Planning and Zoning - Regular Meeting

Okay. So we're live streaming this for the benefit of all residents and for those of you who are here and can enjoy this presentation and discussion this evening. At the same time, you can go home and see it on the YouTube, Orange Village YouTube channel, because this will be available tomorrow for consumption. First of all, thank you all for coming tonight, giving up some time to spend with us to go through this very important project for Orange Village. I think I've mentioned this before. We have not done anything of this magnitude for over 35 years, and it is high time that we have to look at it. So what I want to do this evening, spend some time, talk about the objectives of the project, give you a bit of an overview of what the projects are all about. We're gonna discuss project costs and the funding process that we're planning to utilize for the project itself. And I'd like to open the floor, and if you have questions, feel free to interject. The people that are here are ready, willing, and able to answer your questions about the project and take public comment, have an opportunity. I'd like to sort of begin by introducing my co-presenters who will take part in this tonight, and I will turn various parts of this over to them. To begin with is Eric Prose, who is the architect with DS Architecture. He and his team has worked over the last decade several months in putting together this project, working with our fire and police departments to evaluate how they operate, what they do, and to come up with plans for the buildings that will be the most effective and efficient for us going into the future and to look down road 30 years. What will Orange Village look like in 30 years and what kind of facility do we need to accommodate it. Next to Eric over there in the lovely Orange Village Fire Department t-shirt is Assistant Chief Bill Mandich. He's been a part of the team in helping Eric and his people identify the timely entrance, identify all of the issues that firefighters go through. And I'm going to talk about a few of them that were really important to us to consider why we should be doing this project to begin with. The two gentlemen that just wandered into the room are Chief Roberts, Mike Roberts, our police chief, and Detective Lieutenant Stephen Atwell. And they have been instrumental on the police side, working with our team and with the architects to develop the program and design for this project. They've been the critics. They've been the... eyes, ears, nose, and mouth for the village relative to what police departments need to have in order to be effective now and in the future. And then the last of the presenters, and not the least important, but probably the most important to you all, is the gentleman in the jacket in the back, hiding in the back of the room over there, who's Matt Stasinski. Matt is a former, were you the treasurer? Finance Director, Treasurer of Orange Village. He is a consultant that we don't keep very far from home because his value is incredible. And he leads all of our efforts relative to public financing projects and other endeavors that Orange Village does. And he will address and talk to the public financing aspect of this project. So I thought I'd begin quickly with the history of how we got to here, why we're here doing this, why is this project important now. This isn't day one for the project. We've been doing this, working on developing a new village hall and fire department for over 10 years under my... predecessor's term, we had two looks at one, both of which had to do with renovating this building to see if we could accommodate our future needs by renovating, expanding, putting additions, and doing other work in this building. And at the end of the day, we came to the conclusion that the cost if you will, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. We were gonna spend a lot of money, $16 million then and at the end of the day, it wasn't going to really meet all of the necessary requirements for contemporary police and fire station. So the project got shelved for a while and we played around with it a little more and we brought in, we hired Bialoski partners to come in and develop a more comprehensive plan about four years ago, and that we had budgeted down to see if we could, maybe through some different eyes, come up with a better way to do it. And again, we realized that that wasn't the way to go. It was not, at the end of the day, we weren't going to have a facility that met the needs of the community for the future. At that point, I began my career here as the mayor and reached out to both police and fire leaders and asked them to do some studies. We had thought, well, maybe what we need to do is bifurcate the facility and break out the fire department because it needs... What its needs are are so comprehensive that we couldn't figure out a way to do it within the footprint of this facility. And then by doing that, we free up a lot of space that we could then flip-flop the police into the old fire station. And we've discovered along the way some opportunities to insert some infill areas in the building that makes it even more effective and more efficient for the fire. for the use of it. And so I asked Chief Genova and Assistant Chief Mandich to sit down. I said, I'm not going to take this project. I like having these two departments together. I like having the entire city in one facility. But if it means that we can't be as effective as we need to be, we really need to think about it. And we really need to consider what is the best way to go. So I went to the two chiefs and I said, I want a cost-benefit study. I want you to tell me if there's a reason for... us to leave this building for one department or the other. I need to know what that efficiency means, what the value of it is, how it will improve our service, and the quality of the facilities that we have here in Orange Village. We do, everyone in this community I have not heard a complaint from anyone about the service that we get from both our fire and police. They're there, they do the job, and they do it great, and they represent our community well. But we need to do things that help protect them, and we need to do things that help them be more efficient and more effective. And so we did, and there was a question that came up from Mark about runs. and how many runs the fire department does and where do they go and so forth. So those were questions that I asked them to come up with the study and we have that data, that information available. I'm not gonna drill down to that level of minutiae here, but suffice it to say that before we even thought about an opportunity to go somewhere else, we needed to evaluate that and make sure that was the right thing to do. And then, once that's said, where do we put it? Where is it going to be the most effective and that we're going to be able to get the best bang for our buck in terms of the real estate and location to make the facility as efficient as possible? I'm an architect. I can't resist putting pencil to paper and started noodling. Once we had that idea out, started noodling some ideas about what the building could be, not only how we remodel this building to accommodate our needs and how we might build a new facility and where that facility would be. Um, It pointed to being at the corner of Harvard and Brainerd as the best location for it, both in terms of convenience, accessibility, and our ability to capture a sufficient piece of land to be able to do the project that we need to do. So we started to look at determining the best options. It was at that point we went out and said, okay, now we need to hire professionals. We have a program, basic program, that we can use to engage a group of professionals. And we put out a request for proposals from five different architectural firms across the city, all of whom I knew. and their experience was very, very high level in terms of police and fire public facilities. We reduced that down. I was thinking we would end up with two architects, one for this building and one for the fire station. It turned out to be the most cost effective and most efficient to go with one firm, and we hired DS Architecture. They're a nationally recognized firm in the country who focuses on fire and police facilities. They're currently working in... I interviewed actually the mayor of Strongsville. who I know through the Mayors and Managers Association, and they're doing a fire station in Strongsville right now with him, and he couldn't say anything more complimentary of the work that is being done by DS in that. So we engaged the design team. We developed a program. working with the fire and police departments to give them, you know, they had my little footprint plan that I put together that gave them sort of a, if you will, a skeleton to work around, and then sat down with our departments to really divine out what was the real essence of what this needs to be and how it needs to be produced. And what you're going to see tonight is the result of that study and that effort. We engaged the team, they produced the design, we had a previous town hall meeting back in March that was similarly open to the public. We took comments back then, we went back to the architects, made some changes in the plan and updated it and then finally came to a final resting place for the project and then handed it off to their the group that does their budgeting. I'm an architect, I know how this works. Architects are notoriously bad at budgeting, at figuring out numbers. So we felt it was really important that they hire what I call a quantity surveyor, which is a professional company that does budgeting and estimating for construction projects. And their accuracy level is very efficient and very high and very accurate, and that's what we needed. Because at the end of the day, it's going to be a publicly financed project. We can't miss the wall. We can't miss the barn door by a country mile. We've got to get through it. So we brought them in. They handed off the design plans to them, and we're going to look at that. Eric is going to take us both through the design for both buildings and the budgeting process and the budgeting for both projects. So why now? Why are we doing this now? Why is it important for us to do this at this moment in time? And there are a number of, I think, very important reasons. Number one, construction costs are continuing to rise exponentially. And if we wait till when we really... If you wait till your clothes are completely tattered, they're gonna be a lot more expensive than they are today. And the other thing that we wanna do is we wanna budget both of these together. The other reason that we need to do it now is we're literally busting out of the seams. We have issues in both departments that need to be physically addressed. Not the least of which, and I'm going to touch on something that I think is highly important in the fire department, and that is when firefighters go out to fight a fire they come back covered in contaminants. And we do not have adequate facilities here in the village to fully address how they can be cleaned up after they've fought a fire. If you see the equipment, if you see their uniforms, if you see them, we need to have the proper facilities to do that. And other communities are building that to protect their firefighters. There are more incidents of firefighters developing cancer as a result of their profession, and we want to do everything we can do in our power to protect them from that inevitability. And by having a new facility, we can do that. We also need to recognize that this building, when it was built in 1995, when it was opened, it was planned earlier than that. We had a volunteer fire department. We literally lived down the street in a garage effectively, and when the fire alarm went off, everybody showed up. They went home. They had to take the contaminated clothes probably with them for the most part. We now have, albeit we have a fire department that is all part-time, they are all full-time somewhere else, but when they're on duty here, they're on their 24-hour shift and they need resting quarters. And they need places to recover from the day and to be prepared for the call that may come in the middle of the night. So we've shoehorned cots and beds into all corners of this building in order to accommodate that. And the other thing is back then we didn't have female firefighters that we have now. And we have a number of them. And we need to be more thoughtful and concerned about their welfare and well-being as well. So all of these forces come into play and have driven us to say, now is the time. Now's the time for the future. I guess the other thing, not to be egotistical at all, but being the architect in the room, I have a much better ability to guide a process now than somebody else may have down the road. There are not very many architects that become mayors. In fact, there are only two in Ohio. And they're both in Northeast Ohio. One's in Willoughby. There was a third, but he just retired in Sylvania. And there are only 13 in the entire country. So they're not very often that we are involved in our communities to that extent that we can make a real physical difference. So I don't wanna spend the entire time here kind of droning on as though I can, but I think it's important to have this as sort of a preamble to what we're gonna hear. And I'd like to introduce Eric Prose. Now for everybody who's here, you can help yourself. I don't know if there are enough copies, but there are copies of the presentation And the other one's the presentation. Those are, that's the detail on, yeah. The console people already have that, but they're... Yeah, hit the switch on the back, Eric. So I'd like to introduce Eric Prose of DS Architects to... to walk us through the plan. And if you have questions, if you have observations, please feel free to raise your hand and interject. I hope that we can maintain some decorum. This is an audience that I kind of know well and that I think you can all contain yourselves with your enthusiasm. And Eric, take it away.

