Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

okay all right good morning or good afternoon everyone and welcome to the February 13 2025 um K County Planning Commission meeting can we go through a roll call please yes mayor Burke council person Conwell present mayor Dy Jones director deor here mayor Gallow interim director Fields mayor CTS mayor orcut here council person Simon here mayor R mayor wheo you have AUM thank you thank you very much uh second item of business on the agenda is the organizational meeting so the board reappointment yes um we' had reappointments of uh various individuals on or just one person yesterday on council's agenda right right so um officially we've got mayor Gallo is reappointed Mayor orcut mayor bib um if you remember coun um um director Wong um left the city for a job another job and so we needed to get another alternate through and so Marco was approved at Council on Tuesday but we're pending official signed resolution uh with that but she's actually out of town anyway today so she's here um and then Council wman Simon and Council wman Conwell have been reappointed and their alternates are Joe Nani and um La black okay there was just previous uh alternates were was a mik Mike King Michael King Mike the king Mike the king he'd love there okay uh next item on the agenda is

the election of the board chair and Vice chair um so that's before us um make a motion our time sure I I guess this is the appropriate time to make a motion in regards to potential appointments okay so um for chair I would nominate um second thank you who lead Mee I do is there any other uh um recommendations or um motions for uh appointment to the position see none I I'm assuming we need to do these both separately right for the chair and vice chair yes okay all right um thank you councilwoman I know we haven't voted on it yet I want to note also that uh the mayor is uh joined us also thank you there late it's okay um thank you for the appointment and I um I'd be honored to serve for another term in this position so thank you um so with that being said I'll make a motion to approve the uh recommendation for myself to the board chair you made a motion yes I can any other comments questions just want to know appointment every two years it's a two year cycle is that right we do we do the sorry I think this will now be my um I think it's like seven year you are not term limited however good

point okay on the motion all those in favor say I I those opposed that She carries uh the next item is for vice chair I'll make a motion to nominate uh councilwoman Simon as a vice chair for the Planning Commission second second any other nominations hearing none I will make a a motion to uh appoint for um elect councilwoman Simon as a vice chair for the County Planning EX all those in favor those opposed that motion carries all right that was a little disjointed can I say thank you yes um I do enjoy being on this board I've been on it since the beginning and you know believe in the mission and really love the work that we all do here both and Jennifer is filling in for net today so let's if you if you have a question on who said what then my I know thank you okay next item on the agenda is the board uh approved uh scheduled for 2025 I make a motion for the approval of the 2025 meeting sched for County planing commission second motion by mayor willo seconded by mayor Burke to approve the schedule for 2025 any other further comments questions all those in favor say I I those opposed that motion carries and I would just add um thank you to Beth and we've identified in the schedule with asteris after the dates for those meetings that will also be solid waste policy committee meetings that way hopefully we can keep track of how long we need to keep you here on certain times so hopefully that will help with your planning all right next item on the

agenda comments from the public I'm not sure if anybody's here to speak on any did not see anyone sign in okay there's nobody online either okay all right seeing no comments we'll move on item number four approval of the minutes from the December 12 2024 meeting hopefully they were in your packet you had a chance to review them any comments or questions I'll make a motion to approve the minutes second second by mayor Burke any further seeing none all those in favor say I I those opposed that motion carries next item information only presentations Mary yes thank you uh so today we don't have any any resolution items that need your approval today um but as you remember we are having another discussion on the bylaws so we thought it would be a good time to provide some updates on some projects before I do that I wanted to intro introduce Jaylen Starks uh he is our new intern from University of Cincinnati from the D program uh he is working on Jim's team and he has been diving right into all the work and he's been a great addition to the team so welcome thank you okay uh the first item that we've got is city of single family zoning and Meg Cheney is going to present that information to you today good afternoon everyone um as Mary uh said I am going to be talking about um the single family residential infill uh project that our office has been working out for the last several years and I know many of you have heard um about this this project um a couple times um and so I'll be going into a little bit of background but if I skim over any kind of information too quickly just jump in there and uh feel free to ask questions so um specifically I'm

