City Council - Regular Meeting

No, my brother-in-law is the surgeon. Yeah. Yeah, this will say I've been scrambling that's. Yes, should I wait for.

the ladies finally was yeah Good afternoon. Good evening. Everybody. It's September 8th, 2026. this will call this meeting of the laws and ordinances committee in session. The purpose of this meeting today, we have a moratorium that expires at the end of the year concerning recreational adult use marijuana and the way that those permits are used. Uh, as far as it relates to cultivators, processors and dispensers, um, I had asked before the summer break. City admin team could kind of look at some of our options we have before us as we consider what to do here in the next couple of months. And, uh, maybe some of what we've been seeing out of Columbus and other cities across the state. So, um, I hope everybody on the committee, uh, Tyler owns and Jennifer warden from the committee as well. And then other members of console are in attendance. I should have led with that. I apologize. Um, I hope everybody got the email from Miss ruler before she went on. Vacation had, uh, you know, had a. ample opportunity to kind of look over some of the options before us as she did her research. We do have four options before us. Just going in order, it looks like we can opt to as a body if we deem so to allow these types of businesses in town without any parameters. We can extend the moratorium that's in place. We can extend a permanent ban. or we can regulate these types of businesses, kind of the way tobacco and vape shops are currently regulated through the zoning code. So I did want to kind of kick it off to the admin team. I don't know if that was Mr. Marion or Mr. Montgomery or yourself as well, Mayor. Just kind of some of the background, I guess, from what Andrea found and what

Council can expect if we decide to you know choose one of these avenues I'll do my best and if it gets the specific zoning issues Vince can can speak to those and his his his information was attached to that to that memo as well but Andrew tried to incorporate that I guess the one thing I would point out is she did give you a summary sort of table and I think you know I There in addition to those legal options she also put on there what the associated zoning a regulatory structure The key advantages and then the primary legal policy risks or financial trade-offs, so and then she gave the background In the memo more details behind all of those things so I guess we could start with that and You know, if you're looking at the number 1 that you mentioned, allow it with no parameters just to be aware if that was the case, and that would be the default if nothing has happened, then that means they would have fewer roles than we currently have for tobacco and vape shops in town. And without that, that means some of the things, if you remember that we put in place were limits to how close they could be to schools and parks and things like that. So, without any regulation. And we, if not, no action is taken whatsoever, they can basically go anywhere and be and be, um, have less restrictions and tobacco and babe shops too.

So, even outside of, like, a commercial zone, you're saying, like.

Potential depending depending on where those parks or schools are. I didn't look at it specifically, but yeah, right now they, they can only be in those commercial areas.

They could be in a C3 zoning district with a conditional use permit through planning commission. Right? But there are currently, as Joel said, there are no conditions or use standards attached to that. Like, there are for tobacco or paper shops simply. Planning commissions, uh, assessment of the individual application and any testimony that may be received at a public hearing.

But they would still also have to go through potentially or planning commission as well, or not even just be kind of an administrative conditionally permitted in a general.

Commercial zoning, a C3 zoning district.

Okay.

So there would be a conditional use hearing, but there are no standards for planning commission to guide your decision on. Except whether or not they think it fits with the, with the area testimony that may come in to the planning commission hearing. And in a way that looks good.

Yeah. So if there was a park or a school within a certain distance of 1 of these conditionally allowed areas, then there would be no restriction. Unlike tobacco. Yeah.

And they add that the tobacco and vape shops are also conditionally permitted, but they have. A set of regulations attached to them that that planning commission. Uses to guide their decision, so that doesn't exist right now. That doesn't exist for dispensaries or cultivators.

Yep.

