the ability to approve or disapprove those. Then they just tell us about it. We don't have a right to say, hey, we don't want that technology in our thing, right? So there's two things that I was very adamant that I won this contract, and I appreciate Dr. Dean carrying the torch. And maybe Dr. Dean doesn't agree with us, but she's doing her duty, which is this is what the council wants. And the county made it very clear, that's a great idea, city, but we're doing it just for us, not you guys. And that, to me, is my biggest issue.

Mr. Chairman? Mr. Humphrey, I wonder if an easier way to approach this, because this is going to get very confusing very quickly, especially if you try to amend and there's disagreement among the council members in terms of the amendments. Would it be a better way to go that at our next meeting, whatever the contract that the administration wants to forward so that we can have an up or down vote on like the original contract. I have no idea which way that's going to go based on the discussion. That either passes or it doesn't. If it passes, then this very complex amendment process is completely avoided. If it doesn't, then we're back to, okay, what is the lowest common denominator or the foundation upon which at least a majority of us can agree? But at least that would allow us to test kind of where we're at as a council, because short of that, there's no way we're gonna be able to get through this and amend One, three, and five, who agrees on that? Two, seven, I mean, it's just not going to work, I don't think.

And that was my hope, you know, coming back from the county, what they're willing to accept and not accept. I think we've got a pretty good picture now. But, I mean, me, what they didn't agree with my two points but got it for their own contract is why I won't support it. But I'm happy to do an up-and-down vote for one through seven here. First, the contract, right?

Yeah.

And then if the contract isn't agreeable, then to your point, what would have meant to make it agreeable? I'm happy to do majority controls here. and go along with it.

Are you talking about in between meetings or right here making motions?

I'm okay even tonight.

I'm okay with it because we already know where the county stands. So if we align with the county, then we can vote on that. And if I say I want the 24-hour restriction but six others here don't, then it's done and that matches what the county wants anyways. I agree.

So could we do during our regular meeting we could move to amend to take the piece of legislation back to the way it was originally offered to council and we get an up or down vote on that. If not, then we can decide how to move forward to the next meeting because there has to be some process besides going item by item, I just don't see that that's going to be a useful way to approach it.

And from a procedural standpoint, what the sheriff has done with your guys' own policies and guardrails, I'm in agreement. The way that the sheriff is implementing this stuff, I agree with that. My biggest issue is the contract. So I'm fine with the tool. I'm fine with how the sheriff is handling their business. My issue is with the county.

Can I make a suggestion? And I guess I'm looking at Nicole to see if she agrees with me as the record keeper for the council. I don't see any reason why we couldn't just go through those amendments and individually vote. And when I say individually, I guess by number, each one of those individual points take a vote. We did this when we've done other legislation, everybody will remember property maintenance. So just getting across the board from each person and then that way majority rules. Do we stick with these things we want from the county? or we don't, or we shoot the whole contract down because these things aren't in it, we'll know that from the vote. And you have to be able to vote publicly, right? So how else can you do it? I don't know how else to do it.

I agree. But if we vote on the original contract, we'll know whether or not we have to even deal with the amendments. Because the original contract were without the amendments. So I guess my question is, let's say that council... does the process that you just suggested, and we have a majority agree on three out of the seven points. And then the legislation gets amended as adopted. Where does that leave us with the contract vis-a-vis the county? How does that work?

So the first part of your question, I don't know how we vote on the original contract because it's on the floor for you guys to vote on the amended contract. So that's A. So somebody can reject that, I guess, and say they want to vote against that, but you already have it as amended. And then you can have a discussion about that. B is where does it stand with the council or with the county? They're just waiting for us to say, you know, we're either going to enter into it or not. And so that's what I think you're going to decide.

But is this really an amended contract? I mean, if we vote on these seven restrictions and the county can't execute or won't, we'd That's really not a solution. And if we go item by item, one person may object to, and six would say, no, we don't need to do that. One person would hold out. And then at the end, you still have to vote on the entire document. And if everybody who they're one thing they're not willing to compromise on, you could get six out of seven approval on everything and have a zero to seven vote at the end. So I think the suggestion, I think there was a suggestion made that why don't we take the original contract with suggestions back to the county, and the county said we can live with these things. In other words, that's a point of agreement. They said we can live with these changes. This is what we asked. If we can vote on the things they're willing to change from the original to get an idea if that's sufficient to pass, and then if not, then we have to find a path forward. But I'm not sure voting on eight things, seven things individually is going to give us something that everybody's going to be able to, even if, like I said, even if six out of seven approve each thing individually, you may not pass it. Because the one thing, you said it, one thing, I'm not going to go because...

But the county got the two things in their contract now because of our suggestion. Right. How can they say we get it, but you, City of Green, can't have that same right? To me, that... I understand. I think your point's well taken. This is what the county's willing to give us, and it's probably what they already got flocked to agree to. So maybe we vote on that.

So you're... I kind of feel like I get where we're going here. We have that response from the county saying, we'll agree to your contract with these two extra bullet points added in, right? So we can just say, based on the county's response, you know, adopting bullet point one, two, and seven, or whatever it is, right? And just vote on it in that condition.

And then if it fails, then what?

And then can you do a motion for reconsideration with an amendment? Can we have to move on?

then we have to figure it out. But that's a good starting point.

I want to make sure I'm understanding, and I see Nicole has a question. So the committee is going to, when it's time for the council meeting, put it on the floor as the amended contract, as what the county council will agree to, county, sorry, the county will agree to on this contract, and you guys are going to take a vote whether you're going to live with the changes they will accept or not. And if you don't, then we're not accepting the contract.

But just clarification, that's not what's before us. That's not what's on the agenda.

But if we amend it on the floor, then it would be. Which basically would be excluding what they are not agreeing to, correct? So excluding items one, two, four, whatever.

As long as it passes your requirements, legal requirements, I'm okay with that approach.

All that matters is it's clear what we're voting on.

I will say it word by word, all the additional points. that are being added.

That the county is on board with.

And it's just in the section G. Yeah, nothing else changed. Nothing else, okay.

What did you want to say?

