City Council - Regular Meeting

like to welcome everyone to the Louisville City Council meeting here on July 20th, 2026. We will start with our public hearing on ordinance number 26-42.

Being an ordinance amending chapter 192 income tax effective January 1st, 2016 of the codified ordinances of the city of Louisville.

Is anyone here to speak on 2642? Okay. I'll call this meeting to order and ask for approval of the July 20th, 2026 meeting agenda. I'll make that motion there.

Second. Yes. Johnston. Yes. Street.

Yes. Okay. Please pause for Mona. Silent prayer. Amen. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. call here here Johnston here McAllister Atkins Street here please let the record reflect the councilmember McAllister Atkins is excused this evening we have a certificate of an open meeting and I like to ask if there's any additions or corrections for the July 6 2026 meeting minutes okay I'll entertain a motion to approve those so moved Second. Let's go ahead and vote.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Street.

Yes. Uh, also we have the mayor's court of report receipts and disbursements for the month ending June 30th, 2026. I'll ask that you accept those as presented and we move on to the financial report of receipt and disbursements for the month ending June 30th, 2026.

Thank you, Mayor. A couple things I want to go over on the finance report. Income taxes are up 1.7% from this time last year. That's despite net profit accounts being down a little over 50%. So it's encouraging that we're still growing despite that withholdings are up and things like that. But I wouldn't count on us ending the year at much higher than a 1.5% or 2% increase from the last year. The general fund cash balance does continue to behave much like we would expect it to, given the budget and historical data. The expenditure target for June is 50% of appropriations, reaching the halfway point of the year. We're at 47.75% for all funds, and that's even with transfers and advances included. So we're doing well on that front. Good cost control. All fund balances taken together are about 2% lower than they were at this time last year, pretty close. And Star Ohio interest rate was 3.82% for June. Last thing I wanted to touch on real quick, you'll notice on the agenda that there is an additional item for the actual approval of this report rather than just me presenting it. That's a sort of a, it's a technicality really. just a best practice to show for audit and compliance and best practices that council's not only seen these and had the opportunity to ask questions, but that they actively approved the report. So we'll be doing that prospectively.

Thank you. Anybody have questions for Matt? I have one, and this is going to be very picky. Okay. But on the general fund cash balance, Do you have the ability to change the color of the years? Because 2026 and 2024 are both red. Oh, sure. I can look into that. They follow together. Yeah, that'd be awesome.

Yeah, I can look into that. No problem.

other than that that was relatively easy all right I'll entertain a motion to approve the June 2026 monthly finance report I'll make a motion to approve the June 2026 financial report I'll second yes yes yes yes yes okay next up it's ordinance number 26-42

Being an ordinance amending Chapter 192, income tax, effective January 1, 2016, of the codified ordinances of the City of Louisville.

I'll make the motion we bring ordinance number 26-42 to the table for its second reading.

Second.

All right, Mayor. This ordinance is what changes Chapter 192, our income tax ordinance, to reflect our transition to GRETA. And it also has a provision that will allow automatic updates when the state law mandates it. OK.

Yes.

Great.

Any questions on that? Yeah, I've had a lot of discussion on this. Yeah. We've killed it pretty good. All right. Let's go ahead and vote.

Al Jantzak? Yes. Gadone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. OK. Next up is resolution number 26-44.

Being a resolution adopting the leadership culture and behavioral commitments for Louisville city council members.

I'll make the motion. We bring resolution 2644 to the table for discussion.

Second.

So mayor coming out of bull setting, if you'll remember, you ask, uh, the impact group to kind of capture the. and conduct that you expected the existing city council to maintain. And what this document does is details that and then your passage by resolution would adopt it as policy for council.

yeah that's great and i appreciate it i know that packet was really really thick this this meeting but going through and just saying that you know we expect you know people to be respectful positive trusting honest open safe encouraging helpful kind united cooperative impactful and talk about behavioral commitments, going to the source, and practicing open and honest communication, listening to understand, not merely to respond, assuming positive intent and extending grace, setting each other up for success, and respecting board expectations and governance boundaries. I really liked it. I think we had a great couple days of working session. I appreciate and respect everybody up here and everybody on staff that went through that process. And I just think we should continue the positive momentum. And I appreciate the impact group being able to capture the intent and ideals behind that on how we should work together.

Something I'd like to highlight, you did not read an end date on that. So this is something that we expect to be carried forward, right? For however long this board continues this.

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

That's what I thought. It just, this report, I was so impressed. Those were two of the best days I've ever had at meetings like that. And just openness and, like, the department has, you know, their reports and everything and the questions we all asked. It was very, very, well, attentive, well-learned. I love Matt's the best. I think Matt and Carol. informational and entertaining yeah very well done that's what we strive wasn't like boring and we weren't looking to go home i mean we actually like we're

It was really good. It was good, for sure. Yeah, and we've been to the different things with the Municipal League, and they give almost all the worst-case examples of what is happening in other cities or what not to do. It's always the lawyers that have to get up there and say, you wouldn't believe this, but this is actual things that have happened. And I appreciate everyone who talks about board expectations and governance boundaries, understanding that we are a strong... City manager week council form of government. We have professionals that run the city, you know We said, you know the policy and the directions and they carry that out and I just appreciate that we all have that same Clear concept in mind and they're looking forward to good things to come All right, let's go let's go ahead and vote Yes, yes Yes Okay. Next up is resolution number 26 dash 45.

Being a resolution, adopting the strategic visioning report, 2026 through 2029.

I'll make a motion to bring a resolution 26 45 to the table for discussion. Second.

All right. Mayor also coming out of goal setting was the strategic visioning report. And in that report, you'll find that they also captured what your vision for the community is. identified our strengths, challenges, opportunities, and threats, and then in some detail discuss what the strategic goals for the next three years would be. And those, of course, are economic development at the top of the list, maintaining capital assets and quality of life issues. And then, of course, it's a lengthy document. I'm sure that you read through it, but it certainly seems to capture what council's intent was coming out of the goal-setting meeting.

Yeah, I appreciated changing the W in the acronym from weaknesses to challenges. Yeah. Yeah, that was interesting and I think important.

And I think it doesn't matter if you're, you know, Louisville, Ohio, or I would say New York city, but I'm not sure if that's in the priority of New York city, any other major city, um, where, you know, economic development growth. I mean, that has to be your number one priority because in order to have, you know, paved roads or, or safety services or, um, good parks or anything in between, you need continued growth, continued, you know, looking for different ways to bring businesses in. And I appreciate when I've met with different business leaders in the community and I ask them, like, what can we do better? I haven't got a suggestion on the city side. A lot of them is like, oh, we're waiting on this from Washington, D.C., or we're waiting for this for Columbus, or we're waiting on interest rates or things of that nature. But, you know, we want the message out there that Louisville is open for business and Louisville is a place where it is inviting for businesses to currently have to expand or others that want to look at an opportunity to come in. Definitely.

Okay.