going to be talking about phase two of this project um and the pilot program that was a part of that um and our work that um we did with city of uid to update their zoning um so the issue that um we had uh identif along with many other uh players and ident or entities in uh the region was um resulting from the 2008 foreclosure crisis the demolitions that occurred and the resulting vacant properties that lingered in many communities these missing teeth as we call them uh represent a loss of revenue for cities and also are jarring um and disrupt the fabric of a neighborhood so um a number of uh entities uh partnered together County Planning uh the county land bank uh First Federal of Lakewood um and the first suburbs Consortium to try to better understand this issue and why these vacant Lots uh were persisting in these neighborhoods so uh this uh image just illustrates um a a common scenario where you have uh older homes in a uh an inner ring suburb on somewhat smaller Lots and you see that vacant lot there in the middle and um there we go so you see the parcels um that have uh an existing U the existing Parcels have a certain uh depth width uh and area and then oftentimes what occurred in the 50s and 60s is that uh suburbs uh adopted zoning codes that were more in line with exurban development and adopted lot regulations that were bigger or deeper or wider than the pre-existing Lots so that made it um impossible to build the same house on

that same lot because these Lots were now non-conforming so just to illustrate how important uh zoning code in these regulations were to developers but or other um smalltime developers as well as bigger developers to um do Redevelopment on these lots a a developer survey was performed as part of this Phase 2 um and two questions really uh highlighted how important zoning was to these developers one when developers were asked um how important and easy to you zoning uh code was in the process of Redevelopment for these info Lots they indicated that it was the most important thing or very important um another question uh asking them what regulations present barriers to infill development the most most common response was minimum lot size minimum lot size being too large um as required by the zoning code for them to work with so um for single family residential project phase one um uh the the County Planning team worked with those entities to do a deep dive um to understand what kind of regulatory barriers existed and where the non-conformities uh existed in the ining suburbs so for phase two um we looked at um the best practicing and outlining lining best practices that communities could use and adopt to address these issues um part of this process was a pilot program that um we performed with two uh participating communities to then look at their zoning code and update um based on these best practices one Community was South ID the other one was ID so um when working with uid there were kind of the work was uh divided into three different tasks um task one we

looked at the work that was done for phase one and the community profiles that identified the different non-conformities conformities and where the existing zoning code was out of sync with the existing Lots um we also did a deep dive to understand how that related to their existing zoning code uh task two County planning and City staff identified potential Chang changes and three we went ahead and processed those changes and presented to the uh planning commissions and the and city council so um interestingly um in ukl it wasn't so much minimum lot size um we looked back at the information that was uncovered during phase one and in city of uid it was um minimum lot width um the minimum lot width for most of the residential districts requires a 60 foot Frontage and for the most part Lots in uclid range between 35 and 40 feet um so that presented a huge barrier you can see from the map um the light colored kind of yellow uh um areas on the map show where lots are in Conformity with the regulations or with the old regulations and as it gets darker and darker blue it represents higher areas of non-conformity so a summary of these changes um one reorganized District chapters so we moved um lot standards um and development standards in with um permitted uses so you could have what you were able to do right next to how you were able to do it um and that goes with that one comment and question from developers um about making that zoning code more easy and more accessible we updated and reorganized definitions to bring definitions in line with current orc uh definitions um we also removed uh regulations that were embedded in definitions to make those uh part of the use chapters we updated District names

to be more in line with the expanded uses that we've uh included and we expanded the the uh number of permitted uses a lot of times um single family um districts allow only that um we worked with city of uid to identify and expand the N the uh types of housing options that were allowed in those districts added cross references were needed a lot of times we were able to take away those cross references because of the consolidation and reorganization of chapters but we made sure to uh update those where needed we also updated setback requirements Uka did have a good amount of non-conformity in terms of setback requirements so we made those um reflect the fabric of the street so they were the average of adjacent properties um we also simplified rear setbacks to be rather than a percentage of overall lot depth it was just a straight numeric um uh footage and then that shows um the dimensional standards that um we updated for um the U1 and U2 District um you can see there that um lot area didn't change significantly but we did expand those uses um and lot with you see that um that reduction in lot in required lot width to be much more in line with existing Lots so um I should say that U City of uid adopted these changes in October of last year and what's resulted what was uh over 15,000 non-conforming Lots in city of ID um these changes resulted in more than 12,000 of those lots coming into Conformity with regulations um and that has streamlined and facilitated infill development um on these Lots

