City Council - Regular Meeting

Time is 7 PM. Mr. Ott, can you please call the roll?

Member Pierpont. Here. Member Orr. Here. Member Weirich.

Here.

Member Matheny. Here. Member McLeister. Here. Member Pratt. Here. Member Stocker.

Here. Six present. Thank you. I will make a motion to excuse Mr. Orr. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you very much. All right. First item on tonight's agenda is Community and Economic Development Committee. As chairperson, I would like for Mr. Ott to go ahead and read Ordinance 16-2026 that is coming back to us from the Planning Commission.

An ordinance repealing Chapter 1139, Industrial District Regulations, and amending various provisions of Chapter 1137, Business District Regulations, are the codified ordinances of the City of North Canyon to update, modify, and clarify the regulations governing the City's business districts.

Fortunately for tonight, we have Mr. Van Gundy in the our mix. And I think Mr. Segede is going to leave the conversation, gentlemen. I'm going to turn this over to you. You explain to us all of the changes that are coming back from the Planning Commission.

Yeah, Jason.

Oh, go ahead, Marty. Okay.

So yeah, I can give a brief overview of the changes. So that might be a little easier. Let's add Mr. Hop to the list. Okay. So, uh, coming out of planning commission that a few recommendations to the existing legislation that have been with you guys previously, um, they recommended significant enough changes that I wanted to bring it back to committee before advancing it forward. Um, So the first of which is restoring the office building designation. So we had initially proposed removing the OB designation from our code, but ultimately we've decided that was a little premature for that. So we are recommending that that be restored. So there are currently eight parcels that are zoned as OB. So in the interest of not kind of getting rid of their zoning out from under them and without forcibly rezoning them to a different designation, We just recommend leaving that in place for right now. Are those all on Schneider?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. So eventually we can look at encouraging them to rezone into a different designation that might be more suitable for them. But for right now, it's just best to leave that in place. They recommended setting a conditional use for multifamily residential in all of the commercial districts. A conditional use for restaurants in the limited industrial LI district. A conditional use for museums in the newly to be created neighborhood business district. So for example, if there was a historically significant house, turning that into a museum, making that a conditional use just so they have to apply for a conditional use with the development services department. Um, establishing live work units as permitted in the office building, neighborhood business, GBA and GBB, and then conditional in the limited industrial, uh, and I live work units would be something like, uh, the lower level is a business and the proprietor lives upstairs. And then a permitted use would be established for commercial kitchens and catering services in GBA, GBB, and LI, but would be prohibited in neighborhood business and office building. And then the last significant change that they recommended was establishing a regulation for computer data centers. We, after talking with Mr. Van Gundy and Mr. Saget and Mr. Heil, the director of law, we settled on that it will be a non-permitted use in all but the LI district. It would be a conditional use in the limited industrial district. I don't know if anybody wants to add anything to this, but to my knowledge, nobody has requested the construction of a data center anywhere in the city. I don't know if Jason or Marty, if you want to speak to that as well. No, that's correct.

We felt like... given the lack of available spaces for at least a large data center, having the option to have one in the limited industrial, but with a conditional use. So planning commission and council could look at it, see if it's a good fit. I mean, a lot of the discussion about data centers understandably has been about the behemoth data centers that are really large and use a lot of power, water, but There are a lot of data centers that have been in places for 20 or 30 years that people didn't even realize were data centers, which are much smaller. So if that sort of data center was ever proposed, we'd have the ability to at least look at it, but we feel pretty confident we've got both the zoning code and just land use at North Canton that it's unlikely that we're going to have applications for the kind of data center they're discussing in Perry Township.

And I did want to, just as a point of clarity to Jason's point, that would be solely the purview of the Planning Commission. So any applications for conditional uses would go through Development Services, and then they would go before the Planning Commission. It wouldn't appear before you guys necessarily. The approval of any of those conditional uses would be with Planning.

There would be a public hearing, correct?

Yep, correct.

And you would like to add, they would stand out to you.

I think it's worth noting that this legislation would place the journey in New York and said that successful course before you're flying to get the properties in the city, but with the map of that map of many of the same process. There's Mr. Attention. It would be an option for those properties.

So that would be somebody requesting to be re-sown to that and then the Planning Commission determining whether or not it fits within the neighborhood? Correct. Okay. Mr. Van Gunning, can you elaborate just a little bit on the segment that talks about something that doesn't necessarily fit in these categories and how you might help that individual determine which one it would be?

Yes, so effectively it would be looking at the

uses that are listed there. If it is something that's similar and close, then that would be something that didn't fit in there or that could potentially be incompatible with the surrounding properties. It either can be denied or possibly sent over to . It's part of .

I have a couple questions. So at that meeting, there were also some comments from the planning commission members about some of the land use categories and the vagueness and the nature of those. So essential services was one of those. And I would agree that's pretty vague. I mean, since we've come through a pandemic, essential services seem to extend to a lot of us, no matter what we did. So I don't know if we can put some more clarity around that. But if somebody wants to go into the new NB category and says, I am an essential service worker, I mean, what scrutiny are we putting that land use category through with that kind of a description? And I guess I'll ask the same thing for some of the others that they mentioned at that meeting, like studios, the certain types of offices.

So the essential services is a defined term. So section. Okay. All of the. example of studio. We'll get that proposed use what we're proposing in that building property. I know that that can be

district was kind of spoken as to be intended to be businesses that operate in a nine to five kind of realm and not residences who would expect their business doing business out of their home after hours, but a studio could be after hours. Any number of those items under essential services as we define it could be after hours. So that's just where some of my concern with that extends to. So that was expressed by the commission, but we're not really addressing that here. There was the request to add the OB back in, so thank you for doing that. There was also some discretion that we were looking at with the whole process of a grievance, or if I'm a resident and my neighbor is approved for the NB zoning change, does that resident receive a notification that somebody has applied for that and they have an opportunity to come and speak about that prior to being approved?

So for a permitted use, there would not be a notification rather than something that would have an administrative review.

In fact, the data makes the process very quickly with notifications or anything facing boundaries.

As far as, it's fairly difficult where you would see notifications to conditional uses and all of the conditional uses

But a permitted land use category under NB would not notify anybody that's moving in next door to you. That's a concern that I've received concern about from constituents. I share that concern. It's not going to be a good situation if my neighbor opens a business next to me and I do have 10 cars in their driveway at 8, 9 o'clock at night. And now the burden's on me to come to the ZBOA and file some sort of an appeal for that. It seems a little bit reactive, less proactive to me. So can we take a look at that? Is that something that we can amend?

So with that is the application for a... Go ahead, Brendan. Go ahead, Brendan.

Can I clarify a point to that? I think they would get noticed, though, because it would require a zoning.

That's what I'm wondering.

No current part of our city... It's zoned NB.

So in order for them to be an NB district, it would have to go through the rezoning process, and that does require a geographical area notice for rezoning.

Okay, so this is our law director on the phone. So what he's saying is the first time I apply for the zoning change to NB, the notification would go out because it's zoning change request. That makes sense to me. Now that I've been zoned, so Brendan, now that I'm zoned NB, and instead of having a dance studio in my house, I decide to do some sort of medical service instead that's permitted, then notification isn't going out for that new type of business because I'm already zoned NB, correct? That's correct. Okay, thank you for telling me.

As long as it's a permitted use, yes.

Okay. So that was the concern that was expressed.

I just wanted to add in, again, maybe he covered and I just couldn't hear, so... So let's just say I want to make my house empty. I would have to apply for that. And would that be just my house? And then what are the parameters we're putting on? Is it only certain areas in the city that we would consider this? Or is this literally any house, any residential house in the neighborhood or in the city that could be empty?

So this was designed to be a buffer zone. So this is going to be that transition. Do you want to go through the zoning map and look at some of the areas to discuss potential candidate locations?

Could I add one thing real quick to that? So the neighborhood business district, one thing that brought that idea about is in our current zoning code, and maybe to step back for a second just for context, The reason we're discussing these particular districts is we spent a lot of time on Main Street districts a couple years ago, but we haven't looked at any of the other business districts for a long time. So that was the whole genesis of why any of this is before you. Also, Marty alluded to this and said it in passing, but none of what we're bringing before you today has any changes to the zoning map. So this is strictly the text of the zoning code. That kind of gets into Holly's question about if someone requested rezoning to neighborhood business district, and then Jamie, to your question, I'll just give you my own perspective. But if your next door neighbor wanted to designate their house as neighborhood business district, my recommendation would be no. You know, like Liam said, and Marty had said, it was really more We have these two districts called GBA and GBB, general business, which allow Washington Square, for example, is GBB, where GBA is the land on cordage as you leave the city to the west. Those are larger, more intensive commercial. We don't really have a zoning category for smaller businesses that might be more like what you would see on parts of Main Street. So in my opinion, the intent of the neighborhood business zoning, if any, were created. And again, it's important to remind you, we're not even proposing it be put on the map at this point, but we wanted the category available. But it is intended more for arterial or collector streets, maybe where you've got, you know, maybe on like East Maple Street as you go east of Taft over where Eric's is or the car wash, like areas like that. I don't think it would be a good idea to rezone parts of an actual residential neighborhood as neighborhood business. It's really more intended to be that step down in intensity from something like you see at Washington Square to a purely residential. And just one final thought, it's usually not a good practice to just take one parcel. So like if your neighbor did want to, I don't know, create some sort of display district or neighborhood business district on their only residential lot, I think our recommendation would be that's not really in keeping with the intent of the zoning, but it would require public hearing. It would have to come before our planning commission, et cetera. So there would be safeguards to it being created in the first place. However, like Holly said, once it's in place, If people do want to put something that's a permitted use, they would be allowed to do that. Just like in a residential district, if you're R50 or R70 single family residential, somebody can build a house there and they're allowed to do that by right.

So, Jason, what I'm hearing on both sides of the room is there's a lot of, at this point, discretion in terms of what the city would allow and what the city would not. So, A concern that a constituent gave to me and I shared as well, I shared the same concern. What happens if or when the current folks who all have apparently a pretty strong understanding of what the intent of the law is, what happens when those folks are no longer here and they've moved to other cities or locales? And I guess what my question really is, is can we not put some more specificity into the law where it talks more specifically about what we need instead of this, like you said, you'd be inclined not to permit.

Well, to be clear, I was saying what my recommendation would be if somebody requested rezoning in the scenario that Councilman McLeister mentioned, but could you maybe specify, are you talking about establishing the zoning district to begin with or about a permitted use of the zone.

You were referencing that something might not be within the spirit of the law and of course the spirit of the law is not the letter of the law and I just worry that if there are interpretations to be had if none of us are here and the interpretations are left to people who perhaps don't have the same altruistic motives I'm just thinking very long term about what I don't want to give you know, our residents 10 years down the road build goods.

Are you talking, though, specifically about the neighborhood business district zoning? Yes, I'm speaking about the NB. Okay, understand. Sorry. Yeah, because I just wanted to point out every zoning category is like that. Like, once it gets established and it has a set of permitted uses, I think if I understand what you're saying is that might be all the more reason to be circumspect about where it's placed. Right.

So some of the questions that Member Pierpont had, Member McLeister, were talking about a lot of the, if it's an approved use, you know, it might get approved without hearing. And then it's incumbent upon the residents to then make a complaint. Well, that's kind of a difficult, challenging, perhaps, process. So that's all I'm kind of Looking out, I'm kind of trying to weave together all the questions that we can't just be a little bit more specific about the NB. Ironically, not very specific in my question, but about that, could we just be more specific on that?

I guess I'm wondering, could the language be that an NB has to be adjacent to If we're saying it's a buffer to head toward residential, is there a way to say it can't just be a standalone residence?

It may not always work like that. For example, looking at the zoning map on Schneider, these offices along Schneider, there are no surrounding commercial districts, but these are established commercial uses. already, that then any future designation goes with the land. So in that...

So those are conditional?

So these are zoned as office building, whatever their use may be, whether permitted or conditional, would change theoretically with changes in ownership and changes in use. Same with up here, there's no GBA, GBB, these are the offices along East Maple.

Would we be...

Would it be beneficial to not have five or six permitted uses and make everything conditional as we roll out this new NB designation? They have to go to zoning, has to be changed to NB. If everything's conditional or not permitted, where would that place this?

So that's what I was going to say. This only affects eight parcels right now. Well, actually, no. That's the OB no part presently. So why would we just send whatever is in this category to ZBOA anyway? Would that resolve everybody's issue?

zoning would have to change, but to have any future uses.

If the use category changes where it's already zoned in B, I want that to go before somebody and I want that resident next door to be notified. But your idea to make those conditional, I think would handle that, right? Because conditional is going to get a notification, right? So I like that suggestion.

To change the zoning. So if they're like, okay, they're going to zoning they're saying hey we want to be this essential service you know and it's going to be a one-person office but we are going to be dispatching for whatever right so now it's an essential service zoning says yes change it to nb well it's still conditional use so you got to go to planning and say we're going to do this because if they choose to change it and now have 10 or 15 cars parked in their driveway and on the street or in their backyard yeah then that would have to go as another conditional use if they change from their original conditional use.

By default, as a, and Brendan, correct me if I'm wrong, as a Home Rule authority, you have every right to set everything in the NB designation as a conditional use, and then any use, no matter what circumstance, would appear before the Planning Commission for... Just those that are listed here as permitted, not everything, because the ones that are... Well, the non-permitted...

I think there's only six of them. Okay. Administrative government services, offices, administrative medical billing, essential services, business services, studios for instruction, and dance studios. That's what I capture as permitted. I think that would solve for the issue, the concern about... You could make all of those conditional.

So if we make the permitted five or six that are on here, make them conditional, then we've got kind of checks and balances.

Is there a way of possibly safeguarding those The residential, the true residential neighborhoods. So I grew up on Willoway and I totally understand Schneider and how some of those properties are businesses. And I can see on Maple as we go on the other side of Main Street how there are businesses that were there. And I can see wanting to maybe safeguard for those business owners who own those properties now, but do we really want to see that grow necessarily? So I'm thinking like specifically from the area where Eric's is out towards Washington Square. Those are all residences. So by putting this in, are we just opening up for that to become a business district? Is that the best use? But then I guess to go even further, I guess I would just be concerned that this gets construed where now they're going down off on smaller streets that truly residential streets that aren't, you know, a buffer between uses.