Question. If this gets voted down, right, and let's say we can't get the county, let's say this gets voted down, and then we have a special session or whatever, and we take up and down vote, like the property maintenance code, we have like a special meeting, and we took an up or down vote on everything we want to change. Let's say we do that next step. and then the county shoots it down, and then we're just dead in the water. What's the liability for the city with respect to the flock cameras that are already installed? Do we have to pay to uninstall those? Do we have to pay? I just want to understand the full.

I'm looking at Shelly. No, I'm looking at her because they did send us kind of like a note that, hey, if there's any penalties for nonpayment, then we're going to try to force that on to you. And I know she sent some numbers to you guys, so I just don't have that in front of me. Do you remember

We already owe back pay for like six months or something.

That's a point of discrepancy, actually, whether we do or don't.

Yeah, we haven't paid since December, but we paid the full two years of the first contract. And again, I don't know, there was some delay in them getting installed at the beginning. We originally, so we've paid everything under that first contract. We are completely, but we have not made a payment since December of 2025. Okay.

So shouldn't the county have made us aware of this contract lapsing and voted on that before?

Why there's a little discrepancy is the county thinks that we don't owe them. They think we paid through June. And Shelly's records show no, and that's because of when we started.

Or when the contract started, was it when the cameras were on?

This was, I have brought this up because my understanding was we were already lapsed for six months. And we have gone back and forth with emails with the county. But what Steve Schmidt conveyed to me was that essentially what he recalled was there was a delay in getting them installed but it was supposed to start in january it didn't end up that they were installed until june we ended up paying we paid our full two years and but they weren't actually in there was like a six month delay of them getting put in um but we've paid everything that we owe to them under the contract but our last payment was in december So I don't know if you guys have any recollection of that, but I can try to find, there was an email from them about penalties.

Mr. Chairman, can I ask a question? Yeah, Mr. Humphrey, go ahead. It seems to me, first of all, we're almost at 7.30 and we have a huge agenda just to get through committee and to council tonight. To me, it would make sense as a member of the public safety committee if we have a clean piece of legislation we can easily do this at our next meeting with it written so that we all understand what we're voting up and down on as opposed to trying to do it on the floor on an evening where we have we must have fifteen different pieces of legislation that we're going to have to get through tonight other than what we've already dealt with and this is a pretty confusing situation I think it doesn't hurt us to wait until the next meeting so that we all know what we're voting on.

And I will say, I did tell the county, I did not know if you were going to vote on that tonight. So nobody's expecting that to happen if you wanted to. But I need direction. Like, what do you want it to look like when we come back?

Okay, so I will talk with Mr. Humphrey and Neuja Bauer real quick. Are we all in concurrence that we want to have this contract at our next meeting reflect... The contract we were originally given plus the amendments that the sheriff's office agreed to or the county agreed to?

Yes.

Okay. So that's how we'll have it show up at our next meeting.

And not to throw a wrench into this, but correct me if I'm wrong, Lisa, but attorneys here, attorneys with the county, attorneys with FLOC. even though I know the county is waiting for agreement for you guys because FLOC still may not agree to it. So it hasn't been approved through FLOC yet, the changes on the contract, because it's waiting for you guys' approval first. So once you approve it, we submit it to FLOC. So also take that into consideration. If FLOC says no, We have multi-million contracts, and we're not changing this for you. Where do we go then?

So we can make it in the legislation subject to approval by FLOC, right? I mean, they're going to have to sign the contracts.

I don't think it's necessary because we don't have a contract with FLOC. It's the county.

We're just requesting these changes to be reflected. And if they're not reflected, then I guess it wouldn't. Well, I don't think, let me look at the last slide.

I think like a fair chance for us to be able to, like your seven points that you have, like I think we, it would only be fair for us to be able to have some sort of answer for you right here in front of you rather than emails back and forth between attorneys. That never seems to go well.

Yeah, I'm trying to be transparent so everybody knows that even though this wish list is there, FLOC may say no, the contract is what it is nationwide.

I appreciate your point, Larry, but what I'm trying to say is we are not a party to the contract with FLOC. That is the issue that we're having, and now my computer's not working, but the things that the county agreed to is between us, and that's it.

I don't think that any of the three items that the county agreed to with us to oblige to have really anything to do with the county and FLOC. Do you know what I'm saying? The ones that you guys will follow your SOG, your policy. The other one is that any changes to your contract, you'll let us know. But that has nothing to do with them, right? So I don't think that any of these changes really have anything to do with the county and FLOC and their negotiations. So I think we're good. The remaining ones. Yeah, the remaining ones.

Which could be why they kind of responded the way they did. We're not going to ask FLAC to make changes to their contract. These are stuff we're going to do with UCity.

But that's not true.

Because they are trying to take my stuff and do the termination on the successor stuff. So to me, they are getting some amendments. So if they're going to go and ask for themselves, I want the city to be able to have the same rights. That's all I'm saying.

Which I understand your point to that point. But if it's FLAC, anything that they... well, anything we try to change or you guys want or we want, it costs. So it would be us coming back to you to discuss that anyhow. So there wouldn't be any changes to the contract without you being involved and having a discussion about it while it's with FLOC.

Well, I think only with our reimbursement agreement with you. The actual operation of FLOC.

But if at some point in time, let's say we wanted to add cameras or we wanted a pan-tilt zoom camera or whatever at an intersection, there's fees that are associated with that. So we would have to pay that. Or, for instance, one that was destroyed, there's fees that are associated with that. We have to figure out who's going to pay that. So that has to be a conversation with you guys.

I'm going to open this up to more discussion. I know Mr. Spate wanted to pass some comments. Yeah, I'm sorry. I've been biting my tongue the whole time. Because we've been talking about the legal mumbo-jumbo this whole time.

Sorry. I know we want to get this over with, so let me just throw this out there. For downed cameras, what is the policy on that? Who pays for that? I'm sorry, what? For any cameras that are downed, vandalized, anything like that that needs taking care of.

Anything that's damaged or inoperable, they take care of themselves. If it's vandalized or damaged in a car accident or something like that, we're responsible for.

Okay, then does that bill come back to the city at that point?

It should. Yes. I know that's the question now. Is it going to be the city of the county? That's going to cover the costs of the one camera that was vandalized.

And right now in the City of Green, there's nine cameras, correct? One we know is definitely... Oh, it's 14 total. 14. Oh, okay.

Correct, yes.

