City Council - Regular Meeting

Regular City Council meeting for the City of Dayton tonight is August 11th, 2026. Roll call please, Ms. Klein.

Member Judd. Present. Member Levin. Member Horton. Present. Member Neary. Here. Member Neiman. Here. Member Kelly. Here. City Attorney Edmondson. Here. City Administrator Fawcett.

Here.

Mayor Baker.

Here. Member Lovins did ask me for a pass as she is cleaning up debris in her backyard and Dayton Housing Authority because she's she's very dedicated to that role so she gets a pass and i don't see rick locust out there right now but we just experienced some really bad storms and he's out there doing just great work for the public works for the city of dayton so we wish them well and we'll see them when we see them now everybody would please rise for a moment of silence and a pledge of allegiance Thank you. Next on the dock is the mayor's report. We've got a few things we're going to go through tonight, but don't really have anything on the mayor's report other than big thanks for the public works who are working right now. They've had a rough month with these storms. This is what?

The fourth? Third? Fourth?

Of 10-year storms that just seem to happen every other week now. And I think round two is going to happen here tonight shortly.

Great.

So try to get us home before then. Do I have a motion to approve of the minutes from July's meeting?

So moved.

Member Judge made a motion. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Member Horton's made a second. All in favor?

Aye.

Any nays? Any abstentions? The ayes have it. Do we have a reason for any presentations this evening from any of our partners?

No presentations that I'm aware of.

Well, this is easy. Next up, we're gonna open up the podium for public comments. Now, the public comments are for anything that's on this evening's agenda, which is somewhat light. So if you have any comments that you'd like to speak to city council, staff, administration about anything on tonight's agenda, the podium is yours. And nobody's bum-rushing the podium, so we'll go ahead and move along. Next up is a second reading of ordinance 2026-8. This is an interesting one. This is gonna change our Tuesdays for a while. Ms. Klein, please.

An ordinance amending section 32.21 of the date and code of ordinances to change the time of the city council meetings to 6.30 p.m.

So again, that is changing us from 7 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. So it's a second reading. So we will need a motion, a second conversation, then a roll call. I'll make that motion. Whoa, she's on it. Member Nemes had a motion. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

Second by Member Kelly. Which opens up for conversation.

Let's do it.

Why are we doing this again?

Because we had multiple people ask because they get off work at 5, they usually get home at 6, and sitting around waiting until 7 kind of takes a little bit.

Covington does it at 6, I think Bellevue's at 7, and the city's usually between 6 and 7. Okay.

Also, we usually don't get out of here until late, so I think that kind of buffers that a little bit.

Yeah, I was going to say that's why I suggested it. It's just I know folks that also have day jobs or whatnot, it does make for a long day, and we don't have the option of getting to watch it on video, which also I'm sure sometimes for people, maybe it's too late for them to want to come. Maybe they can make the meeting if it's a little bit earlier of a time.

Okay.

Any other conversation? All right. Roll call, please, Ms. Klein.

Member Horton?

Yes.

Member Neary? Aye. Member Neiman? Aye. Member Kelly? Aye. Member Judd?

Aye.

The ayes have it unanimously.

Quick clarifying point. It looks like we might be having the meeting in two weeks from now to discuss some things. Will that take effect for that meeting or the September meeting?

It takes effect immediately.

That will be in effect for that meeting.

It has to publish, but it will publish before then. So, yeah, that will be effective. Great.

Thank you.

We are cooking through the agenda this evening. Next up will be order of resolutions. Do we have any orders or resolutions this evening?

No.

nothing nothing nothing wow maybe we should keep maybe we should move to eight our meetings if they're gonna be this quick uh all right moving right along to department directors monthly reports first up we'll go ahead and uh bring up cassie patterson from public works code enforcement um you have a copy of my report

And that's about it. Grass is growing like crazy. Yeah. Still working with the police department on the nuisance.

Grass is growing.

Grass is growing like crazy. Yeah, it is. My grass at my house is growing like crazy.

Same here. My alley is crazy.

Yeah.

So all the neighbors are kind of banding together and trying to help each other, but yeah.

That's wonderful. Yes.

We did hear that someone did buy the property up on Urban Terrace, damaged by the fire. Yes. I don't know who it was or when it occurred, but hopefully they're either going to repair it or tear it down. It's pretty serious.

Yeah, we found out about that today.

Yeah, we had a foreclosure sale on a property that was on 3rd, or that was, you know, on 3rd, I guess.

3rd when canceled, it was on 10th.

On 10th. The bank bought it back. Yeah. The bank bought it.

I don't know if you know we get all the foreclosure auctions a lot of bank foreclosures right now I go I typically what I do is once somebody bids and they win I'll give them a welcome to Dayton sheet basically says you know if you're gonna rent the property this is what you need to fill out you have people working in the property they need an occupational usually get their contact information just in case there's an issue so

We're the only city that does it. I think it's been really helpful for us, people knowing exactly what the rules are before they come in. Right.