All right, can you guys hear me okay? Excellent. Everyone can see the screen. If you want to move a little closer, feel free. Those in the back will be looking at the screen here. But thank you, John, for the introduction. As he mentioned, I find it a great privilege to work with police and fire agencies across the country, and especially here at home. So as Judd mentioned, we have the opportunity to team up with other local architects across the country and bring our expertise to the table, but I really love working here in Northeast Ohio. So it's been a privilege to work with you guys so far. So we'll start in this building for just a moment. I'll kind of walk through the existing conditions. Mayor Klein kind of gave us a little bit of a background, but I think pictures sometimes speak a little louder than words. Just to orient you all, this is a view from Lander Road just out there. We're kind of in this space here. What you're seeing here is the new proposed project, although there's only a few minor additions to the project that we'll talk about here in just a moment. Okay, I'm not going to read all of this, but these are some of the goals that we set for the project. Is this working, guys? Okay, okay. The important thing, as Judd mentioned, is safety for the firefighters, keeping them safe, and mental health is a big part of that as well for law enforcement and the fire service. So a lot of the goals you'll see here are about supporting their efforts from an operational standpoint, but really thinking about the human beings that are doing this job day in and day out. How can we make the building safe? support their job and make them the best that they can be when they're serving their community. So I won't read through all this, but this is some language that describes that approach. This is an aerial view. You'll notice there's not a whole lot of changes going on here. There's a small addition that's happening just inside this corner over here and a few exterior spaces that are just kind of patio exterior extensions into the landscape. But for the most part, the building footprint will stay as is. The parking, all of the surrounding landscape will stay essentially the way it is today. We're just taking advantage of a few opportunities to get some outdoor space. Okay, I'll spend a little time here. This is the existing plan and it's a little tough to read, but the important thing that Mayor Klein already talked about is, you know, just the limited space that the building has today. All the equipment has grown, the personnel has grown, all the use of the building has grown. And so we're just sort of out of space. And so the previous studies, I haven't explored them in great length, but to add on to this building, to try to make it grow with the use of the building just doesn't quite work. So we're at a place now where the fire on this side of the building could be used as the new police space. So once the fire move out of their building, this space would be available. And then this building becomes available for more community use and some more kind of shared spaces. well as kind of the administrative portion inside the middle of the building here getting a little more flexibility into the future I'll pause there for any questions that you may have if this is difficult to read I apologize I'm happy to get into the details a little more but it's really just a graphic to show that it's too small yes Yeah, and that's a great question. So why build a new fire station versus a police station is a good question. It's a little easier to move the police into this space than it is to do the opposite, build a new police station elsewhere. A number of factors in there, but really the fact that fire are usually responding from the station to wherever the emergency may be. Police a lot of times are out patrolling in the community already, so the physical location in some ways is not as critical for police because they are out patrolling, guys protecting, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's one of the reasons is getting on that more prominent corner to serve that commercial core that's developing. And I believe it was studied both ways. In this case, it's more efficient to build the new fire station to make this come up to the current standards for fire service would require extensive renovations where Putting the police in is a less Less arduous task if that makes sense I can get through some more of the details in the new plan Maybe you might see that the way that this is built doesn't really support a modern fire station. Yeah Yeah, sure, sure thing. So you walk in this door, right? I don't want to go through all the details, but this is the hallway you walk in to come into this space, right? So this kind of bifurcates the building. In general, right now, this is the police station on this side. You'll see the window that you greet folks at, and all of the police operations are happening here. They've kind of got the garage here on the end. Okay, that's a good point. I can zoom in, yeah. I'm glad you did it, not me. That's all right, okay, that's all right. New tool, yeah. I believe it, I know it works, I saw it. uh and i don't have all the room names on here we can get into that if you want or i believe you can take a tour afterwards if you wanted to really go see it for yourself um so anyways fire i'm sorry police on this side fire this side the larger trucks in this apparatus bay area and then the fire support spaces um you know some of the things i could highlight is uh mayor klein talked about the fact that it was a volunteer department uh mostly just a single gender we weren't thinking about men and women working together so you know this is where they all sleep in one room um at this moment right now so That's something we try to get away from for a number of reasons. Just privacy, for one. Issues with men, women, other genders in the same space. There's a whole lot of thought about how do we keep the HR issues down when people are living in the station. And then just the quality of the sleep you're going to get when you're in that room. I snore. You wouldn't want me sleeping in that room with you guys as well. So just one example of this small space that was designed 30 years ago, it was fine, but things have changed over the past 30 years. And then coming back into the space, some smaller locker rooms and other support spaces. One of the things that I'll highlight when we get into the new plan is about separating, as Mayor Klein mentioned, the carcinogens, the contaminants, the bloodborne pathogens, all the bed bugs, things you're bringing back from the calls. There's not a whole lot of separation between where that's happening and where you're eating your lunch or where you're sleeping. So being thoughtful about how you separate those spaces in a modern fire station contributes to health, well-being, and longevity for our fire service. far as like asbestos or lead paint or something like that yeah I think we've looked into that I don't I mean if this was built in the 60s or 70s we'd have a little more concern but in the 90s there wasn't a whole lot of you know asbestos wasn't a problem back then I'm not aware of any concerns if you know something let me know Sure, yeah, yeah, and I don't know that that's something you guys have dealt with, yeah, okay. Good question, though. Okay, so again, existing conditions. Please, of course.

for anyone's benefit, I think it's really valuable if you want at the end of this meeting, I think both the fire and the police would be very happy to enable you to tour their facilities and really see what they have. So you can more thoroughly understand the context and the constraints that we're faced with and how and why we're going this route. Okay, Eric, take it away.

Okay, so we'll jump ahead now to our first move. Let's see, how do we make it full screen, maybe?

No?

That's all right, we'll go with it. So the next step would be to move the fire department out. We've gotta move those folks out so then this building becomes available. And this is that site that we were just talking about, the southwest corner of Harvard and Brainerd. If I were to zoom out more, you'd see the highway off to the side here. COOPER'S HAWK, RIGHT, SOME OF THE OTHER DEVELOPMENT ALONG HARVARD, I BELIEVE, AND THEN AS YOU GO SOUTH, YOU KNOW, MORE RESIDENCES AND THINGS. BUT THIS IS THAT CORNER. IT'S JUST UNDER TWO ACRES, WHICH SOUNDS LIKE A LOT OF LAND, BUT FOR A SITE WHERE YOU HAVE LARGE TRUCKS MOVING AROUND IN PUBLIC COMING INTO THE SPACE, TWO ACRES IS A LITTLE ON THE SMALL SIDE, BUT WE FOUND A WAY TO MAKE IT WORK. So you'll see here, I'll kind of orient you to a little bit of the site circulation. The large driveway here is obviously for the fire apparatus to get out onto Brainerd Road, give them north-south access. That orientation keeps them the furthest away from the intersection for when traffic may be a little heavy, they're a little further away. At our last meeting, we talked a little bit about how we handle some of that traffic, and the traffic study is something that we're looking into just to make sure that this is not going to be an issue. There's lots of technology on the firetrucks preemption for the signals and things to help them navigate the roadways in a safe fashion. So firetrucks kind of out onto the road and then the ability for them to return back and pull through the bays, excuse me, on the backside of the building. So kind of the south half of the site is really the business side of the fire station. Here in the middle is more of the administrative living side and so some of the personal vehicles and things could be parked back here. And then of course we wanna welcome the public into the building as well. So having a dedicated public visitor parking lot here on the north so you can get to the front door quickly without having to interfere with the rest of the fire operations. 19,000 square feet is roughly the size of the building. You can see kind of that dashed line. That's the actual footprint of the building. There's some roof overhangs that give it some coverage to help with some thermal gain. There was a question earlier, you know, about the tree canopy. We're gonna do our best. We're showing kind of a generic landscaping plan now, but to retain as many of the old-growth trees that we can and, of course, plant new ones where we find opportunity to. So this is a bit generic. Yes. That's a really good question. So if you couldn't hear her questions about how do we anticipate size, growth, you know, the apparatus, the people that are working here, how do we think about that? I guess, do you want to answer that question? I'm happy to talk about it from an architectural standpoint, but

So the fire department is kind of based on NFPA recommendations, right? There's the NFPA and then there's ISO ratings that we also get, we get a score on, right? Based on the vehicles we have, our staffing models, things like that. Sure, the NFPA is the National Fire Protection Administration, and they kind of set us guidelines on what our staffing should be per population, per response district, things like that. So that kind of sets the bar where we should be, the guideline. ISO rating is the Insurance Services rating that they give us based on the equipment we have, our staffing models, our response models. So those are kind of the two big qualifiers for us that tell us what we should have as far as equipment, manpower, things like that, along with our call volume and things like that. So that's what sets the guideline for us. Got it. Understood. So for a space like this, we have five bay spaces right there, the apparatus bay. And given what we have right now, that's current with what we have, which has two engines in it, two ambulances, chase cars, and then a couple regional vehicles in there as well. And in preparation for that, you know, we probably should have three engines. We should have three ambulances, right? So with all of that space, it fills up really quick with the apparatus like that. So five bays is kind of the standard for what we need.