And I think it's certainly more than fair to say it's the path that we're on. I'd like to think that we are more business friendly or more accommodating to the businesses and their needs and their kind of desires to grow and relocate than maybe we have been in the distant past. Because when they win, we win. Right on.

Okay. Let's go ahead and vote on that.

Aljancic? Yes. Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. Next up is ordinance number 26-46.

Being an ordinance, making appropriations for current expenses and other expenditures of the city of Louisville, Stark County, state of Ohio, for the year beginning January 1, 2026.

I'll make the motion we bring ordinance number 26-46 to the table for its first reading.

Second.

All right. I'll second.

So this is something that we generally would not do until the end of the year, but at the ballot in November we had the amendment to our charter that allowed for this to take place beyond just the last three months of the year. Primarily what this appropriations amendment does is move money around within the budgets to kind of identify, or after I should say, Matt, identify where we may have some shortfalls, where we may have some excess. to kind of get a more balanced approach. And the only new money that it appropriates is $14,258 out of the general fund for a generator repair for one of the fire trucks, which of course was unanticipated. $32,000 in the water revenue fund as a result of increased electricity costs and insurance costs. And then I believe it was a whopping $29 in the water tower fund simply because an invoice came in $29 more than what was expected. But beyond those new money appropriations, this just shifts money in the existing budget that council approved in November.

Okay. Any questions? No. Good, Mayor. Nothing.

Okay. And then the reason for the emergency is because it's appropriation.

Correct. That's a charter requirement for appropriations amendments. Okay.

All right.

Let's go ahead and vote.

Algianthic? Yes. Godown?

Yes.

Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. Make a motion we suspend the rules to consider ordinance number 26-46 by emergency. Second.

Algianthic? Yes. Godown? Yes. Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. Okay, will you please read it again?

being an ordinance making appropriations for current expenses and other expenditures of the city of Louisville-Star County, state of Ohio, for the year beginning January 1st, 2026.

I'll make the motion we bring ordinance number 26-46 to the table for its second reading.

Second.

Any further discussion? Okay, let's go ahead and vote.

Aljancic? Yes. Godone?

Yes.

Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. Okay, next up is ordinance number 26-47.

Being an ordinance authorizing the city manager to enter into a purchase agreement with Dynamic HVAC Solutions for the materials, labor, and scope of work for repair to an HVAC system at Constitution Center.

I'll make a motion to bring ordinance 26-47 to the floor for its first reading. Second. Second.

So, Mayor, as you know, the air conditioning at the Constitution Center does not work. This was budgeted for to repair last year. The quote has come in slightly over $50,000, which is the threshold to require council approval. The issue, the reason it has not been fixed yet, the money that was appropriated for this or approved in the budget was to repair the air conditioning system, not replace the entire HVAC system. So there is a coil in the heating system that is, of course, part of the HVAC system necessary for the air conditioning that was, and correct me if I'm wrong, Daryl, so old that they did not produce the part anymore. It had to be fabricated. That's correct. So that is what's causing the delay in the HVAC system being repaired and everyone at Constitution Center enjoying climate control. And we're asking for it by emergency for the welfare of the people that work in the building and those that use the main part for the community covered.

So just two quick things. Just want to clarify that this is just repairing the current system that we have. This isn't a full-out replacement? Correct.

This replaces a big part of the air conditioning system and the coil in the heating system, but it does not replace the entire system. That would have been considerably more expensive.

And this was budgeted for last year. Correct.

If you remember, there was some debate back and forth, but ultimately it was budgeted for.

Correct. And it makes sense because we still have, beyond the community cover that uses that space, we still have city staff working in that building.

Correct. There are some smaller portions of the building that are still air conditioned, but yes, to your point, there are areas that suffer because the air conditioning is is out. And there's other organizations that periodically use the building as well.

Still using the dais, I believe, right, Andy?

I think all the public meetings now are held here. We did, of course, we vote there. This year, I think, was probably the last time AARP will use it for tax purposes. But there are other organizations that use it periodically. Of course, the most frequent use right now beyond for city purposes is the community covered.

They have all those shelves and everything that are, I just thought of them like when our houses were so hot. You know, they have all that, oh my golly, it's just like a grocery store in there. That's what I thought. And you think,

And you think, too, so I just wanted to make sure people knew that it was repair, it was budgeted for by the previous council, and it's not just like we're just fixing an empty building where we don't have city staff or there's no other use going on. And I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing if you wouldn't move forward with something like this, I mean, that's really when you don't have heating or cooling, that's when the deterioration kind of picks up in buildings. You have other issues that can kind of creep in.

Sure. That's allegedly the best way to preserve a home or a structure is to make sure that it's climate controlled from the interior standpoint.

Okay. And Mayor's Court, Andy?

Yes.

Mayor's Court still takes place there? Okay.

That's quite similar.

Okay.

And have we used Dynamic before?

We've started to more recently. They repaired the server room at City Hall. They did some work in there to fix that air conditioner problem. And so far, they've been great to deal with.

Good. Okay.

Great.

Okay. Let's go ahead and vote.

Algiantic? Yes. Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. I make a motion we suspend the rules and consider ordinance number 26-47 by emergency. Second. Let's go ahead and vote.

Yes. Yes. Johnston. Yes. Street.

Yes. I'll make the motion. We bring ordinance number 26 dash 47 to the table for its second reading.

Second.

Then you have to read that. You have to read that again. Thank you.

Sure. Being an ordinance authorizing the city manager to enter into a purchase agreement with dynamic HVAC solutions for the materials, labor, and scope of work. for repair to an HVAC system at Constitution Center.

Sorry. Oh, it's okay. We got a motion. We got a second. Any further discussion?

None from me.

All right. Let's go ahead and vote.

Al Jancic? Yes. Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. Okay. Moving on to the public speaks, non-agenda items portion of the meeting. First up, we have Todd Hawk. So Todd, you can come on up for your presentation. I believe there's a microphone set up for you right there. He's going to be presenting on the screens over there. And you're at the Stark Economic Development Board. We're happy to have you at City Council.