We've made a lot of good relationships with the buyers as well, haven't we? Mm-hmm. They're always pretty nice.

Yeah, it's kind of nice to meet them because they're kind of, you know, like, oh, wow, thanks. You know, it kind of outlines, like, I mean, we have a nice, like, welcome to date and form that kind of tells who to call, what to do, that type of thing. So it is nice for people that are... not have never been in the city before but i will say you know it's kind of i guess it's a good thing that we see a lot of people that want to invest in dayton at the foreclosure options so it is nice sometimes getting a little competition with each other it was a competition today it went back and forth back and forth it started off at like i think 70 and it was went all the way up to 110 and it was you know a thousand dollars each bid so so which one was it it was on 10th 401 10th right in the bin and it's fire damaged no no no that was urban urban was the one that was for sale by the stop sign down there right at the urban the stop sign where the car was always parking that that property that property sold that was a bank foreclosure so

It reminds me when we first hired you, Cassie, you said you track more flies with sugar than vinegar, and you've definitely done that over the years. You've just been a wonderful asset to our community, and thanks for being nice to people and reaching out.

Well, thanks. I appreciate that.

Thanks, noticed. Yeah.

All right.

Any questions for Ms. Patterson?

Thank you.

Have a good evening, ma'am.

You too. Thanks.

Next up, Mr. Schaefer. I know we had a... Chief Schaefer, I'm sorry. We had a lot of calls today, man.

Busy afternoon.

Yeah, I bet it was. And your guys are great.

We watched you roll in. That was... I don't know. It was unusual. We've never had so many alarms. I mean, warnings. They did a good job of getting ahead of it. Hopefully that is over for this round. Next week, it's unbelievable. I think they're calling for the river to raise 20 feet by Saturday. I think it's just the beginning of it.

Next week is the Rock River too, isn't it?

This weekend. They're calling for the river to be 42 feet by Saturday.

Wow.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, it's not spring.

So, high water. Turn around, don't drown. for that reminder out. Everybody got a copy of my report. This past month, we made 192 runs, 64 fire runs, 128 EMS. So year-to-date total, we're up to almost 1,200 emergency responses, up a little bit in the years past. Training hours, right around 1,200, which is just incredible. I can't say it enough, these guys just love to train, love seeing it, and it's really paying off. We did do 11 inspections. With that, this, you know, July, feeling a lot of overtime, feeling vacation, so that's starting to wind down. School's coming back, getting ready to start, so get everybody back at the firehouse. We did get our junior firefighter program up and going, which has been Firefighter Hassert is spearheading that. He's done a great job with it. We got three kids, and Sorry, I shouldn't say kids. We have three cadets that are doing a great job. So the school getting ready to start back. We're not sure how it's gonna look, but... I think a few of them at least are gonna intern with us, so they'll be down during school hours doing some time. So that's been really good. They're super excited about it and we're super excited to have them. We did have, responded to one structure fire last month in the city. Little incident with tight street and big trucks, but that's all getting handled and taken care of. The fire, guys did a great job and knocked down the fire, so at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. We did go to neighboring cities for five other structure fires over the past month. And aside from that, just been out interacting with the community, meeting people. It seems everybody's really loving it, too, and I don't understand why, which is great, but this summer, more than any, we've just had so many people just stop in and take tours of Firehouse and come visit us, so we're all really enjoying that, so if anybody's out and doors are open, stop in and say, hey, we love it.

Any questions, Chief? Thank you, sir, you have a good evening. Next up, Chief Halfhill is actually training, I believe, right? Conference, right. So he sent his best man, Mr. Tony Baldwin, Lieutenant Tony Baldwin, to give his report.

So I believe everybody has a copy of Chief Halfhill's report. I didn't have much time to really go over it. I kind of had things happen at my house that I had to deal with. So, any questions on that? We are in the stages of finishing up. I was talking to Jarrett before the meeting about the rifle grant that we got. I'm sure you guys have heard about that. I think I've talked about it before. I think Chief Hatfield's talked about it. A little shy of $20,000 for new rifles for our agency with all the upgraded items needed to help us if we ever have a situation that requires it, optics, magnifiers. Actually, they should be, once I get all this paperwork completed and be with Jared over a few more things, we have a training on September 14th out at the airport range. We're welcome. You guys want to come out and watch? I'm not letting you do it. Oh, come on, Tony. Well, that's up to the firearms guys. We'll talk later. So that's when we're gonna actually open up the training on those, get everybody acclimated with them. Of course that's also our night shoot as well where we have to do what we call basically a slow light shooting. So we all have to qualify twice a year. We try to actually go out three times a year if possible. So we'll take care of all that then. I actually just finalized a contract for the highway safety grant that will start All right, October 1st for the next one. This one ends September 30th, kind of on a weird government fiscal year program. Actually, we've done very well with this highway safety grant. I mean, the guys have, well, I've had about four or five guys who really participate in it, and they produce a lot of numbers, a lot of traffic stops, trying to get people to slow down. Here on Manhattan, we're just trying to stretch our legs a little bit more on Mary Ingalls, just slow people down coming into the city. So we've done very well with our numbers on that. And I'm not getting myself in trouble with the state trying to say why our numbers aren't up. So it's working out really good, and I gotta commend those guys. They've all stepped up and done a really good job. I'm looking forward to trying to get a few more grants and trying to look into, but once we get moving on those, I'm sure I'll pass it on to Chief Hatfield and he can announce it.

