Council - Regular Meeting

Meeting the St. Mary City Council in order. Roll call, please. Bob, here. Lun here. Here. Slater here. Fero here. Aqua here. Dylan here. I don't see anything. All rise. Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God. indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

All received a copy of the minutes of the last meeting. Are there any questions or comments from council? If not, may I have a motion to accept, please? Mr. Pub, Miss Buchanan. Council vote to accept, please. There you go. All yeses. Thank you. Under petitions, communications, first on the list is the auditor state, we have with us out of state director of regional leaison, Mr. Brady. Joe, the floor is yours.

All right. Thank you, Mr. President. Appreciate that. It is my honor to be here tonight on behalf of Ohio auditor of state keep favorite to present the city of St. Mary's with the Ohio auditor state award. Again, it is important to note that this award puts the city of St. Mary's in a very select group. The auditor state's office audits about 4,200 entities a year. 4,200 entities annually of almost 6,000 total entities that we audit and only a select few of those entities are even eligible for this award. Doug and I was talking before the um the meeting and three out of the last four years you all have received this award. That says a lot. It really does. The auditor's state award is presented to local governments and school districts that meet the completion of a financial audit that had the following criteria of a clean audit report. I'm going to read through the criteria so all your constituents or anybody watching here have an idea what it took for you guys to make this happen. The entity must file the financial report with the auditor states office by the statutory due date without extension via the HKLE system and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Data report must not contain any findings or recovery, any material citations or material weaknesses, any significant deficiencies, uniform guidance findings, or any question costs. The entities management letter must contain no letters, no comments related to any ethics referrals, any question costs less than the threshold for uniform guidance, any lack of timely report submission,

any bank reconciliation issues, failure to obtain a timely single audit in accordance with uniform guidance, any findings for recovery. public meetings or public records issues and the entity shall have no other financial or any other type concerns. This award represents the hard work of all of your city employees here in the city of St. Mary's and the financial staff who make an effort each day to attain excellence. I want to recognize all the council members here. I want to recognize the mayor, recognize your city services director, all of them that have done an outstanding job washing over any dollar here in the city of St. Mary's. Doug, if you'd like to step up here with me. I would especially like to recognize Douglas Rezen, your city auditor, for his outstanding leadership, his professionalism, and his exceptional commitment to fiscal integrity. Thank you.

Congratulations, Doug. On behalf of Ohio Auditor State key favor, I would like to present the Ohio Auditor State Award. So fantastic.

Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations.

Thank you, sir. It took all of it. Yes.

Next on the agenda, we have a notice of public hearing. I'll go ahead and read it. Notice is hereby given that the city of St. Mary's council will hold a public hearing on April 27th, 2026 at 6:15 p.m. in Ohio ch in council chambers at the municipal building 101 West Springs Street, St. Mary's, Ohio, relating to the renewal of the designated outdoor refreshment area, Dora in the downtown business district. The legislation is available to the public at the city of St. Mary's ministry building during regular business hours. Next, uh, under addition communications, this is where the public has the opportunity to address council. Does anyone in the audience wish to address council at this time? Okay. Under reports of city officials, we have the auditor's report. Mr. Rezen,

no correction, no. Any questions or comments from council? Next we have the treasur's report. Uh Kathy, same thing. Any questions or comments from council? Okay. Next we have the director of public service and safety's report.

Uh Mr. Harris, if I could please just add a couple things. The city office will be closed at noon on uh April 3rd for Good Friday. So all of our offices will shut down at noon. Uh police and fire of course will still be open. That's on Good Friday, April 3rd. Then following day, Saturday, April 4th, is the smart sponsored bunny trail uh from 10:00 to noon. So we would encourage bring up your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. I have no other than that, be glad to answer any questions anyone might have.

Any questions or comments from council? Question. Uh number bullet number five under your public service and safety. Have you guys been noticed? I guess are there a lot of issues throughout the city on I9 or just certain areas

there? We have certain troubled areas. We've been under um directions from the EPA for a while now. As you know, sanitary sewer overflows are uh illegal or they don't want any of the communities to have them. All the communities struggle with them. You simply cannot build a treatment plant large enough to accommodate heavy rain events that we have occasionally. They won't operate efficiently at that rate. So, it's been a process that we've been working on now for probably 10 or 12 years. Uh, we're getting closer. We have taken steps. Obviously, some of the improvements we've made to the sewer plant, uh, with some flood press and some additional capacity, those have all helped. We still have a lot of INI issues and that's what we want to tackle now. Um, and so we want we're going to meet we've met already. We're going to meet again with some of the U folks that we've worked with in the past to try to get a better plan together on it. But it is a it is an issue with some of our areas.