So the zoning board is a whole to interpret what our intentions are. The same could be said of any zoning designation on this list. In theory, you can apply for any designation for any parcel, whether it's granted by the board or by an administrative official, like a chief building official is discretionary. Additional CARVATs, I don't know, would help the way that you would think that they would. just because that's not really how zoning codes work. Jason, if you'd like to speak.

Yeah, I just wanted to add to get to your question, Jamie, but to finish with yours also, Christina. So typically in zoning codes, what you were saying makes sense in theory, but you don't typically tie a use category to adjacency to another use just because, like Liam was saying, the geography of every city is different. And I've never seen a code where you actually write that in. Like, for example, NB can only be next to a GB or something like that. Suppose we could probably write up anything that council wanted to address, Jamie, what you said. I mean, one of my recommendations is if city council feels trepidation or concern about the neighborhood business district CATEGORY, WE DON'T NEED TO PROPOSE IT. WE COULD TAKE IT OUT. IT WAS OFFERED UP AS SOMETHING THAT MIGHT BE BETWEEN HAVING THE GENERAL BUSINESS CATEGORY STRAIGHT TO RESIDENTIAL. BUT AGAIN, JUST SPEAKING FOR MYSELF, IF IT'S A ZONING CATEGORY THAT YOU DON'T FIND USEFUL OR YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT INTERPRETING IT OR THINGS LIKE THAT IN THE FUTURE, I mean, you have every right to say, take it out of there. The only other thing I would say about that is, you know, it's like Councilman Pratt and McLeister were talking about. Maybe we want to go in another direction. Maybe we don't want to have as much commercial activity. I mean, that's another tool the city has. You can rezone properties to residential use. For example, they're commercial. they're grandfathered in, you know, as long as that business is there, it can continue to operate. But if it were to change in the future, you know, new development would need to be residential. So I just wanted to offer that update. I think it's helpful to have this discussion just to see where you're at in terms of do you want more commercial uses in the city over time or do you want

I want to add, though, if you recall, some that have been on council in the past, the conversations we had about how largely residential our city is. And the difference between commercial and residential is that your commercial does not tax the resources as much as residential. So there was one time when we were doing the what was it called, when we rewrote the zoning code and it was the new, what was it called, the new generation? We had a term for it, you know, from the old zoning code to the new. And we did look at how much we are residential versus commercial on our percentage. As you know, residential uses more, costs more, uses more services of a city and doesn't pay income tax. So a city kind of want to balance your commercial from your residential. because residential costs and commercial pays income tax to the city. So that might have been some of the spirit of this zoning code. I have a couple of questions.

This is a little bit non-profit, but do we have, I want to turn it into an old house.

I mean, we can turn an old house into an old place. That would be the R2F. So as long as, I don't know if it's located in the R2F family. Not the family.

Okay. Because I mean, I guess basically what we'd be doing is turning more houses into businesses or having them be partial businesses. And I know we're school asking for more students and things like that. So we'd be losing more housing. So I think kind of that way, as well as businesses next to the houses, there's a great precedent. I know Jason kind of thought about that. guess that would still be a concern i would have um you know people have bought homes and they're located where they're at for reasons i don't really know if i'd like to change the rules of the game while we're in it um i've talked to a couple people to kind of share that concern and then i also think about empty space we already have in the community going down main street are we Are we kind of giving reason to not utilize those spaces that we already have? Would it be good for business or bad for business? I don't know, that's just some of the thoughts that I had. I see a lot of the larger buildings that after pandemic, you know, they've not been built back up. Those are my thoughts.

Go ahead.

I'll jump back in. So I do honestly see wisdom in this transitional. And the reason that I see that is because, as it was explained at planning commission meeting, there are people who have businesses who are not quite yet ready to take on a lease, to take on the responsibility of a property. This is kind of a transitional way. What I also like from what I've heard tonight is the idea that nothing's automatic. Everything is conditional. That provides progress, in my opinion, to a lot of the concerns that I personally had, and then also most importantly, were voiced to me by constituents.

If we have one house, let's just say back to where we described before on Maple, between Erick's and Washington Square, One person raises their hand, as Member Stocker said, that they're not ready to take on a lease of a commercial building and we change one property. Is that not the spot zone? And could that be done problematic?

Typically, I think Mr. Sagan, you can address some of that. We're looking at a single parcel . So we'd have to look at a larger area, make sure that it makes sense. And that's kind of what I thought I heard.

So really, we would have to actually say, hey, this, from this street to this street, wherever the briar is going to be, and be right to really be just necessarily one.

Generally, it would depend on the size of the parcel.

So you'd need multiple owners who would be willing to to jump on board and say, hey, you know, my neighbor Andy wants to start an ice cream shop. So I guess I'll jump on the bandwagon too and follow the MD as well.

And I would say it's to echo what Marty said, it's a little context dependent. I think what you're saying is generally true that if you had one parcel surrounded by residential uses, that type of category probably wouldn't be a very good fit, like to use a more extreme example, say you had one, you know, 60 foot wide residential lot, and there's 100 single family homes in every direction, I would say that probably not a great fit for a neighborhood business district. But like Marty said, if you had a two acre parcel sitting there, and maybe there's a park on one side and one single family home on the other side, I mean, that could maybe be something where the context would at least have that idea be worth exploring, but it's fairly context-dependent. What about across from the old car wash, it's like a Valvoline now, Glass Hut, Claremont, and East Maple?

There's a couple lots there that I think they're set for development, but they've not been yet. Is that something that could be zoned for business?

That's currently zoned residential, and it's purchased by someone that intends to build homes on that. That already went through zoning and planning.

I guess to your point, in theory, because there's businesses across the street, that individual could turn that into, so that is putting more businesses right there on top.

Would that be a trigger where then the house on the corner that's a duplex at Claremont and East Maple, could that go into a business and then so forth and so on down there?

Each of them would have to go to zoning, and then each of them would have to be approved by the Planning Commission for their conditional use to make sure that it is a good fit.

And first, the district would have to be created. So they would have to petition for a rezoning to create the neighborhood business district zoning category. That would have to go through our usual process. And then to Councilman Matheny's point, once that district was established, if it was established... and you decided to have every use in it be a conditional use, yes, then they would have to come back. And I would just say from long experience in planning and zoning, it's always a balancing act because if you want the city to be more business friendly to some degree or another, and you create too many processes and too many onerous processes, people will say, I don't want to deal with all that government red tape. I'm going to move my business to Jackson Township. On the other hand, on the other side of the balancing act, if you have no standards and no, it's, you know, you can, anything goes, then that creates problems for residents and might also not be the type of community character you want. So it is always trying to find that balance of having some guardrails, but also not making it so process heavy that it discourages people business development or investment.

I'd also like to circle back a bit more towards intent. So first off, I don't think that anybody, either Mr. Van Gundy or Mr. Segedy, envisions there being a flood of people looking to rezone into the neighborhood business designation. Additionally, this is intended to be more of a stopgap buffer-type zoning designation. Without that, looking at the existing... designations that we have, particularly for your off Main Street business districts. You have General Business A, General Business B, Limited Industrial, and the office building that is on its way to being outmoded. So once office building is gone, you're left with these three. Without a stopgap, like a neighborhood business, You're left with those three categories that are much more permissive than what we are proposing for the neighborhood business chapter. That, again, just as anybody could apply for a neighborhood business designation, they can apply for a GBA, a GBB, or even an LI. LI would be a bit optimistic of somebody for a residential lot, but you might be able to inch out a GBA or GBB. And those uses that are permitted by right are much more permissive than what the NB would allow, especially if they're all conditional uses of the ones that are currently listed as permitted. So if you set those, what was it, six?

Yes.

Set those six as conditional uses and everything else is non-permitted. Those are theoretically the only things that could ever go there. And that's pretty restrictive as opposed to GBA or GBB.

So, Liam, if we go ahead and we find balance tonight and we change those six to conditional and we pass this back to Planning Commission next, they're going to discuss it like they did before. The gentleman there on the panel, they'll have an opportunity to also consider do we keep or not keep NB because there was a little bit of discussion about that last time. And then if they approve whatever decisions made there that night, then where does it go next?

So it will come back to you for setting a public hearing, which is then set at a month timeline based on the Planning Commission's meetings calendar. I'd hope to get in in the first week of July, I believe it is. So then it would come back to you guys on the 13th, right before you go to break, where you would set the public hearing, which would be 30 days out. So once you return from break, you'll have that public hearing. And then it will start its first of three readings, the first of which will likely be the night of the public hearing.

Got it. Okay. So there would be at least three opportunities after whatever the commission decides for the public to be heard.

Correct. Got it. Thank you. And the planning commission exists in an advisory capacity. technically really all they can do is move forward with their recommendations. Uh, they recommended significant enough changes that I wanted to bring it back to committee. Let that be discussed a little bit more before we moved it forward. Uh, I would say when it goes to planning commission, the next time I would recommend that they just move it forward with their comments. So edits, uh, what you guys are always free to do at any point in that process after, um, You know, say you get feedback on a particular designation and you'd like to line item amend that to be permitted, not permitted, what have you. That's within your guys' right past that point.

Thank you. Can I shift gears for something else? I think we've barely beat that portion down. I see that there's a strikeout in Section 1137.13. which is supplemental regulations for mainstream media shops. What was the why behind the why on that?

Let Mr. Van Gundy speak to that. I think that was one of your proposed changes.

So, yeah, so this was Mainstream Media Shops. This is the Mainstream Media Shop. They carry adult media provided with Mainstream Media Shop with the entire development standard. And so we've effectively removed this section. Therefore, I guess that our new savings. from uh from what i have on what is local there's new red line chapter 1137 business district regulations um did the supply to like video stores and those don't exist and so we're they wouldn't start and they don't exist like they used to i'm not sure if that's well i'm just trying to there's one on main street uh

Is that covered under the land use category adult uses as defined in section 1145.07?

I believe that that was the intent, if I remember correctly, is that it's governed by a different chapter.

Yeah, because that's the chapter that then talks about they can only have a certain percentage of adult materials in that retail store or whatever. it's under the land use category section entertainment and recreation and it's listed as the last category adult uses as defined in section 1145.07 yeah i believe that that's what it was well that it was referred to elsewhere yeah i think it's a redundancy yeah i think that's what i believe and then in the interest of future proofing that if you let it just all be governed by that separate chapter then any future edits don't have to be made to multiple sections

You can just edit the governing chapter and then by default edit it.

So we're not changing the law technically about what can happen there. We're just restating it clearly.

That's a good question.

Fair question.

Oh, I see it now. It's on page six. Got it.

Are there any other questions or concerns with this? I will make a motion. Is there a motion to amend Ordinance 16-2026 as we've discussed?

With the changes to all of the P's and the conditionals? Yes. Okay. Is there a second?

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. Is there a motion to recommend Ordinance 16-2026 to the Planning Commission for further consideration?

So moved.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion to carry. And I'll make the motion to postpone further consideration of 14-16-2026 until after the Planning Commission's recommendation is received. Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Motion carries. We'll get on to Section 4, Finance and Property Committee. Mr. McLeister, the floor is yours. All right. Thank you so very much.

So this is item 4A. It's actually an ordinance for some change orders for the current renovation of the HVAC project that's going on at City Hall, which, by the way, if you know it's in the way in, we do have some temporary work stations set up here. So this is going to be a temporary City Hall project.

From what date to when? They got moved up last week. I did say June 22nd, which was today we were going to start the move, but our... team was able to move sooner. So we have already set up over here our permits and building department. So if you need any contract registrations, rental registrations and finances is here, then they're gonna start with the other building department admin. So through this week, beginning of next week, the last move is the engineering department at the end of next week. And then all city hall services will be located here until this HVAC project is complete.

So if you show up at City Hall and it's a ghost town, you know what? So anyway, so there are two change orders we're going to discuss tonight. So item 4A is for $31,830.73. And it is an emergency, so you can get rolling on this. It's a project that is underway. It's a down plan at City Hall. So this is for adding a conference room down in the first floor down by the police department. So this just gives an opportunity for more meeting space, whether it be police personnel or from folks upstairs.

Questions, comments?

Dr. Randy, just briefly. The police need a place that they're viewing individuals that may not want to take them into the regular side of the police department where people may be detained or that type of thing where they're coming in. We just need that section for them to be able to talk to them in private instead of in public.

And then, of course, also overflow for upstairs in case the fishbowl is taken out.

Do you think that the biggest thing was that witnesses might be walking right by suspects and vice versa? That's just obviously pretty uptight.

Separating parties. The other thing is the police department would be largely unchanged forever.

I think that they definitely deserve to be more Anything else? Okay, so for that, I will make a motion to move on. I will second that. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

All right, we're moving right along to item 4B. So similarly, this is another change order that's going on with the City Hall HVAC Renovation Project. So this one is for $225,326.28, also declaring this to be an emergency for the same reasons, just as we already know this project and want to move things along. And from what I've heard, and Gina directed from Long, we're looking at the renovation of two bathrooms downstairs and the reconfiguration of one bathroom upstairs, which will be nice upstairs because there currently is no bathroom upstairs for public use. So that pretty much captured that, Gina?

And will finance explain the funding side of this and why that money is already there, already appropriated, it's not getting into the budget, taking away from other things?

Right. These are posters from today on the 1200 block, which are demonstrated. Whatever is left over will be used to pay off the bond.

The 1200 block has the L-shaped building up north that was corrupt to be the place of karma.

Dairy Queen.

Dairy Queen. Basically, we're just getting there. Okay.

All right. So, seeing no other comments, I would have motion to move item 4B on the motion carries.

You're second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Moving on to item 5, Ordinance and Rules Committee. Mr. Pratt, this is all under your committee. This is something that all of you are involved with.

