Council - workshop

all right welcome to the council workshop meeting for tuesday july 28th uh can we get a or i'd like to call the meeting to order a roll call please mr talley here all right First, we have the proclamation for Wurtz Variety Store for 100 years, but I think we're going to... Yep, so thank you, Mayor.

We are going to move that to the future. We are extremely excited to celebrate 100 years, but we want to make sure that representatives from Wurtz can be here, and so we're going to move that to a future meeting.

All right. All right. Next up, we have legislation CM-26-49.

yes thank you mayor uh so cm 2649 so as you can tell through the agenda we're going to kind of break it up into two parts so the first part is really going to be pending legislation that is going to come before you i'd like to bring it forward make sure that you can review it understand it the public can hear about it and then we will bring that forward and then the second half really is just going to be an update portion where we're going to talk through a number of the outstanding things that are going on in the community and so we can give updates on those items if the village council has questions we can answer those questions and if the public has any questions on any of those items we certainly can try to address those here as well So this portion, the legislation, CM 2649, is a resolution that will come forward. I don't believe it will come forward in August. It will probably come forward in September. It is what allows us to apply for the OPWC, the Ohio Public Works Commission State Capital Program. So if you will recall, the Village has been successful in receiving OPWC funds for different projects over the years. I'm going to throw it at Ben. How many projects have we received OPWC funds? Like, we get them every other year, maybe?

Almost.

Every year, I believe. Either through, yeah, I think you can look it up.

So generally, what I would like to get us onto is a consistent pattern of requesting OPWC funds. Those funds are usually matching funds. You can go up to about a half a million dollars on the majority of those projects. And so those are grants. right so OPWC will grant you that fund so it's a great way to make our money go farther and so this request will be to move forward with a project to be funded as of now we are not certain which project that is we have three projects that we're considering and it is very likely that it will be one of two the third one being the wastewater treatment facility we're not there to talk about that in terms of funding yet so that is likely not going to be the one and then there's two other projects that are under consideration so this will come back before you formally in september to authorize me to enter into an agreement to apply for or to excuse me to enter the application to apply for the opwc funds Are there any questions on OPWC or that potential legislation?

Thank you.

Ben or Jill, did I miss anything? They're trying to come up with a number. Maybe you'll have a number at some point.

Sorry.

It's OK. Yeah, that's it. So that's the only item that is for consideration that we have currently that will be coming before you at some point in the future.

Thanks. Next we have public comment. Anybody from the public? Alright, I see none, so next we move on to discussions and updates. First being Stillwater Crossings updates.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. So what you'll see within your packet is a number of items to try to go over and talk through. The first one in your packet is Stillwater Crossing. As I noted, I have yet to meet with the developer. I actually am meeting with them on Thursday. So I will say, unfortunately, I can't provide as many updates as I would like to. will have more information after my meeting on Thursday so at workshop in August this item will still be on our workshop and I will give you many more updates but a couple of the items I just want to make sure that we publicly talk about that we are intending to address or get solutions for obviously the paving of the roads we're well aware of the dirt pile on folly sidewalk construction throughout the location. Then some other things that I think are important that we're going to continue to talk through is the future components on Stillwater Crossing South, which includes the Rachel Ann and State Route 571 intersection, Ittings Road, and then the overall replatting of that to make sure that it is meeting all of our planning and zoning requirements. So those are the major components we're going to be talking about on Stillwater Crossing South. Stillwater Crossing North, there's a lot less that is finalized. And so we're going to be talking about the development agreement, which is the document that obligates the developer to do something. The cooperative agreement, which is the document that obligates the funds that we have passed So to give you the quick history, as I'm sure all of you are aware, but maybe the public isn't, maybe the public is, we have passed legislation that authorized the expansion of the CRA, which is a tool that allows for abatement of property to be expanded to the north side. We've passed legislation that authorizes the TIF, which is the tax increment financing mechanism on the north side. But the cooperative agreement is the actual legislation that authorizes the money that we bring in to pay off the bonds that we are taking. And so that has not been passed yet. And that will be the final piece that we will talk through about the financing for the north side. What I will tell you is those are the major components. I will have much more information and be able to address those more clearly at the next meeting. I have talked not just with Ron and Jason, who have been before Village Council many times to have those conversations, have asked them to be at the workshop in August so after we have that conversation I'd like them then to come and speak on their behalf in terms of where where they are updating us on some of the other individual components of that as I think everyone is aware if you're not they have come to a final agreement with Irwin brothers on this on the south side so there is a gas station component that is looking to be go through our planning process and be authorized on the south side but they then could bring forward any additional individual tenants that they're looking at or future development partners that they're looking at as i can't speak to those yet if if i have more information by next month i will certainly speak to those as well so with that um the final piece of that is i'm going to really put together a timeline and a path for us to talk through what the south side and the north side looks like and how we can make sure that we can address the comments and concerns that we receive from residents internally whether that's maintenance issues or whether that's future investment in those areas we want to be able to express that clearly to our community so those are all the questions i'm going to be asking unfortunately tonight is not my ability to give you many answers because i have yet to meet with the developer but i will do so and after after i do that as i do with the majority of things you'll see before you we will put together a report and make sure that everybody has that and if there are additional questions that we can address we'll certainly make sure we get that in there as well yep thanks all right next we have new community authority membership appointments So this is kind of a continuation of that concept. The one legislation piece that we passed that I didn't note is the new community authority. For those that are not members of Stillwater Crossing, you may not know this, but the new community authority was created by legislation. It puts a nine mil levy upon every home and every business that lives or works within that subdivision. That then goes into a fund for the new community authority to utilize. Their actual only obligation is to pay off debt. So part of that debt service kind of stack of money. But they are a board. They have a separate board from the village. and they are able to authorize the expenditures beyond which as of now as I noted there are no expenditures beyond but they are given the authority if and when someday the new community authority has other duties this board would be authorized to make those decisions As of now, as I noted, they really have no role other than to meet once a year and authorize the expenditures of which are to pay down the bonds which are obligated of them. i say all that because there are members that represent the village so as i note in my staff report the new community authority is made of a number of members by legislation one of which is the village manager so this question came up obviously jeff is still on the board i my understanding is that he has no interest in staying there as the position would be so we would ask the board to replace him with myself also our previous mayor is on there but he is actually not a government position he is actually just the citizen position so he would need to resign if we were then to replace him with someone so that is not something that the village can do per se but those two positions obviously are no longer village positions so we wanted to make sure we brought that up to you so you understand we're going to work with them to try to make sure that we replace them with two village representatives as intended

So we have to get Scott Hurst to resign and Jeff to resign?

Correct. They, as individuals, would have to resign. Now, the position, again, that Jeff holds is specifically related to the village. And since he is no longer related to the village, that one is a little easier. Scott's is different because his is more as a citizen of the community. So he would have to resign. And obviously, if he wants to. If he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to. But it's just different.

All right. I can call them. All right, next we have strategic plan creation.