any questions questions May or I I'm sorry I don't know maybe or Jim um I don't know about the total number in ID we found 5300 vacant Lots in all of the first suburbs com question so the boulevard did you find that the width you had to change the width on the homes south of the Boulevard and north of the boulevard like differently because you know south of the boulevard some of those homes are larger up by Indian Hills and all that and then if you go north of the boulevard it's mostly World War II Bungalows doubles triples so you know was it like you were actually um getting standards for two different type like cities almost inle you know it's it's interes we talked about that uh possibility and it's been a little while so correct me if I'm wrong Patrick but we um talked about differentiating those areas those the U1 District had uh a larger home sizes and and lot requirements for the most part um but the feeling was is that those were established homes and um even if the there was um if one of those homes was demolished and two homes could go in and create two different Lots it wouldn't be to such an extent that it would disrupt the the character of the neighborhood particularly what they they felt um was the most important was the setback from the not so much the the lot width how wide it was but the setback so all the

homes would kind of in alignment of each other and that's where that flexible requirement for the lot setback came in making it reflective of the the um nearby development that's interesting yeah I was I was wondering how that was going to go when you started the project because it is so different as you move about up into indan Hills and all of that what was what was good was the the flexibility of that setback because I think that's more when you're imagining walking down the street and you see a home much farther back or much farther for forward that's that's kind of the most visible um indication that something is not working there's a disruption to the street fabric I figured it was just people who you know um were putting in the pools the ground all that stuff back there you know it's a different time period um for uid and it's interesting when you go back there now to see it so comments thank you Megan appreciate thank you all right the next information presentation we've got for you is the orange Village survey and the one to the the right you have to kind of lift it up there we go okay so hi everyone uh good afternoon I'm Paul triolo I'm a planner here at the Planning Commission um so I'm going to talk a little bit about uh the orange Village CommunityWide survey um which came board in April of last year um the survey was uh open from uh June M mid

June to the end of July so about a month and a half total um we presented to uh The Village Council on October 9th um some key statistics just kind of overall summary statistics of what came out of the survey uh 432 responses which was a response rate around uh 16.7% of the adult population of which Village so we were very pleased by that response rate and felt it was a very U representative sample of the community as a whole so just kind of gonna talk through the uh the overall survey process so we started with um well we we met with a village team which consisted of members of the administration um as well as different staff members of The Village um as well as uh Council Representatives um and they had previously done uh two separate surveys one in 2007 and one in 2014 so we kind of use those older surveys as a baseline um just so that we could kind of compare across years um in addition to um asking anything new that came out uh so those that was the kind of the the first phase of that uh the second was designing different um different advertising materials um and distributing the survey getting it out to all the residents um so we designed postcards um um village staff went to different um Community meetings um it organized um they they sent things out on social media and through their code red system as well as through their E news and then once we had everything and the survey was closed we had a final survey analytics and Report where we tabulated and analyzed all those survey responses um which I'm gonna kind of highlight some of the the key findings

of that uh so in total there was about 39 questions we cut it down from previous surveys which about 60 or so uh the village really wanted to see a a streamlined survey which asked um fairly important questions to the village and uh there's the balance between asking a ton of questions and getting a bunch of information versus enough questions there where people don't get bored and halfway through the survey and stop taking the survey so we had to find that balance and so this uh this number seemed to work well for us um and we had a mix of different survey question types um as well as different topics um including quality of life um we asked about Community Values um different amenities and events that the village puts on as well as how they communicate to the residents um as well as priorities for infrastructure so uh some of the key findings I know this is a lot of information just on one slide uh Village saw uh residents uh rated their quality of life amenities of events and communication services and services uh very highly uh which was very nice to see um we asked what the top reason why people liked living in Orange Village and why people might leave Orange Village and that provided a lot of different insights um the top reason young people um age 18 to 44 would consider moving is to be able to walk and bike more places um while the top reason seniors would be considered moving is for a retirement friendly Community um for uh Community priorities sustainability kind of rose to the top um of the options that the village put forward um and then for their different

amenities uh playgrounds and their paid Trails um are two of the most utilized amenities that they're very proud of and residents really really we really proud of it and rank them both high in terms of both the quality and the importance to the Village overall um and then finally for um for uh Community uh Community Improvement needs um parks and natural spaces as well as bike infrastructure and Trail additions and improvements kind of go to the top of what they saw um for additional Community Improvement one did you have a question I did did sorry I'm surprised that the respond to the survey did not talk about the age 184 why they would move there was school an option yes it was schol District so yeah that's um I didn't put that in this in this highlight um but the throughout all the different age groups um including 18744 everyone regardless kind of said um the orange school district is Top Notch and why I think it was the number one reason why people chose to move there um regardless of their age group uh the village also was curious on a couple of diff other issues um one being a potential Levy for a new safety and service facilities uh which they wanted to kind of gauge respondents overall kind of feelings of for putting it on a ballot um and that was overwhelmingly positive uh this other question was the communication question which I think is um very interesting Trend um of how respondents prefer to receive their news from the village um