Does that answer your question?

we see that the way that we're setting this up is for the next 30 years. So we've taken that all into account already. And we've started with four bays. It didn't fit. It didn't fit what we needed. So we're at five bay spaces right now in the apparatus bay. We've taking into account sleeping quarters, right? Where sleeping quarters are gonna be prepared for the future. The dorm space has been set up for the future. So we've taken all that into account to kind of build for that.

Those are great questions. Let me just add on to what he just said, and then we'll go to you for a moment. Part of what we did, and I'm not showing you the whole process. We're kind of showing you the result. So some of the first meetings that we had was a lot of spreadsheets. We weren't looking at pretty pictures yet. We were talking about how many rooms, how many square feet, how many people. and what does today's need, what does 10 years look like, and what does 30 years look like? So we call these 50-year buildings, that they should last 50 years without a major renovation being needed, 30 years before maybe thinking about some growth. And what we've done, we've taken a program document, this pretty massive spreadsheet of all the different spaces, and we've added in a factor to grow. So the fifth bay there would give them that space. When we get into the floor plan here in just a moment, you'll see there's some dorms that are, not fully needed today, but will be shortly. So there's those spaces that are kind of ready to be grown into as we go. Yeah, go ahead, guys. That's a good question, yeah. And so part of what Bill, do you want to talk about that too?

Sure.

So yes, so this location is very strategic for us, right? So based on our call volume right now and the call volumes and the fire service in general, 70% of our calls are EMS, 30% are fire. For us here in Orange Village, 70 call it 75 percent of our calls are coming from the north end of town and we expect that to only grow sort of exponentially with all the growth coming on the north end of town so this puts us in a great strategic spot to one respond to those emergencies faster um and and kind of get to a bulk of them faster all while kind of cutting down on noise pollution from responding to that many calls for for everybody else in the neighborhood um and it'll set us up for 271 access faster. So all these things have been taken into account with that strategic location. So we just, yeah, we talk kind of north of Harvard. We break our district down into north of Harvard, south of Harvard, and like I said, over 75% of our calls come from that north end of town. residential commercial from that whole North District. So we all have mutual aid agreements. We all sort of help each other out depending on call volume. If we're on a call on the north end of town, sure, we have to call Solon Mutual Aid. Sometimes we have to call Pepper Pike Mutual Aid. It all depends on kind of where that call comes in. It's all dependent on that. But we all do kind of lean on each other through mutual aid agreements.

It is.

It is closer to Beachwood. Yeah. So she asked, is this closer to the Beachwood Fire Station on Richmond Road? I believe it's north of Ahuja there. And it is. Yeah. But that, you know, it... Mm-hmm. Right, right. So yeah, just given the fire on Harvard, we ended up having six different municipalities come to that fire. We have it kind of drawn up through Chagrin Valley Dispatch on what municipality brings what vehicle, right? So we had Beachwood here with a ladder truck, Pepper Pike with a ladder truck. Warrensville with an engine, North Randa with an engine, Squad from Chagrin Falls, Engine from Chagrin Falls, so everybody kinda comes from all over the surrounding communities to help each other out with that. But going back to Beachwood, even though it's close, You know, with us, it'll get us to our calls faster, but it'll also get us to the hospital faster and get us back in service faster to handle more of our calls. Does that make sense? So it just keeps us, just the functionality of it and the better service that we can provide and keep us in service, you know, all went into the strategic planning. it still puts us, we've driven the response, right? So the response is expected to be between four and five minutes. And even from this location, we still have plenty of time left on the clock for us to get to that south end of town, the southeast quadrant.

Correct.

They do. The question was the regional dispatching center. No, they do not. It's a, no. Exactly. Well, one hand washes the other for us, yeah.

What's that?

Everybody's call volume is steadily climbing. Everywhere is expanding. So yeah, it's not just us that's responding mutually. Yeah, everybody's call volumes are increasing. It's variable day to day. Typically we're between 1,000 and 1,100 calls per year currently. And again, that trajectory of call volume is just increasing the more development that we get. A day-to-day, you never know, right? Sometimes there's more calls on a Monday. You really just don't know. 30% of our calls do come at night. The rest are during the day, 70% during the day. And by that, I mean from 7P to 7A, 30% of our call volume comes then.

I think that's been considered.

Got it. So the question was, does this cater more towards that north end of town than it does the rest of the village? And kind of going back to what I said before, with us having that strategic location, yes, it gets us to those calls quicker, but it also gets us in service quicker. So we don't have to rely so much on mutual aid. because we can get to a Hoosier faster, get back in service faster, and that helps us in turn respond to the next call so we don't have to have our residents wait on Solon or we don't have to have our residents wait on Pepper Pike or even Warrensville Heights. You never know who's gonna be available. And plus, this keeps us still in that four to five minute response time for the south end of the district or northeast, wherever we can get anywhere within four to five minutes. do you want to talk about?

Sure. The big future projects that are going to put some more people and more houses and more rooftops in the village are really to the north of Pinecrest. The residents of Walnut Hills, which is about 25 acres that has been approved for development, that was part of that, approximately 395 acres. residential facilities, homes, apartments, whatever will be in that. The build-out of the canyons, which is under construction right now, and the adjacent townhouses there bring into play about 130 new units. And then when the... if you will, senior, what you would call independent living facility goes in. There's another 100 or so there, residents that will come into play. So there's a lot more density that is going to be in place over there. The development that's taking place in the main part of the village is really onesie-twosies. You're seeing a lot of scrapes and rebuilds Single family homes that are being taken down and new new houses are being put up. So you're not going to see with the exception of it will be approximately six homes across the street and the new song church property. There's 20. three more homes in phase eight of Lakes of Orange. Lakes of Orange will fill out completely. And then there's the Romano Congemi property, which is the south end of the site across from the Miles Market. that is proposed to have 39 residents on it at some point in time in the future. So that's the major development. You can see the numbers are really in the north because that's where the potential density will take place. And being able to respond there makes great sense. Plus we also have all the hotels that are there right now, and they create a great demand on our services, both police and fire. The canyons are the 55 and over community that's being constructed across the street from Pinecrest.

Yeah.

I can address that one. Pinecrest owes us a traffic study, an updated traffic study that was to have been done several years ago, but because of COVID, it was postponed. We're awaiting the results. I know the study has been done. We haven't seen the results of it yet. And that particular study will give rise to any kind of additional traffic structures that need to be put in place over there. They really don't have... And in fact, the engineer that we enlisted to help us with this building said that's more important than what would be generated resulting from the fire station.

I'll give you this back because I can work this one here.