Okay, this is a fun one. This is the big one, right? So in your packets, you're going to see the strategic plan purpose, vision, and values. This is going to be a long speech. I need a little something there. So if you look, the goal as all seven of you, five of you tonight, but as when we talked when I was hired, one of the goals that I believe our community needs is a plan that clearly articulates what we're trying to achieve internally and how we're going to achieve it externally. So the community can see what we're doing, why we're doing it, and then what we're trying to get out of that effort. So this strategic plan effort, what the goal of it is, is to take our vision statement, which we've already done. We did that as part of our comprehensive plan process. We created a vision. So I'm gonna read you the vision that we created in 2022. Now, again, we may say to ourselves, This isn't our vision anymore, but this is our vision from 2022 and it's West Milton is a welcoming, cherished community with a unique history, eclectic character and pristine natural areas. The village seeks to preserve its vibrant community spirit with dynamic housing, employment and recreation that foster a sustainable place for all now and in the future. west milton embraces innovation and investment to enhance the quality of life for our residents visitors and businesses so that is our vision right and so when you do vision statements a lot of the time it doesn't become anything it's just words and so this strategic plan is intended to take that vision and apply the values that we have created internally. All of you know, the seven of you know, one of my first efforts was to get information from all of our council, talk to our department heads, and try to take all that, put it together, and create values that we can argue for, right? And so what you're gonna see within the strategic plan is four main values. The Village of West Milton will always keep the nostalgic pride that our community has for our buildings, our events, and our small town feel. The Village of West Milton will be transparent and openly communicate with its residents and businesses. The Village of West Milton will make decisions that support the next generation of Miltonians through innovation, sustainability, and collaboration. joy the village of West Milton will create places within our community that allow social gathering recreation and a unique sense of place those are our four values right so then what we can do then we take our vision we take our values and we create goals so it's a lot easier to come up with goals when you know what you're trying to believe in right and so if we say we believe in these things we then need to go through and create individual value goals for each one of those so what you'll see within your packet is some examples of statements that we want from commission or excuse me from council from the public from our department heads to be able to tell our story and know whether or not we are meeting what our expectations are for ourselves evening hi good i'm in the strategic plan part okay that's on page 781 of your packet okay

I like it. I'm there.

That's not true. It wasn't 781 pages, but I don't know how many it was.

Like 580.

I don't know what page it was, but it's somewhere in the middle of there. And so what I gave you is examples. And what I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask council and I'm going to ask the public to give us examples that we can then put in here in our final document, right? So an example of tradition is we have strong community pride with annual traditions and events. when looking at development growth and opportunities we will always keep our traditions in mind right so that's just a statement but it's something that we can always think about as we make decisions right we are proud of our parades rock the hill in our fourth of july event when deciding new events we should make sure those traditions are kept strong right so we say those things are valuable to us that's a tradition we care about and we want to grow those things without you know stopping ourselves from doing other things Please. And by the way, this doesn't have to be just me talking. Please, go whatever you need.

In the statement about the events, I love that. It's amazing. Can we add the fall fling in there?

We can add whatever we want. That's the great part about this process.

That's perfect. Because that's one of our, like, that's a really good big event. So I...

I guess if I didn't say it, what I would love for this evening to be is a conversation about how we can make this better. I want very much for us to finalize this so we can utilize it for all the decisions we make, but I want to make sure that it means something to us, that it means something to the council, it means something to the public, it means something to our department heads, and that it's achieving whatever we want it to achieve. If this takes us months, it takes us months, but we have to start somewhere. And so again, what you're going to see is some things to start and we go from there, right? So I will add that in there. And if that language doesn't work at the end, we'll make it what you guys want. The next one, just some examples from accountability. We will prioritize transparency with all decisions and actions by the Village. We will manage our financials with fiscally conservative principles and assure that we reflect a balanced budget annually. We will communicate with the public through multiple outlets including social media, website, local newspapers, and word of mouth to try and reach as many people as possible within our community. Value three is legacy. Some of those would be when making decisions, we will not just think about the short-term gain, but think about the impact these decisions will make to create a more beneficial future for our residents and businesses. We will always try to create a community that incentivizes the next generation to want to come back to West Milton if they leave, or to convince those that have left to want to come back. We understand that how our community is viewed from those who live here is the most important part of how we do business. We want to attract new people to come to our village, but we will always focus on how we can continue to build our community up for those who have already chosen to live here, whether that is for one generation or many more. That's our legacy. and then joy. We will always prioritize creating a community that people want to live, visit, and enjoy. We believe that our geographic location is something special, and we will always focus on creating connections between the Stillwater River, Community Park, and our downtown to allow the community to enjoy these spaces and connections. We want to create social gathering places throughout our community for people to meet, to meet each other, enjoy food or drinks, and to just look at the beautiful environment. So again, those are statements for each of those values. Those statements then, this is the whole thing guys, right? We're still going, this is the next step. We're gonna take those statements and then you're gonna see the next page on page 16 that you'll see through the strategic plan is we're gonna create the framework. So we take all those things and those things allow us to grow, change and improve while continuing to keep our traditions in small town feel, And I say all of that as the backdrop for the stuff that the 99% of people will care about, which is the goals and benchmarks, right? So now what can we do with all that information? We can take it and we can tell people, this is what we're gonna do and why we're gonna do it. And this is what you can do to see whether we did what we said we would do. right so when you get into goals and benchmarks people care about different categories so we've got financial project and operational and really what that means is money projects that happen, things that happen to the community, and internal things that we can do to provide our citizens better services or to be better, efficiently better than what we were yesterday. And then timelines. How long is it going to take you? Is this a one-year thing? Is this a five-year thing? Is this a never going to happen thing? Hopefully none are never going to happen things. That's the whole goal of this. But then you're gonna get to the last couple pages and this is, I know I've zoomed. So if once we get here, if you wanna go back or if I'm going too quick, let me know. We provide our goals, right? So we've laid out financial goals, which are like big buckets. and then we have benchmarks and achievements which are how we fill our bucket right so if our bucket says we want to expand the tax base right that is one of our financial goals that allows us to help our community keep prices down by expanding our tax base how do we do that what does that look like one of our goals or one of our benchmarks would be bring new businesses to the community commercial and or industrial right by doing that we expand our tax base Build new homes. More people, expand our tax base. Incentivize new job creation in the village to help businesses join the community. We grow a little bit. Create a development playbook that details incentives and economic policies of the village. So I know some of our goals internally as part of the council were to try to make a playbook idea where we would say, look, if you want to come here, this is what you do. And so that helps us expand our tax base. And again, I want to be clear. These are not the be all and end all. This is our conversation to start here. So when you look at these things or if the public hears these things and you have ideas of ways that we can justify the expand the tax base or the ways that you feel like we should be, let's add them, right? Financial goal two, balance the budget, reduce debt obligations. What is a way to do that? We have a transparent open budget process that includes a budget committee. Easy. Schedule projects that require debt when grants or low interest loans are available. So if we're ever going to take out debt, we need to do it in consideration of as much grant money or other people's money as we can. There is no time that we should just take out debt and it just be the village's debt. That means that we have not thought through the process enough to say we – There's always money available. So if we aren't going to be able to think about it in a long enough term to get other people's money, we shouldn't just use our own. We should use the state's money, local money, federal money, whoever else's money. It's going somewhere else. We should try to get it here if we're going to do a project and take debt. We need to create a debt payoff plan that includes short-term and long-term debt. So we have money of those, but we need to make it clear how we're going to pay off the debt obligations that we have. Again, that's financial goal number two. Financial goal number three, make the village finances more accessible. So create a document for the public to understand the full financial structure of Stillwater Crossing. That one in and of itself, that's a question we get a lot. Publish the financial report monthly at our regular village council meetings. So we're doing that. We're going to make it clearer at every single meeting. The public will know where our financial position is. Those are our financial goals, the three that we have, right? We can definitely add more, we can add more benchmarks, achievements. Project goals, enhance the park experience in West Milton. So then we go through benchmarks, create a parks master plan that clearly defines each park, its amenities and future goals. In the community park, complete the projects, including the park pavilion, restrooms, concession stand, resurface tennis, pickleball, basketball courts, complete the walking trail downtown, Founders Park, create a plan for that park. These are all things that would enhance our overall goals dealing with our parks. Project goal two, improve infrastructure throughout the village. Create an annual pavement program that includes mill and overlay, curb replacement, ADA curbs, and other surface treatments. Make it public so people know. Create a sidewalk replacement program. We've talked about this, it's my understanding, for many years. What does that look like? How do we implement that? Implement the vacant property ordinance that we've talked about. Get parking agreements with private property owners to improve parking lots downtown. Allow us to share in the cost of creating parking so people can use it. Have roadways within Stillwater Crossing paved. That's easy. Create a GIS map and capital replacement plan for all water, sewer, storm lines within the village. So we have internally done a lot of that, but externally we're not sharing what we've done and what our plan is and how we plan to achieve that. Project goal three, update and digitize codes, plans, and maps. So plan one, adopt a comprehensive plan, right? That's one of the long-term tasks that I have that is going to be done in the short term, right? So I intend, and I will get to that here in the next, once we're done with this, to bring you a timeline for a comprehensive plan adoption, a development zoning code adoption, which is the next one, and then to make all of our maps easier to understand. I've gotten a call, I've been here officially one month and one day, and I can't tell you that I have not gotten a call every week asking about what the zoning is on a property, right? Because we don't have a map online, right? So some of that is us making it easy for the public to be able to understand our codes with the development code update, understand what you can do, where can my fence go, understand all those things without having to have our staff interpret it, right? A lot of that is because it's hard. When you look at our code, it's a bunch of pages that are not easy for normal people to look at. So we need to make it easier for people to be able to digest at any level. Project goal four, create economic development opportunities for development. So work with retail strategies to implement policies and incentives to increase business interest. Work with downtown strategies to implement festoon lighting in alleyways. Hire an engineering or planning firm to help vision downtown. Create aerial images and marketing materials to better communicate what amenities our community has to outside businesses and the development community. Focus on preservation of the downtown buildings and consider the national and state registers of historic places. Attempt to get certified local government status and or building registration. Get business in Stillwater Crossing. Make available properties to outside developers through the website and JobsOhio. Again, those are all things that we could do. We can add more, we can take some of those out. And then last but not least, the organizational goals. Increase the quality of existing services. So this again is internal to us. So increase maintenance of downtown sidewalks, curbs, and open spaces. Increase code enforcement efforts along major thoroughfares and become more consistent with our overall plan for code enforcement. Assure that everyone in the village is treated evenly and fairly throughout that process. Create tools for better public communication, like our website, social media, and other applications. Clarify the brand of the village, including consistent messaging, design, and visuals. So that again is the quality of the services that we provide. Goal number two, create new and update old systems and tools to become more efficient. We are in a world where a person always is going to cost more than a system, right? So if we can become more efficient, we can become less necessary to have more people. Not that I don't love having as many people as we have, and I certainly am very appreciative of our staff, I'll say that over and over again. Our staff is amazing. But I also understand that we cannot continue to grow with people because that costs a lot of money, right? So if we can be more efficient with our dollars and update our systems, we are hopeful that we can do more with less, which is a terrible, terrible saying, but it is what it is, right? Which is another terrible saying.