so as you can see this kind of newer online forms of communication such as email um the website and uh social media significantly increased um from previous surveys 207 to 2024 while things like direct mail um the the village Marquee sign and that u news newspapers decreased so you're kind of seeing that that trend of people getting more of their information different ways and how thinking the village can think through how to kind of adapt and move towards having a more kind of online presence to more uh so finally we also asked some kind of overall visioning questions about how um orange can develop and um evolve in the coming years um what they would like to see maintained what they would like to see improved upon and what they would like to add um again kind of falling in line with some of those themes that I talked about earlier um of maintaining Green Space um and um improving upon uh development standards improving trails and sidewalks then adding different community and Recreation amenities um we're kind of giving the village a nice blueprint of what things that their residents have emphasize and care about forward so that's that's what I have if I take any questions have questions or comments oh this isul first project that he led um so he did a really great job on this and really great coordination with the city so um was a really good good process thanks Paul appreciate

it thank Paul uh next is uh proposed bylaw amendments okay um so in your packet that was sent out last week and what you've got in front of you um thank you to Wesley for again painstakingly going through this and Jennifer and others um um we thought we had all the things covered on the last um on the last version but as we cleared all the red lines and revisions that were made in that version we found other areas that um needed to get some updates and so one section that we said you know there were duties that were assigned to the chairperson um which really are not what the chairperson needs to do and so we said while we're cleaning this up he as executive director in our team really does do that the work that was somehow assigned to the chairperson so we said while we're doing it we might as well clean it up for agendas and minutes and all of those things so we took those away from the chairperson duties and put those into the executive director duties um and then some note some notes on public um notices there was a couple places where something said 10 days and one other place said seven days so we wanted to make sure we were consistent with that um and so really some of it was just formatting and making sure we had clear um um references to Ohio Revised Code or resolutions or legislation so I think we are at the point where this is these are the final comments and so I would just you know entertain any comments or questions that you have on what is in there currently um and then we you know once we get feedback and make additional changes or finalize it we'd ask for a vote at the next board meeting any comments anybody had a chance Council Simon correct right so based on the discussion

um from the last meeting that was approved with those edits we cleared all those and then these are the that's okay yeah these are the only current standing Provisions from December no correct so I would add just once we get this cleaned up again we'll make sure the page numbers are correct in the table of contents and everything lines up but I didn't see a point doing that if you're going to be modifying page numbers with these final edits is it a multiple uh to vote on the changes to it is a multiple meeting vote yeah yes it's um we we have to introduce the proposed changes first and then the bylaw say that we can then uh vote on those changes at a subsequent meeting but they can't be introduced and voted upon at the same meeting unless it's something mandated by state or federal long so that was the hope that we had it in December all cleared and we'd vote today but we had yeah and just to fill in a little bit um in after the December meeting um I went through and I noticed some things right right off the rip that I unfortunately I missed so I I spoke with Mary and decided that rather than ignoring them let's just do it the right way even if it takes a little bit longer and so these represent the additional proposed revisions that we've we've identified it was just titled Strangely I don't know why notice was there I mean it's in the body of this as it's pursuant to Ohio's open meeting law um and other places in other sections it references I don't know why that was in the title but that that's historically

been there but I didn't think there was a need to included in that section title so just in regards to the for the notice for a public meeting is it typically I'm sorry correctly is it 72 hours or do we need to be seven days I mean that length of time to have a notice out uh my understanding is it's been a week although I I can't say for sure if it's it's statutorily required so I don't know that if it's 72 or seven is is the minimum but we've we've done seven and I didn't see any I'm I'm not looking advocating for it I just and then there is a note there in that 706 that if there's a special meeting we have to provide 24 hours advaned not so I think that would be if something changed from the original sday notice if something changed in between that or prior to that okay this typically just you know to that point we send out the packet a week in advance and on that day we send out the packet the agenda is posted publicly so that's Ty the seven days okay all right so the thought is is that if there is no objections to any of this that this document will come before us then at our next meeting we'll take a vote on that document correct and I'm and I'm in the interum if questions rise I'm happy to answer them so that the members have time to review and digest and just you know to reiterate the overall goal with these is not to create uh new powers or anything like that that we that the board doesn't already have it's really to make sure that the rules are consistent what with what code 7.22