Well, thanks for having me, Mayor. And we'll try to run through this quick. I asked Dave how long I had. I can do this in 15 minutes. I can do it in an hour and a half. So take your poison with you. I took an hour and a half. You all took an hour and a half. I don't want the hour and a half either, so we'll do the 15 minutes. I think at one point someone thought I was trying to act like George Kiko running through this in 15 minutes. We'll get to that. See, there we go. So I think you guys had a recent presentation a little while back from Stephen McKenzie, President and CEO of Stark Economic Development Board, strengthening Stark. You saw this model. This is a model from Professor Ned Hill from the Ohio State University. There we go. And he kind of stumbled over the V in there. We had to make sure he hit that one. But I think, so the part that came out of this was housing. And you were talking about economic development earlier. And when you talk about economic development, one of the big things comes into that process is workforce. All the other pieces that go around getting to the red circle of true economic development, bringing traded sector jobs, fulfilling those kinds of revenue and those types of things within a community. So how this came to be was some requests for proposal were out. There were some site selectors in Stark County a couple years ago, and one of their first questions, and now all the first questions in those RFIs are, how's my people and what are you going to do to educate my workforce? Those are the big questions. ALL THE OTHER STUFF THEY USED TO ASK, ELECTRIC USAGE, WATER USAGE, ALL THOSE THINGS THEY CAN FIND ONLINE IN FIVE MINUTES. THEY KNOW THAT BEFORE THEY GET HERE. SO THEY'RE REALLY HITTING US WITH SOME OF THOSE TYPES OF QUESTIONS. SO WHAT HAPPENED OUT OF THAT WAS WE COMMISSIONED A STUDY, THE STARK COUNTY COMMISSIONERS PAID FOR THAT STUDY. I ACTUALLY WAS THE LEAD FROM STRENGTHENING STARK AND STARK ECONOMIC EVOLVEMENT BOARD THAT WORKED WITH THE CONSULTANT TO DO THAT STUDY. we spent months going through that they were in town for a week or so doing focus groups we drove all over the county about 160 miles all over every every corner to look at the housing and what was going on what came out of the study that's the major point is there was a median income at the time excuse me of about 63 000 per household And the median sale price of a home was about $200,000. That's unaffordable when you look at 30% of AMI and what someone should be spending. That house should have only been about $135,000. So the other opportunity there is, well, you can increase wages, and you can lump people up about $25,000. We have zero control over that, obviously. That's up to the businesses and where that goes. So we looked at what are the options and what things can we do, and that's what the study really brought out. When we look at that more recently, that's about a March number. The median household income in Starr County grew about 10%, to about $69,000. This study, again, was done in 24, so 24 numbers. So about 10%, median sold price about 14% increase, and median house listing price about 25% increase. So the wages still aren't keeping up with the price that comes out from a house. That is purely the sale price. We had a report from the National Association of Home Builders. The most recent median new construction price in Stark County is 524,000. So put that same number together and work on 69,000. Pretty tough nut to crack. When we were talking 200 and 135 in house value, keep in mind this was when interest rates were above 7%. So it's a little bit better with lower interest rates, but it doesn't change it all that much when you think about it. SO WHAT WE LOOKED AT IS WHAT DO THOSE JOBS LOOK LIKE? I'M GOING TO THROW THROUGH THIS ONE REALLY QUICK. LEFT SIDE WERE JOBS THAT WERE CREATED THROUGH SEDB AND WORK THAT WE HAD DONE TO ATTRACT NEW BUSINESSES THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY. RIGHT SIDE WAS A PROGRAM CALLED CAREER CONNECT THAT WORKS THROUGH STRENGTHENING STARTS AND IS NOW UNDER THE STARTS WORKFORCE BOARD. The left side, jobs being created by industrial work being attracted to the area. Average wage is about $27 an hour or $56,000 a year. Typically what happens is when we say $27 an hour, people think that's a good wage. $56 is still not even close to the median household wage. Then we look at the other one. So the Career Connect takes people who are on the sidelines or who are underemployed, brings them back to an employed status or a more meaningful wage job, and brings them up along that way. That number was about $16.35 an hour. Again, people think, okay, that's a decent wage. It's only $34,000 a year. So if we had a person in each of these categories, we're still barely getting to where we need that median household to be in a year. So then what we did was we started looking inside the study, there were these personas that looked at families of two, so single parent, families of three, one child, families of four, those types of things. They gave us some numbers as far as to what they should be able to afford in housing, what their incomes could look like with jobs that fit the area. We took this a step further and broke it down to true actual star county jobs. So what you'll see here is a family of two, family of three, family of four, with family of two being a nursing assistant, mom and her daughter, family of three, husband and wife, mechanical engineer, so one person stays home. That'll be key when we flip through the rest of these slides here quick. And then family of four, two workers, a welder and an LPN. I get a lot of pushback when I show this slide about the welder being 49,000, but we hear welding's a great occupation, everybody should go there. That's the number for a welder coming out of certification, going into the service. When you start to get up where some of the specialties come in, yeah, they can get to 80, 90,000, 100 plus, but in a standard welding job, that's the number in Star County. So then we want to break it down, and what's that really look like? Because we're saying she should only be able to afford $870 a month in housing. NOT A BIG NUMBER TO WORK WITH WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT A HOUSEHOLD OF $227,000 TO BUY, SOME OF THE RENTS THAT YOU LOOK AT IN DIFFERENT PLACES. SO WE BROKE HER NUMBER DOWN AND WENT THROUGH TO GET HER TAKE-HOME PAY. WHAT'S THAT LOOK LIKE? THAT IS AN ADP CALCULATOR. IT'S NOT ME MAKING IT UP. THAT TAKES ALL THE STATE LOCAL INCOME TAXES. THIS WAS DONE AT CITY OF CANTON'S INCOME TAX LEVEL OF 2.5%, SO MAYBE IT WILL DIFFER FOR right here locally in louisville but then we went down and looked through something out for medical something out for dental something out for vision we had to save a little bit for retirement at 401k most of those these folks will skip that so that's another problem that we'll talk about as you go through that but then we looked at what does it really look like for them So her monthly income comes out to a net $2,167 after all those things come out. If we could find her housing cost at 870, car payment of 527, that is the median car payment in Starr County. We looked at childcare, 980. That is the cost for childcare at the North Canton YMCA, a program a lot of people know about. And then groceries, that's the moderate for two-person family under the USDA regulations. Utilities, average numbers across our county. 410 is that there is cell phone and internet, other types of things that would go into her expenses. She's $1,500 upside down on a monthly basis. So partially what this starts to show is why people have credit card debt, because they'll start to go back and pick off the things they can put on a credit card and then the things they have to pay in cash. The other one is that housing cost at 870 is probably low for what she could find. And what we find is a lot of times when you start talking about building multifamily or higher density housing, we all tend to feel a little itchy about that because we talk about people that are either Criminal activities come out of that. It comes out of it's a renter, all these types of things. This lady needs to be a renter right now. She's not going to have savings. She's not going to have the money for a down payment. This is the same lady that's at everybody's t-ball games, brings wind slices and cookies for the kids, and we also don't have great conversation with her. She still needs to get to some type of housing that's better than what she can get to today and what we see in the county. so that's kind of where that falls if we take her to home ownership and give her a little bit more and cost it a thousand she's seventeen hundred dollars upside down and i said you can challenge me on any of these numbers knock off five hundred dollars she's still upside down a thousand as well it's just not it's just not a reasonable thing for her to see so you see a lot of reports of what people are doing is they're cohabitating with other single single parents they're doing those types of things they're trying to they're going back and living at home you know with a parent that may have it that may have that space you know in a basement um there was just a piece on youtube for about cleveland doing this and a woman who's kind of in the same boat she got laid off she went back and got a nursing degree and she's renting a room in the basement from her sister for her and her child just to make it make it to me because her rent went from 700 and some odd dollars to almost 15 almost double So it's a big problem, not just here, but everywhere. Did the same thing with the family of three. The only thing I'll really point out to you here is when we went through and did these same prices, again, we doubled a lot of things for car payments and things like that. Childcare, we left at zero. This is that age-old question a lot of people go through about whether that spouse should go back to work or not. Where does that break-even point happen? So we let this one stay at home. They're still upside down. So it's still a tough space for them to work through that process. Family of four, again, we've got those two folks earning. They're up over $100,000 of annual income, a little bit above 120% of our median income. They're still barely breaking even. And I will challenge you, too, that housing costs at $1,100 for rental. If you're talking about that, you're probably a three-bedroom. Find me a three-bedroom rental for $1,100. It's probably more like $1,500 to $2,500 if I'm being honest. So again, I think we undershoot some of those things. Get to the housing cost of actually owning a home at about $2,000. It's about a $300,000, $325,000 house probably somewhere in that range, so we're getting up there a little bit in value. Still, they're negative now. So they're still at a break-even kind of point. So we're in that 300 again, not at that new build at 524. And you can find them. We can all tell these stories. I could tell you stories. I've got at least two in the last two months of people trying to come back to this area who could not find a house and are still waiting. Two of them have lucked out. Two more of them I know are still trying to find a place to come back home, which is what we want. We want that talent here. If you have businesses and you're looking to develop, you need the talent to come here to be here from that perspective. Todd, when you say they can't find, there's nothing open? They can't find it in their price range, number one. So there's a couple things to that. Not in their price range. Or they find their price range, but it's another six figures to renovate the stuff that needs to be taken care of for them to live there. or they're getting outbid by someone who has all cash, whether it's another person or it's an institution, which is another problem, or the other one is there's just, what you're finding is the people that are in this number, they realize all the other expenses have gone up, so while they should be able to afford a $450,000 house, I'm gonna come back down here and buy the 350. So now when they come down a rung, this person at 350 can't find anything, so they gotta come down. And when they can't find theirs, then it comes down to another one. So you're sitting in this push down. One of the biggest populations actually, believe it or not, after COVID of homelessness was 65-year-old men. Single men. Because they keep getting pushed down. There was nothing for them to go buy in those spaces. And the rents were up too high for them to be able to afford in their retirement. I learned a lot of this. I didn't know any of this before I started doing this work. So it's interesting.