That's two in a row.

Good. So the ways that we do that is digitize all records and create internal network sharing of files that allow faster response to the public. So for me, if somebody calls and I have to look at a piece of paper, I have to call them back. If I have it at my fingertips, I can be quicker and respond faster to the public. digitizing all our maps updating our policies and procedures our staff will tell you that the number one thing that i have said over and over is that i'm a policy and procedure person and so we are going to make sure that we get all those updated so we are consistent and fast in the way that we do everything publish the code of ordinances on the american legal publishing website right make it possible for everyone to understand everything that we do right that that every ordinance that we've passed should be in that american legal publishing system so you can just type it in and see it right make sure it's easy we want to create a business registry i want to know every single business that we have and make sure that they feel loved because we're appreciative of the effort that they've made to invest in our community execute shared agreements between the village and organizations within west milton to clarify those relationships I believe very strongly that we can shake hands. It's important to look at somebody in the eye and shake their hand. But at the end of that shaking of the hand, I want an agreement that makes sure that you and I both agree of what we just shook hands on. And so I've found we need to be better at that. We need to work with our partners and we need to make sure those relationships are public and clear so everybody knows what our goals and efforts are jointly. And then last but not least, It's a good one. Create clarity and consistency throughout the organization. So this one is really, it's at all levels. We want to implement policies and procedures to create consistent meetings, bidding, documents, and permits. So that's a liability thing, makes it easier. Update the charter. Our village charter was obligated to be updated every 10 years. Our 10 year was in 2025. We need to update our charter. We need to go through that process in 2027. Adopt updates to the personnel policy and administrative policies to assure internal staff understand expectations and their rights as employees in the organization. Some of that is we did update our policies. Obviously, now I'm here, so I have some ideas on how to do that and make sure that we're growing as an organization and investing in our people, but making sure they understand the expectations that we have. And then update our organizational chart and reflect upward mobility and succession planning. One of the biggest things that I have seen and that I believe in is clarity in where you stand. I want every one of our employees to understand that we want them to grow. We want them to grow upwards and get better. The more efficient our employees are, the better our employees are, the better they serve our public right and that's what we want and i want to make sure that our organizational chart reflects that so when you become a maintenance worker one you can see what a maintenance worker two and a maintenance worker three and a maintenance worker 76 which is what ben is considered what it takes to get all the way from one to 76 in the list so you can see kind of the effort that it takes but you can see that it's worth staying with us and growing with us because someday, you know, you can be that, right? And we want to know that because from a succession planning, we have a lot of staff who have been here and have given their time, effort, and heart to this community for many, many years. And for that, we are forever grateful, but that will not be forever, right? And we need, you know, I can't hire seven people to replace Ben. I'd love to, but I can't, right? That's what it's going to take. If you all don't know that, that is just a straight up not, it's a fact. And so in the end, we need to make sure that we've got a creation, whether it's in the service side, the police side, whether it's in the administrative side, that we understand what that pathway is and how you can grow with us. We want you to stay here forever. But if you don't, we understand that too. You need to understand where you can go and where you can't go in our organization. And that requires an organizational chart that is clear. I talked a whole lot.

So can I interrupt and let you take a breath? It's not interrupting. I would like you down to, yeah, please. I just want to say to anyone listening, Kyle started on June 29th.

I was one month and one day.

And this is what I have sat in meetings for a year and a half and asked for this information because it is really hard for us to know where we're going if we don't have a map. And this map, like I'm sitting here and I'm just like jumping up and down, doing, you know, cartwheels in my head, getting goosebumps from talking about the legacy and joy. What a cool, cool thing for our village. And I know this is a lot of information, but it's publicly available. So you can look at it and read through it and print it and write notes and ask questions, which is absolutely phenomenal. So I just want to say thank you for this. I'm watching stuff and they're just like, this, this is a yes, yes. And I'm going, yes, like,

We gotta get it adopted too. So let's like, well, yeah, I appreciate that. And I think what I hope comes across from this is I want us to be special. And I mean that from every level. And I believe that West Milton is special. And I think there are people who, understand that but maybe don't know how to say it and i think we need to help people say what is unique about us and that's you're going to hear me say that we need to lean in all the time we need to know to do that and this allows us to say who we are this allows us to express that in ways that maybe we're not able to do clearly but Unless we do this, right? Because I can tell you right now, if you're going and talking to your friend, you're not going to be like, did you know strategic value seven is this? Like, you're never going to do that. But you're going to know it in your mind. Like, yeah, we kind of believe in the tradition of our community. That's what we believe in. And that's a good thing. so yeah again i appreciate that greatly but i want to get it adopted so i want the public i want i want council i want everyone to make sure that we're all on that page and i know we will not agree on all of these if you look through these and the the seven six of you seven in the future like we'll see all the stuff that you sent me i hope you see some of those things in here right like i mean everyone got a bit of something that you wanted in here, right? And so what I would ask is that we change it, adopt it, feel it out, and make sure that we all feel good about these things. And I will say to the public, it's then your job to also give us those things too. If there are things that you want us to achieve, I need to know that. Because if we don't know that you want us to achieve it, then don't hold us accountable to it. We want to be held accountable. Now, again, we may not agree. We may not be able to achieve all the things that you want. If you want us to pave every road in this town, it's going to cost us, what are we, like, $78 million? Something. I mean, you know, it's not that we don't want to. It's that we don't have $78 million. So we have to prioritize. And that's, again, what this is trying to do is to make sure we can express to people that we can chew gum throw a Frisbee in the air, dribble a basketball, and walk all at the same time. We're amazing here. We can do it all. We just have to decide what we want to do. Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other thoughts?