And she lists here the advantages are, then you would capture any state tax revenue. And I think you were given a list of the various revenues of different different places. Um, so that's the highest risk as far as where they could go that kind of thing. Um, you could extend the moratorium and we talked about this and there are some places that have have current moratoriums, but. Typically, and I'm here again, Andrea can correct me when she gets back, but the discussion we had was, and maybe actually Amy, she was involved in some of this too. You typically need a reason to have another moratorium and it's hard to come up with a reason to do a moratorium. You'll either allow it with regulations. Or. Or ban it, you know, that, which is 1 of the options, but to just do another moratorium, if somebody wanted to fight that, we wouldn't have a lot really good legal standing on that. So, some of these other other communities that currently have a moratorium. I mean, there's a level of risk pretty significant risk. If somebody wanted to challenge that, um. As opposed to just banning it or or regulating it. So just want to point that out. Um, and in this here, she says, it's not really clear if you have a moratorium, whether you get any revenue or not, you know. Possibly not if you're not, you have a moratorium. So, in that 1, you would have to adopt a resolution extending it. If you were going to do another moratorium, a permanent ban, that is something that the state law does allow us to do. So you would have to do a ban prohibiting dispensaries in all districts. That does give you your maximum control locally, and there's no enforcement. And that is specifically allowed under state law, so there's very little risk in getting challenged.

If I can interject there, the phrase permanent ban is a little bit deceptive because it's only permanent until a future council, if and when a future council would decide otherwise. We don't, city council or the mayor's office, whatever, we really have very little ability to do anything permanently because future elected officials will make their own decisions.

The other option is just to regulate it, adopt regulations like maybe similar or additionally like we have for tobacco and vape. Um, I will say that regardless of what we do, there is a little bit of cleanup that has to happen in the zoning code and Vince can talk about that because we basically did nothing at the time. We just did a moratorium and. Didn't address anything so, you know, if even if we were to, uh, no matter what option we took, there'd be a little at least a little bit a little bit or a lot depending on what. What direction the council decides to go with the zoning code. So, even with the ban, I think we'd have a little bit of. Is that correct?

I don't know if a ban, I think an ordinance can just ban, right?

There is, there is a reference to them for if you want to allow the conditional use, right? We want to clean that up.

If you want to add regulations, it would be an amendment to the zoning code. I'd have to go to planning commission, have a hearing and then come to city council, have another hearing and you wouldn't be able to adopt that under emergency. You can, you can, uh, I would have to go to. You can you can adopt it under a 1st or 2nd reading, but it would still have to sit for 30 days for the public comment or the referendum period to come to an end. So it would take 3 to 4 months to amend the code.

Um, and then also Julie kind of alluded to it. So, on the, uh, just kind of for the record here, we have some, uh, case studies of what some of the fellow cities in Ohio have received so far when we're looking at the revenue potentially from this. I don't know. How do you know how Andrea. Anybody collected this did we just look at kind of similar size cities or. You want to answer that?

I'm sorry. I'm how much the revenue where, you know, how we arrived at the revenue.

Oh, that's actually on the state of Ohio's Department of commerce website. It's a spreadsheet.

That's public access data. We didn't look at, like, similar size counties.

That's what I provided.

Was for the entire state, so what I think she did was she tried to look for either 1 similar to us. So, like, close on here or close to us in proximity. So these were the ones that were either close to us. You know, geographically, or, um. Sort of similar to us, and then the other ones there just wasn't they weren't on it. Like, you see some of these other places, like, Seville and, uh, and. Shelby and you know, they had either moratoriums or I think those towns expired Seville's expired But my understanding is there aren't any dispensaries there the moment so there was no revenue The revenue must have been small But yeah, we're looking at Potential median host city could look at a

Two hundred some thousand dollars a year and additional revenue, um, based on data we've received so far.

And I think you see, it's sort of it's, it's, uh. The spreads pretty wide, because it depends on how many dispensaries and what volume they do and all that. So it'd be hard to predict, I guess, because it's going to depend on a lot of factors. But, yeah.