Well, happy to take more questions as we go, but I'll kind of take the next step into this project and explain a little more, and we'll get into some of that growth planning. But please feel free to stop me at any point. I guess now's a good point to talk about the kind of scope of what we did. So the design is not done, right? We did the first, say, 15% to 20% of the design to arrive at a budget number. So we call this a feasibility study. Really the goal of a feasibility study is to arrive at a budget and a schedule for the project, which we have. to manage the overall program, how many spaces, how much growth is going to be there, some site design, and then a little bit of dipping our toes into what the building will look like. So certainly the design is not done. We've got a pretty good guess. We could build something very similar to this, but we've got time to continue to develop that design as we go forward. If there's no other questions on the site, we'll take a next step into... the plan here, and I won't read all this either, but this is talking a little bit about some of the goals for this project. So we had the goals for the police station. Similarly, we developed goals for the fire. And you'll see these kind of this code down here. And this is getting at some of the things we talked about, the zone design, right? So the red zone here is where there's likely carcinogens, different types of contaminants that we need to manage, right? So that red area is where you really don't want to be breathing the air if you don't have to, right? That's a working space. The transition zones here, you'll see that there's a yellow zone here on the bottom, and this is places where we can clean our gear and store it for the next time you need to recall that gear for use. And there's also some airlocks here that will prevent carcinogens from getting into the living quarters. So the yellow zones are kind of that transition space. Clean zone this is where you know you're living right the living spaces every station and that's kind of where the social and the kind of camaraderie. Can be built and then decompression we're calling those kind of the dorms that's where you have a private space to sort of call your own these spaces really geared more toward creating that common. Common communal type of space so. That's what all these words get at, essentially, is developing those zones and how do we create a building that supports that type of operation. Okay, so here's a little bit of a zoomed in plan and I'll kind of walk you through it. We've rotated at 90 degrees, so north now is facing to the left here. Excuse me. I'll talk about kind of the hot zone at first, right? So obviously we've got the room here for the trucks and these are sort of generic that we're showing right now. There'll be more equipment filled in behind here, but just essentially to show the vehicles that are pulling out onto the roadway and then the opportunity for them to pull back in the longer ladder trucks and engines, having the ability for those to pull through when you need to is a nice feature so you're not necessarily backing up traffic or maneuvering on the front side of the building. These orange spaces here are spaces that support the apparatus. Turnout gear space, that's where the firefighters store their gear. Three shifts in general and having the opportunity for all three shifts to have their own turnout gear locker for when they're not in service. So generally We won't get into operations, but their gear is ready to be deployed on the trucks. The other two shift stuff is stored in this clean space for the next time they're on duty. A decon area, this is where when you come back from a call, whether it be a fire, whether it be a medical call, where you have a chance to clean your gear and get it ready to go back into service. So having this space set aside where all those chemicals and bodily fluids, things of that nature, are all contained in a certain space that is away from the living quarters. A workshop. This is a place for snow plows, tools. They can maintain their chainsaws, all types of equipment. So it's a bit of a workshop space for not just maintaining the building, but maintaining their gear. And then a training tower. So getting them the opportunity to train on-site is a really critical thing so that they're not using up overtime to go off-site and train at another facility or borrowing a stair tower at a hotel somewhere to train. So this gives them the ability to train on site, stay up to speed with their training log, and be ready to respond. So having that available on site is a great amenity. Any questions so far? Yeah. Oops. Straight out to the street. Yeah, let's see if we can go back here. Here we go. So those trucks are kind of lined up here, and so they can pull right out onto Brainerd Road. Yep. They can. So some of the larger trucks, they may or may not, right? It's giving them mobility. So someday if they need to get a ladder. Right now, you guys don't have a ladder, and there may not be something that happens anytime soon. But, you know, turning a 50-foot-long truck is a little bit of a trick here. So you may want to be able to pull through and park. So... Well, this is 50 feet, so for smaller ambulances, engines even. Well, so I guess I can kind of maybe give you a little roadmap here. Well, I don't know. Maybe it's easier here, huh? But let's say it is a larger vehicle. We usually try to put those in the middle of the bay, you know, two or three over, and especially because they're usually maybe not the first one out. The ambulances are going out a lot more quickly. Next, the engines. Next, you know, maybe another vehicle. So the ladders are sometimes in the middle. And the nice thing about that gives them a nice wide sweep that they can make this turn to come in the back. Generally, and anything can change, you never know, but generally second or third, maybe fourth, It's a little big, and so that's a 20-foot long parking spot, so there's another, that's 60 feet, there's 80 feet, close to 100 feet, so it's not as large as this driveway, we'll say. This is a very large, you have a helicopter landing pad here, right? So it's not quite as large as that, but we're doing the best we can. You'll see the parking spots are right up against the edge of this property that we've been given, so we've We've built to the edges as big as we can. If we had another acre of land, we probably would have given a little more space, but I've learned to get pretty tight compact with how we set these up. To the... There's housing to the south as we move this way. There's a protected green space that's happening and then we get into some commercial development further down the road. But essentially this is the property we've been given to work with. You're right, okay. Crew parking where now? Across the bottom? It could be. And in a scenario where you had volunteers coming, that might be a scenario that would make sense. What this is for is, let's say that these doors are, yeah.

One of the things we wanted to do with this site is create the trailhead. for what will become the Orange Headwaters Preserve. And so we've allocated an area where we can park cars that people who might want to come and visit the future park that's over there have a place to go. We don't have to build another parking lot on the property for the future.

No, they'll come in and out of... We haven't designed it quite yet, but the trailhead might be somewhere. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

It's a good thought. And I think having parking flexibility, what this is really for, this is sort of a bypass lane. So for some reason, a car crashes into the building and you can't get out. Having a secondary, you know, it's always about redundancy, right? So if something fails or the power goes out, they have a backup generator. But something were to happen, having another way to get out of the site is important. And if they're coming back from a call is important. as you mentioned earlier, getting back in service as quickly as possible. So if you can pull in here, get back in service, it gives them another option. That way you're not mixing traffic with the public. It's kind of a, ideally the business side of the building all happens south of that line, essentially, yeah. But like I said, if you had to park there, you could, right? It's an option. Okay, was there another question I might have skipped someone? Maybe? No. Question, sir, or no? I'm gonna go with no. Okay, where were we? Here we go. So I won't get into every single space, but we'll talk generally. This other orange bank here is more the administrative side of things. Some office space, some shared office space. So kind of the nine to five function of the building, if you had to put it that way. Also here on the corner, we wanted to have a prominent opportunity for kind of a public presence. If you were coming here for some sort of meeting or some training, Having a training room visible in the corner, much like the space we're in now, a lot of glass, a lot of openness, kind of a landmark, kind of iconic piece for a civic piece of architecture. So that becomes kind of the main focal point of the corner. As we come across the dorms, there's never a great spot to put them, especially on a corner, so we kind of tuck them back. These are where people are trying to sleep, trying to recuperate, and it's not just at night. You know, you may have had a a long winter night, and you're trying to get some rest in the middle of the day. So giving them blackout shades, giving the ability to rest whenever they need to is critical. So this, believe it or not, is the quieter side of the site. So we tucked them in here. This is kind of that living, the day room space, the kitchen, the dining, and then the fitness. The building kind of tucks back a little bit, gives them a little bit of privacy. A beautiful day like today, you can sit outside and have dinner or get some fresh air. And then we do have some coverings, as I kind of pointed out, so even when the weather isn't cooperating, you can still get outside and get some fresh air. So the mental wellness and kind of just helping people be at their best, giving outdoor space, even in Northeast Ohio, contributes to that. The core of the building here is some locker rooms. Part of any type of public safety facility is a Category 4 building, so we have to provide a storm shelter. So the middle of the building here is designed to help with some of that. I won't get into all the details, but this detox space is when you're coming back from a call. How do you get... your gear off, and we talked about kind of cleaning it, but then cleaning yourself, going through some showers and things before you go back into your locker room area to prevent kind of cross-contamination. So we've got a sequence of spaces that get you back into your locker room area. Any questions so far? And I guess, go ahead. As much as we can. So you see the walls are a little thicker in between the rooms. So if you do have someone like myself that's snoring next door, The hallway, yep, so that's a good question. So this hallway really shouldn't be too loud. We're tucking most of the, you know, the noisy weights and things are a little further back, but we always do try to put some acoustic insulation in those walls and the doors, yep, of course. And it'll be a rated wall too because it is a residence, even though these folks are the best at fighting fires. If a fire were to break out, we treat this almost like an apartment building with those dorms. So it's a good thought. There are windows outside. Yep. And so they're kind of tucked back. North. Yep. So I've rotated the plan. North is this way now. So they're here, right, kind of facing north. So you get some nice ambient light. We're going to try to do some landscaping out in front to kind of give a little bit of visual protection. And we'll get some good windows, you know, except when there's sirens going by, you know, you don't hear too much of the traffic through these windows. It's a little closer to the road, but we're going to do everything we can to keep it comfortable. Other questions? Gosh. I believe you guys keep it on the rig. Is that right? Or just in front of the truck? Yep. Yep. And so as they grow, you know, you may have an ambulance company, an engine company. Each of those have their gear ready to go. Yep. Sounds like you want to tour. No, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good question. A two-story building. It's something we always talk about early on. And two stories don't make a lot of sense a lot of times because you have to put an elevator in, even though these guys are very equipped to climb ladders and climb stairs. The accessibility code requires that we have an elevator. And then we have stairs. And so by the time that you put an elevator lobby, the stairs, the cost of going vertical, and then sometimes just the overall circulation of... If these guys and girls are sleeping upstairs and they need to get down to the truck in 60 seconds, 90 seconds, walking horizontally is a lot safer and a lot faster a lot of times than going up and down stairs. So we do it in more urban settings or in sites where there's even less land available. Certainly two stories are an option. It's something we always look at early on. And here we were able to make it work. Even though the site is a little tight, I think it doesn't warrant going two stories. But it's a great question. Yes? Uh-huh. Yeah, so they do a good job of maintaining their trucks. And Bill, if you want to talk more about it. But the idea is, let's go back here. The space in front of the, microphone's going out again. So the space in front of this, even if they did have a ladder truck someday that's 50 feet long, they should be able to pull out into the space and not block the sidewalk. So they can always pull out in front. Sometimes we'll do a wash bay or some really specialized spaces for larger departments that have lots and lots of vehicles coming in and out. In wintertime, of course, yeah.