Do we have a lot sitting open? A lot of empty houses, empty apartments. Do we have a lot that's available? It's just people can't afford in that range?

It's more of a supply problem. There isn't supply.

Okay.

So when you get to that, and here's the number, from 35 to 100,000, that's the numbers we're trying to work for, which is what you saw there, we're about 13,000 units short in Starcap. Now, that's 13,000 units of all types. So brand new, people who need to move to retirement communities that aren't. So the 55 and older crowds, we need more of those spaces to be built for them to be able to move to, as well as those, the brand new spaces. But how do you find one that's reasonable for some of those folks? We don't have a very high percentage of multifamily. I don't have the number off the top of my head across all of Stark County. But multifamily, and it doesn't mean, we're not talking 100 unit apartment complexes. It could be duplex, triplex, quadplex, those types of things that still look like a single family home. There's a lot of those. The Ohio Association of Realtors and a group called the Greater Ohio Policy Center actually created eight different building plans. Any one of us could go grab tomorrow. They're pre-approved by the Ohio Building Department, submit them and build those. And there's a duplex model, there's a... single family model there's a duplex model that's built for multi-generational so like a six seven hundred square foot space in the back and then the twelve or fifteen hundred in the front and the doors all look side by side so it all looks like one straight house And but there's that way and then there's a door in the middle that's open. So you had parents in the back that wanted to downsize what they can to come through to the front and be with their their children and grandchildren. The thought was it alleviates two problems. Housing for two folks brings up the 55 and older community and also could take care of child care from the family if they're dealing with the sense wrong together.

Would you say you have those plans out?