Um, Mr. Marion, can you kind of go over a little bit more in detail? I did not bone up specifically on the tobacco and vape stuff kind of what's the zoning code allowing us to do now? And how's that worked for us so far in relation to tobacco and vape?

Uh, the current. Conditional use regulations require any new, uh, locations to be at least 1 mile away from any existing tobacco and vape shops.

Okay.

And it's strictly limited to the C3 zoning district. In relation to other distance restrictions, I think it's 3,500 feet from a school or playground or other type of community institution. And that's pretty much the conditions that are in place for the tobacco and vape shop.

And does that apply, like in gas stations or convenience stores sell these to you? No.

It just applies to the new jobs. I believe it's 30, anything, you have to have 30% of your floor space dedicated to tobacco or vape related products. So if it's in a convenience store or a grocery store or a gas station, it, It's very unlikely that 30% of their floor space is going to be dedicated to.

Okay, so I'm just wondering, so if we went, for instance, with, uh, number 4, that similar types of conditional use, regulate, like, back over the shop. Okay. Okay, very good. Mr mayor does the city have a position on this issue?

um yes and for those of you that were around two years ago i guess we did that kind of same way um with regards to item number one um if we end up in that situation i would hope that it was done by conscious choice and not because we failed to get things taken care of by december 31st i don't want to default our way into a position. Again, if Council votes or indicates a preference to go that direction, we would support it, but we don't want it to be a conclusion we get to by accident. And the second thing is we want to make sure that whatever resolution Council comes to, it's something that we can administratively enforce and not, you know, I don't necessarily have any concerns that you wouldn't come up with something that creates a problem for us to enforce but that's where we would probably speak up and you know if we should we get the feeling we're headed down that path you know we'd probably try to steer that away but um you know this is a tough issue was tough the first time around and i don't know that um two years later there's much more clarity to it so um i know we have different opinions in the community and different opinions on council so okay um we'll we'll support Council, whatever you come up with.

Yeah. So I anecdotally, I've had no communications on this issue. I don't know. Mr. Marion, if you've had any. Contacts with folks trying to reach out and see where our moratorium is or.

For open for business or not, um, I haven't had any contact in the last 2 months, but prior to that, for the last 12 to. 18 months prior to that, I was probably getting 1 to 2 calls a month. From suppliers looking for a location. Okay.

I will say I've had a few calls, you know, over the last 6 months, but people concerned about allowing them just to be. To be honest, and just personally from an operational standpoint, I tend to be very risk averse. So sure.

Okay, I think I'm tapped with questions right now is the committee have any other questions.

Okay. Do we know how most of our, how most of the rest of the state has handled this? Have people gone, in terms of like the options that's presented to us, of no regulation or most folks regulating it if they have it like a tobacco or a vape shop?

I don't know the answer to that question.

But I don't either my guess would be they are regulated. To some extent, you know, the extent is probably changed different depending on where, you know, what community, um. 1 piece of information that was in, um. Vince's report was, and this is from the Moritz college of law down Ohio state and. I don't know how accurate it is since Worcester's not listed on here, but we weren't contacted, which was there's a, they were aware of 137 active moratoriums. Obviously, if Western would be 138, there may be others that just didn't get contacted. So that's how some people are handling it. They're either banning or effectively banning it with with a. Sort of a permanent moratorium.

As a graduate of the Moritz college law, I think it's a definitive statement on the situation.

Um, I will also ask chief Fisher now that you're here. Has your department had any increased issues with the legalization of marijuana in in Worcester.

So, put me on the spot. A lot of issue from a law enforcement standpoint right now, because, um, you're unable to test right now. It's based on what the concentration of is, and there's not a mechanism unless you send it to a private lab to be tested.

You're referring to, like, the, like, that kind of situation setting off the testing.

I have a couple questions. One, I'm wondering, I think I didn't answer this, but are there any restrictions on how any revenue is allowed to be used by these families? It's just .

I do not know the answer to that question.