I want to clap. I don't know. Does anybody else feel that, Dan? Do you want to give them a round of applause for that?

The public says challenge accepted.

Please. I'm ready to work now. Awesome.

Well, and again, I mean, I will tell you, like, you can pretend like this is mine, but it's yours, right? Like I took, if you don't see what you did in here, I mean, it's what you did. I just took it and put it together. Right. And that's what I'm hopeful that the public can see is, is, is not just your goals, but when we get theirs in there, they can see the thread of what they want. And that's where, again, we're not all going to get what we want. Because other than the Rolling Stones, everybody knows you can't always get what you want. It's just what it is. We're government. We're not able to do it all. We've got to prioritize. But I want to be transparent about that process and make sure people understand it.

All right.

Love it.

Next, we have comprehensive plan finalization.

Yeah. So we went from fun to less fun, but still fun, right? So the comp plan, just to give everyone a quick history, started in 2022. We had a really hot kind of effort there in 22 and 23. We did a lot of, excuse me, survey work. We were at every... event, we saw a lot of people and we took a lot of information in 22-23. We built it into this plan that covers quite a number of topics. So if you haven't seen the draft plan, the draft plan was put together by Collabo, which is the firm that we have hired to help us facilitate this. And that plan incorporates a lot of great stuff. The challenge with that plan, and I think everybody is aware, is that it is now four years old. So a lot of that data from 22 and 23, some of which, like our project list, for an example, we've done them. Congrats to us. So having things that we've done in a future-looking plan doesn't really make sense. So we need to filter through that, get rid of the old stuff, put in the new stuff. So our planning board has reviewed it all. And when they looked at it, they gave a bunch of different comments about how we can try to incorporate some of these future things in. So that includes the work that downtown strategies, retail strategies have done for the village, so on the economic development side. That includes some of our projects that we're now working on. So our capital plan that Ben has worked hard on, those kind of things we need to incorporate differently than what we have. So I have provided a timeline for you of what I intend to do. I want to bring back to you a comprehensive plan that incorporates who we want to be in 2026 by taking some of the data from 2022 and 23, keeping the framework, but really just updating each of those sections to feel fresh because we need a document that's going to talk for the next 20 years. We need it to talk starting today, right? So What I'm going to ask is you're going to see that I've put together a timeline. It is an aggressive timeline, but I believe it's realistic. That timeline incorporates multiple meetings with the planning board to talk through kind of some of these changes. i've worked with collabo i now have the actual document so i'm going to be making internal changes without having to wait a week or whatever to go back and forth and we won't have to pay for those so i'm going to make a ton of these changes and then we're going to take it to the planning board over and over again until we can get it resolved and then we're going to go and buy over and over again this is over like the next couple months right so we're also going to go out in september And we're going to ask the public the same questions, the same questions we asked them in 22 and 23. We're going to get 2026 answers to the same questions. So the framework is still the same. We know what we want to know answers to. But I want to know what Miltonian from 2026 thinks about it, not us prior to now. We're going to update that data. We're going to take it all. We're going to get it in there. We're going to try our best to then go back to the planning board, go back as many times as we need. But I want to get this document adopted by December. it is july um i believe very strongly if you look at that it's july it's august i mean come on now um but if you look at that timeline that i've provided i've shown you every meeting i'm going to bring it back to i believe i can meet that timeline i i think we have to the only challenge is asking the public to take that survey in september right it's going to be open september 1 and it closes september 30 and it's not going until october 1st so if we get seven responses back you know, then if it's just the seven of you, then that doesn't help us all that much. Not that you're not all beautiful, wonderful people. Appreciate y'all. We need, you know, a hundred people. We need a full sample of our community to really get that updated. So that's going to be pressure on us to try to get the community to be active and take that survey. But as long as we get that, I believe we can get that document finalized in December. That's it. Yeah, please.

So how are we going to reach out to the community, the public, and ask these questions that were asked in 22 and 23? Are we going to have this survey on our website? Are we going to go out and talk to people like we did at events? How are we going to do that?

Yep. Both. Glad we had this conversation. Yeah. So, I mean, the answer to your question is we don't have any set events in September that I'm aware of.

The car show.

Car show could be a good one.

And it'd be cool if we have little cards with a QR code.

We are going to use a digital platform. So whether that's SurveyMonkey or something else, we will use a digital platform and we will put the survey there. Now, we will also have hard copies that we will fill out. So if somebody is not digital or doesn't want to be digital, we will have them available. They can come in, take the survey, and we'll put it onto the digital for them. Everything needs to be in the digital because that's how we're going to take the data quickly and make sure that it you know, we're not gonna go one by one, like it's gonna go in there and amalgamate and do things that surveys do in there. But to your answer then, we can get QR codes, we can go to the car show. I'll go anywhere that I can that we have an event. I'm more than happy to be at that event, right? And go, hey, take this survey. Like we'll do whatever we can do. Or I would ask you to too. I'd ask anyone to just tell your friends.

Rock the hills in three weeks.

Yeah, so the challenge with the timeline is it's already really tight. And so getting the survey prepared and everything ready by Rock the Hill feels impossible. I don't want to... I don't want to promise you anything I can't do. What I will tell you is if we can have it ready by then, we will have it ready at Rock the Hill. I just don't want to promise that. I can promise you it'll be ready by September 1. I've kind of backwards my way into the way I think we can get everything done on the timeline. I don't know that I think it can get done before September 1, but that doesn't mean we can't. We've done more amazing things than that. Okay, sure.

Would we be able to do flyers also? Pass out flyers to somebody's store, like, hang up.

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, do it again.

Because I'm willing to walk to do that.

With QR codes, it's very easy. We can just take the survey and stick it in every window that somebody will allow us to put it in. Yeah. Absolutely. And honestly, that's where, if we can get it done by August, if we could, you know, the sooner we can get that, then there's more people that can take it.

Yeah, I'm totally willing to walk and hand out.

So we are going to try our best to follow the organizational structure of this meeting. And at the end of all this, we would do comments. But it's up to council how they want to manage it. If we don't have a ton of comments, it's not like you don't want to take the comments. But if we have 700 people here.

There's Facebook. Yeah, absolutely. And Tom Beck has a pretty good apology.

I will note, Tom has been wonderful and really wants me to do a video that we're gonna put out about stuff, and this may be the perfect opportunity to do that, where we can talk about what it is, why we want people to take it, and again, to your point, try to get that on Channel 5 or whatever, Facebook, all the things. Yeah, for sure, it's a great idea. We'll allow great idea comments. I'm just kidding.

There was a survey that Retail Strategies did.

Yep, and that needs to be involved as well. So again, the goal is to take all the current data and incorporate it. We're going to not just replace the old data. The old data is still going to stay. We're just going to tell a story today So you can see actually, and if there's no difference, that'll be even more interesting if it's exactly the same as it was.

That one was just in the fall.

Yeah, right. And I'm sure that one will be very similar. I don't know the question difference, but I'm assuming that the feeling will be the same. Okay. Yeah. Cool. I can send that if you don't have it. I'm sorry?

I can find that if you don't have it.

Oh, I'm sure I have it. I'll find it. Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you. All right. Next, we have zoning code updates. Yep.