We have a truck wash bay over here at the service department that basically washes pretty much all the vehicles. That keeps them, you know, they, if you will, in the garage, they'll clean them up after a fire and so on. But when they take the truck to the wash, they take it up here to the service bay, and it gets washed through that. Okay.

Well, I guess all of the bays in some way are a service. There's trench drains down the middle, so if they do wash, and if you do, I encourage you to take a tour. You'll see that there are trench drains in the existing space now. So if they do wash that off, it has a place to go in the middle so it doesn't become a slip hazard. And they're pretty good at washing the vehicles. I mean, I think, yeah, yeah, exactly. They keep them nice and shiny. So to do something more specialized is always an option. A lot of times this last bay will kind of put some more equipment here for cleaning and things. If they had a truck that needed some long-term maintenance or something, they would park it there. But in this case, the service department is a better solution for that. So good questions. You guys are smart. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. And so for commercial buildings, there are things called STC sound transmission coefficients that we think about. So there's standards between, you know, two different dorms. There's a certain type of standard that we're getting to. And that may mean that you have multiple layers of drywall or drywall on something that we call resilient channels that prevent sound transmission. We do the same thing for the windows. There's certain STC ratings for commercial architecture that's a little more interesting. demanding than maybe a standard residence. So, you know, the windows that we'll be installing here will have a little more protection than maybe something that would be in a home potentially. So that's a great thought. But yeah, definitely we want to think about sound to give them as much peace as possible when they have a chance to rest. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, and like you said, some vegetation certainly helps. As we develop this a little further, maybe there'll be some plantings and maybe even a little bit of a buffer between the road and this parking area. Good question. Okay, if there's nothing else, I'll keep kind of going. And I don't know how we're doing on time, Mayor Klein. Keep me honest. Okay, great. Very good. I won't go into a lot of detail here. This is a ceiling plan looking at the different finishes of the ceiling. So you're seeing, you know, kind of your typical office type environment that you would see, you know, up in the north of the building here, some acoustic ceiling out in the bays is not showing all of the systems that we'll have there. This is a very early kind of study, but essentially just trying to give the different spaces there the proper look and feel. Same thing with the flooring, you know, the working areas here, concrete that's going to be resilient. Up in the dorm areas, a little softer, something that's going to be a little more appealing for rest and relaxation. And again, we're looking for durability, excuse me, durability for the long term. We want this building to last and look good. Okay, here's some exterior elevations. And again, these are early, right? So we haven't really picked colors yet. We haven't talked specifics about what type of material exactly we'll have, but we're looking for masonry a lot of times for these types of buildings. You look at this building, it's 30, 35 years old, and it looks pretty good, right? They've done a great job of maintaining it. But the fact that it's masonry helps it have that longevity. So especially down low, you know, in our climate where you have salt and a lot of moisture, masonry has a tendency to perform well. What we'll do sometimes though is like upper portions of the building that don't need that resiliency, we can switch to something more like metal panels or you'll see here various types of siding. So that's kind of what we're imagining here. Masonry down low, some stone, some brick, and then maybe some panelized type materials that will help acoustically, as we mentioned, and sort of help us with some cost as well. Here's some of the other more prominent elevations that you'd see from the roadways. And I can kind of help orient you to these if we need to. But I've got some renderings that'll maybe do a little better job. But the important thing here I kind of want to point out is that we're doing our best to kind of keep the height of the apparatus bays. It's pulled away from the main intersection a little bit. But that's where you need that vertical space for the large trucks. We're going to do maintenance on them. Being able to have that clear story space above is important. As we get closer to the road, we want to kind of bring the scale of the building down so it addresses more of the residential kind of quality, but also feeling a little bit more commercial, right? Because we're kind of transitioning into that commercial corridor. So this building is doing a good job of connecting to both the residential scale with the materiality, but then also kind of being this transition point towards some of the more contemporary development. You'll see some of these clear story windows up above is to bring in some natural light. So in this case, if we were in the training room, let's say, and this is the training room, we could close all the windows. You can see a PowerPoint presentation, but still have some natural lighting above. Again, thinking about circadian rhythms, people's wellness, keeping them connected to nature. Even if what's happening outside isn't so great always, it's good to keep people connected in that way. So here's some kind of three-dimensional views. And again, they're intentionally sketchy, intentionally they're black and white because we haven't finalized the design yet, but this is the overall kind of feeling. This would be looking at the corner. If I was standing in the intersection looking back at the building, you'll see that kind of prominence that we were talking about with the main training room, a lot of glazing, a lot of transparency, kind of a beacon for the community and giving that symbology for public safety in the building. And then you can see The way the dorms kind of scale down a little bit, those spaces are more that residential scale. Same thing with the offices on this side. The scale of the building drops back. And then, of course, the apparatus bays are a little more prominent because they need to be. And that training tower component, again, keeping training opportunities on site is important. This is another view looking kind of from the north, looking south. Here's that main public entrance, kind of that parking lot we were talking about, and those are those dorm windows. So, you know, maybe a little bit more vegetation, some other screening there might be helpful from a visual and sound consideration. And I think I've got two more here. These are looking at the back of the building. These are two views that, you know, really the public wouldn't really see these views if you're in the woods looking back at the building. But just to kind of give you a sense of the massiveness of the building, we're trying to pull that back away from the intersection as much as we can and giving the rest of the building a little bit more of a pedestrian scale. some isometric views to kind of help visualize some of the massing, but I think that generally covers it. Any questions on the fire station? We can jump into what we're doing here, yeah. Remind me the promenade, how do you mean? Go back, sorry. Oh, okay, here. Uh-huh. Well, let's look at it real quick here. Zip back a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's this corner here. I think we're going to look at some landscaping for sure. Let me go back here. So we're talking about this corner here that has a little bit of a prominence to it. So there's going to be plenty of landscaping and trees and things. It won't look like the view I had. I had to hide some of the trees in that view so you could see it. So I was focused on the architecture. But we do want it to be something that's noticeable. We don't want it to be completely hidden. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, and we will. And we will. But I think it'll be a balance between... you know, maintaining as much nature as we can and then also letting the building be visible. So we'll do our best as we get our civil engineers involved to figure out where exactly those trees are and which ones we can keep. It's a great question. Yeah.

I don't know who was next. Sorry. You go.

Sure. So you don't like the way the training tower looks? Sure. Mm-hmm. It could, and it's something that we look at. You know, I think as long as it's on that side of the building is usually what we look for. Like I said, this is not fully developed. I'd like to do a little more detailing, maybe get into a little bit more brickwork or something that maybe wouldn't make it so ugly, if that's not your particular style. Sure. That's a good thought. Yeah. Yeah.

I do think so. I can't tell you exactly where that's going to put us as far as rating, but I definitely see an improvement. It improves our response time to that commercial district. I'd have to get back to you on that. We're talking about the feasibility study and cost study analysis? Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of what drove us. It needs to be updated. Because since then, we used to have the substation in Pinecrest. Yeah, exactly. Now we're just manning the land to road. That substation has gone away as far as that would matter.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And that's something that we can talk about and get out to the public once we get everything kind of established.

Yeah, right.

So we've changed our model to four people around the clock, 24 hours. We used to have five during the day, three at night. That didn't quite work. You can't do too much with three people for a house fire, even a squad call, or multiple calls for that matter. No, we have a new fire engine coming in about a month that we've already planned for. So this does prepare us for the future and for future manpower. Are we going to be required? Not required to do anything, but we would like to see more manpower to kind of handle the call volume that we're starting to see. Right now we're riding a wave of some great talent right now. So I think we're doing pretty good as far as that goes. But the fire service in general has, along with the police service, we've seen a decline in applicants. You know, just giving the hazards that we're seeing, you know, increases in cancer, increases in mental health problems, decrease in sleep, you know, all the things that kind of come along with a civil service job and a public safety job kind of is hurting our numbers, I think. But we're, right now in Orangeville, we're riding a nice wave of some good talent.

Yeah.

That's correct. But I think the fire chief has been here for 30 years, and I think he knows this district like the back of his hand. He really is outstanding. Well, sure. And you want your personnel to have the greatest equipment and the greatest fire station to do their job out of. Correct.

Certainly having a new station will help with that. recruitment and retaining. So the folks you have that have been, and again, I can't encourage you enough to go see where they're living now, but the folks that have been with you for this long is a testament to their courage and their dedication. But having a new station will certainly get those applicants that are coming in to maybe be a little more, you know, and they could go to Beachwood or they could come here. You know, how do you compete with that? So having a new facility certainly will help get the best and brightest talent.

Uh-huh.

I believe so. Yeah, I don't know off the top of my head how many feet that is. Do you know, Mayor Klein? That is a look. Several acres, though, right? I mean, as it moves, it's kind of a... Okay. So I think this is something like 180, so another two times that, I think is, it's a good question. I wish I had a better answer for it. I'm sorry, I've been so focused on this part of the site. Yeah, sorry about that. It sounds right, yeah. Mm-hmm. So the houses start relatively close, but the property lines are back here, so it kind of runs behind those homes, I believe. I could probably dig it up and find it. I don't have it ready today. Oh, okay.