requires and what the county code 20612 requires and so I think Mar and I may have stated a couple months ago it's it's about just cutting the fat and making sure these are streamlined and consistent I pretended to be a lawyer through a lot of this but no thank you Wesley you've been very helpful um you know and it is it's like we don't have to restate everything that's in an ordinance because what happens is if that changes then we have to go back in and change our bylaws and we simply reference it and what I will do is I will be adding hot links to these uh orc's and legislations and regulations so that if someone's in the body of it they can just click and go out to them they'll also be added as an appendix to the document okay if nothing else I'll move on from this okay sounds good let's move into the executive director's report thanks Wes thank you thank you so one of the things that we did add to the bylaws and before when you saw it on December we talked about introducing a work plan um which is something that was not included in there as well as what the 2025 budget um you know is so that you have an awareness of that obviously that's approved by Council so um just a few things to cover today um and I know we do have solid waste policy committee so we'll make sure we give ample time for that meeting as well um so strategic imperatives and initiatives this was something that we did at our ini initial retreat in 22 I think 23 22 can't remember but it was it was a while ago um good news is we had another one uh we had one in December and it was really good um and we'll talk about Community planning Services Program which is formerly known as the planning grant program where we are with budgets and revenues from last year and then a draft 2025 work plan to discuss with you and see if you've got any changes um so we did have a retreat in December um we went to the upstairs of AJ rockos if anybody hasn't been there lately they have completely remodeled and they are a

little light on business so it was nice that you know we could go there for the afternoon and be upstairs and really have a you know time to talk with each other have a lot of flip charts we had 100% participation um and we reviewed what we had already done and we pulled out the flip charts from our original Retreat and figured out what have we already accomplished what do we still need to do and what needs to be missing what was missing or what we should be prioritizing for this year um so we're really thinking of this as more internal um pieces that we need to do and working on best practice itic so that the work that we do in communities is really reflecting best practices um for results in your communities um you know and I think it's something where we've had a lot of input um I've asked the managers now to really take a look at see like how do we winnow it down to make sure that it's something that we can accomplish um and we had people assigned uh managers uh were assigned to different imperatives and then initiatives under each of those we really want to make sure there's ownership there to keep advancing it and then measuring our success because I think we talked about it as managers and probably not as often as we needed to but really relaying that message back to the whole team to know where we were and what we've accomplished and how we can really make sure we're holding ourselves accountable to doing that so that's being finalized and I'll make sure I share with that um all of you as well going forward um and so the community planning Services Program we felt like it was time to change the name um because they're not truly grants we're not giving people money and we fielded a lot of questions on like oh I heard we have grants can you give me a grant for you know X project and that's not how um it works and so we said it's time to really change it and we uh we're hitting the 10year mark of this planning planning grant program so we thought it was a good time to change the name and you'll hear more about our 10 years of planning um probably at our next meeting from Mah who's leading an effort on that which it's hard to believe we've you know we've been exist in existence for many more years than that but this program has been going around uh for 10 years so

we received 10 applications uh five Master plans but in the instructions we said that you know only a Max of two will be awarded we have one multi-jurisdictional Corridor study of business district revitalization plan uh one Parks Green Space open space planning an active Transportation plan and then other uh community plan so we received I'm going to go through it and Jim step in if I miss any Bedford Bedford Heights Cleveland Heights in partnership with East Cleveland uh Fairview Park Lakewood s Township Orange um Rocky River Lakewood and Valley View and Maple Heights sorry that's good the one I wrote the notes down must be sitting at my desk not here um so obviously you know these were all due last Friday um so we're just starting initial reviews uh and we plan to announce um by Friday March 7th so Jim son halter on our team is leading this effort um and as we say every year we know we can't do everything that everybody wants us to do um so it's unlikely we'll be able to do all 10 um especially because we can only do two Master plans but we're talking already internally um capacity wise and maybe what we do maybe a little different this year is how we assign teams and maybe not have as big of a team on each project but maybe people come in in and out of projects as needed but um you know we did bring on two new Staff last year but we have a lot of work that we're doing outside of this work and still finishing work from last year so um we'll have to balance capacity with you know the number of but um excited to see you know a lot of interest in it and Jim uh fed a lot of phone calls beforehand to kind of understand what people are looking to apply for so we will keep you posted on uh next steps all right um okay and then just quickly uh on the budget so for 2025 this is the second year of the banal budget um last year if you remember we