All right, you stood up there too long, so I have a question for you.

How are the bikes getting used? Oh, okay, I'm glad you said that. I forgot all about that. We had a training down here on the bikes. Yeah. It was quite interesting.

It was fun to watch.

Yeah, I had to walk away because it was just a little too comical at some times, but... Now, it just took a while for the guys to get the hang of it because it's not a normal bike. I mean, it's almost like, I don't know, you probably remember the old mopeds back in the day. Had little pedals on the side, but they were a lot smaller. These definitely are bigger, bigger tires. So we had ran a box drill out here. Then we ran... It was another drill out here. It was kind of a little bit more getting them used to get up a little bit of speed and make those sudden stops and maneuver and stuff. And then we did a little snake drill out through here. And then we took them riding throughout Manhattan Boulevard, down the trails and things like that, just to get them all acclimated to it. They all did pretty well. And the majority of the department is what we call Technically not certified, but they're trained through guidelines within our policy for the department. I'm sorry. I should have been addressing you directly. But, yeah, the policy we have put together on it turned out really good. So this will be in every year that they have to demonstrate that they are capable of still riding that bike. So they're working out really good. They're really nice. The guys like them. They're learning, and they're starting to be a little bit more visible on them. So it's working out really good. It turned out to be a good little thing for us to do. I am kind of wanting to work with Chief Halfhill on, we still have a couple of mountain bikes. So I'd like to invest a little money in them and possibly send one of our guys to the actually 40 hour training, certified training for that. So we can also utilize those as well again, so. It gives us a lot of options out there. I mean, right now we could have the mountain bikes out once we get that taken care of. We got the e-bikes. We got what we call the side-by-side. They seem like your little golf cart. But it gets around.

It's a nice size golf cart.

I know. And then we got our ATV. So you guys are actually starting to, when we have a decent amount of people on shift, getting out and doing these things. Because, you know, we kind of have to have a decent amount on shift to actually be able to get some of these things accomplished. But overall, pretty good. I guess they're over here. Usually I see them stuck over here somewhere, but not today. So I'm sure, has everybody seen those bikes? I think you have. Very nice. So if you ever want to look at one, I think they're over here somewhere stored. Working out pretty good.

Any other questions for Lieutenant?

I have a question. How's it going with all the kids on the fast electric bikes?

It's a work in progress. Actually, I've noticed when I'm out, because I'm usually out in an unmarked car, and I've noticed a few of them, they catch the eye of that car and they're stopping at all those stop signs or riding where they're supposed to be. So it's gotten a lot better. Good. For the most part, I think by us getting a lot of things out on social media and stuff, trying to get things to the school and all that, I think that helped them. So it appears to be doing well.

Not just Dayton. Everybody's got that problem. These kids got these new toys, which are not toys.

They're fast.

They're flying through these stop signs.

Oh, yeah. They're for a while. They were really good. I think we've had some recent calls. I remember, I think it was last week, we had one up around 8th and Walnut about a small child, or I don't know how old they were, riding up in that area, a little bit reckless. We went up trying to locate them and stuff, but unfortunately, when I was out, we didn't come across them, and I didn't hear any further of any of the other guys did, because our goal was to kind of get with them. You live, AS could talk to your parents, so we can kind of educate you a little bit.

I appreciate that outreach, and we have a great traffic garden over here in Gilliland Park. We're a good spot to learn how to drive those things.

Mm-hmm. Definitely.

Any other questions for the tenant? Thank you, sir. Have a good evening.

You too.

Now, we put them last. Because we know he's out working. But Rick Lucas, Director of Public Works, is not available to give his report.

He's out with the crews right now. That's all right. Whoa. That's on him. Somebody else.

That's not Rick.

Oh, yellow shirt. I got excited. That's what I saw in the corner of my eye.

All right. But I do have a question. Maybe you can help me, Mr. Fawcett. Yeah. While I was out doing storm damage patrol today, I came across a resident who said that He was interested to know if he could paint. He has a handicap parking outside his house. He wants to know if he can paint his curb blue.