So this is the second item that you guys have tasked me to do that is monumental. The zoning code is, for everyone out there that doesn't know, it is the foundational document that we use to review all regulation in the community. When I say all regulation, I really mean development. So if you want to put up a fence, it's in this code. If you want to build a house, it's in this code. If you want to deal with anything that is on your private property, it is in this code. It does not include things in the public space. So if it's in the public right of way, that's our administrative code. That's a different beast. But this code is intended to cover all of those items. It has not been updated since early 2000s, right? So what we did in 2021 and 2022 is we hired a consultant to help us kind of change it over into the 21st century. That code is what I would argue to be a great start, but it is not comprehensive in all of the development that we need it to be. So what I am suggesting and what you will see me speaking to the planning board about here next month is a request to turn it into a development code. So the difference between a zoning code and a development code is really we're going to incorporate subdivision regulations. We're going to incorporate a lot of things that make it easier for the public to go to one spot and see all of our code instead of having a subdivision regulation code, a zoning code, all these different things that you need to find. It is you go here and you choose your adventure. I go, I need, I'm housed and I want a fence, it's on a corner, what can I do? And so we're gonna make it as easy as we can, but it's gonna require us to reformat and re-imagine a little bit. We're gonna take the data, we're gonna take other codes that exist, and we're gonna go like this, and we're gonna create one for us. I believe very strongly that We don't need to pay anyone for this. I can do this internally. And we will work through getting that adopted by the planning board. I put a schedule together on that one. Although I would love to get this similar to the other ones done before the end of the year, this one's a bit bigger. And we're going to have to go to the planning board more times to make sure that they understand each chunk of this. Thankfully, the planning board has kind of done some of this work. So in terms of their minds, i think that they understand the task at hand in terms of reading and doing all that stuff so i think we could definitely get it done but this is going to be more like a february thing i think when i'm looking at this we could maybe do it sooner than that it's really going to be up to the planning board if they want to have more meetings than one a month we could potentially do it faster, but we're also trying to get the comp plan adopted. So asking five volunteers to spend that much time and put that much heart into it is challenging, right? Like that's not necessarily fair to them to tell them the two biggest things that we have as an organization you need to spend all your life to do. Like that's what I did, right? Like asking the five of them to do it seems somewhat unfair. But again, if they're willing, I'm not going to say we can't do it faster. are there any questions on the zombie code update i don't really have anything specific to talk about yet okay i appreciate your plan thank you and again what i'm going to say with all this stuff is i'm giving you a timeline if anything in that timeline seems unreasonable to you let me know otherwise i've got dates that i'm going to hit and if i don't hit them hold me accountable okay next are park updates perks okay so this one um if you look within your packet you're gonna see the um in my staff kind of report part i'm going through each part i think parks are kind of one of those things that everyone has an interest in and so i think it's important to kind of talk through some of the things we're doing um generally i've said and i kind of even in the strategic plan i've talked about a park plan the more that i get into the comp plan i really believe we're just going to incorporate it into the comp plan because the comp plan already has a bit of a park plan i think we just need to make that a little bit maybe more robust and so i don't know that we need a separate park plan i think the comp plan is going to be awesome i think we just need to make a little more robust so i just want to make that noted because if you never see a park plan or try to find it you're gonna have to go in our company Community Park, I'm meeting with Kevin Harlan, who's with Premier. I'm meeting with him in the next couple weeks to discuss all the different things that they have going on in West Milton, one of which is obviously the pavilion support. So we're going to talk through kind of what that looks like. We need to get together as part of kind of some of those conversations. i've been going through our charter and all the rest of it we need to talk about a parks board i know that maybe that has happened in the past or that we have said we wanted to do it but we haven't implemented it i think that would be helpful in us prioritizing some of what we're trying to achieve and being able to talk through why we want to do the things we want to do and how each of these parks kind of fits into the puzzle Ben has ordered the restroom, correct Ben? Yep, and so that is that building, if you can recall. You wanna explain that one?

Yes, it's a prefab building with dual restroom and updated facilities, ADA compliant. And it's a shame, but it got pushed back due to about 10 different reasons. But it is scheduled to be here this fall, and I just hope it is.

So it'll be here in the fall, so use it as fast as you can before we shut it down for the winter. All right? Get in there. Enjoy it. Use it. Be safe. And then we're shutting it for the winter.

But other than bathrooms, what else will there be in this prefab building? Will there be like a storage meeting room?

Yeah, so the front, basically when you're looking at the front, that'll be the two doors to go into the two separate restrooms. But on the back of the building, there's a door. You go in that door, that's like the mechanical chase, but there'll be room for like if Tom wanted to put in

permanent PA system and you know some smaller like paper storage and that kind of thing so okay but not there's nothing in there like was in the old one that has the concession stand or like in a separate room in there to know no it's just mainly restrooms in a control room and that type of thing okay

And I think that comes back to the understanding all the components of what we want in that park. And so trying to understand, you know, we're removing an element or an amenity. Do we want to ever add that back? What would it take? Where would we put it? I think that's a fair conversation to have. Because the site work for that is done. We've purchased it. It's getting put in. Now's the time to go, well, maybe we want something else, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Found oh, sorry because I think the biggest thing with our park and like right now for example. It's It's it's it's not ideal. It's I think it's kind of dangerous probably at times There's only one entrance And right now it's right there in the area where there's all the construction and it's hectic, it's confusing. So I think our other big task at hand, I know we've talked about it several times down there, maybe by the Founders Park end of coming up with another entrance into the park. uh because one way in one way out is is difficult and i think that would improve things tremendously with the access and people using our park and so forth uh you know looking at that it's a blessing on a saturday that it is so packed you can't get out of there but my goodness if you drive through on saturday there's a canoeer in your way no matter what you do yeah you know i mean it is it's a challenge and so to your point i think

think understanding the future expansion kind of going towards what we in 23 when we opened a little trail there understanding what that park looks like as we kind of go south I think it's really important and access off of some road off of Washington is you know wherever that is getting it down there the grade trying to figure out the grade is probably the biggest challenge that we have is how to do that in a way that is safe to allow people to get in but it's it would be really really

nice to not have to go on 571 to be able to get in and out of the greatest amenity that we have yeah yeah and I do know that there are a couple folks that were on the park board before that are interested if that is started back up so if we decide to start the park board back up I know there's a couple folks already interested so awesome we'll be reaching out then

next is founders park glad you brought that one up so we have surveyed and the design is being formalized for that as of now we don't have a design so we've kind of talked through a number of things and I think my goal is to make sure that for each of our parks we design it and we know what we want so we can put elements in over time that achieve an overall mix for the community so whether that's a rentable shelter whether that's you know an amenity like pickleball court or something else that we want there. Those kind of things, whether it's there or whether it's in a different park, we're clear into what we're gonna be doing. which goes into the J Street Park, which doesn't have a name formally. That is the land that the village purchased, I believe in May, from the school. And as of now, the only name I think that's been suggested is the Old School Park, which is kind of the name that happened for that property that was across the street from there. a couple years ago there was a conversation about that and that was a conversation to be called old school park but we need to name it right we need all of our parks to have names so we can then advertise it and be clear in what that is so that's a conversation we need to have whether that's internal or external uh but it needs a name um and so as we do that as of now you're seeing me refer to it as j street j street park which is it's not a cool name like we could do better i know we can um so that needs to be finalized but um with that um right now again that's similar to founders park we don't have a timeline exactly for the development the full development of that park we're working with the school we're meeting with the school to talk about some fencing issues and so we're going to get that prepared surveyed understood and then we're going to put a plan together and we're going to bring it forward and make sure that everybody understands what we're trying to achieve with that right um And again, what that can look like is probably still out there. We do have quotes. Correct me if I'm wrong, Ben, but we have quotes for the basketball, pickleball, and tennis court resurfacing.