Are there many SSOs left in the city?

Yes. Yeah. We uh depending I mean last year obviously we had a very uh dry season and we didn't have as many if any uh but there are times under heavy rain events um that we could have three or four a year which which is is the EPA doesn't like them but they understand the necessity of it. uh all communities experience it. Um it's just when you get that much rain and the ground's already saturated, um there's no place to go with it. So, we will we will overflow at that point. Any other questions or comments from council? Okay, moving on. Reports of committees of city council and the streets and sidewalk committee, Mr. Quarro. Uh yes, we had the uh streets and sidewalk committee on March 16th at 5:15 p.m. Uh myself and Mr. Fitzgerald were there. Uh held the meeting. Aaron was absent. Um we spoke about golf cart uh seat belts. Chief Turpin was here. He spoke about balls. The seat belts a secondary fence in a motor vehicle. And he also noted that there were no accidents. A few from the audience expressed for or against um having them be an ordinance. Ultimately, we decided that at this time we would go ahead and table it and we may bring it back up at a later date. Any questions or comments from council? Okay. Moving on to readings of ordinances and resolutions. We have no third readings. On beside readings, we have ordinance number 2026 03, an ordinance approving the revised refugee rates for the city of St. Mary's.

Any questions, comments or council? Mr. Yes. I would like to add I'd like to make a motion, excuse me, to add emergency language to this ordinance. And the reason being is our fund is in the red currently. And if we can get gain one extra month to help pay that down, I think it would help. So the emergency language, folks, means that we would have a third reading on April the 13th and then instead of a waiting period of 30 days, it would we could enact it and have it go into effect May 1st instead of June 1st. so we catch an extra month and I think we need that so that we can get this fund into good standing. Um so I don't know if Greg has anything he wants to share but

uh well the administration of course supports that that effort. Um our goal all along we started this process with the two initial uh cost of services studies that were conducted was to have this in place by January 1st. Uh we recognized um how desperately we needed to do this. Uh if you did, if you'll recall, I believe we started this whole process last September uh with hopes of having it in place by January 1st. Uh that didn't happen for various reasons. And so we are in the red when I met with the auditor's office earlier today at 3:00, we were in red $156,000. And so it will it will help us. There's no doubt about it. Starting this rate increase a month early will certainly help us uh make that deficit more manageable.

Any other questions for comments or council? Mr. I guess the only comment I would make is um we just need to make sure the city's prepared to allow try and allow the seniors able to start getting tomorrow or Wednesday or speak on that when they can start putting their name down for that since that duration is going to be cut by a month.

Yes. Angie, Angie Guns and I have talked, the mayor and I have talked if if council moves forward and and the amendment is passed. Um, we will meet with her tomorrow and start figuring out how do we do this. So, yes, we are prepared for that, but we aren't going to assume anything. So, if it does go through tonight, we will we will move on that first thing tomorrow.

So, I guess when could when could we say they could start coming in to put their names down on the list? I I don't want to say that right now because I don't know Angie's schedule with things. I know right now it's a little slower because the collections are done. I mean, it's never really slow slow over there, but the first two weeks of the month they're just crazy busy with collections. And so, right now probably be a good time and we, you know, the the a good thing about social media is that you could push information out pretty quickly and so we'll do that. But, uh, my hope is that if it's not tomorrow, it's within the next day or so that we can start having, uh, folks come in and do that.

Yeah. I guess I would just say, yeah, if there's a way, social media or something to push it out because you wait till the next council meeting, it'll probably be too late first building cycle. Yeah, I think again, don't hold me to the nut to the date, but I think she said she has to have the information to the building company by the 14th of the month for it to apply to that month. So, there is a there is going to be a cut off. So, it's going to be hectic form. We'll do our best to help them and uh we'll get we'll get through it. It will pass. I mean, the difficulty will pass the legislation. Any other questions? Mr. Lungs?