The Ohio Association of Realtors and the Crater Ohio Policy Center. It's I think it's housingoh.org. Dave's been with me all the time. He knows where to get it. We can send it to you. So part of that process is looking at zoning regulations and those things. He actually created a guidebook around some smart zoning regulations and things to prompt people to think as they go. So we basically came up with the goal that we want to eliminate that imbalance by 2030. Probably going to take a little longer than that, but we're going to keep pushing to try to get there because we can't just keep doing the same things and do nothing. So I'm going to wrap you through this last part here really fast and make sure I hit my 15-ish minutes. So what we did was the study came back with nine main recommendations. Broken down, it's about 32 different action points. We took those and created five main priorities. I have a group of folks that are an advisory team, kind of a steering committee of people across the county that are involved or engaged somewhat in the housing in some way. And then from those, those people each help lead five working teams that go to the five priorities. Part of their priority is education and communications. Again, we've been on talks with the governments. We met with Dave a while back. We went through this with a number of different governments and said, this is the same problem. Now we're here trying to come out in the public, talk a little bit more too. I had a meeting with all the school superintendents. That's the one they thought I was George Kiko because I think I only had like seven minutes to run through this all at the same time. But we've got to get across where the schools are and what they need and what they have to do. So we looked through those processes and had that conversation. We've had our update meeting. We had about 150 folks in attendance. That's when we had the National Association of Home Builders economist in town. She was here. She did a whole presentation. If you want a copy of that, we can get it for you. It's sitting, it's probably on this drive, as a matter of fact. I think, Dave, you might have a copy. If not, I'll shoot it over to you. A lot of good data. It's really economic data-driven. A lot of graphs, a lot of different things like that, but it really works through that. So then we want to really do a lot to send things out to the communities so the communities can start thinking about this a little bit differently. So we've got some op-eds written, blog posts done, some videos that are put together. They'll be coming out here in the next couple of months. We started posting some things on social media about this and what it takes to get through these processes to try to really spur the conversation and have a better response. understanding of what these things mean and then we'll start to look at some case studies and what those look like cost-wise because there's always the cost of construction to a house one of the one of the builders gave me the kind of off example of a ceiling fan You need a ceiling fan in your house, you go to Lowe's, Home Depot, it's 150 bucks, 120 bucks, whatever. You buy it, you pull it down, you put a new one up. When he puts a new ceiling fan in a new house, he's gotta have a framing carpenter, he's gotta have a full carpenter, he's gotta have the drywall that knows how to put it in, they gotta have the electrician to wire it. All that goes into building that ceiling fan part of that house. SO IT'S NOT JUST PUTTING UP A CEILING PAIR. SO YOU THINK OF IT, IT'S NOT EXACTLY THE BIG EXAMPLE, BUT IT GETS YOU THINKING A LITTLE DIFFERENTLY ABOUT HOW THOSE THINGS COME INTO COST AND WHY THEY GET SO HOT. PROCESS AND TECHNOLOGY, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT CAME OUT OF THIS WAS WITHIN THE COUNTY, AT THE COUNTY BUILDING LEVEL DEPARTMENT, THE COUNTY BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTIONS AND THOSE DEPARTMENTS, HEALTH, THOSE TYPES OF THINGS, WHEN YOU SUBMIT, YOU HAVE TO RUN AROUND ALL THE DEPARTMENTS AND DROP OFF PLANS. OR YOU GOT TO EMAIL 16 DIFFERENT SETS OF PLANS. AND IT'S ALL A BIG PROCESS. So we're happy to say that the commissioners purchased the system about three months ago, and it is being implemented right now, so be ready by the end of this year, where you'll be able to submit any plan for construction to the county building department, start regional planning, health department, sewer department, anything at the county level will all go through that system. and you'll be able to see it, track it, know when your permits were issued, be able to see that things have been approved and move things along from a county standpoint. It was very backwards at that point, and this was a big recommendation from the consultants. Also looking at those processes to find where there's efficiencies so we don't delay it. The more holding costs there are in property, the more the cost of the house costs, because that developer's gotta pass it along. They can't eat all those costs when they hold it. And then again, some of that, when you asked the question earlier about properties that are out there, there are some that get through renovation at a pretty decent rate and become back viable to use. We want to look into that process as well as land banking things that need to be demolished and get those things back up and running if we can do that. Regulatory structure, a big piece around zoning. That's always something that is always a concern. Dave has been to the two meetings. We actually have started a quarterly roundtable with developers and zoning and building officials. So they actually have to sit in a room and talk together. It's an interesting conversation. Everybody thought I was going to have to wear a referee's shirt when I started that one, but they've been pretty good so far. They followed your model of being open and honest, and they haven't gotten there yet, so it's been good. We worked through that to try to figure out what are some things that make some sense, whether it's setbacks, whether it's lot lines, whether it's street frontage, those types of things. We've learned some things. Certain areas in the city of Akron for infill, they don't require street frontage at all anymore. They just require that your lot be 4,000 square foot or bigger. no one's gonna build on a one foot by 4,000 but they they know they're gonna have some frontage but if it's odd to get those in there because sometimes old city lots are weird there's there's a little weird and you've got if it's 60 feet okay well if it's 50 well what if it's 52 well what if it you know how do you do that so that's kind of how they got around and we have some 45 YOU MAY HAVE SOME THAT ARE 45, AND HOW DO YOU DO THAT? AND THEY CAN BUILD HOUSES. THOSE HOUSES THAT I MENTIONED WITH THE OHIO ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS, THEY WERE BUILT, THEY WERE DESIGNED, MEANING BEING MOSTLY FOR INFILL OF CITIES. SO THEY'RE A FAIRLY NARROW, LONG CONSTRUCTION PRODUCT. BUT THEN WE LOOKED AT, YOU KNOW, THE ROUND TABLES AND HOW WE'LL CREATE THINGS OF THAT BEST PRACTICE TO PASS ALONG AND SOME OF THE EDUCATION OF APPOINTED AND ELECTED OFFICIALS. I'm against you all. I'm one. We get that same. You get elected, you don't really know all this stuff. What do we do to educate? We don't do anything. We don't really talk about zoning with elected officials. We don't talk about it with planning commissions. These are the things you should think about. We really want to start to drive some of that education to help make that a little bit better process and make it a little more teeth behind what we're trying to accomplish. the next one sites partnerships and funding this one kind of wraps a lot of stuff together really looking at what can we do to create a better opportunity of resources things that can come out looking at properties that we can bring together one of the things we've asked some cities to do if you have multiple vacant properties package them up and send out an rfp REMOVE PERMIT FEES FOR THOSE SO YOU CAN GET THEM REBUILT. THE CITY OF CANTON HAS DONE A COUPLE OF THEM SO FAR. SEE WHERE THEY'RE AT. THEY'VE JUST BEEN ANSWERED, SO WE'RE WAITING TO SEE WHAT THEY FILTER OUT TO YOU. YOU SAW THE ARTICLE ABOUT THE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY PROJECT. THAT CAME OUT OF THAT PROCESS. So it's the old Baxter School property. She's going to be looking to do 16 units there. She's also talking to some for-profit developers to see if we can do some neat things to try to build a model that we can replicate. Because we've got to build more, and she can't do them all as Habitat. No one developer is going to get us out of this situation. So how do we bring those things together? So that's some of the things we've looked at in that. And then events, again, we talked about the events working with the developers working together, talked about doing some things to get out like this, meet community up front, talk about things that we need to see and need to do. And then one of the big ones that came out was establishing the Stark County Housing Summit to attract some additional developers here that aren't currently working in the area, whether it's larger regional ones, some of the national ones, what do you want to do? This one scared the daylights out of me when it came out in the recommendations. Because I thought the BIA would string me up by my toenails trying to bring new developers in. It was exactly the opposite. Most of them said, hey, we need some help. We can partner with these folks. We can make this work. We want to do some. They can do some. We can do these types of things. So it worked out better than I didn't get strung up at least. So I'm still here. So we made it through. So really looking at that summit and how do we attract other folks to the area. That's the rapid fire version of drinking from the fire hose of the housing room. Do you guys have any questions or anything else you want? Or anything I didn't hit that didn't, or something didn't make sense.

Is there something... you need from us to assist with this like what can lewisville do to help you bridge that gap of that um that that what is it 13 000 yeah exactly 12 877 yeah yeah yeah what can we do like like property available do we need higher income housing do we need what do what do we need to help