I'll bow. law enforcement as well. It's an ordinance establishing chapter 372 for mobility prices of the codified ordinances of the city of North Camden, thereby establishing provisions for the use and operation of mobility in the city. The proposed legislation would establish chapter 372 for codified ordinances of the to regulate the use and operation of mobility devices, including e-bikes, motorized scooters, electric skateboards, and similar devices. This legislation aims to improve safety for operators, drivers, and pedestrians. It defines key device types and sets requirements for lawful operation, including minimum gauge limits, common use for riders, and required equipment, such as lights, reflectors, signals, and meters. The ordinance restricts where and how the devices be used, such as limiting roadway use to streets within speed limits of 35 miles an hour or less, requiring adherence to traffic laws to be mandated to save behavior around pedestrians. It also outlines prohibited conduct, including unsafe operation, unauthorized modifications, improper parking. It further goes in to basically define the difference from the e-bike, the regular bike. There is a section for electric motorcycles. It's different, but it basically helps explain what those things are and where they came from. So with that, I'll let Liam

Okay, so yeah, I'll run through a brief summary of Chapter 372. So first is what it's governing. So we define mobility devices as electric bicycles, motorized scooters, and electric skateboards and similar devices. So an electric bicycle is going to be a two-wheeled vehicle with pedals, handlebars, a seat, and that is powered fully or partially by an electric motor or meets the Ohio Revised Code's definition of electric bicycle. A motorized scooter will have handlebars powered by either gas or electric motor, no pedals, may or may not have a seat, and is capable of exceeding 10 miles an hour. An electric skateboard, think your one wheels, the platform that has a wheel in the center, maybe a couple more on the outsides with either a stand or a sit design that's powered wholly by an electric motor. And this is not covering the electric motorbikes, electric motorcycles, whatever you'd want to call them that don't have operable pedals. Those fall into a broader definition of state code with licensing and registration requirements. So this is just for the things with pedals. Generally speaking, the operation is only allowed for people that are 10 or older unless accompanied by an adult. And for the case of class three e-bikes, which are your heavier duty, heavier speed, or bet faster that is 16 or older with a valid license or permit to operate a Class 3 e-bike. The Class 1s and 2s are 10 plus unless accompanied by adult. Helmets are required for anybody under 18 with the chin strap fastened. and are required for everyone operating a Class 3 e-bike regardless of their age, just because those vehicles are capable of a surprising speed for something powered by an electric motor. So we want people to be safe. Some required equipment for the vehicles themselves is a headlight and a taillight or reflector that's visible up to 500 feet. It's just a reasonable, if you have a light on it, it's what we're concerned about. It has to have an audible signal, whether that's a horn or a bell. And for e-bikes, it needs to have a rear view mirror. I believe it's on the left-hand side. For usage on the roadways, they're only allowed on roads that are 35 miles per hour or less. The rider is Strongly encouraged to stay towards the right side of the road as close as possible, just to stay out of the way of oncoming traffic as much as possible. The maximum of two riders abreast, so side by side, no more than two side by side going down the street, unless you're on a designated path that's built for more width. and following all of the relevant traffic laws applicable to vehicles. So they will operate as cars, should be stopping at stoplights and stop signs, not going up onto the sidewalk to avoid that red light, you know, those sorts of things. For operation on sidewalks, trails, and in recreational areas such as parks, only Class 1 and 2 e-bikes are allowed, and only in areas that do not otherwise prohibit those devices. We set a speed limit to the average walking pace of pedestrians that may be in the area. And when you are approaching those pedestrians, most likely from the rear is giving an audible signal, something to the effect of on your left, on your right, just to let them know that you're coming by. And again, following all applicable laws. For the prohibitive parking that Member Pratt mentioned, so it's not allowed to just be left on the street. blocking traffic or creating a hazard, whether that's in the street or for pedestrians, blocking any bus stops, ramps, driveways, fire hydrants, and anywhere else where bicycle parking would be prohibited. Some of the prohibited behaviors is carrying passengers unless it is specifically designed for it. If it is meant for two people, two people can ride. If it's meant for one, there better only be one. riding improperly, so to the effect of standing on the pedals, raising up off the seat, popping wheelies, things of that nature, anything that would compromise your ability to be in control of the device. Modifying the device's structure or its speed beyond the manufacturer's specifications. If they rate it to a certain wattage, voltage, speed capability, it should be kept at that or less. Attaching it to a moving vehicle with a rider on it, so You know, don't bungee cord yourself to the bumper of your buddy's car. And reckless or unsafe operation. You should keep at least one hand on the handlebars at all times. Failing to signal turns or warn pedestrians when approaching and ignoring the signals or traffic laws. We do establish a section for parental responsibility. So parents and guardians may not allow any minor in their care to violate these rules. I believe Chief Kemp can speak to this. We will inform the parents and after that point you are liable for what your child does with it if you have been informed. And then it does set some enforcement and impoundment provisions for the police. So the police may impound it if they need to. They will notify the parents of minors and Devices can be returned to them with proof of ownership if they're confiscated. And this would be established as a minor misdemeanor with subsequent escalators. So with that, I think I've covered as far as what the context would be. But Chief Kemp, if you'd like to speak further. Just one point of clarification.

You said lights and reflectors up to 500 feet. It's not less than 500 feet.

Correct.

Okay. This gives us one chapter of the day. I think there's a lot of different parts. More efficiently, obviously. The other aspect of it is very, very beginning. So that we make time for the parents. Thank you.

I have two questions. So I appreciate under the definitions, we have electric bicycle, motorized scooter, electric skateboard, electric motorbike, which is where my contention has been. And then a mobility device, it seems to be all encompassing. So I guess my first question Under mobility device, which is 372.01E, I do not see electric motorbike on there. So that is intentional.

Correct. Because those are governed by the larger state code for motorcycles that would require separate licensing and registration.

Perfect. Okay. So I want to make sure I understand that correctly. Because I, for one, listen, I'm a cyclist myself. I have, you know, I'm glad we're regulating some of the safety aspects with the e-bikes on... I can appreciate the use of e-bikes, but what makes me nervous is the electric motorbikes, the pegs, not pedals, I think we've described it as. So I just want to make sure with this, the way that I read it is there is no electric motorbike in here. So if it has pegs, not pedals, that is not allowed along city streets, correct? It's a motorcycle.

Unless otherwise registered as a motorcycle with the BMV.

So regardless of the size, regardless of the power, if it's pegs, not pedals, it's a motorcycle.

I think it would have to have a license plate and an operator's license. If it has all the other requirements, like blinkers.

Basically what they've done is the mini bikes, the gasoline, lawnmower engine, motorcycles, these electric motorcycles that become that. Yes.

We haven't let those other ones operate on the roadway because they're the same thing on the roadway. So the same thing applies to the electric vehicles. We've taken every other could to the social media to try to inform the problem. I don't guess they're fools.

Well, I don't have any concerns with the legislation. I appreciate it. I just want to point out that this committee, there was an issue that came before this committee several weeks ago, which we discussed.

Extremely limited golf carts in neighborhoods that were not connected to greater parts of the city.

And the discussion at that time was to all those golfers on the streets for 25 miles per hour. And that didn't even make it out of the community. So I guess my question is, what's the difference between a 16-year-old riding on our street, a licensed 16-year-old, How is that any better or more safe or anything as compared to an adult riding a golf cart in the neighborhood?

For me, I'll throw it out there. The legislation that we had before us, I feel is fraud. It would only be permissive to operate a golf cart in one neighborhood or literally two neighborhoods. It does not apply to every single resident. In fact, it didn't apply to my belief, at least according to the listings provided. than with my constituents.

Let me ask it a different way. Why wouldn't this, why would golf carts be permitted under this? Why couldn't it be written in, golf carts could be written anywhere in the city?

Why shouldn't it be?

Well, I think with this, the electric motorcycle, which is the level three, right, Liam? Yes. There's a law that already exists, so that's precedent, right?

So first off, point of clarity, the electric motorbikes are going to be more regulated as motorcycles. The class threes are just, they still have pedals. They're just a little bit beefier than the average class ones and twos. Correct.

So the ones without any pedals. Or the electric motorcycles those there's already balls on the books that are state level that they would have to be plated devices and have all the safety equipment as a car because that's basically what they are. Right.

Mm hmm. And to that point, as it pertains to golf carts, is the state code is that they are prohibited and less permitted by the municipality rather than the state has already carved out what that looks like. And then we can choose to allow or prohibit. It is at the state level prohibited and then we are allowed to permit and whatever that looks like for us. So I'd say it's a little bit different of a scenario. Chief Kemp, you can speak to that as well.

I believe we've had plenty of discussion on the property. Yeah, we've said we want to understand your mindset on the entire piece. One, I was purchased by a hawker down there that provides a very well-experienced dog cart on a road case down the equator with his wife on the dog cart while she was holding their infant.

I discovered there is no child safety season. Right.

We talked about, we talked about seatbelts and child seats and all the same law. So I guess Mr. Stocker's point is, how much different is this? And how much unsafe is this in both parts? But what's most important here is I think we're going to find this legislation is going to get moved to further discussions. I'm fully supporting that. Yes. Okay, good. I want to make sure that we are going to move this to the council agenda. We are going to have three readings on this, and we are going to make sure that we get to a workable solution for all definitions, for all motorized.

Yes, sir. I think you talked about in the work that's been done for the 16-year-old in Black Street, where they are licensed. They're an African-American 16-year-old. They're licensed. They're eligible for VA. So they don't grab any state bills. They have to give them an understanding of the practice. So for the Blacks and Americans, that's for a 16-year-old. So you're playing the class right.

It's also like driving on the street, on the bay, on traffic. Now we have, you know, electric assist bikes. So this helps clarify that. Being something new and then also setting, you know, some safety guidelines and requirements, but then also, you know, I guess it's the enforcement when people that aren't of age are riding them and they become a roadway hazard. What can we do to release them? So I think it's 100% in support of that. It's only pointing out. Yeah, I agree with what I talked about. But I also think that if we weren't having issues with these things, they wouldn't be in front of us. And so I think that's why having some guidelines is good to have with education. And yeah, I think moving it forward would be good.

Anyone has any other questions or concerns?

I don't have any other concerns or questions. I just kind of wanted to highlight that during the multiple discussions and meetings with our police chief and counsel and legal and Liam, there was a lot of focus on the safety side of this. So we are already seeing these mobility devices on our streets. A lot of them, right? They're becoming very popular and widely used. And I, for one, I'm glad that it stays used, not in the basement on the computer or the video games. They're out in the community in the fresh air, right? But there's a safety element here that was a huge focus of this. And not only that, It was putting more teeth around. We had existing bicycle laws here in the city, but they didn't cover these brand new types of devices and the concerns that came with them. So it does give our department teeth now to be able to address that. safety conversation with somebody who might not be operating safely. Our department quite often takes that route of a discussion, an educational discussion with the person violating the law the first time, educating them, hey, this is now the law and here's how you can get this right. We are not the no fun place. I would like to say we are more, we're here for your safety. And there will be an additional element we're trying to pursue with educating the community, maybe incorporating some of our video production programs utilities at the school district when they're back in session. So we'll continue to educate too. But I think this just kind of gives a more robust idea of why we pulled this legislation together.

Is there a motion to move item 6A to leave? Wait a minute, it's 5A. July 6th. Not tonight's meeting, July 6th. Motion. Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Item six is Parks and Recreation. Ms. Weyrich, who is your committee?

Okay. I haven't gotten to do this in a while. So this is a resolution in support of accepting the 2026 Parks and Recreation and open spaces master plan. I want to say a few words and then we will bring you all up. So I'm just really excited for this presentation and that we've reached this point. Those of you who have been with us for a year know that we've been talking about this plan for a long time. And this plan really represents a significant investment by the city and includes feedback from residents who took time to attend meetings, complete surveys, and share what they value about North Canton's parks and recreations. I want us to be sure to remember that a master plan is a planning tool. It helps us identify priorities, evaluate opportunities, and make informed decisions in the future. It does not obligate council to fund or implement any specific recommendation. So tonight's presentation is really an opportunity for Council and our community to hear directly from the consultants about what they learned through this process. At this time, Council invites John Gugger, Pete Rodenhauser, and Nancy Novick of Brandcenter Carroll Incorporated to the floor for a presentation on the 2026 Park Recreation and Open Spaces Master Plan.

Thank you very much. Again, we are here representing Branstetter Carroll. We are a firm of architects, landscape architects, planners, and engineers. I am Nancy Nozick. I am an architect, and I lead our Cleveland office right in downtown Cleveland.

I'm John Booker.

I'm from Lexington, Kentucky office, but I actually live in Logan. And so what we're going to do tonight is give a brief but detailed summary of what we've done over the past year here in North Canton, both what we've heard from the community and the evaluations that we have done with the committee that we have been working with. So John's going to run us through that. We also have on the telephone here listening in to answer questions, Keith Rodenhauser, who is our planner, who has led this project. He had a conflict, so he's He's on the phone, so he's gonna hear and he can chime in if necessary.

Yeah, when you ask us hard questions that we can't answer, we're gonna ask Dean for help. So this first slide here really just kind of gives you an overview of why we did the processing, but we kind of hope to get out of it. And I think that the, you know, some of the important things are that, you know, it helps us identify priorities, right? As Councilman Weirich said, we don't have, you don't have to do everything in here. What we've given you is the information and the documentation and the background information and knowing what your residents support so that you can then better make those decisions later on, as well as with the cost estimates. We'll help you know what you've got the budget for and when. And the other thing that I want to point out on this slide is that we focused very heavily on the Dogwood Pool, the Arrowhead Pool and Event Center, the Hooley Forest Complex, and to an extent, this building as well. And so we'll cover some of that as we go later on. Again, this was about identifying priorities and giving you options and being informed about how you can prioritize things later on. So we gave those of you at the table a draft of the current plan. And what you will find in there is that it's got an executive summary that a lot of people will read and has the highlights of what's in the plan. And then following that, we have five chapters that have a lot of the details, the support of what we learned, why we make these recommendations. And then later on, there's appendices that give all of it. So any meaning that we have, we kind of acknowledge from that. All of the survey results will be in that. And so all of those details will be available to you in that plan.

I would like to highlight that what you have in front of you does not have the appendices. We've got a couple books that... The administration and recreation department will have, it has the full appendices. We're not trying to bog you down with all that information. Yeah.