And then I'm curious, I know that, or at least it seems from this discussion, maybe there's not as much interest in Continue. But, you know, based on not having a legal stance to back that up should be challenged. But if we were to lean toward that, I'm curious, would we be able to say we're looking, we're looking out maybe three years, five years, whatever, we just really

So, I don't, just like Joel, I'm hesitant to speak for Andrea in her absence, but we have had some discussions on this, and I think what she was most leery of was a moratorium just for the purpose of kicking the can down the road that, you know, you call it and say, okay. Yeah. But the more substance there is behind it, there's legitimate reasons for doing it. And we've talked about some in that if we go the route where, you know, we want to look at regulations and we've got to send, you know, those are processes go through that. Frankly, we probably be short on time or to get that done by December 31st. Um, or at least we'd be pressing it. You know, I think there's some reasons we can justify extending the moratorium. I don't know the 2 years is might be a stretch, but.

Yeah, I think this is where I can read, you know, what Andrea. For the record, you know, what she stated is. the legal authority of the state law allows us to, as long as the extension serves a real public purpose, is not arbitrary, and lasts only a reasonable amount of time with some kind of, what are you trying to do at the end of this? And then she goes, here's some things that would be valid. You're studying it. You want to actively study it, look for how they affect communities, reviewing other cities' rules, those kinds of things, which is what you had mentioned. They have a very specific and reasonable duration. And so she recommended, if that's what you want to do, six to 12 months. Um, and have some kind of progress towards a. Some permanent solution, whatever that was not a hidden agenda and not just kicking the can down the road. Um, those kind of things so that's that's what she had advantages of that. You can. have a very developed, tailored, defensible, use-specific standard for addressing spacing, location, hours, security, all those kind of things. The disadvantages is the uncertainty for potential applicants. Somebody could challenge it legally if they wanted to. So that's just what she had mentioned is some considerations for that option.

And my final question, I guess this was adopted There was a limit, but I think they periodically up that that every so often and I don't know what that is right now.

And I think it was within certain areas as well. They had weird, weirdly defined districts.

Yeah.

And every once in a while, when I was keeping up with it, they would. Yeah, they would definitely say, hey, we've added more or there's been an application for more and they've added a few more in these specific areas. So, I know at 1 time, we were all the way up with, like, Lorraine and obviously, like, the rain and that the northern part grabbed all the licenses right away.

So to jump back in real quick, I did download the most recent adult use marijuana distribution information from the state website. We were talking about Seville. Seville has received, if this is accurate, $191,000 this year.

So slightly below, but still in line with what the median is for a city in the state of Ohio. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, on the on the report, and yours might be more up to date, but on the report that I think, uh, vented downloaded. Um, 1st of bill. Yeah, that was from June, you know, it was 25 and 26, 24, 25 and 26. And trouble getting the right line across at that time was like, was it 168 that what I'm looking at here? Too small for me, but so that might the numbers probably right if this is.

Other fellow members of council.

Thank you Mr. Jose chief Fisher my understanding that the vape shops alone are stretching resources at the police department. What can we expect by enacting measures that would allow. Recreational marijuana kind of stress with that put on the on the police department. Okay. In your opinion.

Listen, I don't have the data in front of me, but I know recently, I believe, our detective bureau, it was with OIU, and there wasn't a vape shop in the city of Worcester that didn't break the law in what they sold.

Can you expound on that, Chief? What kind of stuff are they selling?

What do you guys find? To my understanding, much of that was they weren't IDing. And selling to people that should not have been able to buy whatever it was they were buying.

Gotcha.

Would it also then be fair to say that with not having the ability to immediately test on site, that if a store had consumables that had too much THC, we would not be able to identify it until we took it and sent it away to the lab?

And that's very expensive.

Thank you.

In my research, I understand that big shops are far less regulated.