had requested additional Appropriations which were issued um in 2024 to cover salaries and benefits um that additional appropriation of 150,000 is not included in the 2025 budget so we have already talked to OBM and they said that's not included and that is something obviously we needed it to cover those things last year we're going to need it again this year to cover those and then likely a little bit more just given increase in salaries and benefits and then our ongoing contract soft you know contract software and licenses um and we've also been really kicking down the road a new website since I came on it's something that I really wanted us to do we have we have a great amount of information on there there is um you know a legacy of projects in there and there's a lot of information which doesn't always make it the easiest to navigate and find the information you need um we did do kind of um a light update u based on our new logo and branding and our colors um when we did that so that's been done but it's something we're gonna we're starting to solicit quotes on what that could what that might cost but it's something we really pushing off and I think it's time we trying to identify some funding you know for that as well um so last year in terms of revenues we deposited 220 more and more aicp um certified planners on our team every year we had recent you know new new ones that pass the exam this year or end of last year or whenever it was um but this is you know it's continuant education requirement so um a way of potentially utilizing those Revenue dollars to help offset some of those costs um and then the other uh big

change this year is the healthy Urban Tree canopy grant program that we've been administering on behalf of sustainability for five six years going on um it's going to be transitioning back to sustainability this year um and so there is $950,000 that is in tied to an activity for that program in our budget currently for the 2025 um application cycle those dollars will be moved out um and sustainability is going to work in partnership with soil and water and so what the vision really is and this is not public is say but they're looking at ways of maybe not having to do so many individual grants but look at Large grants for um companies who do plantings and working with communities and residents to figure out where they need to be and offering that um uh ability for someone who's got a lot of the capital to do it and then get reimbursed rather than um individual you know cities and cdc's getting funding so more to come on that but we will still keep dollars in our activity code from um the the program year 23 and 24 to keep um we have to make sure that we've got dollars for the active contract Comm commment that we've got from those years that as we've processed those reimbursements so um just another change that might come which will hopefully free up some folks in our office um capacity to do some other work but um that's in the works now and I know sustainability is in initial conversations with OBM about that change soide was this planning no I mean I think what you know we've said we've always wanted we were helping and it was never the long term that we were supposed to be the ones doing it and I think once we um fulfilled The Five-Year commitment from former County Executive budish on what that program looked like it was time to really take a look back and see what's working what's not how do we make it easier and how do we you know in the end plant more trees okay so that's really it's been a we've got a you know a team meeting that meets every Thursday with

Soil and Water sustainability us and so it's been Board of help a lot of conversations on what it could look like in its next life so definitely the goal of still planting trees is is the big one all right okay so draft work plan um this is something we have not done previously we work really hard internally to manage capacity and our commitments and I think based on the conversations we had last year and you authorizing me additional Contracting Authority I wanted to make sure that we shared with you what we envision our work with our workload will be tied to for 2025 so this is really a summary that's getting handed out to you and what we want to do is really look for um our overall you know our areas of expertise what goals we want to accomplish and then what activities are tied to those goals so this is I know hard to see so I try to break it up um but you've got it in your hands now and so I think the the main thing what we want to do is this is really the overview and then the spreadsheet actually continues and so for each one of these activities we're going to be finalizing metrics for each of those so that when we look on a quarterly basis where are we with these are we doing the things we said we were going to do we have to say no to additional work it's because we're doing these things that we've already identified knowing we can't do everything for everybody um but really setting forth specific metrics tied to each one of these activities for each one of these goals in each one of these areas of expertise um so it's nothing necessarily that I you know need a vote of approval on I just think it's good for you and for me um to keep this you know front of mind and when we have a every time you know once a quarter we revisit this and

I can provide you update um on what our progress is against these um activities and these goals and we also are going to be utilizing it to really say how much of of our own capacity is going to be used to do any one of these things because um you know we're asked we've already been asked recently for communities asking to hire us to do work outside of you know the planning grant program because it's not necessarily something that's eligible there um and so we love to do all the work we can but we even if they're paying us it doesn't create another staff person to do the work so it's really I think going to help us balance things um I think too with this next round of projects we're going to stagger them more than we have in the past just so that everyone's not at the same point of a project as their their colleagues because then we've got public meetings on top of each other and um really heavy lifts for current conditions and other parts of the project um when they're all starting at the same time so I know you just are seeing this today so I don't know if anybody has any you know initial thoughts or questions or um any better way to show this but I want to thank Patrick and the rest of the managers who really helped get this window down to a manageable summary to share with you today comments the access yeah more and more important so I can see done yeah and what we're seeing is you know we're already doing say two so we assume there'll probably be at least another two communities maybe or three communities that want to do that same thing with the single family zoning updates we just know we just did two and as we do these and you know as we're thinking about to and other things we've got the overlay zoning code so what we want to do is make sure that's getting implemented in more communities so it's not really rewriting those but then um taking them out to the local community and making sure that they're um meeting