No. We generally, that's the city to do. We don't want others to do it. The sign is enough because we've decided that We're trying to reduce the painting of yellow and blue inside residential areas. Okay. So we prefer not to paint those because sometimes people will paint them 20 feet long when they only need to be 15 feet. And so there are certain standards that should be applied. So we think it's better that we not have them. That's kind of our policy.

Okay. I promised somebody to ask. Does anybody else have any other public works conversations they want to ask?

How are the steps?

Those are beautiful. You mean, what is it? Devil's, Green Devil's Backbone?

Is that what it is now?

Well, yeah. That's what we're jokingly calling it. Maybe we'll call it a fish with it. I don't know. But they look beautiful, and Susan's doing a wonderful job restoring them. Get in there.

Okay.

Any other public works questions? All right. Well, we appreciate your work. That brings you up, Mr. Fawcett. City Administrator's Report, sir.

Okay. Well, I sent an email out today, kind of late, so I'm going to go ahead and talk about it just in case you didn't see the email on council or for members in the audience or at home about the upcoming tax rate certification. We finally got our tax rate certification today. It was later than normal. They've had some issues at the PVA's office, so it got to us later than we normally would like. This certification came to the city clerk today, and then we immediately sent it to NKADD, the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, because they do the compensatory rate analysis for the city, as well as many other cities in Northern Kentucky. We asked them to expedite it so we could get it on before August 24th, because we have to get these tax bills printed. We have to have two readings. And as Aaron mentioned, we are going to have, we've recommended having a city council meeting two weeks from now so we can have first reading of this and then have the second reading at our regular meeting on September. So that will give us enough time to get... The city court's got to do a lot of things with those tax bills before it goes to the printer. She can do that. And then we can get it to the printer and get them out. November 1 is the date we send them out. So just a little information about the certification we got from the PVA. It showed that property taxes, assessed value of the property in the city increased by $12 million this year compared to last year, which is a 3.16% increase. And remember, this is just taxable properties in the city. Most of the properties in the city are taxed, and we send tax bills. But we have a number of properties, particularly in Manhattan Boulevard, which are done under industrial revenue bond financing. So they're not on the tax rolls. They're exempt from taxes, and they're held in the city's name until those bonds are defused. So what happens is, though, we issue, instead of tax bill, what are called pilot bills. which are payments in lieu of taxes. They're the same amount as a tax bill, but it's just done this way because we can't assess taxes on property we own. So most of the high-value properties on the river are under those IRBs. The two large apartment complexes and a number of the multifamilies are done with IRBs. So, and that's important because while this number, we're talking about the two point, I want to say, the $12 million increase, this applies for those properties. We'll have a much bigger increase with the pilot payments, and particularly the Velo Apartments, because it sold last year. The previous year, the valuation of that was $19.8 million. The selling price was $76.6. So there will be a large increase in the IRB pilot revenue because of that. You've got to remember, this is in the TIF district, so we only get 20% of that. 80% goes to the developer to pay for all the infrastructure improvements they made, which is right now around $20 million that they put in to make this development happen. We're in the 13th year of a 30-year bond issue on that, so we're almost halfway through that. Once the 30 years is up, we'll get 100% of all the value, and we no longer will have pilots that will defer to tax bills. So long story short is we're ready now to set the rate and that will be done What we'll do is we'll get the information back from the Ed District. We'll talk to the mayor. He'll make a recommendation to you. We can raise the rate by 4%, the compensating rate. We don't know that rate until the Ed District does their job. So that's coming up. And we don't know what it's going to be. And we don't know what the future holds with the economy and inflation. So we'll have to make a lot of decisions about what our recommendation to the mayor will be. So that's where we are. Any questions?

I had a question. Yeah. Not sure if this is the time or place, but how did it go up $50 million? What's that? How did that value go up $50 million in two years?

New development, both on the riverfront and inside this. We've got a lot of houses.

Oh, so that was like pre-construction, that purchase? The 19 to the 76th.

How does it increase by $15 million?

$15.

It's $15. Oh, $15. $15 million. But it will be $50 million when you consider that the new apartment building went on, but that's an IRB. So that in and of itself, like I said, was... That's like a $50 million increase in value from the previous year, just in that apartment.

Because it was built? Yeah, it was built. Okay.

It was based on the construction value and the value of the land. And now it's done and it was sold. So once it's sold, we know what the true value of it is.

What is that?

So that is $50 million. But it's $15 million just on the other taxable property. That's not an IRB.

Thank you for your report, Mr. Fawcett.

Anybody else have any questions for Jay?

All right, thank you, sir.

Next up on the agenda is audience comments. So this is a portion of the evening where anybody from the audience can approach council and administration, ask us questions about whatever is on your mind. You're more than welcome to do so. Just time limit is three minutes on the questions and the podium time. And just please state your name and address. Sure. Just name and address.