Mm-hmm.

Separating, oh, I see, for the vehicles and things moving on the site for those. I mean, it's a good thought. I don't know what we could really do when the houses are relatively close. I mean, protecting as many of the trees as we can is a good thought. We could do some things like some landscape mounding and things, but again, we kind of built to the edges. We could maybe look at maybe moving this site a little further north to give a little bit more of a buffer there as a precaution. It's a good thought. Yeah, it's... Hmm. That's great. That's awesome. Excellent. Let's finish what they're talking about, and then we'll jump over to you to make sure we're... Keep moving? Yeah, I know. Okay. We're going to keep moving. Quick question, though. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm on... Yeah. Sure. Yep. The rest of the stuff, right, exactly. The police department over here. Let's move over. I can always come back and answer more questions. Let's go, let's start where we left off here. This is the existing building that we're in right now. And this is kind of the proposed plan. So the kind of color coding here will help us out. The blue is police. The yellow is administrative offices and community engagement. And then this part of the project was outside the scope of our work. There's some ongoing updates here. I think I see some color swatches in the back. So we weren't really touching this part of the building that's white. Hello? Hello, hello. Here we go. All right. We're going to go with it. So you'll see the space that used to be where the fire trucks are parked. I'll just kind of start there because it's the biggest part of the building. Now is a space for police cruisers, right? So now we have them out of the weather, which is a great way to protect those investments and keep them in good condition. And then we've also taken a portion, one of the bays, and turned it into a sally port, something that really the police don't currently have, a safe way to bring in detainees into a place where they can be questioned. Keeps them safe, keeps the police department safe, gives them that proper space. So this new kind of cruiser carport space, Gives them a way to bring evidence in, bring detainees in, and bring themselves in to a kind of controlled environment where right now they're kind of, they don't have that controlled space. So that was one of the biggest parts that got us started on the project. And then we started looking at the other flanking spaces as, you know, how do those support the rest of the operations. So to overly simplify things, we have kind of the administrative function of the station up front. Chief, all of his staff here, easily to get to other administrative functions of the building. And then this is kind of the back of house, the locker room, the physical fitness area, armory, stores, those sorts of things off to this side. So again, that kind of carport space becomes the kind of anchor. One interesting thing that we we looked at is bringing the front door across to the front here So it gives them a little bit more of a controlled way to to greet the public whenever they are coming to the building As opposed to them coming into this door a lot of good conversation about keeping everyone safe and really gets into how do they how do they have a controlled space if someone were You know upset with the police department bringing them into this space may not be the best place to mix the public and those folks so this gives them a nice controlled place to do that on a typical you know daily basis if someone's here to meet with the chief to have a conversation or something certainly there's an opportunity to have that kind of interaction as well so that gives us two different kind of opportunities to interface with the police yeah Well, so these are sort of interview rooms. We're not really looking to get into the business of jail or even long-term holding. Chief, I'm happy to let you talk more about that, but that's something we're seeing as a trend across the country. If someone needs to be detained for longer than an hour or so, then there's a facility for that somewhere else.

Can I interject on this one? Currently, we have an agreement with Solon and all of our detainees go to Solon. As you may all know, the county is building a new jail currently in Garfield Heights. And one of their objectives is to become a regional jail for communities that down the road we may be able to use. So we don't really need to have a housing facility for that activity. Just to get back to the quick question about how big is the park here, 28 acres.

Yeah, I think you guys covered that.

Perfect. Thanks, Chief. I feel bad that I'm rushing through this, but I want to make sure I give them presence. But we really found a great way to reuse as much of this building as we could. We did add on a small portion here that gave them kind of that squad room, the patrol officers coming in, a place for them to do their work, and a break room as well that is separate. So a lot of sensitive information is discussed here. So mixing these two together, something we studied as an idea to see if finance and police could mix. GIVING THEM THEIR OWN DEDICATED SPACE WAS THE RIGHT MOVE AND GETTING BACK TO THE THOUGHT OF GROWTH, THIS IS SET UP FOR GROWTH, RIGHT? SO WE'RE LOOKING AT, HEY, THIS SERVES OUR NEEDS TODAY, BUT THERE'S ROOM TO SQUEEZE ANOTHER DESK IN IN THE FUTURE WHEN WE NEED TO OR ROOM FOR THAT FIFTH OR SIXTH PATROL OFFICER WHEN THAT DAY COMES SO THAT THIS PLAN WILL GROW WITH THE COMMUNITY AS IT GROWS. Jumping over to the yellow space, no major renovations here, but thinking about those restrooms, I'm sure you guys have had a chance to experience. So trying to get those back to be a little bit more accommodating for public use and then dedicating one for the staff, because right now it's kind of a shared situation. So we're trying to get more facilities available for those that need them. This portion of the building is gonna be opened up for, currently you have that smaller kind of community room here, that's this space. So you can see now we're giving a much larger area for community gatherings. And then the great thing about some of those auxiliary spaces outside, now you have these patio spaces. So again, a beautiful day like today, if you had some kind of a training and you had a break, you could get outside and enjoy kind of an outdoor space. Coming across more and more restrooms to serve that use, some table and chair storage, sort of a warming kitchen. So that wing of the building can function on its own. So thinking about the access to that space, this could be rented out, it could be managed independently of the police department.

All over. No, we have a four-stall garage right now, and one of the, yeah, that's the existing over there. One of them we use as our makeshift sally port. So we try and keep it free as often as we can. There's a cage in here and things like that, reinforcements on the windows. So we try and keep that clear. So in effect, we have three, and we have 10 marked police cars, three unmarked police cars. So When you have to park a car, a police cruiser out in the wintertime, it makes sense to leave it idle. Why? Because it has to stay warm for all the equipment that's running. Otherwise, you have to reboot it all and things like that. So if we can pull them into the garage all under roof, then we can stop idling the cruisers. Idling the cruisers is what kills cruisers. It sends them to early graves. Idle time on an engine is worse than driving time, probably three to one. So that's one of the benefits. Question was, do we have a K-9 unit? We currently do not have a K-9 unit. One thing on the things to get done someday, but currently, when we look at all of our needs, it's not quite there yet. We have had them in the past. They were very successful, wildly popular, but when you get away from one, restarting a unit like that is very costly up front, and there's just other things that need priority right now for the tax dollars required.

Okay, I'll keep moving here. Again, please feel free to stop me. These are just some zoomed in areas here that show those spaces with a little more detail. But again, we're really trying to reuse as much of the existing infrastructure as we can, keeping plumbing as close to where it is now, trying to be sensitive to the cost. this is one space that was the topic of discussion not a big deal here but this is that physical training space and even here we're trying to take advantage of that vertical space with a mezzanine for the IT closet and things so trying to get creative about how we use the space in the existing building so this becomes storage and IT up above All right. We won't talk about finishes, but the name of the game is durability, right? So to make this building last, durable surfaces throughout. Not so different than what you see today, but maybe a little bit more of a focus on ease of maintenance. Ceilings, again, you know, appropriate ceilings for offices, a little softer for some of those more community spaces, focusing on natural light.

Gosh, this thing's all over.

And then so the exterior elevations you'll see. Come on. Look very similar. What we're doing, we're replacing some of these doors with solid kind of metal panels that will keep the look, even though they're not actual doors anymore. That middle bay, again, is just where the cruisers are coming in and out. They'll have windows in for some natural light. Some of the windows, it's hard to see here, but the windows will be replaced with a little more energy-efficient windows. 30 years on, you know, they've come a long way. And then thinking about a little bit of security and privacy for the police department as well, so... having windows is great but sometimes you don't want the public seeing you while you're doing your work so thinking about the bottom half of the windows being more opaque where you can't see through them but leaving some transparency up above so you can get some natural light so being sensitive to their privacy you know also that some of the things they're working on their computers is not for public consumption so being thoughtful about how we use the existing building but just make it function for a modern police force Here's a couple little vignettes of those outdoor spaces we're talking about. And again, these are very early on kind of concepts. So all the plantings are hidden. We're just focusing on, this is really a cost exercise. How much is this going to cost? But some way of containing that space, maybe some lighting, something to make it feel enclosed, like you're sitting at a table in the parking lot, but a way to give it a little bit of a sense of enclosure for that without an exorbitant amount of cost. And that's really where we're at. So the overall look and feel of the building will be very much the same. Again, the building's been maintained well. The village has been a great steward of this resource. It's just time to modernize a little. Yeah, yeah. Those are expensive is the short answer. And they're a great technology. So what he's talking about is you can have a clear window that when it's in actual, it's actually solid when it's energized and it's opaque or clear when it's something we could look at. But I think for now just a solid panel would be probably more than adequate.

One of the things I learned from Eric was there's new window treatments that go from down up. And right now we have from up down and we'd wanna protect the down part, so we've never opened them since you put them in 30 years ago, the blinds I'm talking about. So if we could pull them up here, leave the light at the top, things like that. Yeah, cheap, easy solution to keep the light in. So that was one other thing.