So we expect that, you know, most folks will read the executive summary. Some folks will read the whole plan. There's a one-page summary that serves as a poster that you can put up in maybe the Parks and Rec offices and other places. And then those that really are interested are going to read the appendices, but there's probably only three or four people that are going to read them. So the first phase was the evaluate phase, and that's where we learn more about your community, learn more about North Canton, what it looks like for your parks. We did assessments of all the parks and the facilities, features in them. We did some mapping where we looked at where are your parks located, how many people can walk to those parks within 10 minutes, that's sort of a national standard, the 10 minute walk to parks, and how many people can drive to parks within five minutes, and how many can drive within, And so that's what that map is that you see there. What we find that less than 35% of your residents are in low service areas. So that's pretty good. And 40% of your residents can actually walk to a park in 10 minutes or less. We looked at some benchmarking with other communities and that's what these graphs are that you can see. Couple point out here is that it looks like you have a lot of diamond fields. Most of those are at the Hoover Rec Complex. and only utilized by the LULI. And so you don't necessarily really have a lot more diamond fields than your benchmark communities because the access to those is limited. And then obviously with rectangle fields, you're not currently offering any of those. And so you're considered behind the benchmarks on that. And then while it looks like you're really good on pickleball, everybody's behind on pickleball. there are some recommendations for Poker Ball and that's just because it's so popular. Everybody's playing catch up. So even though it looks like you're ahead, everybody's behind it. And then the other thing I want to point out on the right, the acres per 10,000 population, looks like you're way ahead and you are. A lot of that is because of Arrowhead. If you didn't have Arrowhead and the Cougar Rack complex, then you wouldn't be ahead with the benchmarks on that. The next phase will be the engage phase. And this is where we talk to people, where we learn what your residents want. And we talked to a lot of people. I think we interacted with over 1,000 people through the process, 613 in the survey. And then a really fun day, Nancy, I think you were there at Main Street Fest, talked to over 200 people. That's a really good number. So talking to over 1,000 people or communicating with 1,000 people we feel like is pretty strong. We're really happy with that. So these are some of the things that we heard during those engagement results. The most important thing to the residents were natural areas, nature parks, trails. We hear that a lot. You're not different than most communities. That's standard everywhere we go. But those really stand out in what we heard when we were here. And then, of course, playgrounds are important. You guys have an award-winning playground. And other parts of the city would benefit from new playgrounds as well. And I think that's why we heard that. And your pool obviously is a big deal. It's very important. We're going to talk more about that later. We also hear all the time and your folks will know different that you'd like to see more drinking fountains, more and better restrooms and more shade and places to sit. In terms of programming, the city itself doesn't currently offer much programming. It's not surprising what we heard, though, is that people want more festivals, fairs, concerts, and events, things that bring you together to interact with your fellow residents. Those are very common. We also heard a lot about nature programs and music programs, which was pretty interesting. We don't always hear that. And so I think that's something that's a little bit unique for you all is that music programs came out so high in this process. And then when we look, you know, when we separate it for youth and adults, similar results, you know, festivals, fairs, communities, concerts, but then also we see that sports and STEM also popular for the younger groups as well. And then some things that we also look at what would encourage more use, Jade, is Bigwin. We hear that a lot of places, and there are definitely some areas in your parks where we could do that. Restaurants, of course, are important. And then that thing on the top right, the things that people ask for that you're not currently offering. And so I think it's important to note that While you don't offer the multi-purpose rectangular fields, they're kind of far down the list. We have a lot of other things that people would like a bit more than that. And the amphitheater and the stage is something that you've talked about in the past and something that we can talk to people, have some recommendations for in the plan. And then splash pads. I think the only thing that's important to know around splash pads is that while you have a splash pad at Dogwood Pool, it's inside the fence. And so a lot of your neighboring communities are offering a splash pad where you don't have to have a membership or pay a daily pass to go to it. It's in an open park and they can just use it. And then dog parks and, you know, continuing support your community garden to support. In terms of the support for a tax for additional funding, this is one that we wanted to highlight for you all. This was not a statistically valid survey. is not a random sample mail survey. So what you're seeing here is that while there's 67% of the people that took the survey said they would support that, these are people who were more likely to already be engaged with parks or with the city and not necessarily representative of the population as a whole. And so we don't want you to get too excited about that. We can, you know, that you can go ahead and, you know, put out a referendum to increase for a tax for that. You're probably closer to 50% based on our experience where we've seen a similar number in this type survey, but we've also done a random sample. They generally, when it's this high, you're closer to 50%. So you still might make it if you decide to go that route, but just a little bit of caution on that. And then these are just kind of the overall highlights of things that they want. Obviously, improvements to what you have right now. Dogwood pool, very important. What's the future of that? And then more restrooms, more shade. Continue to do more playgrounds like you have it. at Dogwood and then community events, festivals, concerts, those type things. So then finally we get to the plan phase and this is where we start to make recommendations. Mike, can I put you on the spot to talk about the mission and vision statement? Is that okay?

Yeah, you just did. So, um, you know, reviewing this master plan, um, share this with Catherine and Jason, our, our vision is parks and recreation here in the city of North Canton. Vision is, is to create a vibrant, healthy and connected community where parks and recreation enrich every life. Our mission is therefore then enriching lives, by providing exceptional service, creating and maintaining beautiful public spaces, quality programs and experiences that inspire healthy living, foster meaningful connections, and create an attractive, vibrant, welcoming community. Now, on top of that, we're going to operate under some core values. A summary of those core values simply is this. We are committed to delivering exceptional service stewarding public resources responsibly, fostering inclusion, promoting health and wellness, acting with integrity, embracing innovation, and creating meaningful opportunities for all. And so those are the items that we're going to operate under Parks and Recreation in North Kent to deliver high-quality park system and programs and community events for the residents.

And they definitely will support the recommendations that we're going to talk about So the way the recommendations divide up, we start with system-wide recommendations. These are things we don't necessarily have a specific place for, or they're things that just apply universally across your park system. And so accessibility is important. You should have an ADA transition plan, but that will be something that you will work towards in terms of making all of this, so it's not just your parks, more accessible. When we talk about parks and playgrounds, It's not that every single thing has to be accessible, but there needs to be plenty of accessible options. The playground replacement program, we talked a little bit about that. That's so that you can play catch up across the city with what you've got in Dougwood. Of course, rectangular fields, there are some places that we talked about where you could potentially add some rectangular fields. We potentially talked about the Stradivon area. We definitely think you can fit some rectangular fields at the Hoover Rec Complex that we'll talk about in a minute. But those aren't necessarily givens, and so that's why they're a system-wide recommendation. A dog park, we've got a recommendation for a dog park at Rotary Park. We think that that's a good spot for that, as well as a trail and a playground in partnership with the Girl Scouts. In terms of the concerts and the performances, there's been a lot of talk about the downtown amphitheater. We think that there's potential at least for some infrastructure to do either a temporary stage or a small stage downtown. And then as you program that and those events become more popular, looking for a place for something larger and maybe a bit more permanent. And that could potentially be right here near this building we're in, in Price Park and maybe some other places. And then, of course, trails, trails, trails. Everybody wants trails. So wherever you can do that, you should do that. Nancy, you want to talk about Dogwood Pool?

Let me talk a little bit about the pool. So we looked and we did an evaluation of both Dogwood Pool and the pool over at Arrowhead and looked at several options to improve or replace the pools. What I will say is the pricing, the cost estimating that we have done throughout this whole process, it's basically an order of magnitude. we don't know exactly what you're going to do. We made some assumptions on what you could do and we would recommend that you do and put some costs around that. So again, you have an order of magnitude of what that impact would be. So Dogwood Pool, you know, you're continuing to make annual repairs. We did look at an option to do, you know, what kind of repairs would we need to just keep limping along, you know, get us another 10 years. And there's probably about $2 million worth of work that would get you another $2 million in that current location with the current pool. Then we looked at some replacement options, whether to replace Dogwood at its current location or replace it at an alternate site, basically the same amount of cost. There's a minor difference there if we look at the same facility, either in its current location or at a new location. And then we looked at, you could do a smaller pool. And there's a lot of variety in there in terms of what we would actually be able to construct and what you want to construct. Moving forward, this is its own kind of study. So we put some big parameters around it based on the community, the population, the trends, what we think the community would need and you would want to support the community. When you get to the point of saying, yes, we need to do something, the next step is to do further discussion just around the pool to identify what that is, where it is, and then tune in on what the cost, the scope and the cost would be. So what we have as the recommendation that gets you to that, the larger pool that we were talking about, you'd have a new four lane lap pool, an activity pool with a beach entry, some water slides, some play elements, a new splash pad, a new pool house. You also need a pump house to support that. Lots of shade structures, the concrete deck, grass areas, and then the pool, the filters, pumps, equipment, piping, and fencing. So that's kind of what encompasses that options three or four, that larger pool, whether it's in the current location or in a new location. The photograph that's up there is of Reservoir Park in Akron. So down in Akron, they have a pool on the west side and a pool on the east side. We replaced both of those. The pools are exactly the same. The pool houses are different. They both had existing pool houses that were renovated. This is a smaller size pool. This is more close to that reduced scale that is option five, I think, on the slide. But it gives you, you can at least see here, we've got lap lanes, we've got some zero entry, we've got little play features on the slide and things like that. So this is more of a modest scale, but it's nearby. So you need to go take a look at it and see for comparison.

I think that, as Nancy was saying, this is smaller, but also the recommendation that we have is for less lap chain area and more fun activity area. It would be the main difference. But what you see on the left in the picture, So arrowhead we looked at several options for it, and we know that this, this is a an important issue. For the city so first option potentially redevelop as a Community part and that could include several features, including a splash pad some more trails. Potentially a driving range a mini golf area things like that you can also convert it to a passive part. which means you could have trails through there, potentially something like disc golf, but not much more. The advantage to that is it wouldn't cost you very much to maintain it, but you also wouldn't have any revenue associated with it. The other thing you could do is keep it as an 18-hole golf course, and as you all know, it's very expensive for you to keep offering that as an 18-hole golf course, which is why We came up with some of the other options. You could choose to still do that and allocate that money every year to operate an 18-hole golf course. You could also sell the property, which could mean a lot of things. You could have an easement on it that says the restriction says it has to stay as a golf course. If you do that, just know that if somebody does buy that, then their fees for people to use it are likely to go up. So it would cost more people to play there most likely if you did that. that you could also allow them to turn it into something else. But we would recommend if you did that, there might be a community engagement process to really see what your residents are comfortable with in that. So in terms of our recommendation, we like the community park idea. And so the big part of that is only having nine holes of golf. Instead of the other nine holes of golf, we looked at things like adding Additional pickleball courts, which would again allow you to host tournaments and things as well as getting more pickleball programming. A splash pad potentially where the pool is reuse some of that pool infrastructure, but we give you a way to you know, give people kids something to do over in that part of the city. And then another fully accessible playground similar maybe to what you have at dogwood more walking paths in that area. And then the driving range and the putt-putt course. And those are things that generate revenue. And our opinion is that if you go to a nine-hole course, add the driving range and the putt-putt, you will generate more revenue than you're generating now. We believe that that would be the case.

I would like to just chime in a little bit about the pool. There is a pool there now. Someone might say, well, why don't we just expand that pool and we'll use that location. The space available is very limited. So for the size of pool that we feel is appropriate to serve the entire community, there's really not enough space there unless we go over where there's other nine holes are being taken away and then it limits the rest of what you can do. And also Arrowhead is in the middle of a neighborhood. So the access in and out of it for a community pool and the kind of use that that would get. is not as desirable as it being in another location similar to where Dogwood Park is, where it's right off of the city street. So that's why we're looking at turning that, recommending a splash pad there as opposed to a post room.

And we don't think you want to operate two books long term. You might, but we don't think you would. So the Hoover Recreation Complex, as I mentioned before, this is almost exclusive use by the North Canton Little League, and in our conversations with them and others, we recognize that these fields are not being utilized to their fullest potential, and that there's a lot, a lot of downtime on those fields. Even when Little League is using them, they're not using all of the fields. They don't have lights, so they're not playing into the evening. They're only playing I think four days a week. So you have a lot of time when they're not using it and nobody else can. We feel like there's room there that you could put in two to three rectangular fields, lose two of the diamond fields, maybe three, maybe only two if you take some of that land on the east side and convert that to either fields or parking. It would give you the opportunity then to have a lot more use of that park, a lot more year-round use of that park. you would need to do some other things, right? Some improvements to the dugouts and the bleachers and add lights and things to some of the fields, maybe not all, just so that you can still accommodate the uses that you have. We also think that that, because we heard trail so much, that the trail that's on the north side of that could be even better if you put a bridge across the creek and finish that loop. People would really enjoy that and use that more often, as well as extend that trail all the way down to the street because right now the trail ends at the top of the parking lot. And then you have to walk through the parking lot to get down to the street. So we were that we're in the trail continue. So we would recommend that that separate trail be added so that if you're using that you don't have to walk through the parking lot. And it's, again, a lot of times it's not a problem because it's not being used but when it is busy over there, it's not really comfortable to walk through there. So then we also looked at some of your open space primarily through the lens of where could we put rectangular fields. And so we talked a little bit about the area by Meyer at Stroud one. We've also looked at Whitward Park in the middle school because we understand there's conversations about a potential land swap and what could happen there. Potentially, some or all of that land that's owned by the school system could come to the city. and be used as an addition to Whitworth Park, maybe add pool there if it can't be where it is. But we also heard some talk about potentially housing there. Again, we're parks people, so we're going to say keep it as parks. But this is something to consider that, you know, there are plenty, there's a lot of space there, right? There's plenty of uses we heard about through the process that you could put at Whitworth, and we think you should consider that. And then we mentioned Rotary Park, the dog park, the trail, and the playground. Then we looked at some other parcel that you own, But there weren't really any others that we felt like were conducive to making into a park. They just didn't, either for access reasons or other things, they just didn't quite fit. So we also looked at operations and programming. Again, this is something that for your city, because you don't have a fully established parks and recreation department, we're keeping this as simple as possible. But definitely looking at things like community events, festivals, concerts. And then looking at that lease agreement, particularly at Hoover, so that you can, when the time comes, get more community use out of that. And so that would require a change to that agreement. Streamline your rental process. You have the opportunity to generate more revenue and offset some of your operating costs with more rentals. And so making that process easy, we think, would be good. Alternative funding is a part of that. So there's many ways that you can raise revenue beyond just rentals and taxes. And so we think taking a hard look at that to try to offset some of the new things that Mike's going to come up with that he's going to need money to do. So he's not always coming back to ask you all for money. He has some mechanisms that he can generate some of his own. And then, of course, marketing so people know what you're doing. And then with this, the Civic Center, we think that this is an important building and it's really your only place to do any sort of recreational programming inside if you want to do that. And so we We think that with some different management, maybe a different agreement in how it's managed for those type uses, one, you can generate additional revenue and have a space for additional programming as Mike builds that up and offers more. So we like this building as something that stays with the city and is used more robustly than it is now. And then when you get to this point in the plan, this is what the action plan looks like. It will tell you kind of what kind of timeframe we're recommending for each of those recommendations. And you'll see the whole list in there. We only highlighted a few of them, but there's a lot. But this will tell you, are we looking at zero to two years, three to five, six to 10? And whether it's zero to two, three to five, six to 10 is not necessarily how you prioritize it. It's that some things you're going to do could be the highest priority, but you're never going to be able to get them it implemented until six years from now. Because of the funding that's required or the land that has to be acquired, whatever it is, it could be a high priority, but it'd be further down the road. And then this thing also tells you where in the plan on that right to find the reference. So if you're looking at this table and you say, well, I don't know what this thing means, if you look at that column on the right, it'll tell you where to turn back to, and then it'll explain to you what we're talking about with that recommendation. And then, of course, who's responsible and what kind of funding. is in there as well. So yeah, this is where we are. And we're happy to take questions. Thank you.