And now you have 13. 13. Okay. So one is for sure damaged. The rest 13 are operational. Correct. And then in the event that we do not pass this contract and we're done with FLOC in the City of Green, does Summit County Sheriff's Department still have access to FLOC? Because there are thousands of FLOC cameras surrounding the city. In the event for investigative purposes, if you guys are tracking a vehicle, do you have access to other flock cameras as a sheriff's department if we choose not to have those 14 cameras operable in the City of Green?

Yes, if you choose to pull them out of the City of Green, yes. It would diminish the flock. It would just go to our task forces throughout the county. The Detective Bureau, our narcotics, a couple of our patrol officers that work in specialty units would have access to the flock cameras. system through the surrounding agencies that have it, primarily Akron, yes, we would still have access with certain officers. Okay.

Thank you. But nothing in the City of Green? Yeah, nothing in the City of Green.

Correct. But let's say there is a stolen vehicle that was stolen in Green, you could put that license plate number in and have access to surrounding flock cameras to be able to track that vehicle, correct?

Like if it crosses under 77 to Springfield? They would... The patrol deputies would not have access to do that. No, they would have to turn that over to the detective bureau, and somebody from the detective bureau would have to get permission through Akron to enter that. There would have to be permissions. That would definitely delay the process. Okay. They would pick and choose cases that they would allow us to do that for. We could monitor it. They would limit our entering, but we could monitor it.

So does the county have a flock contract outside of the city of Greene? No. So basically, we are the main flock which gives access to all county crimes. To the sheriff's office, correct.

To the sheriff's office.

Springfield and Twinsburg Township don't have flock cameras?

The Twinsburg Township does not. Springfield, I don't believe they do. I don't believe they do. But the other entities that have them all pay for them through their city. Like Akron and Falls? Yeah. So we would have to have access through them. So prior to this, cameras out here, like when I was in the Detective Bureau, I functioned under Akron's license for flock. So I had access through Akron. That is what the chief's talking about. And that would diminish it down as to... I mean, they don't even... they really don't have to give us access to it they can limit the number of people that have access to it so that's that's the problem because then you know if there's a we still have a resource i'm trying to remember what are the other entities that the county contracts with i know twinsburg township is it like Northfield Center and Coventry Township.

None of them have flock cameras? We're looking into it right now in Northfield. Northfield Village is getting prices because they're surrounded by flock cameras also. They want flock cameras and we're currently in negotiations with flock for Northfield. Coventry wants them, but they're looking for grants and you're not going to get a grant. Right now, you're not.

Any other questions comments concerns okay so just to be absolutely clear at our next meeting the committee is requesting that we have a contract before us that reflects the changes that summit county has agreed to in section g which would be bullet point four five and six yes sir okay all right thank you guys so much for your time thank you and uh i appreciate everybody's comments from the public council and uh I guess we will see this at our next meeting in its final form. All right. That is all of the legislative matters for public safety. Is there any old or new business? All right. Hearing none, at 737, we're adjourned.

Thank you, Mr. DeVitas. Our next committee to meet this evening is Planning, Community, and Economic Development, chaired by Mr. Noble. Thank you, Mr. President.

Myself, Mr. DeVitas, and Mr. Humphrey are all present. We do have a number of items of legislation, so we will meet this evening. The first item that we have is item 2026-10A, an ordinance to amend section 157.134, subsection 5, subsection C, design and layout of chapter 157, planning and zoning development code of the codified ordinance of the City of Green. We do have a public hearing scheduled in council's chambers tonight on this topic at 7 p.m. I did get a note that we have people here to speak on this topic. Normally, because we're going to be speaking about it via public hearing, I would defer the conversation until council... It is going to be the first public hearing topic on the council agenda, but we have to get through committee first. So I'm going to ask. If you would like to be patient through a whole laundry list of stuff that we've still got to get through, or would you like to, in advance of the public hearing, come up and say anything that you need to say? I suspect we're going to be at least another half hour or so here on committee before we get to, and then we'll probably take a 15-minute break, so it'll be like 8.15 or something like that, maybe. I don't know. I'm just guessing at this point, so I'm going to

Mr. Noble, could I mention a couple things? You have what's been presented. This will be amended. It was a planning commission. We need to put that vote within the legislation, as well as one recommendation from the planning commission clarifying a singular bypass site. It's not in what we're looking at right now. Which is not in there currently. So there will be a slight amendment. just about the planning commission's vote, also about a singular bypass lane to clarify that. They have been waiting here for an hour and a half, maybe two hours, two. I would actually like to ask council to respect their time. It'd probably be closer to nine o'clock when you will get to the public hearing.

I mean, to the point. So if you would like to come forward now, you can come forward now. And I guess you can do this group. So let me just come on up and as you're doing, I'm going to preface what this is all about. And so what we're proposing here is changes to the planning and zoning code associated with drive-through facilities. This did go through Planning and Zoning Commission. It was approved. There were some things, as Mr. Wheatley indicated, that were discussed so that we will see some amendments, but the reality of what is being proposed has everything to do with bypass lanes slash escape routes for drive-throughs.

Is it okay if I give you guys some literature?

Make sure you use the microphone.

Is it okay if I hand out some information about Senate Bill 264? Yes.

You can just set it on that.

If you set it, if you just set it flat, if you just set it flat where the pink dot is, the camera will go straight to it.

Perfect. There we go.

Thank you.

All right.

All right. Well, I didn't realize that you guys were voting tonight on this. I'm just going to read to you.

We will not be voting on it tonight, just so you know.