I lived in Florida when they legalized recreational use marijuana there. I have visited a vape shop. I visited the marijuana dispensaries there. What I remember vividly were the gummies. What I remember also were children getting a hold of those gummies when their parents weren't watching. And this isn't Willie Nelson's weed. The THC concentration in those consumables is considerably higher. My concern is for public health. And furthermore, enforcement. And right now, it doesn't sound like we have great tools to enforce what's being sold in the stores.

More than 1 of you would potentially receive might not offset that enforcement as well. Mr. did you have anything you want to touch?

I was just going to say, it's not so much. Taking when you talk about public health, it's not so much taking. Like, a prohibition type of mindset, because it's legal statewide. So people are still. Going to be able to purchase the gummies and. things that have a high concentration of THC in other communities and bring them back to Worcester. I think for me, it's the question of do we as a city want to enable that purchasing to happen within our city boundaries, I think is maybe more the part of that. We're not trying to regulate people using it necessarily.

That ships it.

I know. Yeah. Yeah.

So just clarifying. I suppose to me, I put marijuana in the same bucket as the other vices, right? Alcohol, tobacco, things like that. We regulate these things and it is legal. If we legislate appropriately, put in the appropriate safeguards, if we decide maybe they need a slightly higher level of control than a vape shop does, we could do that. I'm a big proponent of getting more tax revenue, right? I know people who will drive, they'll drive far, right? To go to where they need to get what they want. If they have, you know, perhaps a medical marijuana card, right? And they will not just go, they'll go, they'll get food, they'll spend money, right? And I think, I think Worcester deserves to get its slice of the pie.

Mr. President, do you care to chime in at all?

The only comment I'll make is that the state did change the breakdown on how a month is spent. in terms of the substance abuse and addiction fund that was repealed and we grabbed it under this under the senate bill 36 basically it does allows us to local governments deposit money into our general funds to use as they fit for public safety record prescription reserves so at that point i mean there's no there's no caveat in terms of how much you so we have so it could probably go on our general fund

We have a couple minutes. I see there's some folks out here.

If anybody wants to speak on this issue, I'll allow some time.

Just step up to the lectern, state your name first and last, your address, and affirm to tell the truth. We have a couple minutes here.

I'll be happy to go first.

Kind of expected anyway. Carrie Snyder, Worcester, Ohio. Do you need street address?

Ms. Hamilton, do you need your street address? Go for it, yeah.

Okay, 1226 North Beaver Street.

And you affirm to tell the truth.

I do affirm to tell the truth, yes. It's my opinion, so it's really kind of hard to mess that up. So I would echo some of the sentiments that have already been expressed here, that basically marijuana already being legal in Ohio doesn't give us the, I guess, the burden of making it easily accessible. And so I think there are lots of things that we drive out of town to get and Marijuana being one of those is just par for the course. If you live in Worcester, then that's the expectation. I think easy access is a detriment to our citizens, especially our youngest ones whose opinions are still being shaped about this issue. And so seeing it on a street corner and going by it every day normalizes that, and it makes the perception of harm really drop. And I think as adults, we can kind of parse that out. But for children or young people, that's harder to separate that out. So the common perception that this is a harmless drug couldn't be further from the truth. And so I do invite anyone who would like to attend the family representative committee of the Family and Children First Council is holding a community education night where we will talk about, it's a documentary called THC Inc. And it's basically goes through the whole thing of how what we've done is take a drug and then put the power of capitalism behind it. So the industry has every reason to make it more potent, more available, to continue this perception that this is no big deal, that if somebody is experiencing a medical emergency from marijuana, that that's laughable, that just eat something and go to sleep and it will be over. I think we've probably all heard those sentiments, and unfortunately, they could not be further from the truth. So I believe the science is long established about this issue, and I'm not going to go through any of that today, but it's definitely out there, and it has been for years, but the industry has managed to bury some of those so that we can look at this as more, as was mentioned, something more like tobacco or alcohol when it is actually not like tobacco or alcohol. So our panelists for that day will be Dr. Dennis Helmuth, Josh Hunt from Medway, and Misty Hanson from the Juvenile Court System, and they will help go beyond what the documentary talks about to put this on a local level for us. I just want to finish by saying I'm not here because of any political position. I'm here because it's a personal experience for my family. And so my interest is not financial, and it's not anything other than protecting the young people of our community. So I am advocating for a permanent ban, and I do appreciate the conversation today. I think it's very enlightening. Thank you.