Yeah, we have the initial quotes, which... Basically, we'll have to bid that. And when we do, I think we'll be lower coming in off the pricing on that.

But as of now, that is the only thing we have planned for that park in 2026. So we will have to figure out if there's other things we want, what priority they have

be funded I think the old school park would be great because that's what we threw out to the community they voted on it with the one that was across the street and why why not go with that that's what the public voted on so it's a pretty cool name I think so too I agree I'm on board with it

It can't be new school park, right? It's got to be old school park.

That would be the next part.

The old school. Yeah, there you go.

For us old bulldogs.

Well, I think if that is what we think that it should be called, let's sit on it for a month. And if everybody still agrees in a month, then let's do it. I think in the end, sometimes it's just like you let things marinate a little. And at the end of the day, we're like, it tastes better. Let's do it. If it doesn't, then try something else. Last but not least, it doesn't really have to do with a village park, but we were made aware, the village was made aware of a private party who is looking to do a park in Stillwater or across from Stillwater, actually the property to the south of the Stillwater Crossings development. There is a woman who passed away and it's going to be named after her as a private park. we were reached out to I just want to be clear again from the villages perspective it's not a public park right so if the village is going to get involved or if we're going to in you know do something to facilitate a park it would have to be a public park so that would need to be donated to the village and then the village would potentially accept it and at that point in time there would be something that the village would consider in terms of access or parking lot or any of that until such time that occurs if it's a private thing that somebody is doing, the village wouldn't be involved. So we wouldn't be doing access. We wouldn't be doing a parking lot. The village will not be involved with any public money in a private thing. If it's a public thing that our public has access to, then we could justify using public funds for it. But for a private thing, we would not. So I just want to make sure. I know there's a number of people in Stillwater Crossing who have reached out to me and asked about it. and i believe he put out some mailers or letters about it so again we support the the park as a private uh park that's absolutely wonderful what a kind and generous future uh for that space but if it's not a public facility again we just we can't be involved so i just want to make sure that's that's out there um but again that's my park upstate updates for now all right cool next we have downtown updates yeah so downtown we have as you are all aware we have downtown strategies focusing on our downtown right now so that is a partnership that we have a multi-year partnership that we have with downtown strategies for them to kind of look at our downtown and understand some of the things we're doing and what we can do better and so as we move into the second year of that partnership I asked, they had already put it together, but I asked them to send it kind of the update on what they did the first year. So within the packet, you will see kind of their annual review of their first year, which is just publicly available so you can understand what they've done over a year. And so really at the end of the year, they're really trying to work on a project. And so what we're trying to facilitate is how we can find a project that creates some livelihood downtown that's a little different. And so what it came to is there will be festoon lights that will go up in one of our alleys. They will be temporary in the sense that they will be put on movable planters so they can go into an alley, come out of an alley, but they will allow flexibility to create an environment and see how it works, see what we like about it, see if this is the right alley, and then allow us to move it to a different alley if we're like, this didn't work here, we'd like to try it here. But it also kind of brought up some other issues that we have with some of our alleys. And so as Ben and I walked out there, if you look at the ground, there's some challenges with ada the safety of it the look of it the all of it and so um we're going to try to look to also in 2027 fund some cleaning up of some of our alleys to just make them a little more personable and available to the public So that's kind of a combo effort that we're gonna do to try to liven up some areas. We'll see how that works with all the individual kind of interactions we have with that space. I think in the end, the goal of it is just to try some things. I think what we're gonna try to do over the next couple years, especially downtown, is try things. I hope that people understand that the goal of moving being different, whatever it is, is to try some things. Right. So sometimes they're going to be super successful and we'll keep doing them. And sometimes we may not be super successful. And those are the ones we won't keep doing. Right. But we've got to try these things to try to see if some of those things help. if people have ideas for downtown please let us know we can certainly incorporate those into the overall effort this has been thought out and the effort is that that it's felt that this could help we're going to try it so again if somebody has an idea about those ideas or thoughts My door's always open as well. But I wanted to note that the second... Do you have a question before I get into this?

Just one quick one. With this year in review, I have not had a chance to look at it, but I'm just curious with retail strategies, how much have they, over the first year, worked with... the building owners or the current businesses. I know, for example, Mr. Sarver has a brand new facility down there, a brand new building. He's looking to get someone in there to open up a food establishment, to have a cafe or coffee or what have you. I know they already have a liquor license that's approved for there that went through a voting process. How much have they worked with folks already established down there, building owners, to try to bring in some type of business down there? Sure.

So I think the first thing to do is to make sure everybody knows we have two groups that are working. We have retail strategies and then we have downtown strategies. Downtown strategies is working... this is gonna surprise you, downtown, right? Retail strategies is just, their goal is to bring people, right? So like a business to town, and usually what they're focusing on is like national retailers. So a lot of national retailers are not gonna go in our downtown. So they kind of separate in that sense. Downtown strategies, and you'll see it in their goals, are not necessarily visioning individual businesses. They're visioning a place, right? So that's why the solution came out as some lighting in an alley would help people get from the parking lot to our businesses. But they're not really envisioning individual businesses or individual business success. They're really looking at the place. So what I will tell you is what their report will show you is they've been looking at our places. They've been trying to figure out what is there. What is our there there? What is special about us? How can we try to shine up certain things and make people want to be here differently than they do now? And that's really what their kind of role was, not necessarily looking at businesses. And my understanding from retail strategies is they have not – looked at individual buildings downtown really either they've looked at some different spaces that we have that are vacant but not not mr sarver's building that i'm aware of okay yeah just curious yeah understood okay uh so the last piece on um on downtown updates uh on friday afternoons or friday morning depending on how busy my schedule is um i do a walkabout so i will go downtown and i just walk around and talk to people and i'm that weird guy that's like hey where are you going what are you up to um just to try to understand kind of how people are in our community right and so um if you see me come say hi you know i'm not that mean most of the time uh but um i'm also trying to meet with all our business owners and so the goal of that effort is to have a conversation about what we as the village can do better to help facilitate their growth What has come out of my initial conversations is really trying to get a consistent pattern of conversation. And so what I'm hopeful over the next month or two months, we can create a quarterly business round table where we're going to ask people the village is going to do you know water coffee and cookies or something and we're going to bring people together and we're going to talk about what the village is doing how we can serve them better and what what they feel being in our community and so the goal of that is to get an opportunity for those people to have a touch point with us and feel that if they have questions or concerns or issues that they're not scared to ask them. I've met now with quite a number of our business owners, and it feels like they have things they want to say, but they don't want to say them. And I think we got to get past that part and say, well, what can we do to serve you better? And so I'm hopeful that by doing this, that we can create an environment that everyone feels comfortable enough to help us solve some of these vacant buildings problem. You know, the problem that we have, I will tell you over and over again, I don't want to fill the buildings. I want to make the space so cool that people want to be here, right? We don't want to just fill our buildings to fill our buildings. We want people to want to be here. And so understanding that and getting that investment is going to take some of that legwork that we've got to get to get the growth and the understanding from these people. So that's all I would say about that. If you see me and I'm taking photos, I'm not being weird. I'm just... hanging out downtown guys that's it all right next up branding all right uh so this one is another one that's kind of uh big out there um you will see within uh in front of you all i don't know if i put this in the pack it wasn't ready in time um but this is a conversation that came out of the seven of you's individual meetings with me about um kind of some of the challenges that we have And the number one challenge that I see, other than the way that we communicate, is what we're communicating. So we are not consistent in our messaging. A lot of what our messaging comes out, it's confusing to people and businesses. And we have a letterhead that says one thing, and we have emails that say something else, and we have official documents that say something else. We in our charter are the village of West Milton. There is nothing anywhere that obligates us to be the municipality of West Milton. And yet you will see the municipality of West Milton everywhere. That is one of the most confusing things that I can tell you our organization has because there is not another municipality of in the state, right? Because a municipality by definition is a village or a city. And our charter calls us a village. But we call ourselves, and I'm sure, Ben has given me the history, so I certainly don't want to say that it does not have a value to that naming. My concern is the inconsistency of that message, right? As we have called ourselves something that our charter tells us not to. And we either need to change the charter and have it say what we want it to say, which I would say is a silly thing to change. We should just follow the charter. It says explicitly in the charter, we are the village to be called the village of West Milton. So you're going to see a lot of our messaging become clean. It's going to be the village of West Milton. That's who we are. So naming under the charter says that. So we're going to follow it. second is getting consistent in how you see our message you will see our social media has changed a little bit our message is getting cleaner consistent and organized so what that means is you're going to see more consistent messages from us whether it's on social media or otherwise it's going to be consistent touch points so we're putting out every monday now all the events all these meetings we are over advertising as much as we can to make sure that as many people are watching Hi, YouTube. That they can. And I think the goal that we have is to get our message out there. But when we do that, we need to do it cleanly and consistently. And so being consistent in our brand guidelines will allow us to do that. We have internal staff who are very skilled and will help us get that message clean. And I'm excited for us to do that. What we cannot do internally, and I think it's a bad idea to do internally, is to change our logo. That is the thing that we will need to have help with. I believe very strongly if we determine that's what we want to do, which is my understanding that we do, then we need to go out for an RFQ And we need to find firms, find people who are skilled at this, know what they're doing, and give us back that request, right? Now, I will tell you, if we are going to scope it just to do the logo, which is what I'm suggesting to you this evening, we believe we can do that for a very reasonable price. I don't think we have any interest in trying to make that scope get wider and get more expensive. I think we can do the majority of the work internally. I think we really just want help with the logo. So what you're going to see in front of you is an RFQ that would go out tomorrow, if everybody is agreeable. It will return back September 2nd for these firms. We would select a firm, and then between now and the end of the year, we will work with this firm to come up with logos. The process that we would be asking to do is we would ask this firm to come up with three logos. That includes the colors, all the components of that brand image. And then we will take those three logos and council will take two of the three. and you will knock out one of them, and you guys will choose those two. And then we will take those two, and we will ask the public what their opinion is. Again, I want to be abundantly clear, it is a bad idea to pick You know, like, that's how they named, like, that boat Snufflemas Snuffleguss or whatever they did, right? Like, we don't... We're not trying to do that, but I think we do want everyone's opinion on how that is. In the end, council is going to determine what logo we select. I want to be abundantly clear in that. But... i think we want public response and interaction and understanding because a logo is something that is ingrained in us um and so there are always opinions in that right so i think we take the three you guys pick two we take it out to the public we ask them what they feel You know that information. And then we select that. And then we budget into 27 our pathway forward to implement that over the next couple of years. We're not going to be able to replace all this stuff right away. But from here forward, we will be using this new whatever. So again, that's communication, that's logo, that's naming, that's our communication package, right? Where we're now going to be speaking the same voice, look the same, feel the same, and express to people who don't know us who we are.