Okay. I'm just going to read to you what I had prepared. We are Nick and Kelly Kellerman. We're from Stowe, Ohio. Our daughter Megan was killed on August 14th, 2024, and this is a photo of our daughter with her dog Penny. This was due to a random senseless act of violence. We are pushing through these hard times and having hope to move forward. Our family will boldly stand for change and truth. We have a new normal, a new life. We have good days and bad days, but we trust God for what we don't understand. We face the future with courage and we press on. We hope that no matter what happens in your life, that you choose to be better and not bitter. Megan was in line to pick up her online order when a person behind her ran into her car. Megan called her dad to see what she should do. Megan was 25, she had never been in an accident, and so she calls her dad up. Hey, dad, you know, what do I do? This guy just ran into me. He said, honey, stay in your car. We'll call the police. You know, we'll go through the process. Not to worry. It'll be okay. Then this individual began to wave his arms, shake his car. And multiple times, back up, slam into Megan's car, and repeat this a few times. No one expects to be in an accident and a drive-through, which leads them to be less safe. Certainly nobody expects that that person pull out a gun and shoot it. Some reasons that lead to car accidents and drive-throughs, speeding, maybe they're a distracted driver, they're in a hurry, they're fatigued, or maybe it's somebody under the influence. This individual had a history of mental health issues and was under the influence. Megan was trapped. She was stuck. She could not drive around the car in front of her to get away from the situation. It was escalating. She was between two cars in the line of cars, a high curb to her right that she thought her low car could not get over. There was, to her left, she was at the ordering station and it was too close for her to open up her door. There was no bypass lane, and she had no way out. She was held or contained in an enclosed space, and she was caught in a trap, preventing her from escaping or getting free. Being trapped is a feeling that everybody has experienced at some point in your life, whether it's an emotional state, a tough situation, or a physical circumstance. Being trapped can lead us feeling helpless, stuck, and scared. Megan was scared. We learned that not all cities have zoning codes for open drive-thrus, which makes absolutely no sense. It's pretty simple. Accidents and fast food drive-thrus may be more common than you realize. It just doesn't make the news unless somebody dies. With an increase in fast food drive-through customers comes an increase in possibly more number of accidents. A way to make life better for others is through Megan's Way Out legislation. Out of this tragedy, we want change. What failed? Megan would want it to be better for others, and we want all drive-throughs to have a bypass lane. No one should ever be trapped. If Megan had a way out that day, we believe we would not be here today. This change in zoning will provide for others what Megan did not have that day, and it will allow safe access for a bypass lane so that no one is ever trapped. It will allow for emergency medical responders better access in case of a medical, a fire, or other safety emergency. This particular day, there were two people involved in the incident, my daughter and the man who did this crime. So they had two ambulances there on site. One of the ambulances was directly on the total opposite side of the building because neither ambulance had an area where they could actually pull up along the two cars to... administer life-saving

Treatment.

Measures. Thank you. So this makes perfect sense to implement this in our neighboring communities all across Ohio, and we hope to do this within the State House with Senate Bill 264. Policy and procedures need to be updated. Change is good. Please support Megan's Way Out in your city zoning laws. It will be a cause of better serving the living and making our communities safer. Megan left behind a love and a strength and a will to help others, and we want to continue her legacy. Thank you. This is my husband, Megan's dad, Nick Kellerman.

I want to thank you for, you know, obviously I had a long evening, and I want to thank you for our time. We're going to make it short, hopefully. Since the last two years that we've been involved in this, I get a lot of questions from people. They want to know who Megan was, who my daughter is. Well, let me tell you a little bit about my daughter Megan first. She always had an infectious smile that would light up a room. She always was kind and warm to people. She always wanted to know how people were doing, and she was genuine about that. She always wanted to know what everybody was doing, and she took care to make sure that everybody was doing well. Prior to her passing, Megan received her master's degree in finance from Cleveland State University in May of 2024. While attending college, Megan worked at a nonprofit organization called Shelter Care, which is in Talmadge, Ohio. And this particular nonprofit I'm sorry I'm having difficulty because this kind of bothers me with all this. Anyway, she was going to work with troubled youth. Shelter care helps with youth that have a troubled past. They help find a place to live and, you know, nurture them and get them on a path to succeed. And how ironic the individual that did this, you know, needed help. Anyway, during this short time, Megan made a big impact on many people's lives at Cleveland State. And also, she attended Stonewall Falls High School. What we're asking for while we need this law, as my wife said, Megan was trapped on the evening of August 14th, 2024. I was on the phone with her while this happened. And while the events unfolded, I could hear the individual hitting the back end of her car. I even told the drive-thru attendant to call 911. I asked my daughter, I thought originally maybe it was, he was on a cell phone, he was distracted. You know, you want to think the best of a situation like this. Well, it escalated. I asked her if she could get out. Well, you had cars in front of her that couldn't move, you had the building on the left, and the high embankment on the right. She had no way out. So, from our perspective, and hopefully the public's perspective,

You know, a one-lane drive-through is not safe. It hinders the right-of-way of any situation.

It hinders the access of a person to fully move about in a public space. As Kelly was telling you earlier, when I got to the situation, you had the way the building was laid out. You had an ambulance, an EMS in the road on one side of the building. You had an EMS way on the other side of the parking lot. Not even near my daughter and an individual. They could not get to them quick enough to administer life-saving procedures. So what will this bring about and what we're trying to do with Senate Bill 264? It gives standard policies and procedures to make public spaces safer in any situation. It's not just a drive-thru. It's any public space. It gives ease of access to police, EMS. They get to someone who's in distress. And ultimately, in my daughter's case, it gives you a way of getting out of a threatening situation. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to appeal to cities like you, Greene, and other cities in Ohio to make this a law. Any new building that has a drive-through and any building that's going to be remodeled that has a drive-through should adhere to this and have a bypass lane or two-lane access. So far, working with other communities in Ohio. Stowe, our hometown, was the first city that passed it in honor of my daughter. And then our sister city, Cuyahoga Falls, passed it. Madison Township signed a document proclaiming that they would support this. And this recently, City of Whitehall, a city outside of Columbus, supported it and voted it. So we're trying to get cities like Green, Ravenna, Akron, Uniontown, Rootstown, Hartville, and Talmadge And we speak with Macedonians. So we're trying to get this to be a grassroots movement. And again, we're appealing to you to make this possible. And not only do we want this to be passed, but in honor of my daughter and to make it autonomous throughout the state, we want it to be called Megan's Way Out. So I want to thank you for listening to us. And I know you guys have a long night, but I appreciate it. Thank you.