start counting everything so there is no silver bullet i think you know dave's been great we work well together um looking at you know if you have properties that you might want to use a land bank to take and demolish and open vacant spaces to make it more productive you talk about income tax if you've got a structure sitting there that's not no one's living in and they're not paying tax into the city that's just strange if you could get that and work through it are there things like that that would make sense do you have open spaces that people could develop talking to those developers what is it what's what's holding them up from making the next step to make that move Is it we need to recruit other folks to come in and build on there with them? Are there things we need to do? Spend a lot of time with the BIA looking at those options and things like that. Looking at your zoning code, are there hindrances that are in there? It may not always be some people will look at certain codes and it's so many units per acre. Units per acre may not bother a developer, but the setbacks might. OTHERS, IT MIGHT BE THE OPPOSITE. THERE'S NOT ENOUGH UNITS PER ACRE FOR ME, AND THE SETBACKS ARE OKAY. SO KIND OF TALK THROUGH THOSE A LITTLE BIT. MAYBE HAVE SOME GUYS AND GALS THAT DO A LOT OF DEVELOPMENT IN LOUISVILLE, TALK TO THEM. ASK THEM WHAT THEY NEED, WHAT THINGS THEY'RE RUNNING INTO. I KNOW DAVE DOES A LOT OF THAT, BUT WHERE ARE THEY RUNNING INTO PERMIT PROBLEMS? ARE THERE OTHER ISSUES THAT ARE SLOWING THEM DOWN? THE SLOWER YOU MAKE THEM GO, THE MORE THE PRODUCT COSTS. because they got to carry costs to hold that whether it's property tax they're paying interest they're paying on the loan that they use to buy it money they can't deploy other places there's some type of cost for them to do that and they can't they can't just eat that so it comes under the price of the house cost of rent whatever those pieces are Be open to looking at multifamily options, what those may look like. Just see. Again, people ask me a lot of times, what's the hardest part? I have no control, I have no authority, and I have no money. I just run around and say, hey, come jump on the bus with me and let's find something to do. So a lot of it really comes down to what you all are willing to do. No one, and I'm not here to tell you this is what Louisville should look like. You guys do that. YOU KNOW, WE'RE JUST TELLING YOU THESE ARE SOME OPTIONS THAT YOU CAN SEE, SOME THINGS THAT MIGHT MAKE SOME SENSE. HERE'S THE PROBLEM, HERE'S SOME SOLUTIONS. AND WE'RE CONTINUING TO WORK ON THOSE SOLUTIONS. I SPEAK WITH THE STATE HOUSE FREQUENTLY ABOUT OPTIONS THAT THEY SHOULD BE LOOKING AT. WE'VE GOT We're starting to put this package together like the Ohio Housing Finance Authority. A lot of people don't use them. There's a lot of great programs that people don't even know about. Until I started talking to them, didn't realize if you're a recent grad and you've graduated with your bachelor's, associate, master's in the last 18 months, they have a program that you can get up to three to three and a half percent down payment assistance that's forgiven over five years. And you only have to stay in the state of Ohio. You don't have to stay in the same house. So if you get into a starter place for the first two years and you move to another home, as long as you stay in the state of Ohio, that window keeps ticking on doing it. So I have twins that are 23. I told the one, if you move back home, guess what you're going to do? You're going to find a house to buy because you're going to get 3% free money because that's what you're doing. You're getting 3% equity in the house that you didn't pay for. You just got to stay in the state for five years. So there's some, and there's other programs they have where you do have to stay in house and different things like that, but those are on the buyer's side. Again, that supply, if you can look at that and you're thinking, I gotta go buy a house and this is what I'm gonna bid, if you know you have 3% coming as an additional assistance, It means you can afford 3% more. So you're trying to look through those things. So we're trying to find a lot of that and create a real robust resource place where people can go, whether it's the resident buying, the developer figuring out how to build and what options they have through programs and grants. So if you guys do come up with incentives and you said, hey, we're willing to do whatever it is, tax abatement, this or that, some type of down payment out of the city funds, whatever it is, we would wrap that in so people know that. Some lenders will do things special for certain areas. You all are in a spot where you're actually part of the USDA, so you can use USDA. Dave and I have had a conversation with a gentleman who builds under USDA regs out of New Philly, and he has somebody that may want to live here in Louisville, so we're trying to figure out, can we make that work? It would be a great project to have. And we're trying to connect you too, but again, you're the boots on the ground. You hear these things. And if you hear things we're messing up, I'm a big person on that. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. Tell me what I can do to better help you in that perspective.

Yeah, and I feel like we've said yes whenever we've had a chance to, you know, move forward with projects or when housing is common, we've said yes. And at least what I think that's the most important thing. We can't go out and necessarily, you know, pick the investor, you know, that's coming in. But when the people on the land and they put up projects and most of them have been, you know, owner occupied single family houses, you know, we've said yes and we've helped them help them along. So I'm thankful for that.

Yeah, you guys are doing a great job. Most of it is, again, I don't have any money in my hand to help you. It's just really how do we work together to make that kind of stuff happen. And you've got to do what's right for the community. Nobody's telling anybody to do something crazy. But what's outside the box that's still relevant and still fits within what you all want to be as a city? Sure.

So we invite anyone who is a zoning official, anyone who is a building official, we have all the all the Stark County Health Department's invited, Stark County Sanitary Steward,

Any of those, Dave, some of the economic development directors, Dave's been at all those. And then it's gone out to the BIA. Any of the builders will want to come. more than happy. I mean I have probably three or four excavating companies that come. Most of the builders come. DeHoff, Horton, Ryan, all of them come. And it's been good.

So I wonder what the conversation is, or maybe they've touched on it, maybe they haven't, but with the Stark County Sewer Department being there, I would think that it would come up. So developers, I think sometimes what we see is that it's hard to do the infrastructure for that development before it's the chicken or the egg, right? So to build the houses, there's no infrastructure. Put the infrastructure there, there's no money to put the infrastructure there unless there's houses. So what do they talk about with that?

That's been talked about a lot of different places Infrastructure is a big deal numbers gone from $500 a linear foot to $1,300 a linear foot to bring most services to a lot So if you figure a 60-foot wide lot I'm 1300 bucks and you got to buy the land then you got to actually build a house So that's a big thing. One of the things we're doing on that too right now. I'm just finishing being cross-eyed is we did a sites strategy and inventory across commercial sites and and we also layered residential on top of it. So when I say I was cross-eyed, the consultant sent me 262 rows in an Excel sheet of sites all over the county. Not parcels, sites. So one site that was in there was 70 parcels together and it was almost 2,200 acres. Another one was one parcel and 20 acres. And they're all over the county. So what fits where, how do you see that? And those were done by distance to sewer because that is a big problem. I mean, if you're not aware, most people are, of the developed counties in the state of Ohio, we're number one for septic systems. It's not a stat you want to tout around that by any means. So sewer is a big issue. Water is a big issue. I was just talking to a developer that's putting in an allotment. He's putting in water through aqua. It's going to cost him $530,000 to put the water in, which is aqua stuff. He's got to pay to put their stuff in. Then he has to pay them another $30,000 to inspect it. And that didn't count the laterals to the house to actually set the house up. He's not going to eat $530,000 out of that. So I think there's 43-ish lots. So you do the math. It's $10,000 plus a lot in just getting water. Now you've got to put sewer in there. And I've had a couple people tell me, another one recently told me they were having issues where They ran electric and gas. Gas wouldn't turn on until electric turned on. Electric wouldn't turn on until, so they're all fighting with each other about who's turning on first. So then that delays it again. So yeah, so a lot of that is gonna be, the last one we had, they gave me about five different best practices more around zoning things to talk about next time. Their next meeting's September 2nd, I think it is. It's the first Tuesday of each quarter that they're gonna meet. And if you wanna come, you're more than welcome. Dave can drag, you can come off.

Yeah.

It's breakfast. It's a 7.30. I bring breakfast. Last time they all skipped out, I gave them Chick-fil-A and they didn't even eat it all. I mean, I had a whole tray at home for a little while.

What day is this meeting?

It's a 30-second. And people have asked me, like, elected officials coming to that. We want to do a separate set of things with elected officials because we all know the zoning parts of it, that's for you all to make recommendations to you guys at the council so you would make the decision. So we want to separate that a little bit so that we can have best practices and then work through it from there. Because we know that the zoning inspectors across the county can't enact new zoning resolutions without approval.