But the technology you're talking about is very cool. I think it would be, if money were no object, it'd be a fun one to explore.

Other questions, sir?

he was hoping you'd ask.

I was wondering when that was going to come around, and I didn't expect you to be the one to bring it up, Irv. I thought John would be the author of that question. And very much, yes, we are looking at a number of strategies, both for the new fire station as well as this facility as well, to look at renewables and alternative energies, including photovoltaics and maybe even wind, possibly. with that. And, uh, as well as, as the both buildings are going to be built, um, to more sustainable standards. Uh, you know, Orange created the Orange Goes Green certification program in 2009. And, uh, we applied it to the, um, service, both the service garage and the, um, and the, uh, building department buildings uh... we certainly will do it to this building as well as to the the other it's basically what i call lead light uh... enables us to uh... go through the essentially the process that you would do to create a lead certified building without having to go through the demands of the certification process that the USGBC requires. I probably shouldn't say that because I'm a lead accredited professional. I'm taking my own business away, but that's all right. It's more important that we do the process than we do the other. So, yes, very definitely. You beat you to the punch, John.

I'm interested. Sounds great.

Yes. In fact, we're talking with some other groups in the county to build, if you will, to build a consortium that would enable residents also to potentially buy in and get an opportunity to cash in on what we're doing.

Okay, any other questions on the overall kind of strategy, for both of these. And again, I'll kind of reiterate that design is not done for these. This one's a little easier to kind of see how it could land, but still more work to be done. The effort here was really just to get their scope. Does this work for you guys? Is this going to be something you can go into? Get us an overall schedule of what this would look like and a budget. So I don't know if we want to talk more about the budget.

I think that's where we really need to go. At the end of the day, so what's this going to cost? And I'm sure that is in everybody's mind. Number one, what's it going to cost all total? And what's it going to cost me as an individual for the village to do this? So, yeah, if you'd like to. We have copies of the... budget breakdown. It's actually the summary cover sheet. There's also a few copies of the whole breakdown, which is about 30 pages of detail. It was really important that the, as I said from the beginning, that the architect engage a quantity surveyor to do a more deeper dive and more detailed report on what the building costs would be, estimate so that we can more accurately determine what we'll have to spend and how we'll budget it.

Yeah. So the larger packet, there's a lot of information there, and if that's something you really want to dig into, I encourage you to, but the single pager is really probably more than adequate for what we want to look at. I hope you can read it. It's a little small, but I'll do my best to kind of walk you through it. I won't read every line item, but if you look at that kind of first dark gray band that goes across, that kind of gives you... Do you guys have enough? Okay, it's not loaded on here. I don't know how to, how do I load it on? Not that one, sorry. The one that you have there, yep. Thank you. Okay, I'll do my best to kind of walk us through it here. Oh, boy. So this bar that comes across kind of helps us understand what we're looking at. So new fire station cost, again, that 19,000 square feet. This tells you by division all these different types of material costs come across and they add up, right? And then we get to this number. So this is all kind of the physical materials that will be on site. So the general all trades number. And then we get into some soft costs, things like permit fees, things like contingency fees. These are all soft costs below that line. So you can look at these all as kind of almost the union trades that will come out and do the work, all have a number that's represented here. And then if you divide it by the square footage, you can get kind of a general cost per square foot. so that's again new fire station is number one next we have village hall renovation so there's certain things that aren't in scope or not part of the project that are that are cleared out and then that small thousand foot square foot sorry thousand square foot addition that we're looking at uh is added there as well so same idea all these different csi divisions come across and add up so IT'S A LOT OF NUMBERS, BUT IT'S VERY THOROUGH. AS MAYOR KLEIN INDICATED, THESE ARE THINGS WE DEAL WITH ON A DAILY BASIS, BUT THE COST OF MATERIALS HAS BEEN FLUCTUATING WITH FUEL PRICES AND THINGS, SO THESE FOLKS AT CEC&E, THIS IS THEIR DAILY JOB, THEY KEEP TRACK OF THAT, THEY'RE TALKING TO THE TRADES, AND THEY BID THEIR OWN JOBS AS WELL, SO THEY'RE THE ONES THAT ARE KIND OF FOLLOWING THIS ON A DAILY BASIS. So as we come down to the bottom, you'll start to see some of the total numbers for the project as we come across. So total fire station costs, you know, the hard costs, something that we call hard costs in the industry of, you know, the materials alone is around $9 million, $9,200,000. Once we add in those soft costs, we get up to about 12.8 million for the new fire station. So that's kind of all things included. There's a few things here that just we don't have a good number yet. But in general, that's what we're looking at for construction costs for the new fire station. Coming across to the village hall renovation, we're about 4.4. And then for the addition is about $600,000. So all in, $17.9 million is the total project cost for all three . Yes? So some of these things how we deliver the project. So first one here, construction change order contingency. That's something that I think I'm dying again. A lot. Yeah, and it's a good thought. So a lot of these sewer and tap fees, some of those sort of things just aren't going to be relevant for the project. Soils testing, some of those items just won't be appropriate for the project that we're doing. Furniture, we're going to need furniture for sure. So that's something that we could think about as it goes forward. But it's not uncommon for that to be a separate cost. You can depreciate furniture in a different kind of way than you can a building. So a lot of times it's smart to take that out of this budget.

In some capacity, yes. The FF&E fixture furnishings and equipment is going to be in a separate budget. We have been putting money away for several years to pay for that stuff and basically for replacement and addition. So it's not included in the budget for the construction.

Okay. You're still going to need it.

Good evening. Is that on? Okay. Matt Stuzinski, I serve as the village's municipal advisor. So I just wanna make sure I understand the question. Is the question, how are we gonna pay for it? Or is the question, what is this really gonna cost when all said and done? Mayor, I don't know that I can address what it's going to cost when it's all said and done. There's your $18 million estimate, contingencies, things of that nature, depending on how the bidding process and all that works.

I'm waiting for my microphone to come back up. Yes, as I said, some of these pieces have already been set aside to come out of other sources of funds that we have already addressed in past years that we knew we were going to do a project, we just didn't know what that project was going to be. So that money has been set aside, sequestered for our use. The plan here is looking at what is the bricks and mortar going to cost residents of the village to build. That's why we needed to get to this number. That's why this whole exercise was undertaken to develop a cost for a brick and mortar building project for a renovated village hall and a new fire station. That having been said, the objective was to fund it in one bond issue so that we don't have to come back to the voters again three years down the road when we're able to start the other project. So we've baked into the project the Village Hall project that will come later, that potential future cost that will be associated with the build for this building. So that brings us to this $18 million number, if you will, that we're looking at, and then that will break down into what millage we need to raise in order to develop this project. And Matt can address that.