My name is Barb Workman. I live at 941 Walnut Street. I've been on that address for 50 years. On the Hill, three years. Red Knot, pain in the ass. They have the fire hydrant I pointed out to Cassie is sitting in the street because when they put their dumpster and if anybody here remembers when Katie Stein helped because right above 10th on Walnut was starting to go over the hill. Well, we're almost back to that because Red Knot sat their dumpsters and scraped moved them a couple times scraped we have a hole up there and it keeps getting bigger and bigger i also would ask that they extend the sidewalk oh wow they came last week took a digger dug it up but now for 10 all the rock is coming down the hill which I guess I'm a nuisance to Cassie, but I'll call her because I've called, left messages for other members. Don't get phone calls back, but that's all right. Cassie always calls me. I called to let her know that that upper sewer is filled with the rocks. But anyway, it does look like they're gonna do that, but I also request it. All where they put the wall. They left all the rock that they had been using when they were building the wall. It's all there. And they need to extend the sidewalks since they decided to put up a wall. The greenery right now would have been fantastic to leave it alone because now it goes down Thornton also. So I guess I'll be the one to complain.

So I can address that. I appreciate your complaint. I can address it right here. So we met with the developer, Mr. Podbon, what is it, about a month ago, two months ago? Come up, Cassie, come up here. What's that? Yeah, and we told him, we expected him to repair that road and that the sidewalks needed, they have some issues with the sidewalks that need repaired. He says he can't finish the sidewalks in the front because they're going to be using heavy equipment to build those other houses. And so...

There's a telephone pole sitting out in the street. And they're going to remove that because there's nothing attached to it.

Okay.

Yeah.

But also... When people fly around, they fly around the curve because the street is so tore up. Most people are on that side.

I agree.

Okay.

I agree. We've been on him about repairing that street, and he's supposed to do it. And if he doesn't, we're going to and charge him for it. So I've already told him that. He really gets fined. Oh, yeah, he paid us fine. I actually called him last week and said, what's going on with this property? We're getting ready to do it now. So I'm kind of fed up myself. And so if he's not going to get it done in the next couple weeks, I'm going to. What about the hole? The hole will be repaired. He's supposed to repair that hole. That dumpster created that problem.

That's a mess up there. It is a mess up there. I was up there an hour ago.

It's two foot of water.

Please.

I was up there an hour ago after the storm. It was two foot of water, that hole.

Right. And I know little boys mean no harm up there. And I know where they live. They play with all the... Sure they do.

They're boys. Yeah.

Exactly. So I'm not complaining about that. No. Right. Ever since they started up there, they kind of do... And whenever any of us see that guy, trying to talk to him, he's called assholes, MFers, anything posted off his freaking property. We've been there longer

Yeah, we're frustrated, too. We actually sited him six of his properties, and that's what finally made him do what he says he's going to do.

Yeah.

So we agree with you. We were frustrated, too. Yeah. And we're on top of it, and if he doesn't do it, I've told him we're going to repair it, and we're going to put a lien on his property.

Hopefully, can we make sure something's done before the term?

That's the plan. I told him it had to be done before the winter months came.

And I will let the other members of the neighborhood know.

We're frustrated, too.

I'm going to give you my card. It's got my cell number on it. You call me.

If I didn't see the voicemail, Barb, I'm so sorry. That's fine.

That's when Joe left me. I don't know what time the meeting was tonight, and I apologize.

You're fine. But anytime. Call me. Yeah, we understand.

And I'm now a widow, and so I don't have much help. I don't know.

We agree. All right. Barbara, I appreciate you. Thank you. Oh, you're fine.

I actually have a question for you, Barb. On Walnut, that upper block, who owns all those cars that are parked there?

We can't hear you or the people at home can't hear you if you don't come up front.

Sorry about that. He started to move. But it started out, he had an extra, his wife, but that was four. Then he went and got another. So he does own six automobiles. He was gonna put two on his back property, but he couldn't get through the other, The folks behind us took and threw a big, half their tree. So the neighbors next door got hit. But we also have, one car got towed out just recently. Don't know who had the nerve to call. It was parked half from my house, half on the lower side of me. There is another, it's a truck. It's sitting, been sitting since the end of winter. He went to the same automobile place that his nephew went to, and the truck don't run. Don't know if it's ever been. Black vehicle in front of it doesn't get used or moved. I'll be honest. I've tried talking to Mark. I said, what are you going to do with all those vehicles? I know one of them was the rest. so I tried politely so I don't

But they are all owned by someone who lives in the neighborhood, as far as you know.

943. Okay.

Because I know we had that abandoned vehicle up there a couple years ago with the police incident.