My name is Jason Burrell, one of the owners of Narrow Path Investigations, and we've been working with the Kellermans on this movement since August of 2024. A few things that I just wanted to add. The Kellermans fully support business, especially support local business. They don't want to add an expense to existing businesses. And when they talk renovations, they're talking major renovations, like when somebody may tear a building down and reconstruct on the same site. I know that there's different gas stations that do that, different fast food chains. but they fully support local business especially. So we would encourage, we thank you for taking a look at this and moving forward with this. We would ask that there are exceptions in there for local businesses especially if maybe the the ordinance may require a 10-foot bypass lane. If they didn't have that area to put in a 10-foot concrete bypass lane, maybe allow them to use green space because it's not keeping cars in their drive-through lane. Maybe use green space as an exception to allow local business to continue with no expense, but still move forward with the same goal that they're moving forward towards. So we thank you for your time We thank you for moving forward with this and we'd hope to be able to use the city of green as an example You know as we continue to meet with other municipalities throughout the state, so thank you again Thank you for being here Okay I Want to go ahead and defer I

THE REST OF THE CONVERSATION TO THE PUBLIC HEARING LATER ON. I WILL SAY THAT I SPOKE ABOUT THIS AT PZC. WE'LL TALK LATER. WE'LL MOVE ON. OKAY. NEXT ITEM ON THE AGENDA IS ITEM 2026-R24, A RESOLUTION AUTHORIZING A municipal economic development grant agreement with Hoover, Cation, LLC in declaring an emergency, okay? Wayne, I'm just going to turn it over to you for a second.

This is pretty standard. We've done a number of these. So this business is relocating, has technically relocated into Greene due to the lapse of time we've had here. But when we started this back in March, it was the idea of encouraging them to come and relocate their office to the city of Greene. They have done that. The MEDG will initially, based on estimated income tax, will provide 50% rebate to them, 50% that we will collect of our 2%. This is currently just estimated at $400,000 a year, so that 1% that they would get is about $4,000. It's only a three-year agreement. The idea is just to help them come in do some renovation to the area that they are relocating to. And it's just one of the tools we do to kind of backfill some office space to make some things happen. They were looking at other locations, Coventry Township, and some other ones they did locate here. And again, this has been going on now for about six months. That's It seems like this should have probably been done already, but they had to sign a lease, so they are here. And we would ask you to support this because it's supporting a smaller business. It's supporting businesses coming to green. And we do apologize for that. Seems like it's been going on for a long time. That's all I can say.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Reithy. Is there any discussion from committee members? Any from council? Okay. This is on third reading, and so during our regular scheduled council meeting, I'm going to go, I'll make a motion to adopt 2026-R25. That concludes the items on our agenda for planning community economic development. Is there any older new business? None. We'll adjourn at 7.57.

Thank you, Mr. Noble. Our next committee to meet this evening is Rules and Personnel, which I chair. Myself, Mr. Mager, and Mr. Brandenburg are all present, so we will meet. We do have three items to discuss, all on second reading. First is 2026.16, an ordinance amending section 34.13. Veterans Advisory Commission of the Codified Ordinance of the City of Green. This is basically adding three members to our Veterans Advisory Commission. They have been meeting for, oh gosh, it's been a couple years now that the mayor formed this committee, or this commission, and they've been very instrumental in helping with the Memorial Day ceremony, Veterans Day ceremonies, and basic veteran outreach in the City of Green. They do feel that there's strength in numbers and that their commission could do more good in this community by adding a couple members. They're also looking to diversify the board, so that's always a good thing. This is our second reading of this. In the legislation itself, it does permit the mayor to select four members and council to select three. So if this passes, we will be looking to appoint, at least council will have to appoint one and the mayor will have to appoint two more. Is there any comments or questions about this? Okay. And at the appropriate time this evening, this is second reading, we will ask for time on 2026.16. Next is 2026.17, an ordinance creating the position of accounts payable clerk in the finance department, establishing compensation, and declaring an emergency. We do have another piece of legislation that I'll go ahead and read in, and then I'm gonna ask Mrs. Serena to come up from Human Resources and discuss both of these. The next is 2026-18, an ordinance creating the position of member services clerk in the service department establishing compensation and declaring an emergency. Ma'am, would you mind discussing both of those positions with us?

Not at all. Thank you very much for allowing me to add some context to these two pieces of legislation. The first one is actually a position wherein there is an incumbent, and the second position I'll be speaking about is creating a new position. So 2026-17 is for creating the title of accounts payable clerk. We are asking for this position to be carved out from among the job classification that it's currently within. It establishes it as a specialized job title for the accounts payable clerk as a key function within the finance department. So, as I mentioned earlier, it currently sits within a job classification that doesn't sufficiently describe the scope of duties within that class. Again, this is not an additional person. This is an existing incumbent who performs this work now. The accounts payable clerk, as you can imagine, basically makes all the payments for the City of Green outside of payroll, including benefit payments, credit card purchases, engineering invoices, and utilities. And of course, all of these payments are auditable and all must be paid timely. One of the objectives of creating the position is that this position It backs up another position of administrative secretary within the finance division, and this basically puts that job on the same equal footing. By doing so, it's really only a 3.1% increase in the start rate and a 2.8% increase in the top rate, but it puts it in the same class as the position that it is backing up. Shelly, did you want to add anything to that?

I would just like to add that the responsibilities of this position have expanded over the years. There is a much higher level of accounting knowledge and analytical ability in this position than had been previously contemplated under the existing account clerk classification. This person in my office does a lot of work and prepares compliance reports. 1099, OPRS reporting, supports the annual audit, maintains gap documentation, assists with year-end financial reporting. They are in key contact with vendors, departments, utility providers, and other outside agencies, and researches and resolves payment discrepancies while ensuring compliance with our purchasing policies. and accounting standards. So this job description now accurately reflects all the duties that are associated with this position and I think it's very important that their job description reflect all that they do and that they be compensated accordingly.

Are there any questions on that 202617?

So there's no FTE increase, there's just a pay increase for the extra responsibilities? That's correct.

And it would be, like I said, a three point, it's about 70 some cents an hour to put that person in the, it's gonna be two classes above. and there is an incumbent, there's one person that performs that job and it just moves them up the 3.1% to another class within the ranks.

Any other questions from members of council? One real quick.

So the existing job description, will it be terminated, closed out? What's the process?

Currently, we still have people in that role, but their position is very different from that one. And as I mentioned earlier, it's kind of more specialized, so it really did not get captured adequately in the job class that it was in. But that's a good question. Thank you.

Understood. Thank you, Ms. Serena.