And we've relaxed a little bit of that in recent times, right, with some of the development that we've been doing as far as lot sizes and setbacks.

And I think that's been our strategy, sort of keeping where we're at. And then with variances, et cetera, we just did that, obviously. Or we're just going to do that to a degree with the 45-foot lots. Right on. Which I think Todd's kind of speaking smaller lots, which gives people more range options.

And that's been a struggle for folks, not just in Stark County, but in Ohio, because we all think to the McMansion world. We all want a quarter to half acre lot. We want that. But that's not what the new people want. The younger folks want no grass. They want nothing to take care of. When they clock out on Friday afternoon, they want to go. They don't want to sit on a tractor and mow grass. They don't want to do those things. So we have to start changing our way of thinking, too, a little bit about what they want. That's the talent we need to come back to.

I think some of that, too, goes back to your affordability.

It does, 100%. And do you have the product they want? A lot of them do not want to own homes, believe it or not. They want to rent a lot of that stuff. And I know a couple of folks who are older who have moved out of homes they've owned and are renting right now because they don't want to mess with it. They have enough assets that they can afford it or they have retirement pensions coming that they can afford that rental number. They just want to do it and be done.

I think that's why our Redwood is doing relatively well.

Yeah, those guys build a great product. They're good folks. And that's the thing, right? That still is a lot of density. But it didn't go like this. So it's not quite as freaking people out in Ohio. If you go to Columbus, it goes like this. And they've done some unique things in zoning, too. We can share that with you if you want. But those are just different things to look at. But it's a different community. It's like comparing New York City to Louisville. It's not exactly the same. As I said, if you want to come here and you're looking for a 90-story building and a subway, I don't have it. You have to go there. But if you're looking for other things, we have that here. You talked about that. It's a chicken and the egg because quality of life bears economic development. Economic development allows for quality of life, so you've got to make sure those two things are there.

And I know they do their studies, too, these developers, right? Because we were told back then that Redwood would never work in our community. And, I mean, obviously it did.

Well, I'll be completely honest with you, but when I said we drove 160 miles together with the consultant doing the study, we came to Louisville, of course. And we were driving across, I think we were driving down 62, and he looked over at me, we're in my truck driving along, and he goes, you know, you guys don't have any townhomes around. You need some townhomes you can rent. Well, I drive right across Broadway, right into that driveway. I make the turn, and he goes, like those, but you got to rent them. So you have some differentiators here in different types of products. Some people do want to own that. What his point was with townhomes was a lot of the younger crowd, they like to rent, but they don't all like apartment buildings, but they like townhomes because they get to feel you out. They get to see what you're like as a community, and it feels more like a house, and then they'll buy. So that was kind of his trigger of this is the thing that we see. He's based in Kentucky. He travels all over the country. He does site selection for large companies when they're looking to locate somewhere. Housing was a problem, so they started doing housing studies. And you can have, if you don't have a copy of the study and you want it, it's 144 pages long. 35 of them really have good stuff in them. There's a page in there for each community, so you're not really going to go look and see what masks are going on. It doesn't really necessarily apply. There's a page for each one of those, but really the meat of what they're talking about is about 35 to 40 pages. Okay. Good stuff.

Todd, one more. That median deficit that you showed, how does that compare with other communities around, other economic development communities around? Has anyone else done that, Summit, Portage?

Not that Wayne did the same study at the same time with the same consultant, as a matter of fact. But most everybody in Ohio is very similar to that, that kind of gap. It's about the same here. I was in a meeting at Harvard for a grant project not too long ago, and one of the pieces that came out of it was, and I was in a focus group with that one, and it was about quality of life, and it about three seconds drifted to Halloween. And we started talking about this, and I said, here's my gap. And the one lady is from the state of Washington. She said, you got it easy. I said, really? Yeah, you got it easy. She goes, my median income is about the same, about $65,000, but my house price is on the sale, not that 227 number, about $600,000. Because it's hard to get materials down, right? So they can't just easily construct things like we can. We're pretty easy to get to. Think about where we can get things pulled in from. Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati. New York is still easy to get your Buffalo ticket, right? So it's a challenge from that perspective. And those are some things, too, looking at differential ways to build. People hear the word modular and they think of trailer parks. modular and manufactured are completely different today than they used to be. They're built in a climate controlled place so the wood doesn't warp and if you're able to get it where you can set it, it's easy. Habitat Humanity in Cleveland actually used a manufactured home company to build whole sets of houses because they had so much parkway money, they couldn't spend it fast enough with volunteers to build. So they had these guys come and put modulars in and then they would go in and do the seams and final stuff and paint with the volunteers to make it a habitat house. I went up and saw them, they looked, the only thing that didn't look right to me was one of the houses, a couple of houses had these seams in the roof. And I said, oh, that's where they hinged it and closed the roof. You couldn't see that part of it. Those were a variance that the city gave them to build closer together. They had to put a firewall in. So it was the fire escape piece of that wall in that room. So they were, you know, it was the city of Cleveland worked with them on not know, but this is what you got to do to get to where we're comfortable. And that's, so that's some of what you can do is ask some of those questions. Maybe different than what you've done before. It may still be known, but you got to try it. But those different types of models, they're 3D printing houses out of concrete.

Now I'm doing that in Columbus right now.

So what does that look like? Pretty weird. I will tell you, but you never know. All right. Thank you, Todd. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, Todd.

Mayor, I want to thank Todd for being here. He came to our planning commission meeting. heard that a couple times but it's a while he does a great job for Stark County and he's not he's my neighbor so I have to say he's a good guy he does a great job thanks very good okay next up we have I believe Julie Morris is welcome to come up to the podium

Did not sign up, so you have, if you can say your name, address, and then you can have three minutes to share.

Three? You got a half hour. Just kidding. Julie Morris, I live at 4514 Eastland Avenue, and I've lived in Louisville for close to 20 years. I love my town. You guys are doing an awesome job. I'm very proud to live here. We have businesses that are fixing up their places. We have new stuff coming in. He just talked about Redwood. I got a thing about the railroad tracks. I really do. My husband worked for NS for 36 years. so i had a couple numbers and i called them first i called the city and they said that's ns problem so i called ns they said that's a city problem so what i want to know is because we have such a nice place why can't we pony up a little extra to fix it because the only way in town from this direction is over them things and it's tearing up my car And I'm not the only one. Over 1,000 vehicles go over those railroad tracks. And they go over to the side so they don't hit the bumps. Well, now we're tearing up that side. So why can't we fix it? NS said that this is what they told me. They need to do it right by putting in some things that I didn't understand what they were and then putting asphalt over top of it. If you just put asphalt over top of it, you're not going to have a good job, and by winter, we're going to have the same problem. So what's the problem? I mean, we're going to spend $50,000 to put air conditioning down here. I'm not complaining. Every time my taxes go up, I'm not down here complaining because, number one, it doesn't help. But why can't we fix it?