Yeah. Yeah. Because we had another one just recently weren't called to check, and it belonged to somebody on Van Bost or something, but it's back, but it's at a house down the street. Yeah.

Okay.

But yeah, and they're all tagged and he moves them. All right.

Thank you.

Barbara, I'm checking my voicemails over here. I'm not seeing it. I'm back in first week of July. I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm just saying I apologize. I apologize if I didn't get that voicemail. And you deserve a callback. You deserve a callback, so I apologize.

I know you're usually very good. That's what surprised me.

We'll figure it out. But thanks for coming tonight. I appreciate that. And I apologize in front of you. For what? For doing your civic duty? You're great. Well, then I couldn't talk. You should apologize for that. That's correct.

I shouldn't have done that. I got on the wrong way.

You're fine, Barb. Thank you. You shouldn't be at all. You did a great job. Thank you, ma'am. Would anybody else like to approach to call me out?

Well, in the mayor's defense, he was on vacation last week, so maybe sometimes I know how that happened. There's no defense of public work.

The podium is still open for anybody who would like to approach the city council administration, myself. All right. We're going to go ahead and close that out. Next up was do business. Do we have any new business from city council committees, Mr. Judd?

Always come to me, huh?

Well, it says your name right here.

Well, yeah, so no new news from the finance committee. We didn't meet. But the sports and rec group, one thing that was nice is, so the city puts on some yoga events going on right now. I stopped by that first one we did, and I recruited some people to join a special hike event that I think I mentioned last time at the council meeting. That ended up being a really good event. I think we had over 20 people attend the hike up at Sergeant Park. Um, so I think that's something we're going to try and do again. Um, and then, uh, just a normal reminder, I guess that, uh, 6 15 AM tomorrow morning is the Elliott coffee meetup for a run, assuming it's not a rain out. And then, um, Right now, I had a few people interested in doing some type of either kickball or softball, but I need a few more people in order to really kind of spearhead that and get it going. So if anybody else that's listening has any interest in helping get that up and rolling, I just don't have the resources to get everything up and rolling myself, so could use a little help with that if people are interested in doing some recreational sports.

Thanks, sir. Any other committee meetings you'd like to?

Marketing and Communication Committee meeting will be at 6 o'clock tomorrow night right here. Cassie, you had mentioned a welcome packet that you give to these when a property is sold. Is that only for the ones that go to foreclosure that we're involved with trying to? No.

Angie does. We were getting new sale information from the PVA, which we haven't gotten in a while. Their office is a little...

Yeah, they're in flux. Yes.

So typically Angie sends those out to all new people in the city.

Okay, because that was one of the topics that we.

Yes.

Yeah, we do that.

Welcome to Dayton Packet. She sends those out to all the people and it basically has numbers, names.

All right, great. It looks like they live in a different city than Dayton. Then we say, hey, if you're renting this property out to you, you got to do this. Yeah. But we kind of. Did you share that?

So that we can talk about it tomorrow night.

Is that on our website?

The committee's been trying to.

It's on the website. Yeah.

It's on the website? It's on the website. Yeah. It's downloadable. Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Any other committee meetings?

Question for, I guess, Public Works, but has there been any progress with CSX on the issue between 6th and 5th Street on the far east end? with the overflow.

I've written to the owner today, the owner's mother, and she said that water's still coming through. I went over and looked at it. I was there the last rain event and today, both about the same time, 15 minutes after it rained or so. And it looks a lot better today than it did last time. I checked it, yeah. But I still don't think it's fixed.

I still think there's a long way to go. I sent a letter to CSX and ST1 and put them both on notice of the problems there and the serious consequences that may result if they don't fix it. So from a litigation standpoint, if anything happens, they are on notice. And they did come immediately after I sent that letter and did some work, but it's still filling up and still not accommodating the stormwater and so i i've talked to st1 and they say that they are working with the railroad on it jointly to to address the issue but i told him needs to be done now not later but it's the railroad so you know how that is

Because I know the last incident, I was up there and two CSX employees came and they had been cleaning out that drain. And they said that there was a meeting with SD1, CSX, and the city like a day or two later.

We were not involved in that meeting unless Rick was there. I don't think he was. Okay. I think those two met. They never invited me. I wish that they would have.

Thank you. I just want to make sure that it's not just forgotten until the next episode.

It's not. I sent them a week after my letter. It was still doing it. I sent them a picture and said, look, it's still a problem. You guys got to take care of it. But like I said, it's the railroad, and they operate on a different time schedule.