Questions?

Yes, as far as the golf board, we've said that we can't, that it's not making money or whatnot, but we're not running it right now. We know, I mean, we, the city is not, How do we know what it's really making or not? How do we gauge that?

Yeah, I think, and you may be able to help with some of this, but we know what you've been allocating to help support their operation, right? And so that's in your budget documents, and that's a considerable amount of money. I don't believe that they have shared, the operators have been sharing what their actual revenues are, and so it's hard to necessarily know, but what we know is the amount of money that you've been giving them to operate.

Do you have, like I think about North, like Cleveland, you know, they've got two golf courses their city ran. Do you think that having a parks administrator run a golf course is, you know, bring it back into the city control?

I don't think that was our intent with that recommendation, not to bring all of that back into the city, but to have that operator or a new operator when the lease turns over or the agreement turns over to operate it as a nine-home course with a driving range and a really cool pop-up course, that that would still be the responsibility of the vendor, at least in the short term. Maybe 10 years from now, you might be ready to do that

For now, it's that orderly vendor. And then what do you think about the pool, you know, as far as, you know, the Y is a partner in it right now, but going forward, you know, recommend leaving the YMCA included in that, operating the pool?

Yeah, we would encourage you to try to keep the YMCA as a partner. And we have seen, we've worked in other places where the YMCA and the city have partnered on the swimming pool. And the YMCA has, in some cases, helped with the capital costs. But one of the most important things, though, is as you continue to do that, that if you do partner with them, it's very important that you have something in that agreement that speaks to the use of the pool by your residents at a resident rate that's affordable, rather than them having to be YMCA members. You're giving them a lot by helping them with this pool. It's important that your residents who are paying those taxes get a typical resident rate to use a city pool. And you can put that in here.

Okay. It was in line with one of the questions that I had. So I saw in the report and also here on the screen, you guys talked about replacement pool costs. And correct me if I'm wrong, it was approximately $9 million if we created a pool that would be sized for just North Canton residents and was it 13-3? I have my figures wrong in my notes. 13-3 or as it currently sits. So what that would mean is my understanding is if we continue to work with the Y, which for the record, I think they've been absolutely fantastic. They fit a need at the time when we brought them on board. We're talking a $4 million difference in investment by retaining them on even with that increased $4 million because we'd have to build a bigger pool if they're going to run it, to my understanding. Is that still worthwhile to keep the Y on board?

I don't know that that is the decision-making between the size of the pool that you designed and you built. There's a lot of factors involved, and I would think the operation of the pool is something that you determine, you know, are you going to hire city employees to operate that pool, or are you going to continue to let the Y do it, or you can bring in a third party to operate. A lot of cities bring in a third party because they don't have the manpower to do that themselves. But I think moving forward, the decision on how to address the pool and how big it is and all of that, there are a lot of factors. It's not just how you can, regardless of the size of the pool, you have to address who's going to operate it, how are you going to operate it. So it's... just a matter of how much space you want, the capacity you want.

The reason for my question is my understanding that the YMCA would not operate that pool if it was just for North Canton residents only. It has to be open to everybody. Not that I don't love everybody, but I guess I'm thinking here as being a steward of the resources for the citizens of North Canton and the citizens of North Canton only. So in my mind, I would like to spend less. And if it means that people outside the city aren't able to use it.

And there are a lot of communities that, you know, when you build a new pool, it's really, really popular. And then sometimes you like save something in your back pocket, some features that you're going to add later, you know, to keep the interest up because interest, you know, the first couple of years, it's crazy. And then your attendance does settle down a little bit. And so a lot of communities after you know it's like okay we've been open for 10 years and we're not getting the attendance we want then you can start opening it up you know then they might open it up to some outside people at that point you can have the opportunity to make that decision down the road gotcha but a lot of communities do when they open especially when they're investing in that facility they want to they want to keep it just for their residents and that's the goal and to have your community be able to socialize together just with the residents

Kind of a reason to live here or move here.

Exactly. I guess along with that, so I counted with your events and your survey results, I count 968 people that you reached out to. What's the breakdown between resident and non-resident?

Do you have that number off the top of your head? I don't have that off the top of my head.

It must be Do you know that? Do you know that answer?

Are you there? I am here. On the survey, it was mostly residents.

Can you define mostly for me, please?

Can you define mostly?

Oh, we didn't ask it. Okay. Do we know?

Sorry, what do you mean? We went to the event. It's like at Main Street. We didn't ask it. Only on the survey. Yeah. So we can give you a number on the survey. Oh, that'd be great. But the folks who came and talked to us in the booth, we didn't ask.

Do you want to know if people went to more than one event and responded or took the survey and responded? I guess I'm just trying to, maybe that gets down to the point where you said it's not statistically valid.

Right. But yeah, there will be duplicates. Now, with the survey itself, there shouldn't be very many duplicates, but lots of people who came to the events then went and took the survey because they thought about it. So yeah, there would be duplicates in that.

So then would it be fair to say that we didn't catch over a thousand folks, we probably touched far less?

I wouldn't say far less, but I'm sure there were some duplicates, people we talked to and then they also took the survey. But you get different kinds of information with the different methodologies of talking to them.

So speaking of non-residents, I have a couple questions. This might be for administration, but do we have a sense of how many pool members currently are non-residents approximately?

I think Jennifer sent this. Yeah, we can get that for you. I don't have it on the top of my head, but Jennifer Anderson at the Y sends us a report.

70% are... You're talking memberships, right? There was an article in Repository Wilde

So do we know what the loss of revenue by excluding 70% of our clientele might mean in the city?

Well, it's not a one-to-one relationship.

there may be a lot of your residents who are not going because there are non-residents there and they would prefer to be there just with her. So it's hard, you know, it's not an exact science and it's, you know, those metrics. What we do, we have metrics based on, you know, the population and the demographics of the population that you have and what you should anticipate. We have a few different metrics that we use that over national data and also just our experience into, you know, how many people should you expect to come for the summer based on your population and your demographics. Those are the numbers that we used to start laying out the pool and got to that $12 to $13 million pool based on those metrics that we used.

And if I may, just to add to what you're saying here, Jeff, I'm not looking to exclude people necessarily. I'm just thinking for the people that live within our city, our taxpayers who ultimately will pay for this pool, what size of a pool do we really truly need to serve the residents? And I guess at the end of the day, if somebody comes in as a guest or something from outside the community, I'm not looking to be exclusionary or start a country, but I just literally, is it fair to the residents of this city who don't use the pool that we are using tax dollars to build a pool to fund the people who don't contribute to it financially other than through their which is a contribution, but that's probably more on the operational side, not the infrastructure. So for the record, I'm very pro-pool, but I want to make sure that we are sizing it appropriately.

And that exercise, as I said, the next step is to focus on planning on the pool. And that's the balance. How much capital are we investing in the facility? What are the revenues we're anticipating to get out? What's it going to cost to operate? And how many people are we going to serve? And so you balance all of those things together. So we might say, hey, we think you can support, you know, the people will come for this huge thing. And you're like, yeah, we can't afford to build it or operate it. So there's a right sizing that needs to happen. And that's part of the next step of planning for that kind of a facility.

And it is standard to charge your residents less than non-residents, right? Yeah. Even if you're in a partnership with the Y, you can still do that. Oh, certainly. I would say 25% usually is. potentially do more or less depending on how you're when you run those numbers you'll you might get an idea if it is true that 70 percent of the current members of the pool are not residents and they're going to continue to come that changes your formula a lot if it's seven percent the other way so now understanding that will help i think you want the pool full of people but as far as building that you have to be taxed it's taxed on the base so people here are paying for it so you mentioned

multiple prices from keeping the pool or a smaller pool or a bigger pool all the way up to over $13 million. In your experience, what are the top three successful funding rounds? So one of them you had mentioned in there was sponsorship or naming rights. And are those temporary or short-term, five-year deals? Where do you find the most success in getting money to build a pool like that for a community?

Every Buzzard Buddy does it a little differently. We're just starting to build a pool right now in New York State outside of Baltimore, and it is a $10 million facility that is 100% funded by grants. They have a statewide grant, they have a county grant, they have a park service grant, and then some local funding. So that, we're seeing a lot more of that lately. And then there are some that are kind of half and half, like they have half of the money that's coming from, you know, ARPA funds or government funds or grants, and then they have to match it essentially. And so then that money is coming from the city. And then there are some that are tax based. And a lot of times that is part of a larger park and rec tax, like the city of Westlake has a tax for all of their park and rec. And then they determine their priorities from our study that says how they're gonna use those dollars moving forward So there's, everybody kind of does it a little bit differently. And then there are some that get, you know, corporate funding, put their name on it. And, you know, we work out the deal. Is that a 10-year deal? Is it a five-year deal? You know, what is that?

So there's... Yeah, yeah.

You want to be able to...

Resell.

Yeah. Resell. Yes. Resell.

Thank you.

I'll catch your number.

Okay. Mr. Stockbrook, I have your numbers from the YMCA. Okay. So this is 2026 numbers. These are season passes only. Single resident single passes sold 142. Non-resident 179. Senior passes sold resident 149. Non-resident 223. Family resident passes sold 220. Non-resident 285. Now, I think there's something key, however, when you look at the family passes, the difference between 2025 and 26 for resident passes, that's up 18 over last year, as of the date of this report, which was a couple of weeks ago. Non-resident passes are down 57 from 2025. That would be with our change. With the rate increase. Rate increase. So in total, we have, there are 511 resident pass holders and 687 non-resident pass holders.

So I guess hearing that, we could conceivably go with the smaller pool. How do I get that? I mean, if we go with the smaller pool, it is just for residents only. It saves us on construction costs.

Where else? Walking away from... They've said the majority of people don't even live here. They use the pool.

Just another careful thing to remember, when you are not opening outside of the community grants sometimes, that will limit your grant funding. Grant funding sometimes is higher when it's regional as opposed to just select. Like we say in this area of all of Stark County, there are very few pools left when they're looking to. I guess you're right. If you're not paying for it, so to speak, then it won't matter.

Yeah.

The other thing that I think could be important to include will be including the school district so that kids that go to the schools are able to go and be with their friends in the summer.

And if you want the percentage for the numbers Mike gave, it's 43% resident, 57% non-resident.

And we don't have a number for school district, right? No.

Not anymore. We used to offer a discount when they were in the school district, and we would have had those numbers, but we stopped offering that discount.

I had some more questions regarding the data collection process. So I was glad that you mentioned it was not a statistically valid survey, because that's what really jumped out at me going through this book. And I've had this book for about three weeks, so I've been noting it up. So I have some questions I've collected. So did we consider putting out a mail or postcard campaign to our citizens to collect this information?

Would it cost a lot more money? Yeah, it would have been 15 plus dollars.

Are you asking about a statistically balanced?

Yeah, so I guess where I'm going with that is that a lot of our citizens do not have access to our website, our social media avenues, and other electronic means by which we collected data.

We tried to have the paper surveys available. I think we had them at the library. We had them at the YMCA. We had them downstairs, upstairs. We tried to have paper surveys. And then that's why we had them at the community events. We had them at the Berlin Fest and the Main Street Festival and came to a senior center programming down here at the Civic Center. And then we did the engagement sessions.

We are going to be able to mail out with utility bill out.

Yeah, I was going to ask my next question. Did we send out anything with our utility statements, a message printed on those utility statements?

I don't know if we did. I don't think we did that.

You had already asked about the breakdown of residents versus non-residents, so I'll skip that. And then, you know, I guess for me, it's a matter of what percentage of our respondents are actually current park users versus non-park users, because All those places that you said we passed out a survey to are people who have demonstrated they use our parks a lot. That's what they mentioned. A lot of these people who express interest in more festivals, fairs, events, are responding to them at festivals, fairs, and events. I would say that the data is very much leaning towards collecting information only from those people who really have an interest in these things.

That is true, however, when we do have communities elect to do the statistics without survey, that's still like a thought. Okay.

That's good. That's good. I think we do a great job of that here, by the way. So, you know, we have a growing 65 plus population. You mentioned that in the draft. And so, other than the senior programming we have here, did we go to any of our senior assisted living facilities, any of our nursing home facilities within the city limits and ask those people for their input?

That was not part of our engagement.

Did we engage our schools in discussions?

I know they may have been part of a focus group, but did we have conversations with them that

go down the avenue of what fields or green spaces do you as a school district currently make available to community members? I know that's not part of our inventory, but I think it's relevant to some of the decisions that we may make using this information. Because if I'm saying I need more rectangular fields, but I don't also know that my school district offers six rectangular fields across three buildings that they have, that's relevant to me as well as to how many I want to build. So did we have any dialogue with them about what they offer?