I guess my thoughts on the matter is, you know, from the committee, which I still want to say you guys did an excellent job. We've come through and this ordinance was wrote. Everybody agreed it was going to be June 1st. People are planning on this being June 1st. Some people it's not going to be an issue the extra money. Some people it's still going to be, you know, you're going to hit them a whole month earlier on it. It's not a lot, but yet it could be a concern for for a lot of people. And you know that's you know what 5 weeks away we're trying to get it in and you know even in the original ordinance your comments even off the last meeting was no emergency language was in it.

Yeah. You know I guess my thoughts are if we were going to do this we should have done it on the original not come in on try to slide it in all of a sudden. You know, this is a hot topic in this city. Yeah. We had a lot of people come to the meetings. A lot of people express their concerns with it, their thoughts, their feelings on it. Yeah. I wouldn't classify this a lot, Mr. Mun. I There were some people that came in, but when you consider our customer base,

the 50 60 people you've spoken to, that's not a lot. But I will take responsibility for it. I felt that council members had taken a a brow beating on some of the rates increases. So I said, "Look, we'll we'll read it three times." I suggested we not have the emergency language in it. I did that because I felt bad for you all for taking that brow beating, but we need the money. We need the money. And if this were up to me and I was going and taking the brow meeting, I would have suggested emergency language right off the go. I just think, you know, if we would have done that, it would have been okay. It would have said a little easier with everybody.

I understand. I'll take responsibility for that. Just from a legal aspect in passing it, we uh with emergency language, it requires five of seven of you to pass it. So, if there's more than two of you that have an issue with the emergency language, don't add it now. Let it go to the third reading. But if there's five to seven of you, then you can move forward with it. It's five. Five to seven. It's five, not four people. It's five when there's emergency language. 2/3. This is a mint, isn't it? Correct. I just meant for the for the final language though when it comes up for the third time. Right. Okay. This is so rare. This is this is still a majority. Correct.

But I'm saying for the final reading amendment, the majority, correct? The amendment can be a majority, but the final third reading would be two/3. Yes, sir. Okay. Okay. It happens if it has the language added. Okay. It happens so rarely.

Any other questions or comments from council? So, Mr. Bup, you have you're making a motion to add emergency amend the ordinance to add emergency language. Yes, sir. Motion by Mr. Bup to amend the ordinance to add emergency language. Do I have a second? Mr. Aquarium. Okay. Okay. All vote to add a uh to amend ordinance 20263. There we go. Mr. Mr. L, Mr. Buchanan votes no. The rest vote yes. So the motion carries Moving on to new legislation, we have ordinance number 20264. May I have a motion to read, please? Uh, Mr. Quarro is going to recuse himself from this activity.

Motion to read by Mr. Fitzgerald, second by Mr. lungs. Council like to read, please.

There's an extend button there.

Oh, yes. With Mr. Aquaro recusing himself. Ordinance 20264, an ordinance conducting a 5-year review of the designated outdoor refreshment area DORA and approving the continued operation and specified areas of downtown St. Mary's. Mr. Fox,

Mr. Harris, I'll start off and Mr. Burkholder can talk about it. So, in 2021, the city drafted a legislation allowing the outdoor uh recreation, the alcohol beat outside. Um, the OC requires that every 5 years that that be reviewed. We're in that review period. Now, the review process is because we want to make sure that it's it's working for us. It's working for the police department. It's working for our business owners. And so, as far as I know, I have not been aware of anything. The mayor's not I don't believe the police department is aware of any issues concerning the door. So we see no reason not to continue with this with this practice. Okay.

But I don't know Mr. Herold or if Lauren you're welcome to you did a fantastic job explain you you and you are all good with it. I'm good. Okay. Any questions or comments from council? If not this will be back for second reading at the next meeting. I respect miscellaneous business in closing. We have a request to go into executive session regarding personnel uh from the press out there. There will be no action taken afterwards. So, may I have a motion to go into executive session? Mr. K, Mr. Gilland vote to go into executive session.

All yeses. We have returned to regular session. Is there anything else come before council? Mr. Buff. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn by Mr. Buff. Second by Mr. Aquaro. I'll vote to go with to adjourn. Oh yes. Thank you.