So if there's no question on that, I'm gonna move forward to 202618. The title for this position is Member Services Clerk. This is a new position that will be based at the core of the Center of Recreation and Education facility. This position will be a little bit of a hybrid. It will require both accounting and customer service skills in his or her capacity. They will be administering the business functions of the Corps, but at the same time engaging in customer service and our efforts to attract and retain members at the Corps. So some of the content of what they'll be doing, they will be the front person for that facility, answering phones, greeting, but they'll also be looking after the accounting activities, memberships, purchase orders, reimbursements, for example, from SilverSneakers, and they will also be supporting marketing and community outreach for the core facility. This is a situation where we've identified a need. As we were talking about, Rita, earlier in the evening, income tax staff will be able to apply for the position, and it will exist within the service department, but communicate routinely with the finance department as well. Valerie, did you want to add anything?

Sure. Just to understand our staffing a little bit at the core, because maybe not everyone does understand our staffing, we actually only have two full-time employees over at the core. We have our park supervisor, who's Zach Kaufman, and we have one programmer, Katie Jorarsic. They do an excellent job, if any of you have met them. And then we have six, we had six part-time rec assistants. The part-time rec assistants are mainly the ones that handle the front desk duties. We have now five because one took a job. They're all young, out of college or in college, so they're moving on into their careers. So that is going to definitely be a position that is going to probably be continuously rotating. And you also need to remember we are open from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. during the winter hours. And now we have a little bit less hours in the summer, but we are virtually open anywhere between eight and 12 hours a day. So we have a lot of hours to cover. One of the things that we wanted to review from the beginning is, do we need more of a permanent person at that front desk? And the answer is yes. And as we continue to grow, our silver sneakers numbers continue to grow. We now have taken on Renew Active. which continue to grow. We have much more traffic, particularly during the fall and winter months. And as those memberships on those areas grow, we have more reporting to do. So right now, Zach and Katie are very capable of doing those reporting, but that takes away from other things. This is a perfect thing that the person at the front desk could be helping with. We just think we need more of a permanent presence there because it is difficult with the rec assistants because they're part-time and we can only have them work so many hours and we're covering a lot of hours. I believe that if we had this position, we can lower those rec assistant either hours or even positions because we'll obviously have someone there more full time. We do have one other rec assistant who's already told us that they're going to be giving us their notice. So we're gonna be down to four. Right now, Katie and Zach are covering those hours to open and close and all of those things. And I can only stretch them so far. So I think we're doing a phenomenal job with two full-time employees, but we really could make use of this position. Some of the things that Pam touched on, I won't repeat, but we have a lot of rentals that are starting to also come about at the core, which is a great thing. It helps us with revenues, but we need someone to help manage that. And this person would be doing that as well. And we hope to increase the presence of rentals. more promotion, those kind of things. We're doing birthday parties now. All of those things take some effort. So this position is a little bit like what we have over in the Parks Office, and any of you that deal with Jess, I know Jess and I think you've met Jess, certainly Gerard, you have as well. That person manages all of the POs, the inquiries, the setting up dates, the calendars, opening and closing of doors and restrooms and all that. Now, some of that, this person won't be doing, but those are really important things ground level, behind the scenes people that we cannot function without. So I welcome this position. I think it would definitely add to the core in terms of our business strategy over there in terms of increasing revenues and making sure we keep the members that we have. Thanks.

Thank you.

Is there any questions? Mr. Humphrey?

So this may be for Director Goodrich. How much, in terms of expenses, I know we only have six months of the year, this is new, but so far, where are we tracking for our expenses that the city is covering for 2026? What are we expected to come in at toward the end of the year?

I mean, we just got utility numbers from the schools last week for the first six months of the year. So it was really hard to have an accurate picture because we were going back and forth with the schools about utilities and certain costs that just had not been billed to the city yet. I can definitely pull those numbers and email you something because those utility costs for the first six months of the years are not even reflected on the financials yet. So because we haven't processed the payment. But once we do that, we'll have a better idea of where we are at for the first six months. That was a big piece that we were waiting on to see.

So without that, so we don't have that information yet, what do we know? What are our known expenses so far?

Yeah, let me pull the trial balance really quick. And I know what those numbers are now. Like I said, the payment just hasn't been processed yet, but let me pull this for you in my software. Okay. Keep in mind, this is all being charged to Fund 224, Parks and Recreation Fund.

While she's doing that, I was going to try to pull up some stats up that might be helpful for you too, but...

I haven't promised you.

It's not working.

I know.

So, so far, we budgeted $389,619 for the Corps for salaries and benefits. We are at $208,353.16. Okay. For all the other expenses, we budgeted 197,204.80. We are at $40,000, 40,392.05. But keep in mind that doesn't include the utilities, which are going to be a lot for the first six months.

So if the top line number comes through as our expense, even before this position is added, not counting financing costs that we already know that we have, the expenses would be $586,000 roughly for the year.

Correct. And I'm sorry, there was $10,000 in furniture and equipment, which is capital outlay, so $596,823.80. Okay.

And that does or does not include utilities, right?

Yeah, correct. So far, the year-to-date amount for the core is $253,618, and that does not include utilities.

So if we take the top line number and we add utilities into that, and that's a large facility, even if we're only paying a portion of that, that's got to be, I don't know, $20,000 a month? I'm guessing.

Let me pull that up because I have the bills. So the first quarter invoice for utilities from the schools was $20,383.10. For what period of time? January, February, and March.

Okay.

And then the second quarter bill Sorry, bear with me, let me find that one. These are all in the emails, so you're putting me on the spot.

Second quarter.

It was a little less. Trying to find it, I think it was like 17,000, but bear with me, I'm trying to search my email. Another 40,000, I would estimate, let's see.

Shelly, I have it here, but it's not loading. Do you need the date of the email?

I have the first quarter one, but hold on, let me see, second quarter, here we go, second quarter. Second quarter utilities were $17,728.97. Okay. So let's say another $72,000. So without financing costs, we're around $660,000 to $670,000.

And then we know that we're paying to service the debt on that per year. So if we're at, let's call it, to be conservative, 1.7 million, what revenue are we looking at so far this year for the Corps?

Let me pull that up.