We had dialogue with the teams and the organizations. Right. And so almost all of them are using school fields when they can use them, particularly at Northwood. And then the high school fields, for the most part, they're not.

very rarely are they able to use okay um except i think football and then the um the intermediate school they use that with itself but most of it okay um you know we talked about the hoover complex and i think that's a unique situation because unlike arrowhead and ymca facilities covered here or the pool excuse me those are managed by a third party but our north kent little league who manages that complex purely through fundraising of their own. And so when we talk about future plans for that complex, I think it's very important we keep that in mind. There's a long withstanding decades of legacy there that goes behind how those fields were created. there is still a lease agreement in place from what I understand. So I would want to be very mindful about any conversation reducing the number of diamond ball fields, because we just saw this year, we have an organization in this community who was desperate to find diamond ball fields to play on. They were asking the city, they were asking the little league, they were asking the school, they went outside our community and could not find what they needed. So I would just say that we probably need to have updated conversations with those folks. And Mike, I know you're already working on some of this stuff. So you're on it. I know you are. But these are just things that I've kind of pulled out from my observations in the plan. I think what frustrates me with making decisions based off this data is is that I want to make sure that when we're making decisions that involve millions of taxpayer dollars, it's grounded on good, solid data. I don't feel confident that I have that in this plan. Um, and I don't know how else to state that other than just to say it like that. Um, so that would be a concern of mine when I look through this booklet and, um, Clearly, we have a lot of funding options being put out there as far as upfront costs, like the ones you just listed, how to pay for that pool. A community had a $10 million grant. They paid for their pool, but then how did they pay for it after that to maintain it and operate it? So I don't know. We have a lot of stuff collected in this booklet that talks about the long-term vision of that. If I go and buy the $100,000 model of the Mercedes-Benz, I want to know that I can maintain it down the road. and take care of it the way that I should as well and not find out the hard way that I cannot. So those are considerations that I wanted to see in there. And then I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself and forgive me for being long-winded. We had a request for proposal that had a scope of the project for this plan. And I don't know that I feel like it actually was carried out exactly as stated. Now, maybe the contract is written with everyone. changed over time. But I don't know that this draft went back to the public yet for public input, and it definitely did not come to council for council input before tonight. And so I'm being asked to support a resolution on a draft of a plan that I've had no input on, and the public has had no input on. So I just wanted to get that concern out there on the floor.

If I could just... Great points and comments. I have already reached out to North Kent Little League, the soccer club, football association. I met with Tim Walker last week, took a tour of all the North Kent facilities, asked Mr. Walker how the city and schools, the youth organizations can work better and work closer together. We serve the same population, the same customer, if you will. clearly aware of the ball fields that were lost due to the rectangular field, the all-purpose field that's being built over there near the new middle school. We talked about options maybe at another location to replace those two fields. So now the wheels are moving, they're in motion in terms of building and strengthening those existing relationships. This is my third master plan in my career for a comprehensive parks and rec master plan. Mr. Brooker's comment on The results don't surprise me. I think every community has that one or two unique components within it that makes it special. In North Canton, it is the Bull, Dogwood Bull, and the golf course. Many communities have a publicly owned golf course. So those are different. But in terms of communities wanting to have events to gather on Fridays and Saturdays, an amphitheater performing our stage, whatever you want to call it, that's consistent with most community surveys. Trails, always consistent with most community surveys. The youth organizations are always gonna show up and answer questions for parks and rec master plans because that's where they're at all the time, Monday through Sunday, right? They're in the parks. So I understand it's not a statistically valid survey, but I still think the data is good. It may not be statistically valid, But I still think it's good data. And the last thing I do want to say is this. As the administration works with this council to prioritize projects in this plan, we're coming back to council. There's going to be more public input. I'm going to meet with the youth organizations and the city. We're going to meet with different stakeholders. The public process doesn't stop here. It continues. And I just want everyone to understand that our core values, part of that core values that I've that I mentioned earlier in this meeting is engaging the public.

I appreciate all of that. And I do understand that anything that comes out of this plan is coming to us to be judged on its own merits. So I know that. But as far as making an informed decision about accepting this plan, that's where I just don't want to give perception that I'm endorsing everything in here if I feel like there could have been maybe a broader netcast for data. I guess I'm just a data-oriented person. I think the responses that you got from people are valid. I think the opinions that they got were valid for sure. For the record, long-term organizational person in the community of multiple sports. So I am probably those same kind of people that you talk to. I just also want to make certain that we're giving opportunity to people who don't currently use our facilities a voice because maybe they would start if we knew what they really wanted and needed and couldn't currently get from our community. So that's where I'm going with those comments, but I appreciate all of that information and those efforts. Thank you.

I wanted to add in, thank you for bringing up the Diamond Fields because I had that listed on here. For the record, softball bad, so I certainly... sympathize with the folks from the Fast Pitch Association trying to find fields. So I agree with those concerns, so thank you for bringing that up, Holly. But I was excited to hear about this thought about adding rectangular fields for the office straddle. I think that's a great use of the property over there. I think at one point it was discussed behind Meyer, but I guess my concern, this might be maybe more for administration, Do we think that the use of that facility or that land for the rectangular field would jeopardize the Ambler Grant that we have?

So we've had discussions about that. For those that aren't aware, we have a grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. It's called Ambler for Reclamation of Abandoned Mines. They're abandoned mines underlying that property. There are timelines associated with that grant, and it's predicated on having commercial redevelopment. So I invite Catherine to talk about this a little bit more if she wishes. I don't think that would preclude perhaps temporarily using that land. And of course, if a commercial development doesn't materialize, we can't guarantee that. The recreation would be an option. I will just point out, Mike could probably speak to this better. In my understanding, that site is exactly 300 feet wide. So it's 100 yards, not quite long enough for regulation fields, but maybe youth fields or orienting. I know you're a little familiar with the shape of it. It's little too narrow and a little too long, it would be better if it was more of a square. But I would say, in my opinion, it's something we can certainly continue to look into, depending on how the eventual development of it would play out.

Okay, that's a bummer. I was kind of excited because I know we had talked about with the Meyer project, possibly having some fields behind there. And there's a bummer that those were never able to come to fruition. Right.

But to your question, we cannot use the Ambler grant money to build the fields.

Well, but I mean, we're using it to remediate the mine. Yes. Could we then use the property as fields then? That's what Jason said.

We temporarily could until it came along. But the cost of building the fields couldn't come out of the hand.

Or even remediating the mines under them. So like if we decided to permanently use it for recreation, the grant is predicated that we will have a commercial economic development use. So if there are mines, I mean, there are mines, if we had problems for mines like sinkholes, we could remediate those with this grant if it was for athletic purposes. Now, I mean, on the good end, hopefully that would be a little easier to repair than if there were buildings on it, but.

Thank you.

If I could, sorry. How many studies, how many parks master plans has Branstad or Terrell done over years in your existence?

about 115 okay and how did the methodology you utilized here in north canton differ from those 150 studies so a lot of it is the same um one of the big the big differences that and not not all of our clients choose to do the statistical survey random sample survey because it is expensive so um you know we i hate to put a number on it but i would say probably a little more Ask us to do that. And then others don't. And so a lot of it just depends on how much budget they have at the time to do the study. So they have a certain amount, and we can give them all of these other types of things up to that without that. But otherwise, going to the events and doing the online survey, meeting with stakeholder groups, we do that in all of the plans that we do. So, and honestly, the 1200, or however many people you talk to, all those people that were talked to at the Main Street Fest, that's a really good number. And those weren't folks that were already engaged in Parks and Rec. Those were folks that were there for the event, right? And just happened to come by, right? And some of the others that got it were already engaged in some way.

So when you said not statistically valid, part of what you're referring to is the fact that these folks are attending a festival, so they might be a little bit inclined to respond very positively towards festivals, right?

But that's only one of the questions.

I would also say that over the years, and we've been doing this for a long time, and so the methodology, the core components of it are similar. You want to reach out to the community. You want to look at mapping of where people are. You want to look at what the needs are. but how we do it has evolved. It's much more technologically savvy and the kinds of information we can get, the kinds of mapping we can do, the kinds of analysis we can do. So what we're getting out of that, and then trends are changing. And so we're overlaying a lot of that data and also relaying it to some of those benchmarks, our national park system data, and that's evolving. And so a lot of that is evolved over time. And I will also say, I was at the Main Street Festival And I'm trying to grab anybody who walks by to talk to them. And if they were not a resident, they're like, I'm not a resident. I don't use these places, you know, so they wouldn't, they wouldn't come and talk to us. And so, you know, 95% of the people that I talked to were residents and actively engaged in the movement. So.

But a lot of people say that they're from North Canton and do not live inside North Canton proper city. So they couldn't live outside of our city limited and said, I'm a resident. So likewise, a lot of people don't understand the difference between the two for our school district. That's a good way to put it. Yeah.

I was at that main street hospital also. I'm the only person from administrative staff other than a former admin assistant. Danielle was there with me and you guys were all there. And yeah, we were pulling people some, you know, we were saying, you want to fill this out? And I handed surveys out. And in the top corner, it did say, because a lot of them would say, well, I don't think I'm in. I said, well, it checked one of these boxes. It said Plain Township, Jackson Township. It said North Canton City. It said, you know, other. And, you know, so we were trying to capture that on the actual survey data. Where it wasn't captured was on the dots. The dot survey is what we called that. Okay.

you know, with having the Hoover Company here, you know, I used to play on the old T-ball league. You know, the fields that they decided were no longer to play on. And so they closed that all off. It's been fenced off forever on the back. And then they relocated us over at the current little league fields. And so it was kind of, I guess I felt like they made a correction for us. So it's like, Hey, we know you guys can't play here. Here's a place for you to play. And so that's gone on forever like that. And those guys have spent, and I'm not, I'm not the baseball guy by any means or sports person, but I know how people are in this town and they put a lot of heart and soul into those, those weeks over there. And, you know, a lot of those guys put their own money and time into it efforts and and they've built it up to what it is so i i don't see that dynamic change but i also think that having lights would be helpful um for many reasons but i i'd also like to see you know some of those fields or the land next to it you know more i think rectangular fields are still very important because you know when when the school built new buildings we lost green space And it's no fault of their own, but, you know, when they built Claremont, it was at least two diamond fields plus other areas for other lacrosse, soccer, things like that. When the school built the primary building behind the police department, you know, the YMCA played soccer and those field trips, and that was a massive area. Orchard Hill. is currently leased out to another school and that area is fessed off so we've lost that resource. I've seen games being played on Waterside kind of across from the Wagner Chocolates where there's an orthodontist on the street that's the only business but there's a water tower In between the back of the one business and that, there's an area that they would like. So it's like, I know we have a real need for rectangular fields. So I'm not sure where some of that data comes from. So that's a concern that I have. We're definitely saying we need a rectangular field.

I was going to say you don't need it.

Yeah, all of it is. And I thought the percentages were pretty low. for the rectangular fields?

Well, I think one of the things that is on that slide that I did not point out, but I'll go back to it. So that showed up for things that you don't apparently have. 18% of the people who took the survey said they'd like to see rectangular fields. Only 17% of your population is in that. under 18 age group. There's some adults that are, but the vast majority of the people using those fields are teens. So it's probably a high, it's higher than it probably should have been because you don't have them. It probably would have been, you know, if you had them, it would be a lot lower. So it's higher than the percentage of your population that generally use it. So they're like, that's a strong theme. I guess with that,

And I think it's on this question why we don't have people from the community, you know, people from this room instead of people that work for the city or people that sit behind the desk here. I guess I don't know why we don't have those rooms. And that's normal, if not, we're stuck.

It's different in every place that we go. We work with our clients, exactly. The parks department or the city to put together that steering committee and we generally give a list of the types of folks that should be on there. And then we, we do the best we can to get a steering committee that's going to be active participating. Because we do ask them to come to lots of meetings and help us further work and be a part of that process.

Can I just mention steering committee is more like procedural, right? On the whole process of it. There was engagement with the community. There were multiple stakeholder meetings that maybe they didn't really, you know, spend a lot of time speaking to, but those groups were all spoken to and those were members of the community. people from the Little League. So we were very respectful of them when we had that stakeholder meeting. We talked about how long that they've been in the lease and to your point that they've put a lot of years and a lot of money. They talked about the arrangement with the city. It is the city's land. We do all that. But our agreement is loosely inside you, outside us. We talked about that. They told us their pain points, their challenges, everything with how wrecked ball is today versus, you know, the pain travel teams. We also spoke with lacrosse and we spoke with soccer and we spoke with little, you know, baseball, football, all of them. So that was the engagement also.

And there's summaries of that in what you have, but we need to get people to see.

Were there like multiple meetings with the steering committee as this data was collected and you were starting to formulate this plan? Was it sent frequently back and forth? I mean, I guess I'm kind of, I lack information, I guess, because unbeknownst to you, you know, we've been having meetings and talking about maybe a lot of positive improvements to our parks and recreation program here. And so we have been anxiously awaiting this plan. And so I just didn't know, like, is this the normal amount of time it takes for our plan? The request for proposal had a much shorter timeline attached to it. I just don't know, like, what was the process between consultant and steering committee? How frequently did you guys meet and share information? And did the steering committee kick back feedback? Did the steering committee go out and solicit input from people based off of these findings? I just can't describe that a little bit.

So we had five steering committee meetings. And at the first meeting, it was kind of an introduction for them to the process. what their role was to be, which does include helping us engage with people, talking to folks that they know or they might represent to bring that feedback back to the group. At the second meeting, we went over a lot of the research that we have done for that evaluate phase. So where we looked at all the parks and facilities and did the assessments, we did the mapping, we did the benchmarking, had conversations with them, got their feedback on how they felt about, you know, those type things, particularly when it came to, you know, the fact that you don't have any multi-purpose rectangle field. It's like, where are you going to put them, right? So we had conversations about that because really places to put them right now. Then we had the next meeting, we came back with the engagement results. All the things that we've heard from the survey and through the engagement events and we talked to them about, know kind of what all that that means and that and then use that to start making that list of projects and then i came back again with the to go over all of the highlights and the details of what's going to be in the plan it really was close to what you have tonight there's been some changes since then but really long we had a really good meeting um with them to go through the draft plan to get their feedback on a lot of things and we made lots of changes based on

So would you say that the recommendations in this plan were influenced by the steering committee? Absolutely. Okay. Thank you.

Well, we had to provide feedback on each stage of the process. Like when we started in the engagement stage, we had to help them as far as like when they say, you know, where can we do this? How can we do this? They wouldn't know what festivals to come to or have to come to a senior event or things like that. And then further down the way I was the one that had to set up the stakeholder groups. They don't know who our stakeholders are in our community. So I have to, that's what I'm providing. It's interesting with our, our steering committee, it changed also. I know you weren't on council yet when we first went through this process with the RFP and when we met several different organizations. The group that started with that, I mean, we started, we had Ben here, he wasn't here, and then Jason came on. We had Danielle, I think, was part of it. She's not there. We have Brian Hill. He's not on. We also had, we added Tricia on after we hired her. So it was kind of, We don't have a Parks and Recreation Department. That's one of the areas you noted how far behind we are on FTE as far as for our Parks Department. In other cities, I think you would have had more of a Parks Department. More people from the Parks Department or Recreation Department. And then we have the elected officials, right? And I think

The process also brings, you know, we brought things to the table from our experience and what we see across the country. And then things were brought to the table from the citizen engagement, the things we were hearing from them. And then things were brought to the table from the committee and what they were hearing in the community and what their priorities were. So it's really a meshing of all of those things. And the end of the day is your plan. And we like to cater our plans to what we are hearing from the community. But we're also going to kind of interject things that we've seen that we think would be appropriate.