Thank you, Mayor. So again, good evening. Keep in mind, this is designed to be financed all with debt issuance. So $18 million is contemplated as the financing vehicle to fund this $18 million project. And keep in mind that when we think about financing, everything we do at the Village here is guided by the principles of the Ohio Revised Code, state law, federal tax law, and local law. And by that I mean not only local laws, it relates to the Board of Elections, but State Board of Elections. So we have to, different than your personal finances or corporate finances, we operate under separate rules, and more rigid rules in many ways than personal and commercial. There are, as the Mayor mentioned, thinking about $18 million, how might we finance that? Village has entertained four options. As the Mayor mentioned, option one being a voted bond issue. I'll go into all of these, but I'm gonna focus on the voted bond issue. The other three would be an increase in the Village's, and by the way, on a voted bond issue, residents and business alike pay a fair share towards the debt service to repay that bond. Option two would be an increase in the village's income tax, which would also be shared by the residents and the businesses who operate here in the village. Option three would be a reduction in the village's income tax credit that it offers to residents who work outside the village. Currently, the village offers a 100% income tax credit if you work elsewhere in the county or elsewhere in the state but live here in the village of Orange. The third option would be an increase, a property tax increase by way of a permanent improvement fund. The Village has a current permanent improvement fund that it levies annually. It's continuous in nature and that could be increased or a new permanent improvement levy could be added either for five years or continuous. The village has focused on a voted property tax levy called a bond issue, basically for purposes of issuing a specific timeline that you would determine the dollar amount of annual debt service, and you'd levy millage for a period of time that that bond issue is outstanding. That would have to go to the residents, residents would vote on that, It would, depending on the final composition of all the construction materials, it would likely be capped at a 30-year duration, and that would be added to your property tax and the commercial property tax for 30 years to repay the debt service on $18 million worth of financing, of bonds that would be issued. The Village does have the luxury of issuing tax-exempt bonds. The Village has a very strong bond rating. It's AA2 by Moody's. There's only two rating categories higher than that, AA1 and AAA, and that's out of 13 investment-grade categories. So the Village just has a very attractive financial profile. These bonds would be, if approved by the residents, And keep in mind, when we think about debt financing, no different than your personal lives. We think about what's the revenue stream we have available first to determine how much debt we can issue. All right, so we look at revenues. And those were the four revenues I mentioned. Bond issue, ballot. Income tax, ballot. Income tax reduction, council can do that by its own authority. or a permanent improvement levy, which would have to also go to the ballot. So three out of four of them have to go to the ballot. And I'm sure council would tend to, would prefer to go have the vote of the residents and the support of the residents in this endeavor than to have to retreat to something like an income tax credit. Most communities would opt for that, would lean towards that option. So the village has contemplated, number one, a voted bond issue, likely for 30 years. And in that scenario, we reverse engineer this. We basically say we want to generate enough monies annually to pay for an $18 million bond issue, which is gonna be repaid over 30 years. And rough estimates I can give you currently. If we were to issue an $18 million bond issue for 30 years at 5%, which I'm going to use as a high rate for the moment. In fact, 20-year bonds likely sold in a 4% total, but I'm gonna use a high rate at 5%, because who knows what can happen. In that scenario, the annual debt service on a 30-year bond issue would be about $1,170,000. That dollar amount would have to be generated annually by way of property tax borne by the residents in the village. And in order to do that, we'd have to levy basically 3.9 mills would have to be assessed to the property owners of the village annually for 30 years. 3.9 mills. annually. Now, in fact, I'm not going to go into great detail on this. At the end of the day, the value of the village, in general, goes up and down. Typically, it goes higher. All right? So, typically, you would see the millage decline as the values go higher, a new value comes online. But it would, generally speaking, be about that over a period of 30 years, roughly 3.9 mils per year. Now... You betcha. You betcha. Good question. So 3.9 mils. Oh, I have it, Mary. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Each mil on $100,000 cost you $35. All right? So 3.9 times 35 on a $100,000 home is roughly $136, if my math is right. For a $100,000 home, 3.9 mils, $136 per year. Do the math. $200,000 home is $272,000. Just do the multiples of that for whatever million dollar homes you live in currently. I'm not being facetious. I know that the burden is high at 3.9 mills, but this is an important project to the community. 3.9 mils, again, based upon 30 years, you can do the math and say at $500,000, it's basically $630 per year. And that would be levied each year for 30 years. I'll stop, answer any questions. Please. Same, same. Oh, I. So I could not answer that question, but I would tell you this. The entire assessed valuation of the village is $304 million, okay? Now, if you want to reverse engineer that, the total market value of the village is 304 million divided by .35, okay? So it's roughly three times 304. It's roughly a billion dollars, the market value of the village, okay? You tell me what that commercial value is worth. Yeah, and I don't know. I don't know what that's worth. I mean, when Pinecrest was suggested was going to be built, Mayor, I think the number was $250 million or thereabouts is what Pinecrest was scheduled to be worth. Well, the residential, yeah, the residential and all that, again, we're mixing commercial and residential, but the commercial component of that... was roughly $250 million. And that's going off an old man's memory, so please do not trust me on that. But if my memory serves me correctly, it's in that neighborhood. So they will share, and they will share a burden of the same as residents and the same exact equivalency, except for the fact that keep in mind Commercial business, commercial tax is slightly higher than residential tax. So in fact, they do have a higher burden than the residents when it comes to property tax implementation. I have no idea. It all depends on what's built there, right? So it was, it has been adjusted lower. Pinecrest, after COVID, Pinecrest was adjusted lower, so I don't want to hold you, but it has a smaller value. But to your point, it's a significant portion, that which is commercial at Pinecrest, that which is south of Pinecrest on Harvard South, that which is on the corridors between Chagrin and Harvard, right? That's a fairly sizable commercial area. They pay their fair share. So everybody can determine whether or not it's fair share, but that is a portion paid by the commercial district. Yes? Sure, sure. So if a $100,000 home, yeah, a $100,000 home will pay 3.9 mils, Okay, and that equates to $136 per year for $100,000. And that's the market value, not the assessed value. The assessed value of $100,000 home is actually 35% of $35,000. Nonetheless, market value, $100,000 home is $136. And just like I said, do the math on that by way of multiples.

The interesting thing about the commercial real estate tax versus the residential real estate tax is if we look at just Pinecrest for the example, the only residents, if you will, who have a vote on this are those who live in the apartment buildings. All of the stores and offices and other facilities don't vote on it. But they get assessed the tax. So there's a pretty significant contribution that they're making without having the ability to weigh in on it. Not altogether. There's a significant portion of it. I think more go to the hotels than go to the... But it's part of the commercial. It's part of the commercial, John. John?

Correct.

No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. Let me be clear.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, no, no. I'm saying the market value of the calculation is $100,000 market value, right? And if you do what you're describing as the taxable value, the assessed value by way of the county, that equates to $35,000. Assessed value of your home at $100,000 by way of the county is 35% of your market value. Okay? So $35,000 times 1 mil .001 equals $35. So 35 times 3.9 gets you to 136. I hope I'm explaining, because I understand that can be confusing to folks. But it's a $100,000 market value. Yeah. Assess value versus market value. Yeah. Please. Yeah. Nothing, nothing, you don't have any, well we have a special assessment for trails, that's not, that's not, we have, okay, that's not that though. I think the question was what other debt are we using for millage and the answer is you don't. There are some small debts that are outstanding that are being, are special assessments for improvements that were made for specific areas in the village and those are being paid back by the residents. The village has some debt outstanding that was issued by way of the Pinecrest Agreement to put the trails in. That was done by way of a special assessment. That's $5 million worth of bonds that were issued that are being paid back by Pinecrest for the trails. So that's not millage that you're paying either. The village has no debt that you are currently assessed property tax millage on, okay, none. Does that answer your question? So you're using the term debt service, and I want to be clear that what I think you're trying to say is, do you pay millage to the Village of Orange? The answer is yes. Yes, you do. It's about 10 cents on the dollar of what you pay the village in terms of your overall current property tax bill. That's what you pay to the Village of Orange. And that is for the permanent improvement levy. And that is for millage that was passed back in 1933, where the Constitution of the State of Ohio allowed the village to levy certain millage. As it did every community in all of Ohio, the village currently levies that millage as well. So there is a portion of your property tax going to the Village of Orange, it's small relative to the county, and of course the schools are the largest component. I hope that helps. Sure. Mayor, can I answer that because it's not a comedy bit when I say this, okay? I say it this way. This country was built on tax revolt, okay? The history of this country, 250 years ago, there has never been a good time to put a levy on the ballot in the history of this country as far as I'm concerned. I've only been doing this for 45 years. But rarely has there been a perfect window to ask taxpayers to raise their taxes. Because we built this country on tax revolt. And it's never been higher than in Ohio, at least in my experience, than it is today with folks like ourselves, we're all in this, saying it's a bad time to levy more millage, right? I completely understand. My guidance to every community I work for, and I work for about 30 in Northeast Ohio, is whether or not the schools are on the ballot, And I know it's competition for resources from every resident in the community. It always is a competition. Whether or not it's property tax or income tax, it's competition for resources to fund government. That's our business, it's allocation of resources. But I would tell you, if you wait for the right window, it never comes. There's always something else that you can compete with. And if you wait for the schools to give you a clear path, I'm just telling you, you may wait forever. And I don't know that you can wait forever. And I'm sorry to be so flippant about it. It's just I've had that question answered or asked over and over again in my career. And I think the answer is you have to try and see what the temperature of the residents are. And that will be your guide as to whether or not you proceed this time or multiple times. Because you can only get there once. I mean, you can only ask. And you can go back to the ballot and ask multiple times, but you cannot wait over and over again to try to find the clear path. There just is no clear path. Sorry if I was flipping about it, but I... No, I understand that. I understand that. That's always an option. That's always a possibility. The residents will make a decision as to what they think is a priority, irrespective of what they're competing with. Please.

I think that's a really great question on which to end this. I really appreciate everybody's time this evening. I know there may be some questions you might still have. We're happy to stick around and talk about them. But I'd like to release the class. To that point specifically, we pay taxes for the things that we value. in our communities. We identify the specific need that we want to address, and then we decide if that's something that's worth our investment. We've all done this in our homes. We've done it in our day-to-day lives and how we conduct ourselves. And what we're asking people to do here is to think about it in the context of our future and our village and what that future's gonna look like for next generation. I try to think in multiple generations about the people who preceded me and what I learned from them and the people who I precede and what I will leave for them. And my hope is that what we will leave for the next generation of Orange residents will be quality facilities that will serve their needs long into the future. And I'm hopeful that with what we've done here in the design of these two buildings and taking this project on, it takes a little bit of chutzpah to do it. And it certainly does in these kind of times. We sat down very early on with the school board because we knew they were going to be coming to the electorate. And we reached a point and said, you know what? we're going to have to do this, and they're going to have to do this, and we'll be on the ballots together. And the communities, the Orange community in particular, because you're the only ones that are burdened with both, are going to have to decide if they want both, or none, or one, or the other. I'm betting on our community thinking that they're going to look to the future and try to build something that will be valuable for ourselves and our posterity. And I thank you all for coming this evening. I appreciate all of the assistance of Chief Roberts, Assistant Chief Mandich, Lieutenant Atwell, and Eric Pross, and of course Matt Stasinski behind me here. So thank you all. I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities going forward to bat this ball around. But you're right.