their needs locally and getting adopted so that um you know they're actually getting implemented Beyond just something that we did that we want people to know about great Mary thank you for join okay for my part old business is there any old business new business any new business see none since we have another uh meeting following us I'm going to make a motion to adjourn all those in favor that motion carries thank you everyone so unless we have something we have an attentive meeting in on March 13 if there's nothing uh pressing then we'll wait and meet again in thanks everybody Elizabeth you can have my seat e

the um the Koga County Solid Waste District solid waste policy committee to order uh um today's date is February 13 2025 we have a uh roll call please thank you yes mayor Burke here council person Simon here council person Conwell mayor Dy Jones director Deber here mayor Gallow here director Fields mayor CTS mayor orcut mayor Weiss mayor here and Tim Weber here I'm standing thank you a thank you um first item of business is the approval of the minutes of the December 12 2024 meeting you've had an opportunity to review those online you need a motion please right motion by mayor councilwoman assment seconded by mayor Gallow any any comments on that all those in favor say I I those that motion passes all right next item is District updates for 2026 2 through 2020 40 I'm sorry thank you um thank you some of this information you have seen before but um we will be launching into a rather busy

schedule so wanted to remind all of you that we will be coming to visit you soon in preparation of plan ratification um just wanted to kind of go through the plan ratification process again we have U put together our statutory update which includes a 15-year planning period our plan must be inclusive of a funding mechanism and as well as a a budget for um expenditures and activities which it is inclusive of and once we have put that together we did present it to the EPA we did review with you that um we had really minimal comments from the EPA through our non-binding advisory comments back in the fall which is great we did incorporate a couple of changes and now we're kind of down to the last leg of ratification here so actually today begins our public comment period um and um once we complete that we will have a public hearing we'll go little into depth then we will actually enter ratification um in early May and ratification of the plan necessitates us obtaining affirmative votes of the plan from 60% of the population of the district inclusive of our largest political subdivision which is the city of Cleveland in the past we have been very successful in obtaining in the 9s in the 90% tile of approval this is our fifth Plan update so we hope to again meet um a ratification approval in the 90%

tile just to review what activities we have in the plan for you um we did ask that we increase our grant funding amount for our communities we're looking at increasing grants to communi about $100,000 annually and revamping the type of activities we would like to fund we're looking to get more programmatic changes funded so we can move that needle for diversion um we heard from your service directors that they wanted to keep our scrap tire Roundup collection they did ask if we could please budget for increases in litter collection which we have put in this as well as developing some multif family and drop off programs which we have also put in this plan for your review and eventual approval we did manage to put all that together and maintain for Budget purposes um keeping our generation fee static throughout the planning period which is a it's a 15year planning window we will update our plan again in another five years it's always aoll but we have managed through a 15year planning window to maintain a $2 generation fee so that will not be changing which we were happy to be able to um to balance that and we will also be able to maintain approximately a six Monon um budget Reserve in our fund balance for operating so those are the things that when you receive a copy of the plan you'll be able to look at for yourselves passed out was um a schedule I figured I was going to ask all of you to please put this somewhere in your

office this outlines as Mary had mentioned um we do need to meet and have a quorum at the April meeting at that point the district will have completed public comments um we will have completed our public hearing and if there are any things brought to US during either one of those phases public comment or public hearing um we will incorporate those into the plan and when we come back in April we will be asking you then to finalize or to um approve what's the final version of the plan that we will then take out to all of the communities for um evaluating or passing of our hopefully an affirmative resolution in support of the plan and then as of beginning of May May 10th is when the ratification clock begins ticking statutorily we have 90 days to visit all 59 communities and ask for there to be legislative action passed within that 90day um comment period you can go for it a little you go for it again there one more there we go thank you um and as you can see um the yellow indicates the period for ratification so statutorily we do we have 90 days to um ask all of you to pass an actual resolution hopefully affirming the plan and then in October you can see the two green line items there is when we need the second Quorum of the policy committee at which point we present to you a spreadsheet that list these are the communities that pass affirmative resolution these are those