The timeline originally was 12 months. And we asked and we tried to rush you to do it in nine months. And I do remember Pat saying, That's a tall ask. We normally do it in 12 months. We were trying to push for nine months because we did once. We asked if there could be anything we could cut out or anything we could do. We still ended up around 12 months.

We definitely have really good conversations about the rule and Arrowhead and the right complex with the steering committee. And what you see in that book is different than what we first presented to them because

they have very strong opinions about particularly those things.

Okay, so that would include their vision as well then? Yes. Okay.

Based on knowing our community, like we did tell them what our community was.

The pool size, we turned the dogwood pool, but we erased it. We built a new one. The cost would be a bit smaller pool. You guys gave a quote tonight. Is that the same location or a new location?

It doesn't matter. If we're building a new pool, the cost difference between building it on that existing site and building it on a new site are negligible.

And also, 7th Street, there's probably at least eight houses, maybe on each side, maybe six to eight houses until you get up to I think we said that's the most south side of the city. And whenever we talked about any kind of relocation, we wanted to be more central to the community.

So it was not identified as really the best place being so south.

And I might just add, not to put words in our consultants' mouth, but I know Nancy, you had referred to this before, that the pool is such a preeminent issue in this master plan that we could do a whole master plan on the pool and should do a lot of strategic planning on the pool if and when council and administration and so forth come to decisions on You know who will there be a pool where would be how to be paid for, but there would need to be a similar level of study just to I think do feasibility, both in location would be a big part of that future planning yeah we typically look at.

sizing you know who's good who's going to serve what size, it should be where it should be located. And then that whole operations and revenue. So you talk about what does it cost to operate it? That's part of what we typically do in a pool study or feasibility before you move forward with a pool is we look at what is it going to take to operate it long-term and how do you offset that with the revenues or do you have to offset it with more? And that's part of that whole decision-making process. Yeah, you know. build the thing, but you got to maintain it and you got to keep it going. You got to staff it and all of that. So there's definitely a component that we always look at.

So what I'm hearing is obviously with the pool statistics and we know that the other parks and the ball fields, our parks are being attended by more than just city residents. City residents are going to be the ones that are funding this. I think that council accepting this plan under a resolution, it's not an ordinance stating that we have to do everything in this plan. It's a resolution saying, okay, we have this plan. I think the burden is going to lie on Mr. Elkins. I think he is the one that everybody is going to be looking to to say, what direction are we going to go with your core values that you have established and how is that going to impact the community and how are we going to make sure that this is exactly what the community wants us to spend our dollars on first and foremost, and then what priorities?

Well, I think that goes back to what I said earlier about continued community engagement. Yes. It is their tax dollars. Yeah. And we will spend them wisely. There's more than just the capital expense that has already been mentioned. There's the operating expense and deferred maintenance, which is mentioned in this particular plan, deferred maintenance leads to increased capital costs. So if you can't maintain it, don't build it.

A lot of pressure being placed your direction. I think this is one of the tools that you can pull from as you make your direction. Absolutely.

Due to excellent recruitment by the city, he's up for the challenge. He's the man for the job. A lot of years of experience. Thank you.

All right. Anything else.

Okay, I just add one thing. So I think like any plan that says pros and cons. And, you know, the need for rectangular fields is definitely a need for the city. It's not a little big field. So like, that's, that's one glaring thing in this that that is not going to happen. Like we will be hung if that happens. Like literally, as Andy was saying, that was built because they could no longer play in one place that was dedicated as a specific facility for the intent of having baseball fields forever, in their opinion. And they've raised so much money and take such good care of that facility that that's not an option. And the other major contention I'd have is Arrowhead. I can't think of a successful... nine-hole golf course under 3,000 yards. That was never meant to be a public golf course. And it is now. But to take half off, you'd be basically making that into a par three. But what I do appreciate about everything you guys put together Or there's options on everything. So like in Little League Fields, you said lighting. Lighting is a need there. Additional parking is a need there. So you brought up the weaknesses of all that we have in the park system and you provided this wonderful data from all the residents and everything. And I think that's the baseline that we have to work on. And that's what I appreciate. So, you know, every plan is going to have pros and cons. But I do appreciate all the work that you guys did and the engagement that you did with everybody.

I agree. And I would say, Matt, that's one of the things that the steering committee kind of pushed back on a bit. And I may have this not completely right, but I think the initial plan that we were shown had only that. plan for Arrowhead. I mean, I feel like that was like, you know, the big aha moment. We can make this a nine-wheel golf course and we can add this mini golf and we can add, you know, make this a community park. And that's one of the things where we push back and we're like, we want a few more options for Arrowhead. Like, I don't, you know, I don't know that our community is going to be tied to that. So that's one of the things that we did do. And we did the same with the pools, you know, just kind of looking at, we probably don't need an eight lane pool. probably don't need that here. And so we offered some of that feedback and you guys were incredibly gracious. And even though I know that you are the experts in this area, you know that we are the experts in our community. And so we worked well together and I do appreciate everything that you guys did. Anything else?

Is this considered still a draft of a plan or is this the final master plan to be put on file with the city?

My understanding is it's a draft and that tonight was our opportunity to discuss with them things that we may or may not want added to this. When we get to the voting side of it, it's to accept it as no longer a draft as we've accepted a claim.

When would I have an opportunity for that input if I wanted to make a change to the draft prior to voting on the version that would be put on file with the city?

Tonight's Tonight's motion will be to moving it to July 6th so we can amend it correctly and we can amend it prior to July 6th meeting for its vote.

And then we've got three total votes. The changes to the plan itself, I would assume, is more of an agreement between the city and... Yeah, I would like to propose that we have a working session.

Obviously, we've got a session coming up for the summer, but I would propose a working session open to the public among the seven council members so that the remaining council members do have an opportunity to just have some input after having reviewed this. I truthfully appreciate all your hard work. And we want to make sure that what we put on file reflects us as well. But I would be fine with that. I just want to make sure that we have that opportunity. That's what I'm throwing out there.

Okay. I think there's a lot of good ideas. I think there's a lot of really good misses maybe on our end.

But I also think there's a lot of things that Can I ask some clarifying questions?

This working meeting we're talking about, how will we publicize that?

Like we do every other council meeting, we would place the notification out to the public through that notification process, I assume?

So we're going to have a working meeting of how many people would attend.

What would be the best way for me to provide input in a setting here? Because I've not had that opportunity yet.

I'm asking you a question about how many people would you guess would be attending this one?

I could say one. I could say this whole room. That's really not... what's important to me, I'm saying the public would be able to attend because that's required by law in a working session, right? That's where I'm going with that. So it's not a matter of me that they need to hear the working session. They're welcome to hear that. I want the working session so I have the opportunity for input. Does that clarify that?

Yes. So for input. So are you saying that the number of people that would be attending or listening to the working session would exceed the number of people that have already participated in the data collection?

No.

Okay.

I think Holly's saying that in order for us to have a working session with all seven of us here, it has to be open to the public, not with the public. Yes. Correct. Thank you. Okay.

Yes. I didn't clarify that. That is exactly where I'm going, is the Open Meetings Act.

Okay.

So would this, in your opinion then, would this be a working session, three of them, when it comes to Council 4 or both?

No.

So what are you looking for is a meeting over and above and beyond a council meeting? Is that what you're asking for?

Not something that I believe has an existing structure in the way we operate?

I think what you're asking for, if I may, is are you essentially asking for us to table this? Because I was unaware that I was going to be able to add anything to this. I think that's what I heard from you, essentially tabling it and bringing it back for a later time with changes that we want to make to it. Is that what I hear you saying? I mean, we do the same thing.

I mean, in a sense, yes, but I do understand that tabling it could absolutely kill it in its current state and we'd have to go through all of this again and we don't want to do that. I'm not trying to make that difficult for everybody. So my point being is that there is an opportunity for a working session as long as it is publicized that we're doing so outside of normal council hours and it would not inconvenience anybody in this community and we would be doing our jobs serving the public and having that conversation. That's the only place I'm going with that.

What would that look like on a calendar then? Brendan, do you have something to add about this specific situation?

Yeah, it's just a special meeting.

It's a special meeting with the council.

If you want to call it a work session or not. Yeah, it's super special. They would have to give notice like any other special meeting.

If the council is exactly correct, the Open Meeting Act applies during the council's meeting.

So you're cutting out a little bit.

Oh, yeah, just saying that it has to be a public meeting like it's already been discussed. Whether you call it a work session or not has no legal bearing. It would just be has to be noticed like any other special meeting, which is at least 24 hours notice before the actual meeting.

And then, yes, the meeting will be open to the public, just like any other meeting of council. We've had special meetings before. Yeah. So it's a special meeting. It's a single topic. Correct. So are we looking at a special meeting then on June 29th?

It's Monday. I mean, that was a fifth Monday. I'm out of town.

You're out of town.

Is John even back?

I'm throwing the question out there. We're going to throw in a special meeting. We're into this meeting. Yeah, John's out of the country. We have another meeting after this. I don't want to add a special meeting in front of a committee meeting that has a council meeting.

You don't want to have a meeting immediately following the council meeting? Right.

So I'm trying to avoid that, trying to accommodate what we're trying to get accomplished here. So what does that look like? Because... We do have a council meeting on the 6th, but this board meeting and special meeting might be a whole evening.

I'm not looking for it to be a whole evening.

I mean, I don't know what our contract with Brandcenter includes, but I mean, we're not doing a rewrite of work.

No, but I'm hearing that this Daring Committee has had input on it. I'm just looking for that same opportunity to amend a like you you brought up the ball fields i would want to maybe amend something about that as an example that's what i'm looking for so i'm not looking for right it's i think it's the best example um that's what i'm looking to do we want to pretend i just need to coordinate with you as well yeah are we trying to schedule this at the table right now or we can yeah

there's too many calendars that don't need to be adjusted liam you're going to have to work with council to see what dates are available and see if administration will work with our friends from brentstetter and see if we can't come up with a meeting time that'll work make sure mr elkins isn't joining us i mean if you think about what we did with the main street plan the master plan

We delayed that. We didn't pass it right away. We took it back to a separate committee. Everybody had more input and we delayed it.

Okay. So to that note, nothing's preventing Mike from working on anything in this plan right now, because this is not some legal binding decision that prevents something like that. I want you to pursue what you're pursuing. So I'm not looking to stop that, halt that, nothing of that sort. So could we delay this by one week? Do we run out of time before session? Is that a big deal? to just delay the vote by one week and work this meeting in.

I think you guys can do whatever you want. And I don't know that accepting this means that we have to accept everything that's in it. It's just a resolution saying that we have a plan to start with, and we could take this plan and adjust it every month if that's what we deem necessary.

In my opinion, you're accepting the work that has been done. That is correct.

In my opinion, independent of the resolution itself. So it could always be done. after the facts in theory, independent of the legislative calendar?

I mean, the action states, the legislation indicates council's support of the administration's acceptance and use of the plan as a strategic planning tool while clarifying that such support does not commit council to fund or implement any specific recommendations. The resolution also requires that a copy of the plan be maintained by the administration department for at least 10 years. And I guess, I mean, so we're not, what we're saying is we support administration accepting the plan, right? And I don't know, I mean, Holly, do you still sit on the Little League board? I do.

I do sit on the Little League board. Do you work for the library?

I do.

Okay, it's mentioned in the plan as well.

Yeah, I'm not saying, but I'm just wondering, like... Is the library mentioned in this plan? Yes, it is. I'm a partner of the...

Just doing the senior programming as a partner.

And I don't think that what I'm discussing is any sort of conflict of interest. I'm stating that.

You might be saying if you're saying like maybe nothing with the Little League fields, but you're on the board of Little League.

No, I don't know. That could be a conflict. I don't know. That's not the only thing about the plan that I would like to discuss.

Okay.

I mean, it does say that accepting this resolution is supporting for accepting the plan.

It's just accepting the plan, but it's not everything in it, right? It doesn't obligate you to do everything it says in the plan.

It's a tool. Green went through the same issue with the word adopt versus accept. And so then city council changed the word from adopting the plan to accepting the plan. And again, the administration ingrained that here we have to come back to city council whether Funding of any project that is in the plan, but not before continued public engagement continues. Sorry.

What if we use the word acknowledges? If we acknowledge the plan, we appreciate the ideas and what's in it, and then we take it from there.

If it says it's supporting that we're going to place the plan on file in the office at City Hall, I can get behind that because that's all that we're doing. I'm not trying to split hairs here. I'm not trying to be difficult. I want to make sure that the money we spent on the plan represents the whole of this committee. It currently does not. So here you're asking me and committee of the whole to support it and I've not been given that input. If you would rather I vote no on it and the rest of you all vote yes, I'm comfortable with that because I made my case why I would do that.

It doesn't stop anything from happening, right?

We're going to have great things that come out of this plan for sure. I'm not trying to be difficult here. I'm just stating the way this is written. I've not had that opportunity as a committee.

So, Liam, if this particular motion is not made and is not seconded, then creating a follow-up meeting is still a possibility as a special meeting.

You can make your motion to postpone until this meeting that is yet to be scheduled is completed. You can move it forward and postpone. I just want to make sure we're doing things legally. In theory, put it on the July 6th Council agenda as proposed and postpone it once it gets to that point, just to not stymie it or trap it in committee.

Yeah, I don't want to trap it in committee. If we were to pass it out of committee tonight, we could still hold a working session or open meeting or whatever we're labeling it between now and July 6th at any time that works for everybody and pursue the following three readings and not be off schedule. That's correct. And I'm totally fine with that. Okay. I'm not trying to hold it up.

Okay. Well, I want to make sure that we're all on the same page, whether it's days in committee... whether we move it forward, whether we postpone. I don't want a table. I don't want it to die on the table. Correct. I do not either. And then I will make a motion to move item 6A to the July 6th, 2026 council agenda, knowing that we'll have a special meeting between now and then. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Item seven, utilities committee, Mr. Stocker. I think you have the next two items.