Understood. Thank you. Another question I had was actually for my fellow council members. Back in May, we first started having the discussions about short-term rentals, and we've had citizens show up asking for action on the short-term rentals. Mr. Fawcett did a great job researching nearby cities, what they're doing, what the pros and cons of all of those are. I have my own ideas, but I'd like to get ideas from the rest of council. How do you want to proceed on this, if at all? Have you had a chance to go through it or any discussion on it? I don't mean to go off the rails here, but this is something that I think we need to address at some point. If you want, I'll put something together and throw it in front of council, but I think it should be a lot of discussion beforehand because there are so many options and restrictions that we could apply. And we can't do it in a mass email because of open records requests. This is the forum to do that in. Any input at all, direction?

Yeah, a lot came out. I'd like to read it all over again after we had that city council meeting because there's a lot of emotion there, but it seemed like we walked away thinking that it was pockets of STRs and that there had been only three complaints. So that was surprising. So I wanna make sure, I don't know, that I read all that and think whatever action we take is tailored toward Dayton specifically and not a template from some other community that has a completely different setup or, I don't know. I don't want it to be too restrictive if it's really not a big deal, but if it's a big deal only in some areas, how do we do that?

Like I said, Jay's suggestions like option A, B, and C, all of them have pros and cons for our city. I mean, like Florence has parking requirements. We couldn't do that here. We don't have enough parking for the people that exist already.

I would say unless you have multifamily units, like four units, you might then require some sort of parking. But for a single family, it shouldn't be required, maybe not required.

So last month we had one parking.

Yes. We had one what?

One parking complaint. Okay.

with a short-term rental property.

From July 20th to August 10th, the run report for the Airbnbs was one parking complaint on urban terrace. So, just FYI.

And from the report, you gave a great report on this, or a recap last month, that with these STR properties, short-term rental properties, we haven't had any real police issues either.

We had one, but it was years ago. It was a rave kind of thing that young kids from Cincinnati came over.

That was probably three years ago.

But it was an aberration. And that was on Dayton Pike, and they quit doing it. They quit doing the SDRs after that incident. Yeah.

And with the parking, parking seems to be the main complaint on these STRs pretty much everywhere. But on this topic, that's what was brought up repeatedly with the complaints. If we were to force out the short-term rental to sell it or to go with the long-term rental, you're going to have parking taken up 30 days a month rather than just a few days a month that we have with the short-term rental. So I don't want to spin my wheels and keep going through all the pluses and minuses here, but I've also promised these people that I would look into it and try and come up with the solution that council would approve. And I just need some direction on where to go or not. That's all.

Joe, I think that we're all, it wasn't really a big deal. It was only a certain percentage of, I mean, why would we make certain ordinance for like 3%? I thought that that's how many calls were made out of all the calls that were made. There was like 3% of calls that were made. And that didn't really make sense for me as a councilman to, to address 97% of the city, especially with short-term rentals, if we're gonna be attracting more people with our amenities and people coming to our restaurants and using our restaurants, it's a pocket that we are um that we need to address and we should address that as a community it's like how they did how they came in here and they spoke to us and they raised awareness i thought that was awesome but as far as like trying to write legislation or city ordinances over short-term rentals when we don't have a problem and we're creating a problem when we don't have it that's just my opinion you're asking for city council input but we don't have a problem you know and i feel like if we start writing ordinances for something that we don't have a problem for, everybody who has a issue on their block could come and potentially raise issues for everybody in the city when we're not trying to move that way. And that's just my opinion.

I felt the same way, because weren't we kind of talking about one little area and how they have three clustered in that one little, I mean, and it's all the same owner? Couldn't we kind of approach it specifically, the issue that's going on there, as opposed to like a blanket legislation?

You need to understand there are two things. You have regulatory business regulations, and you have zoning regulations. If you have zoning regulations, if you're already operating an STR, you're going to be grandfathered in. So if you say that it can only be in this zone, if you're operating in other zones right now, and you can prove that, then you're good. Now the business regulations are more along the lines of you gotta have parking, off-street parking, you gotta do, you know, you can only, you have to live in the house for six months. That's what Bellevue has. So those are different, and that doesn't, those can change, but if you're using zoning in any way, there's gonna be people who are grandfathered in.

But not true of business regulations? No. There's no, okay.

No, those are, no.

Well, what I'll do is, and I'll talk to the people that came up asking for a solution. I'll talk to them privately for their suggestions. If you guys have any input or suggestions on this, let me know, because otherwise... I think any of the options that we have put in front of us based on other communities in Northern Kentucky, anything that we would put forward I think is gonna cause more disruption for the whole than it will for the few. That's just my opinion.

And I'll echo the same sentiments that have been said so far that I don't think anything needs to be done necessarily from our council body making any decisions on anything. One of the big selling points, I think, of coming to the city of Dayton is there's no paid parking anywhere, right? Everything's fair game and free, and I think that's huge for our businesses in the area, and I don't wanna jeopardize that.

Yeah, I think the only parking restrictions are for the church parking lot on Dayton Avenue, 6th and Dayton, during church hours. But in the neighborhoods, though, it's always an issue, and you have incidences where one property may have multiple cars on only a 25-foot frontage.