hopefully there aren't any that voted no a no action is considered no in this so for example um one of the things that we will be kind of juggling during this 90day period is some of you do have summer breaks so yeah so we've already tried to strategically look at when either myself or Jessica will be hopefully visiting you our presence is not needed we are always happy to come visit you and address your counsels if that is helpful but we do not need to be present um but yes in and trying to encourage you to pass that before your breaks or most certainly pass that before the August 10th deadline um resolutions you know cannot be counted beyond that August 10th deadline um and on the back of what I passed out was just a a little kind of um it's a draft version you will be getting the final version of this it's a it's a primer that um kind of goes over everything we've just talked about put out some dates in there again um what we will be doing uh this is the public notice that actually was published for the public comment period um okay I'm sorry um so which begins today it's a 30-day public comment period those can be sent to us this also lists the date of the um actual public hearing which will be held at our offices on um March the 18th from 2: to 3 typically we don't have a crowd that attends that meeting if you want to come and just keep us company you're welcome um and you know again on the back side we provided you

this oops um is the perer for um really I do we have to update a plan what is our timeline the contents of our plan what we will be doing as of the beginning of the ratification process is all of you in your communities will receive not only this one pager but we are putting together an executive summary for you our current plan is is almost 400 pages long we find it rivet in reading but um we will provide you a link to our website in the event that you would like to read that in depth the way the plan is formatted which is um prescripted by the Ohio EPA is there are six chapters in the beginning which are little individual summaries of the different activities for example you our projections for waste and diversion revenues our expenditures our programming and then in the back is a very extensive section of tables showing all kinds of projections and whatnot for the entire 15-year planning period so um we encourage you please to review it um we will be mailing those out to your Clerk of counsels um along with copies that could be shared with everybody on Council and and we will also be sending a ample resolution for your consideration of Passage so and entertain any yes I was just going to ask if there's so to be clear um Beth so each city is going to do it now um this commission will also ratify correct they have to they will in um the yellow date the second um green date on here in

October we will bring to you a tally sheet showing basically the verifying our ratification so it'll show every Community what action they took the percentage that it adds up to and then you as a policy committee certify it's like certifying results certify that we have obtained ratification at which point then we take that your resolution in in October along with our tally sheet and the plan package it send it back to the EPA where they take one final look they make sure youve certified what you said you certified and then hopefully um albeit they have 90 days to review sometimes they do it a bit quicker um we then by the beginning of 2026 to have our official plan and we can begin implementing those activities that we put forth in the new documents is there any value I guess it's not a requirement for County Council to pass are you going approach the Ty County mayor Managers Association yes I've been talking to Lisa and we are trying to orchestrate we we figured maybe try and kill two activities at once we're actually trying to orchestrate a tour of Waste Management's Oakwood ter recovery facility as well as have a meeting to discuss this so we thought uh we're trying to orchestrate that in April which would actually be a little ahead of the ratification process beginning but we are working with Waste Management to try and find a time we'd have to do multiple um tours on that day so we're trying to find a date when um it's good for Lisa and um your schedules in mayor managers as well as waste

managers yes we thought we'd try and make it f are there any other questions I can answer okay and then we have just one last slide oops um just wanted to share with you um some things that we're going to be working at um working on at the district you know this is usually very busy spring it's a busy time for us so um we'll be out in about doing presentations and workshops I would like to call out we will begin our second Saturday hours in March and what that is it's a seasonal time at the district when we open our offices for the public to bring in the things that we collect there and that happens on the second Saturday as the name indicates from now through September we've got a television collection coming up at the district if you're interested or your uh constituents are interested in bringing a television they just call the district we schedu them at time so they don't have to wait in line and just bring it in um the other thing I would like to point out is the end of March we will be in Independence this will be our third reduced reuse repair Fair where we have vendors that have either upcycled or have activities or um lessons on how to reduce use you know backyard composting those types of things and we will be Civic Center in Independence uh at the end of March hoping to you know share those good tips ruc for using and recycling at our fair so we've increased our participants over the last two years we hope to increase those again this year and these are all on our website if

you need to reference them okay any questions I can answer see none thank you uh no resolutions today no resolutions today okay anybody have any items for discussion none well I will make a motion to adjourn today's meeting seconded by mayor Burk anything further all right thank you very much everyone than you you efficiency two meetings and I I tried yeah