While she's doing that, I want to talk about utilities for a second. Remember that first utility bill was the winter. We were still in what I would call the balancing stage of the building. We had some HVAC issues in terms of heat, cooling. I think we have settled all those down, so I expect our bill to hopefully continue to decrease. because we were still trying to figure all those things out. So, I mean, I was glad to see that the bill decreased the second quarter. I think as we are learning the mechanics of the building, we can help with some of those conservation efforts. So that's one thing. And we did have a large water bill, unfortunately, that first quarter because of the sprinkler issue that we had. So I'm hoping those continue to decrease.

Okay, so there's four different revenue accounts, so I'm going to list those off one at a time. Core membership fees, $27,360.85. Core silver sneakers revenue, $14,575.00. Or renew active revenue, which is, we just signed up for that, so we only had $76 so far. And then core rent revenue, $12,797. Okay, so we have $1.7 million in expenses balanced against $53,000 in revenue.

I don't know why we're asking to add a position. That makes absolutely no sense to me, why we would add a position when we're running a deficit of over $1.6 million. Why would we add a position for that?

Well, Mr. Humphreys, outside of the position for a minute, I just want to make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the premise of the facility. So we are not like a typical rec center. Our purpose is not necessarily to make a profit. Now, I know we're way different between a profit and having a debt right now, and I understand the debt service. But I do want to say there are some things that we do do that are different. The purpose of the building was to help with the sports team. That is something we're going to look at as well to see if we should increase those fees. whether we agree or don't agree, it was paid for by taxpayer money and there is a feeling in the community by some that we shouldn't be charging for anything. So we're trying to balance that and we're six months, eight months in, we're trying to find other ways to increase the revenues. I am proud to say that I think we have put in some things that are gonna increase our rentals, even by adjusting hours. So like Sunday nights, we have hours now that we can rent. So we have to balance all that with the people that are paying memberships, the youth sports. We promised we wouldn't do direct competition against the Y in Akron Wellness. So we have all that in a blender. We don't have all the answers yet. I understand the reluctance of potentially adding a position, but I think that can actually help us grow our revenues by having someone a little bit more focused on that.

Yeah, I mean, I get that it may help. It's not going to cover a deficit of $1.6 million. I guess my point is, and I hate to be Dr. Doom, but as I look at the finances of the city, this is kind of a boat anchor because of decisions that have been made in the past and those decisions have been made. We have to deal with those now. but we don't have to add to the decisions that were made to put us further in the hole. We're already well below ground level on this. We have no real plan of even getting close to what it's costing us, and even if it's not a one-to-one correlation, we're not even close to that. So from my perspective, adding another FTE to this would just add to the greater deficit. I just don't, I don't see it. That's all I have to say, but I just question it.

Any other comments or questions from members of council? Okay. Both 2026-17 and 2026-18 are on second reading, so at the appropriate time this evening, we will. Ask for time on both of those. All right, that concludes legislation for rules and personnel, and we will adjourn at 8.20. Next committee to meet this evening is Transportation, Connectivity, and Stormwater, chaired by Mr. Maker.

Thank you, Mr. President. Members of the President, myself, Mr. Brandenburg, and Mr. Noble, we will meet. We have one item before us that's on second reading, and that's 2026-R38. It's a resolution awarding a contract to Kunkel & Sons, Sorry. Punklin Sons for the 2026 Miscellaneous Concrete Repairs Project and Current Emergency. So as I just mentioned, this is a miscellaneous concrete repair project. The total amount of the estimated engineer's bid was $160,000. We received five different bids from contractors. Conklin Sons was the lowest and best for the base bid of $126,716. There was also six alternate bids. Of course, those don't factor into the lowest and best with respect to the base bid, but Conklin Sons had an alternative bid amount for alternative number one at $4,700. Alternate number two, 2,300. Alternate number three, 3,125. Alternate number four, 4,932. Alternate number five, 9,612. And alternate number six, $754.80. So I guess I'll turn it over to Mr. Pickett. Is there any, can you give any kind of specifics regarding where this base bid miscellaneous concrete project is gonna be taking place as well as each of the alternates?

I apologize. I should have done this in advance, but I'll send it all to you tomorrow, the breakdown on what those are, describing each one of the elements and what's in the base bid.

Okay. And this is on second reading, so we have time to consider this. Let me ask you this question. I know I should have reached out to you before, but I kind of get this on the record. Is this the same company that had the issues by me with regards to some of the miscellaneous concrete improvement projects?

I don't believe they had the project that year.

They only had it last year. That was last year.

Yeah. I don't think that was them that did that. Okay. I'll let you know.

Yeah, let's circle back on that, and I'm actually going to take a drive over there. I was going to do it tonight, but I'll do it tomorrow and see if they actually did some repairs of the issues. Again, if it isn't them, I apologize on the record. If it is them, I got some major issues with us, them being the lowest and best. But with that, I'll open it up to the committee. Anybody on council, any questions or comments? Mr. Neuscherbauer?

Yeah, Mr. Pickett, have we used them before? You said for the sidewalk last year?

Yes. I think it was just a sidewalk, but I've got to verify that.

Any other contact regarding their qualifications, any other communities, or did you do that last year?

No, we did that the first time we awarded them.

And you were happy with their performance? Yeah. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I mean, I have an email that I sent you, Mr. Pickett, and it references Kunkel. Again, let's circle back and make sure that isn't the company that did the work on Park Ride Drive last year. I got a lot of complaints, and I inspected with my novice side, but I could definitely tell their craftsmanship and the workmanship on that road alone is going to give me some grave concerns about reusing the same company again if it is in fact them.

Okay, anybody else on council?

Well, last question, Mr. Pick, any concerns with respect to the estimate or the bid proposal being that much less than the engineer's estimate?

No. I mean, if you look at the prices, it's competitive and they were lower by a good enough margin from the second bidder, so.

Yeah, I mean, I'm looking here, you know, the engineer's estimate is 160. The second place and everyone else is in 160s. There's one that's 180, 187. The fact that they're 40,000 lower never gave you any concern or

No, it's not unusual. If you look at our estimate for the base bid was 152,000, so. Okay.

Yeah, I would like to, I'll circle back with you privately and then I'll update council with my concerns if it's in fact them in the next meeting. Okay, any other questions or comments regarding this piece? Hearing none, I'll ask for time at the regular council meeting. Any older new business come forth, committee?