So it says here the budget, Village Council has agreed to spend up to $5,000 on this project.

That is the number that we talked about in the individual conversations we had. It is obviously negotiable in terms of that. As I noted, we believe we can get a logo and some other things for below that. But we wanted to be clear, and as an RFQ as opposed to an RFP, it's important to give whoever would apply to this a knowledge of what we won't go past, right? So our goal in that is to say, look, we want a high quality, the best thing you can do, but on a budget, right? I mean, we're not gonna be getting a firm from New York City that's gonna ask $100,000 to go through a branding exercise. Again, we're not asking for a branding exercise. We can do the brand book. We can do the implementation of it. All we're really asking is for someone who's a professional to put together something that looks and feels and understands us. It's West Milton. And it's West Milton. And, again, it's West Milton today and West Milton tomorrow. Right? It's who we're going to be. Sounds good. I like it. Do you have any questions on that?

I think this is great.

Do we need to give the thumbs up tonight?

Yeah, if you are good with it, then, I mean, again, I think talking through it, obviously, if you want to make a motion, that formalizes it, but this is, as a workshop, some of it is more, again, I will note, nope, do more, no motion, see, I told you. So I think in the end, where I'm at with all this is, and just to be clear with the public, I mean, I have an ability to not ask you up to a certain amount of money, right? Like I can just do it without asking. This is too important. And I felt it was extremely important to make sure that we're public about this. I believe very strongly in the public process. So even though I can authorize this to happen tomorrow without asking approval, I think I just wanted to make sure that we're all talking about it. Now, again, if the number is too high or too low, we certainly can change that, but I don't know that we need or would ever even want a motion.

I would just say this. I would be definitely supportive of it, but I agree there's a certain dollar threshold that you can ultimately make that decision to move forward, and I would have no problem with that.

I again you'll see here we're not intending to go higher than that I think we've looked around and we believe very strongly that we will get a great qualified person potentially for less than that but I think we want to show that we're serious and we're asking for three logos we're not asking for one so you know, you're kind of asking them to go through iterations as well. You'll see in here, we've asked them to give us multiple iterations, which, so really when you're asking, you're asking them to put work three times and then potentially six times because we're asking them for iterations of it. Yeah, so again, If everyone is comfortable with that, I want to go out tomorrow and I would say to anyone in the public, if anyone knows anyone, I mean, we are certainly, you will see within this RFQ in terms of our scoring. I missed that part and I want to be clear. One of our scoring criteria, one of the most important scoring criteria is local connections. 20% of our scoring will go to local connections. So if we have a local person that can do this, that's what we want. We would love that. We just want a local person that is a professional that does this for a living and is, you know, close as they can get to us. We would prefer that it be a local person.

I really appreciate the local person. I think that's something that's really important to me. Absolutely. Keeping our money as close to home as possible. Absolutely.

I'd just like to say I think this is great, and I am in full support of this, and I think it's well thought out, the process for branding. I'm totally on board. Yeah. Appreciate that.

Great. Thank you. Very good. Thanks. Next we have annual special assessments. I think that's Jill.

Jill, you want me to throw this to you?

We do this every year.

It's all of the delinquent water and sewer and refuse accounts. We have some curbs on there that were there. This is the last year for the assessments we started back in 2024. So this will be the last year for those. We spread it out over three years. And then we also have like weed and lawn cutting assessments. I don't have the list right now, because I'm waiting for everything to get finished up with the utility side of things. But once I do, I can send it to you guys, or we can just include it with the packet for the next meeting. So it's just an annual maintenance thing we do.

think i just wanted to make sure that everybody knows this happens this is one of those things that we do annually and some people don't know it happens and we just want to make sure people understand that we do this once a year the county requires it to happen at this time um so that is it's the time so i just want to make sure people know sounds good thanks jill you're welcome

All right, next up, cybersecurity.

Yeah, so this is a follow-up from a couple conversations I believe that the village has had. If you weren't aware, there was a House Bill 96 that was passed in the state of Ohio that obligates every jurisdiction to have a cybersecurity plan. It is a very good bill. It was intended to protect communities, government agencies from the fear and the issues that we're having with outside parties messing with you know our infrastructure and the things that we're doing so it is an extremely important plan i am working with our i.t contractor now to try to understand what we need to do to implement that a lot of other communities have gone with a single vendor we're going to have to get a vendor to do this it's not something that we can do internally and so i just wanted to bring it to your attention it's an obligation that we have we need to do it as soon as we can I believe the initial estimate on the plan was $5,000 but I don't know that was if we did it in January and we did not do it in January so I don't know if that number will raise or not but I will I'm working with our IT contractor I want to give you the heads up it is very likely that we are going to move forward with that and I'm going to be asking for a resolution to authorize me to enter into some agreement for the cybersecurity plan. If you haven't read that, I can certainly get you the recap of HB 96, but the long and the short of it is it's a really important thing for our organization that we need to implement.