Well, Julie, I appreciate you coming up, and we have been asking many of those same questions. I will turn it over to Andy because I know you've been in communication with the railroad or not when they want to communicate with you, and we agree. I don't think anybody disagrees with what you're saying, but why don't you go ahead and take this.

And I would echo what the mayor said. I agree. with you 100%. So we started trying to get in touch with Norfolk Southern over this issue some time ago, and ultimately it took getting in touch with our Congressman's office to get some kind of a response. I met with a couple of Norfolk Southern officials at each of the crossings on 1344. Surprisingly, they're was different than ours. They didn't think that they were that bad. The conversation then turned to, that being the case, if they're not slated for any kind of repairs, which they're not, what can be done on our end that would allow those repairs to happen or to make that a smoother process. What they recommend, in terms of the tracks being smooth, They recommend, and I forget exactly the terminology, but essentially it's the rubber platforms, not asphalt. So we right now are waiting to speak with their community projects engineer to get a better understanding of what that cost would be. We don't know exactly what that is right now, but there is certainly, as you can see, an interest among the administration and council to move in that direction. However, we can't do it ourselves. We have no ability to do any maintenance on the railroad right away. But we are working with Norfolk Southern to try and get that accomplished. Okay.

i know how hard it is to talk to the railroad they are government within the government they make their own little rules and they are very hard to get a hold of i just happen to have some numbers we do share your frustration and we are

We had actually approached them last year in the year before when they said well There's a program if the city wants to pitch in and improve things That you know and we looked into it.

We tried to contact them and then there was no interest

from, from them. And I remember several years ago in Washington, DC, something that always stuck with me is when we were meeting, um, with our former Congressman, they said, when we were mentioned about the railroads, I mean, the, the staff flat out said, and I think he said, um, the, when they were dealing with the railroads on a different issue, they said, we didn't have any problem with the Buffalo. We didn't have any problem that the Indians, and we're not going to have any problem with you. that's what they said to a congressman so we we are doing everything we possibly can as a city of almost 10 000 uh but unfortunately we've i mean my experience in our nine years being up here is that is they we are not high on their priority list um and i think and didn't you say years ago we gave them a ticket when they were stopped this goes back

Maybe in the 90s.

And yeah, they showed up with some lawyers from Washington, D.C. and got it dismissed.

Yeah, they told me it was your problem, and you guys said it's NS's problem.

We just don't own it. If it was city property, I would say we would have it fixed within... Well, can't we do that anyway?

I mean, it's just once. That one's not that bad.

Not any more than we can come on your neighbor's property and fix whatever's going on, because we don't own it. We want to. We would spend our money to do it. We do not own the property.

So even if I had a big fundraiser, because I actually thought about it,

Yeah, we can't, if we could do it ourselves, it would be done.

Yeah, and it's government stuff.

I know. Yeah, and we could not do it without the cooperation of Norfolk Southern.

Right. And they're not easy to work with. 36 years my husband worked there. Challenging to say the least. And he worked in, we lived in Louisville, and they sent him to work in Alabama. And he, I mean, that only cost everybody money, but that's the way they worked, so. Okay, is it rude for me to leave?

No.

Okay. You don't have to stay?

We appreciate you coming. I wish there was a better answer.

I feel better since I came. I was going to blow it off, but I really did.

No, we're glad you came.

Thank you.

Thanks for listening, guys. You guys are awesome.

Thank you. Thank you. We share in the frustration.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Julie. All right. Moving into new business, entertain a motion to appoint city manager Andrew Tarowski as the coordinator to facilitate and manage the procurement of the construction manager at risk services.

Is that a motion?

You're making a motion.

No, you can make the motion. I'll make that motion.

I'll second. All right.

Mayor, this is just a statutory requirement when you are selecting a construction manager at risk for a project.

Okay. All right. No other takers?

It's all yours. All right. It's all yours.

Yeah. Let's go ahead and vote.

Al Jancic? Yes. Gadone? Yes. Johnston? Yes.

Street? Yes.

All right.

city managers report I have nothing there other than requested a copy of the street paving so if this is what council is looking for we kind of simplified it as much as we could we can go ahead and get that get that posted it was should been in your email with the packet yep that'd be great if we can get that posted that would

That would be awesome. And did we say, is Spotlight coming out with a report? Are they trying to get in contact with somebody in the railroad for a – Rob is going to do an article.

That's a thumbs-up from the back corner. From Xavier, what he was talking about. Correct.

I would love, and I had mentioned, if there was a contact, a number, just something that stated the facts that this is where we're at, this is what the city's legally able to do, this is railroad property, and who should people call if they have... with questions or to put some, to give some feedback because I feel like these people are just far away and they're unaffected and they're not the ones taking their cars to Yoder's because of the going over the tracks back and forth, back and forth and they're in bad condition.

I've learned a lot more than you'd ever believe in the last week about railroads and what the city is responsible for or not responsible for

I mean, at some point, it's like, who calls Fox 8 and has them come down and take their van over the railroad tracks? It's rough. Anyway, I appreciate it. I will look forward to that report coming out momentarily. Right? Thursday. All right. Very good.

All right, Chief. Thank you, Mayor. The only thing that I have is I handed out a flyer. We're having a car show event here September 19th. All kinds of vehicles, cars, motorcycles, Jeeps, trucks. We'll have some food trucks here, 50-50 drawing, and then it's also going to be an open house for the fire department, too. People will be welcome to walk through the department and see what all we do here and talk to our firefighters, so. Just passing that out. We've got it advertised a whole bunch of different places. We're getting some pretty good feedback from it already. A lot of people are saying they're going to be here.

Awesome.

This is piggybacking off of one of the Eagles car shows. We asked them if we could get involved. So they have one the week before, and this will be the last one then for the year with the Eagles.

Awesome. I wanted to say you guys were awesome at that touch a truck.

Oh, thank you.

I had never seen Metzger Park so packed with families with little kids and strollers and booby buggies. A lot of people there this year. A lot of people.

They had a lot of nice trucks and equipment there. Kids love that.

That was awesome.

Yeah. It was a good time until we got wet twice. It happens. All right, Dave.

Mayor, Council, just to update, sort of to follow up on Todd, we received the final plat for Aspire Phase 2, 2B, which is about 40 houses. It's going to planning, and it should be coming, I think, not the next council meeting, but the council meeting next.

OK. Sounds good.

Very good. Daryl?

Thanks, sir. I have nothing tonight. I'll answer any questions.

OK. Chief?

Nothing either, Mayor.

OK. All right. Anybody have anything else for the good of the order? All right. I will entertain a motion move to executive session for the purpose to consider possible purchase of real estate for public purposes in conference with an attorney concerning disputes involving the city that are subject of imminent court action. I'll move that motion.

Mayor?

Second.

We'll go ahead and vote.

Al Jancic? Yes. Godone? Yes. Johnston? Yes. Street?

Yes. No action to follow. Thank you for coming, everybody, tonight.