I keep thinking, though, like if you have an Airbnb and you made it not an Airbnb, I mean, three people can move in there with cars and you still have those cars. It's not like the cars disappear. They could have two teenage kids. Now you got them plus two teenage, you know what I mean?

And that's every day of the month, not just when it's rented.

I don't quite understand how they're, I don't know, but.

I'll keep doing some research. If you guys come up with any ideas, let me know.

And remember, the Kentucky legislative, KLC legislative team has told us there's a strong likelihood that there will be legislation passed in the next session that limits what cities can do with STRs. So even if you do pass something, it may get ripped up come next spring.

So just keep that in mind. It's just I've, in public, I offered, I said I would work on it.

Yeah, they're definitely valid concerns, and thanks for keeping the bring it up.

No, and I was gonna say, I think what I've gotten kind of out of a lot of this whole discussion is that not necessarily the short-term rentals so much as parking, and maybe that's what we need to look at as a council as more of the big picture item versus focusing in on just one sort of resident of our city, but are there things, if there's any way that we can improve parking In general, I know we've had passes in the past. People hate those. Didn't they want them? So again, but that's where I seem to see the biggest problem that we hear consistent about the short-term rentals is parking, which also then is a complaint on every street.

I echo back to someone's concerns about the community fabric. If some private equity group buys every house in Dayton and makes it a short-term rental, they're not sending the kids. Where do the Green Devils go? All of a sudden, we don't have kids going to our schools. So that's my interest into that. I mean, parking, parking, parking. I swear if I had a nickel for every time I had parking questions, I'd have a lot of nickels. But I'm more concerned, and I think this is something we really need to address, is you said other communities have six months you have to live there. That shows skin in the game to Dayton, which I think each one of us have. Where private equity group, I mean, we follow these people out of Washington State or Oregon. They never stepped foot in Dayton. They bought something on auction. They paid a local contractor to flip it. They throw it on Airbnb. They never stepped foot here. That's my concerns. So I agree with there needs to be consideration as what we should do. But I don't want it to be overreaching or anything else either. Just my two cents.

And I get the fabric of the community issue, and like Troy said, it's also bringing people into the community to support our businesses. I don't have kids. If we're gonna take that tack, maybe I shouldn't buy a house in Dayton because I'm not contributing to the green. I mean, we gotta be real careful there. Between STRs.

You don't have kids, but you've gone to every football game as long as I've known you, sir. You've got more skin in that game than most people. Just because you don't have kids doesn't mean you're not invested in this community.

And I pay school taxes just like the owners of these properties do. And in many cases, I'll take one block in particular that I won't name, two of the real problem houses that were code enforcement nightmares for years were fixed up very nicely and are now short-term rentals. And someday they may go on the market for sale. So, again, it's one of those areas you can't. I'll stop. It's just very frustrating to try and find a solution that would resolve everything. And I don't think there is one. Unless you guys have a better idea.

You can make everybody happy some of the time and all the people happy. My mom said something like that once. I obviously wasn't paying attention.

That's all I have, sir.

Well, wait a minute. What do you want to do then? Do you want to have a further conversation next month after everybody reads everything?

Well, I think in the interim, rather than taking up half an hour with the what-ifs, if you've got any ideas, let me know offline. We just can't do it in a... We can't have five or six of us unless it's in a... That's why I brought it up tonight.

That's the right way to do it, Joe. I appreciate that. I also appreciate you bringing up a concern that someone brought to us, and not let it fall, die in the vine. It's good council work there, man.

I try.

I know you do. Anybody else for new business?

Just remind people, we're final Friday, coming up on the 28th, 7 o'clock, and then... It isn't Dayton, but Bellevue does have their final farmer's market this Sunday from 10 to 2. So come get some local produce and other items.

Excellent community news. Any other news? Oh, yeah.

There is a football scrimmage Friday night. It's their last scrimmage of the year. They had a great crowd last week because it was a three-way scrimmage. Speaking of announcing the football games. And that's also St. Bernard's Festival is Friday and Saturday night. So it's going to be, you talk about a parking issue. That's going to happen Friday night.

I'll be working the Rock'em Sock'em Robots as I have. I've been going on a decade now doing that. So stop on by and donate some money. Anybody else? New business? Last on the docket. Ms. Klein, do we have a reason for executive session this evening?

Yes, we do. Pursuant to KRS 61.8101C, discussions of proposed or pending litigation against or on behalf of the public agency.

All right. Do we have a motion to go into executive session?

I make a motion. Second.

Member Horton has made the motion. Member Neary has made the second. All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Any nays? Abstentions? All right, we're going to executive session. We'll have a couple minute bio break, as they say. See you guys in five minutes in the executive room.