Next, we have national night out event on August 4th. You want to talk about it?

I can.

Yeah, you do. Boom, let's just get everybody talking.

National night out this year, typically West Milton does not do a national night out. We haven't done it for several years. Being a small village, it's hard to compete with your Piqua, Troy, Tip City. They pull a lot of the resources. It's harder for a smaller village to get kind of resources and stuff. So we've always done the open house in May. That's always been our thing. We do the open house kind of instead of the National Night Out. There's been a, I believe it's a citizen with the city of Troy who's trying to bring National Night Out back to the entire county. So everybody from Pickler, Troy, Tip City is going to go in one location. It's going to be located at the park in Troy this year. So we will be participating in that. And there is going to be over 100 some vendors The event is completely free, including all the food, drinks, There's going to be games, events. There's going to be a drone show. There's going to be all kinds of stuff there this year. It's supposed to be, the guy who's putting this together has worked really, really hard. And it's 100% free, like I said, including all of the food and everything.

And that's August 4th at 6? 6 to 8. 6 to 8 o'clock. At Community Park in Troy.

Across from Hobart. Correct.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Yep.

Thank you.

Thank you. That's awesome. Thanks.

All right, next is Village Council comments. I guess that's new or old business.

I just have two things. One, I just want to make sure, Mr. Green, I know we've talked about it several times about the sidewalk program. I talked to the village manager, talked to Mr. Hinkelman, and we didn't have it on the agenda tonight because he wants to get his head wrapped around everything first before we talk about it again as a group and kind of strategize. So I know it's It's a big deal. We established this last year, and we haven't moved forward with anything really with the sidewalk program last year or this year. So we want to make sure that he has a chance to understand it. We can talk about it next month. So as far as I know, it'll be on the workshop agenda for next month. So if you just be prepared, we'll talk about it more there. And I just wanted to bring something up. This last week, we lost another lifelong Miltonian, Bob Menker. He was the owner of Patterson's Florist. Started there when he was 16 years old and owned the place. Patterson's Florist has been a mainstay in the West Milton community for over 100 years. Everybody saw him. uh on the unicycles in the parades uh as long as he could do it he wasn't able to do it you know the latter years of his life but that was always a big treat at the parades when he and other folks rode their unicycles and also he was a 50-year lion 50 plus years he was with the west mountain lions so just Sad day. Losing another lifelong Miltonian. So just keep his family in your thoughts and prayers. Appreciate it.

Thanks. All right. Any more council comments?

Yeah, I'll just say thank you, Kyle. I think everything culminating tonight is kind of fresh and new and the rebranding and the strategic plan and the vision and the goals. I think it just makes us feel like we know what we're doing and we know where we're going and we have a plan and that we're not just doing this kind of halfway, but full in and this is exciting. So thank you. Wonderful. Yeah.

Anything else? All right, next public comment. Mike?

Yeah, Mike here from West Milton. I just wanted to find out what's the difference between the current trustees at Stillwater and the board? I heard reference to a board that's up there. What's the difference between the two?

So the question you're asking, so the Homeowners Association is a separate board in Stillwater and then the NCA is a new community authority. That's a separate body. The difference is they have different tasks. So the HOA is like an HOA anywhere where they have a right to manage kind of all the stuff that happens in that organization. The NCA is an economic development tool that is explicitly defined in the Ohio Advice Code, and their goals are very, very limited. So they bring in money, they pay debt, or they have other things that they use that money for. It is explicitly different in the sense that it lives under the Ohio Advice Code and can only do certain things. So not every place that has an HOA has an NCA, right? An NCA is somewhat unique.

And then the current trustees, is that still the former mayor from a couple of two or three iterations ago? Yeah, Scott's still on there.

I don't know who's on there.

So right now, I think... On the NCA?

No, on the NCA. Oh, are you talking about the NCA or the HOA?

The trustees, well, when that went in up there... the trustees were supposed to do stuff like mow the grass.

That's the HOA. Is that the HOA? So I will tell you, and I think it's important to note because sometimes people don't know, the village does not regulate any HOA rules, right? The HOA is a private entity that is a covenant on where those people live, right? So they're obligated to manage their own rules. We don't enforce their rules. So the village is not actually involved in So I don't even know who's a member of the HOA because it's not a village thing.

And so the rules govern things like mowing the grass

sweeping the streets and taking care of things and allowing the streets that are public the public still gets managed right so the challenge that we have and this is where a conversation about still water comes in those streets are not public yet they have not been dedicated to the village they are still owned and managed by the developer so the village doesn't actually have maintenance responsibilities on those roads Because we don't own them. They have not been dedicated formally to us. So the developer and the HOA actually still have all the rules and requirements of everything to do with those roads. So when you say like the maintenance, all that, that's still the developer until the time that a road is dedicated to us and accepted by us, it is not the villages. If your question is how much does the developer have control, I don't know the answer because I don't know who's on the HOA, right? Like a lot of the time the developer has people on the HOA. That may not be the case. I know we have some council members that may know the answer to that. I don't.

So the developer is still in charge, but the HOA board has been established. There you go.

And one other thing I wanted to just give some consideration to there's talk about having a stoplight there on 571 and a lot of people are talking about having it right at the entrance of Stillwater Crossing and that grade starts to go down there it just seems like sort of a safety concern is that going to be determined by the state since it's a state highway or is that going to be determined by people that really traffic experts?

The answer is yes. The state will be involved in that decision, but the village will have a say in what is finally selected. I can't tell you that it's not going to be a light or a roundabout or whatever the state determines as their preferred solution to that problem. As of now, I don't believe there's been any engineered solution to it. So when there is, we'll certainly make sure that's public.

Yeah. Okay. And who is downtown strategies?

So we have a contract with Downtown Strategies and Retail Strategies. They do different work for us. Downtown focuses on downtown West Milton, and they're a contracted company that we have a three-year agreement. We entered into an agreement a year, a little over a year ago.

Is that a local company, or is that an outside?

No, they're out of Mississippi.

Out of Mississippi, yeah. That's what I was trying to find out. Okay, thanks. Mm-hmm.

Thanks, Mike. Don Dorman, 605 South Main Street here in West Milton. Well, you had me at we don't need anyone else to pay for that. When we were talking about the one component, I think we had paid someone like $30,000 to start that process, and you're saying we can do it in-house, and I just think that's a stellar opportunity and a big savings for the village if we can complete that in-house, so thank you. then uh i wanted to make a comment on the the naming of the i keep calling the courts because that's what they've always been those are the only courts in town um but if we want to throw some uh um you know uh old school into it maybe old school courts versus because it's not really a part they're courts so just two cents on that old school courts um and uh What an ambitious first month. You guys have to be just really hopping to put this much information out and this much thought into everything. And the last thing, we don't talk about PBV. PBV, that's post-Ben Village. So we don't talk about Ben retirement. So that is just... And I was going to say PBM, Post Bend Municipality, but since we're going branding, PBV, there's no Post Bend Village talk, especially in public meetings on air or anything like that. Right, right. I was going with that.

That needs to be clearly reflected in the minutes.

Yes, yes. We may need to pass an ordinance on that, you know, but... Just thank you guys for all you're doing and thanks. It sounds like the staff here must really be clicking and moving and getting you information to even be talking about this much stuff and getting this far along on so much. And last comment was just all the things and all the ambition and everything, but the thoughtfulness of giving opportunity for community input and all your requests for citizen input and for people to put their ideas out there. I think that's what brings it all home. So thanks.

Thanks.

Thank you. Anybody else? All right. Any motions for adjournment?

I'll make a motion to adjourn.

Second. All in favor? Aye.

Thank you.