Mr. Mayor. Mr. Noble. I'm just looking for an update on the Arlington Road construction. And when I say that, I'm not talking about our project. I'm talking about the... the Chick-fil-A zone that's up as to the timing as to when that's going to be taken down and whatnot. It's been there for quite a bit of time, and the amount of work that happens on a day-to-day basis, it all seems excessive amount of traffic control and interruption for work that's really side street work. I understand they have to do the returns, but we've got Arlington Road down to one lane for...

that could be done flagged that flagged while they're working and closed at night so how much longer do we expect i don't know do you have any i thought that was going to be a four-week project but we can i'll get a hold of them tomorrow find out what what our anticipated completion time because they it was right after the fourth of july it was a weekend after the fourth So they should be getting there, and they're probably not there, Jeff, I know. The curb was in place last time. Let me do this. Let me talk to the construction manager on it and find out what kind of time they have left. It'd probably be good for everybody involved, and we can advise through social media as well when we anticipate to be back to full lanes. Okay? Fantastic. Thank you.

That's all, Mr. Mager. Thank you, Mr. Noble.

Any other new or old business to come before this committee? Hearing none, we'll adjourn at 826.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Mager. Our next committee to meet is Intergovernmental and Utilities, chaired by Mr. Brandenburg.

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Noble, Mr. Mager, and I are all available to meet. However, we don't have any legislation to discuss. Any items of old in your business? Hearing none, we will not meet.

Thank you, Mr. Brandenburg. And our final committee to meet this evening is different. It's a committee of the whole. This is where Mr. Neugebauer will be taking over as chair of this committee, and we'll be discussing the proposed charter amendment changes.

We have a public hearing scheduled for 7 o'clock, which will be more like 9 o'clock. What I am going to do is just read these in as required by our rules. We won't have any discussion unless somebody wants to challenge that. Thank you. Mr. DeVitas pointed out that of the ones I'm going to read in, the first one is not part of the public hearing. So we can talk about that one. But otherwise, we'll just read them in and then we'll come back to it after the short break. And so at this time, I'm going to go ahead and get started. We have on second reading a number of items. The first is 2026 R30, a resolution to amend the appropriate articles and sections of the Charter of the City of Green relating to the non-substantive changes associated throughout the charter per Charter Section 12.10, Charter Corrections and declaring emergency. Seeing as that we're on second reading, Ms. Deen, would you like to talk about what this means or do we want somebody from Charter Review to come forward?

I thought the mayor actually had that planned. I mean, these are, so you can ask him, but these are non-substantive changes, meaning like any gender changes that needed to be made or punctuation changes or, and when I say gender, I mean neutral terms. those kinds of things. Okay.

Any questions from the entire council, which is the committee, on this item? Mr. Nugent-Valer? Yes, Mr. Brandenburg.

I just had questions on the last two items. So the one that references page 14, I think it should actually be 34, but it's referencing 9 charter review. It says, Commission shall recommend to counsel any alterations, revisions, or amendments to this charter. That's in quotes. And then it says, use this section to recommend renumbering the charter if an article specifically for the director of law is separated from the other directors. I read that. I don't see a recommended text. It says use it to recommend. There isn't a proposal to go before the electors to split this out at this time. So I feel like this section, this particular reference would be unnecessary at this point. And if we do think it's necessary, what would the recommended text be? It's not listed there.

Which page was that, Mr. Brandenburg?

The one that says page 14, second from the bottom, is actually page 34, where it says 14.

I'm pulling up the charter. Hold on.

I'm just saying it doesn't say what the recommended text is. It just says, use this section to recommend renumbering if an article for the Director of Law is separated from the other directors.

Yes, please, Madam Clerk.

Okay, thank you. So the Charter Review Commission kind of threw around the possibility of potentially pulling the law director section out from under the regular directors because they feel like because it's an elected position, it should be kind of its own spot. But... I think that at the end of the day, they may be decided against that. So that could probably be removed. And that was just kind of one of the suggestions we had on there.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Nod and then concurrence. Okay, we have a nod from the chair of the Charter Review Commission. And so can I ask the law department to please remove the second page 14 under 9.2 Charter Review section from this page? Any other comments, questions?

Which is one more. So the last one that says page 3536, it recommends changing his, he, him, his, he, and his, but it doesn't say to what? I assume it means to their, like to be either sex, but it doesn't say that. And so I just felt like we needed to add that text. Sure.

Okay. So does there need to be some clarification on this as well? Ms. Deen, do you care to comment?

It looks like previously they referenced there and other changes, so we will just add that in. Okay.

Great. That will be good. Mr. Brandberg, are you satisfied with those? I am. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments, questions for 2026 R-30 on non-substantive changes? Okay, hearing none, we will probably take time on this. Well, I should ask the committee, which is all of us, do we take time on this? Are we all in agreement? Okay, thank you. Next is 2026R31, a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 2.4 of the Charter of the City of Green to add strong, in quotes, to the form of government description and declaring an emergency. This will be covered in our public hearing at or about 7 p.m. this evening, so we will not be having any other discussions right now. Next is 2026R32, a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 4.8 of the Charter of the City of Green to add email with read receipt as a form of notification for special council meetings and declaring emergency. Again, this will be discussed at our public hearing later this evening. Next on our agenda is 2026R33, a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 4.11 of the Charter of the City of Green to add electronic online equivalent as a method of publication for ordinances, resolutions, and other public notices, and declaring emergency. I am just going to skip the part about the public hearing for the remainder of these as it applies to all. 2026R34 is a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 7.4 of the Charter of the City of Green to clarify the powers and duties of the Parks and Recreation Board and declare an emergency. We will discuss it public hearing. Next is Resolution 2026R35, a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 8.2 of the Charter of the City of Green to modify the allocation of the annual income tax revenue within the Parks and Recreation Income Tax Fund and declare it emergency. Next is 2026R36, a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 9.2 of the Charter of the City of Green to allow electronic online equivalent as a method of publication for Charter Review Commission recommendations and declaring an emergency. And finally, Resolution 2026R37, a resolution submitting to the electors of the City of Green a proposal to amend Section 9.2 of the Charter of the City of Green to require the City Charter to be reviewed every five years and declaring an emergency. Okay, that completes the items that we'll be discussing at our public hearing in a few moments.

Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Neugebauer. With that being said, that concludes our committee meetings for this evening. Let's go ahead and take 10 minutes, and we will be back at 845. We are adjourned.