So there's two parts to this. So part one, the ordinance would authorize the city of North Carolina to enter into a natural gas program agreement with the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council, which is known as NOPAC, in order to implement a natural gas aggregation program within the city. Part two of the ordinance, or B, would approve plan of operation and the governance for the NOPEC natural gas and irrigation program. And the administration is asking that both parts of the ordinance be adopted under emergency. Just a reminder, emergency does not mean that the public readings are waived. It's simply that the legislation will take effect immediately upon passage rather than a normal 30 days. I unless I'm missing it. Have we established rates yet? Because I'm sure that's going to be the next question folks are going to ask.

No, we've not published rates yet.

Normally, in the past, we've had a consultant that would go to all the suppliers and request them. That has been an exclusive contract that they've had for 18 years, and we asked that we could collect all of our other contracts without them. That one violated their contract, so we had to terminate their contract in order to access rates from the market outside of their consulting business. So this is no technically happened for the electric aggregation, which was removed from our consultant for reasons unknown. And so no tech, we spoke with them about their gas application program as well. Their rate currently, because this will come into effect with the October billing. It's really hard to tell you what the market's going to do then. They have options just like with the electric aggregation. There will be short-term options, there will be long-term options, and then there will always be the fifth-grade option that is 2% less than whatever energy and bridges.

And you have just one question about the release for pathogen emergency.

Yes. So they've given us the timeline because they will need time to collect all of our residents and small businesses' accounts. from Enbridge, and that needs to start happening in August, early August. Obviously, we're out July 13th, so that gives us time for the three readings, but that's also why we like it to be effective on the third reading, so they can get started in August to be processed in September for the actual bill. They'll hold all the public hearings just like they did for the electric animation, and they will do all the notifications to our residents while that's going on.

Any other questions from anyone? Okay, all right, good. So I would make a motion to move item 7A to the council agenda. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. I'll make another motion to move item D to the council agenda.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. I will make a motion to adjourn. Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Adjourned. we'll start when everybody returns we'll start when everybody returns

You were looking at me like you had no idea. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't mean to. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The time is 9.49.

Tonight's opening prayer will be delivered by Deacon Bill Lambert of St. Paul's Catholic Church. Is he still here?

I wouldn't blame him. I see.

Mr. McLean, sir.

Thank you for this time together. Thank you for not necessarily the difference of opinions, but the variety of opinions, variety of ideas to make this city great. Please be with us as we continue this meeting and continue the work of this city. Thank you for allowing us to be here together tonight.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Ops, will you please call the roll? Member Bierpont. Here. Member Warren.

Here. Member Wirick. Here. Member Matheny. Here. Member McSister. Here. Member Pratt. Here. Member Stocker. Here. Six present.

I WILL MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE AS PRESENTED THE MINUTES FROM JUNE 8, 2026, COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE MEETING. CAN I GET A SECOND? SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. OPPOSED? THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I WILL MAKE A MOTION TO APPROVE AS PRESENTED THE MINUTES FROM JUNE 8, 2026, COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE MEETING. CAN I GET A SECOND?

SECOND.

ALL IN FAVOR?

AYE.

OPPOSED? MOTION TO APPROVE PASSED. AT THIS TIME, CITY COUNCIL INVITES A SPECIAL PRESENTATION FROM CHIEF and Officer Phil Taylor, the community canine Kona of the North Canton Police Department's Kona's Crew Program.

That's kind of silly. Thank you for the opportunity to talk. I'm probably going to cut my talk down. I appreciate it. Make sure he knows that me trying to cut my talk down is very challenging for him. Yes, we're good. First slide. We're here tonight to talk about our community canine program. A couple of interesting facts. Colin's birthday. Interesting facts. Colin's birthday was February this past year. We celebrated it out on Facebook land. It's gotcha day for us. It's coming up on July 3rd. It's the anniversary of this gotcha day. We have several people in the community that are strong supporters of our program. They believe in our goal for Kona to be a community canine, to be a resource, to be as an ambassador for the police department, enhancing our relationships with everyone in the community when it comes in. It's not all about law and order. It's about a little bit of fluffy and feel-good time. It's releasing the good endorphins that we have. We have been trained as a therapy dog in that capacity so that he has an official job. He's also part of our wellness program for the department for the city. That's fine. This past branch as far as community, there's a community canine that's rallying with the community around them to support them. We came up with the idea that we call it Kona's Crew. Kona's Crew got mobilized as gas brands for an award that was presented to us. It was a competition for a voting competition. We had three other communities that were placed in the top three. We beat against, I think, eight to nine other canines. Actually, I think there was 15 other canines in our category. There was 15 other canines in our category. And out of it, for the voting time frame, we came out with a little over 8,000 votes. And the closest one was 4,800 votes and then 4,400 for third place. Our community really came out and rallied around and supported each other. So we're appreciative of that. We went down to New Albany last month, and we were presented with a very handmade plant for him. It is a large tile. I did not bring it down here because of how heavy it is. But it's a beautiful award that we received for that. So it's going to be on display at the police department. Next slide. Kona's crew is what we call supporters of the Kona program. We have two shirts to support it. We're doing a fundraising effort with it. It's kind of an all-encompassing fundraising effort. The idea behind this is that we build out Kona's crew and we have benefactors to support it. We want to recognize them at the police department. So we have different levels up there. They're posted for it. We do have a couple of level one donors that have supported the program. Their pictures are already up in a draft form up at City Hall. Our final location of our Thomas Krug wall, next slide, is being developed. Part of that, we were working on a official sign for this that said thank you to the McLeister family for donating The official Kona's crew signed for our support for that. The idea here is to make sure that we recognize the community for supporting us and supporting Kona. Kona is majorly all of the major places that they pay for food donation support. We have a small amount that comes out of our labor budget to cover Officer Taylor, but for the last two years, last year and this year, it was covered by our Tier 1 part of this you see up there those small little paw prints we call it awesome partners i want to give a shout out to a local business next slide uh for a paw print campaign never run anywhere from a dollar on up you get to sign a paw print the paw prints if you get them in a city hall will go up on our wall up in City Hall. If you work with our first Paulson partner, or Paul print, or Paul print campaign, it is M&H Beans. And I do have a quote from M&H Beans, because I reached out to them, I was talking to them about being a partner in this fundraising aspect for Kona. I apologize for talking quickly. I'm just trying to get through this. They are starting to campaign to put paw prints across all their front windows. And I'm hoping that this grows into having some other Main Street businesses or maybe, you know, shopping centers. Giant Eagle. Giant Eagle. Doing a paw print program with us to raise money. And who can get the biggest collection of paw prints on their windows? If I can... To a quick thing, Mike took a moment. He was here earlier, but he timed out. He had to go to bed to get up early in the morning and make coffee for everybody tomorrow. He sent me a quote just to talk about how we met. A little bit of history about Mike and his family is he bought a house in North Tanton in 2012. His daughter graduated from Hoover's High School. He married Hannah in 2018, and then he grew a business together in town called M&H Beans. They love the, and I'm going to summarize it, they love the community feel of North Camp. They met me one year during the chocolate walk when I was on patrol still and I came up to my car and he was like, here, you got to try this, you got to try this. It was an espresso cup of coffee. From that point, we just got to chit-chat. Mike loves our community so much that As when I asked him, hey, would you partner with me to do this to sell paw prints to help raise money to cover the cost for Cone? He didn't hesitate a bit. So it was very appreciative for me. He actually wrote me a check right up front to cover the first set of paw prints to get the ball rolling with it. So I'm very thankful of that. You can go to the next slide. Just a quick shout out to our founders there. That's going to be up on our Kona's crew wall. Some of the pitchers, those are our two tier one donors. Founders Kennel is the ones who had faith in us before we even started the program. They got us donations. J-Tech was very supportive of us. J-Tech got us connected with our veterinary care. Veterinary care is free of charge. Their services are donated. We pay for medicines or lab testing. But anything that they do in-house is paid for. His room is paid for. Next slide. Just a couple of quick pictures of Kona out there in the community. Shout out to Billion Pooch for cutting his hair for us, which he's doing for a haircut tomorrow. And Shameless Pug for we still have T-shirts for sale for $20, and you get a sign-up ball print to go up on the wall. I apologize for that being somewhat pushed together.

You will be selling those shirts again at probably a Main Street test.

We will be up on Main Street again pushing some shirts. Pushing deep shirts. Providing them. Any questions from council?

I just want to say I love what you guys presented here. And I can't say enough good things about Mike and Hannah. They are my neighbors. Love them. They're great. I think I was there. I don't know if I was the first paw print, but I was excited. I think I was there on the first day, so I was super excited about that.

Thank you very much for taking the time. This was a hand-made fine. Very talented. Very talented. And a quick shout out to the mayor for also being up on our chart of our donors for Kona. Thank you very much for your time.

Well, we'd like Kona.

I know. Does Kona have anything to say? Thank you, Officer Taylor. Thank you for bringing Kona into the community everywhere you go. I mean, you're a celebrity because Kona's a celebrity.

It's coming. I bet you are.

I would be too. This is a community gem. This is a treasure. So I'm so glad that we have this. And I hear about it all the time. So thank you.

He's developing a new morning routine since he's not in the schools. He comes into my office, comes up next to me and nudges me to scratch his head, scratch his head. And then he sits there and stares at the drawer where the treats are. It's one treat per time. It's like time to move on. He now comes back like, hey, I haven't seen you yet today. It's like, we're just here. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I have a recognition of public legislation on the agenda only topic.

Liam, will you please read the preamble? At this time, members of the public who have signed up to address City Council will be called to do so. Each speaker will be given five minutes. Speakers shall be called in the order they signed up. During the section, comments shall be limited to legislative items appearing on this meeting's agenda. The rules for speaking and the speaker's time will appear on the screens. After you finish speaking, please remain at the podium to answer questions from the officials of the day. Paul Erickson.

We start with your name and your address. Paul Erickson, 915 Pilcrest Avenue, Southwest. Good evening. Let's begin by considering a simple math problem. What's one plus one? Two. Two. Of course it is, but tonight I'd like to point out that sometimes under extraordinary circumstances, one plus one equals three. Not because the rules of mathematics change, rather because collaboration can create value beyond the sum of what separate organizations can achieve on their own. Before elaborating on this, I'd like to give some heartfelt, or express some heartfelt gratitude. First of all, to all you elected officials, thank you for the way you serve our community. Thank, grateful to the city employees, And particularly, I want to mention those that keep our parks safe and beautiful. And then also, I want to give a shout out to the North Canton teachers, coaches, administrators, volunteers, and taxpayers. And then last but not least, the generous community members who donate so much and have invested in North Canton for generations. Lastly, I'm thankful for everybody here that's still here tonight. And whether you agree with what you hear me say or not, your presence demonstrates something important. You care about North Canton. My wife Susan and I have been connected to North Canton for most of our lives. We first met when we were both preschool students here in North Canton. That preschool eventually moved, allowing it to serve families beyond the limitations of its former facility. As a young child, I took swimming lessons at the original location of the North Canton outdoor community swimming pool. That pool eventually moved to its current location on 7th Street. I played little league baseball, As mentioned earlier, those fields eventually moved, allowing young athletes to enjoy a larger baseball complex. They graduated from Hoover High School and moved to a new location to better serve future students. Susan and I were blessed with four children who also all attended North Canton schools, grew up playing in North Canton parks, all graduated from Hoover High School. So tonight I come to you with several perspectives. A former student, parent of four North Canton Hoover grads, someone who briefly worked for the city of North Canton, Also, a former Hoover coach. And I also am someone who grew up here, lived elsewhere, and chose to return to raise our family here. Looking back, something remarkable has happened. Over the decades, North Camp has repeatedly adapted when circumstances required change. Time and time again, facilities moved, but North Camp endured. Each move carried emotional memories attached to places people loved. Those decisions were made because leaders believe future generations will be better served. That brings me back to the math. One plus one usually equals two. But when two institutions work together at the right moment, one plus one can equal three. And that's what we have before us tonight. Together, the city and the schools have a rare opportunity to create lasting value. The current outdoor pool location has served our community well for more than half a century. But last week, we were told it's pretty much hit the end of life between 80,000 gallons of water a day and having deterioration beneath the liner that has cracks large enough for a swimmer's hand to become caught. And then we listened earlier tonight, it seemed like we were zeroing in on a replacement. It was stated by Nancy, the replacement's pretty much the same cost if it's at this current location or the new location. So what's better, having 20 acres or not? Thank you. And if you think about the 20 acres, this is amazing. It's adjacent to Woodward Park, which outside of Blitzer Park is the most centralized park in the city. And the school's going to demolish the building. When they demolish the building, that's a beautiful footprint. You don't need nearly that much for the pool. By the way, you already got in touch. And I would say you have excess streets there that you don't need, that you can eliminate some kids running back and forth between the bathroom and the field dump. have to dodge cars. So the question is not whether change is coming, it's coming. The question is whether we use this moment wisely. The proposed land swap gives us something valuable, time. Time for the community to continue to use the existing pool while future plans are developed. Time to preserve local influence over approximately 20 acres of community land all adjacent to community parks. If this opportunity is lost, future options for that land may become far more limited. Moments like this do not come along often. City Council members, I encourage you, I respectfully encourage you to approach this decision not simply as a land transaction, but as a unique opportunity to shape your campus future. Fifty years from now, no one will remember all the details of this discussion, but they'll live with the results of the choice of me. Let's make the kind of decision that previous generations made for us. One that honors the past, embraces the future, and leaves North Canton stronger than we found it. Please vote in favor of a land swap agreement. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, next up is Megan Smith.

Megan Smith, 9550, Avenue Southwest. And I'm going to apologize. I hate public speaking. So I'm just going to read what I wrote. Hello, council members, Mayor Shroyd, and the administration team. Some of you know me, but for some of you, this is the first or only second time that you've met me. If my street sounds familiar, that's because I live right down the street from the middle school and not very far from Orchard Hill. I walk past both properties regularly. But besides that, when I'm not momming, I also lead a group of neighbors who live near the middle school, Orchard Hill, Arrowhead Golf Course, and Price Park. We've been meeting for about 18 months, trying to build relationships in our community. And I'm hoping tonight to share my unique perspective on the land swap proposal that is on the agenda. First, like my neighbor, I want to stress that I love this proposal. I love that the administrations of both the city and the school district are working together to be good stewards of our community investments. I appreciate that you're trying to work in the best interest of both city residents and district taxpayers. Thank you both for working together to come up with solutions that protect the fiscal health of both entities. With that being said, this proposal kind of reminds me of situations in my own household when I come up with a business.