Thank you. And I forgot to mention before Mrs. Snyder stepped up, we do have, I don't want to interrupt Mr. Sanders' meeting coming up at 7 o'clock, so Amy, if you could keep a two-minute time for us. Okay.

Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Harrison Swerger, and my address is 835 College Ave. So I'm a member of the College of Worcester and I'm actually from New Jersey where marijuana is legal and I There's a lot of rules and regulations for, specifically in my town, where even though it's open for businesses to come in and let's say start a dispensary, they still have to go through all these licenses and they still have to go through different zoning processes and different things like that. So my question would be that if we choose not to extend it, but we don't come up with a resolution in time, I know that we talked about, like, there's not a lot of processes that they would have to go through to create. The suspension, but what would still be the conditions that they would have to go through to start a business here? Would they have to still go through the same licensing that they would have to go through other places? Or would it be easier due to us not having rules or regulations in place?

Push that to you, Mr. Mary well, that would depend on what. Conditions are placed on. If regulated similar to what we have in place for smoke and vape shops, it would have to be a certain distance away from each other. Uh, they couldn't be near parks or schools. They could only be in a certain zoning district that is generally considered heavy commercial.

So it would still be in that commercial zone.

That's if those regulations were put into place, right?

He said if we, if we just let them know more inspired.

Like if we don't come up with a resolution in time, then would they still have to follow the commercial zoning and everything like that?

They would be permitted in a general commercial zoning district.

And they'd also be conditional, right? So they would have to still make a commission and have a hearing.

There would be a public hearing, but not having anything in place is going to make it difficult for planning commission to... Right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anybody else 1's going twice. So, man, I saw Mr Walter walked in. I didn't know. I. Everybody's commented so far. I didn't know if you have any comments on this.

I appreciate the time. No, I apologize. I was late. But glad I'm catching the tail end.

Very good. Well, I have already made up my mind that this is not something at least myself. I don't want to let this linger and we don't have an answer by the end of the year with the city. I think that's, uh. That'd be kind of a reckless way to go about this. Um. And then it does sound like there's a little bit of moderate risk by just extending the moratorium generally, um. Other members of the committee to me, this is a yes, no question and. I guess my what I would suggest is we just put up a permanent band for the vote for the full council and see what comes out of it. I, I don't think regulating these types of businesses, like a tobacco vape shop really helps the situation. I do think there is public health, uh, like risks that we need to. Take a little more seriously than some of the type of stuff, but I just wondered what the committee's thoughts were on this. Sure, yeah, I mean, we've looked at this for as long as I've been on council now.

I would agree. We either need to say yes or we need to say no. So I know where I stand on that, but I think we need to have a full vote to decide.

You look like you're able to say something.

I just think that we owe it to the community to move forward one way or the other.

Mr. Zay, if I could supplement my previous answer. I know there's been talk about the revenue that would potentially be generated from this. My thoughts are, and this may seem ironic coming from me because I'm usually trying to figure out every way we can squeeze more dollars out of everything that we touch, but on this one occasion, I would not let the dollars, to me, make the decision. It's because, you know, if you said, you know, we need you to cut that amount of money from somewhere else in the budget or come up with another revenue stream, we could figure out a way to do that. I think it's more about, do you think, you know, the community would be better or not with dispensaries? um and let that drive the decision not the dollars because i think it'd be a mistake to say well i really wasn't favored for that but the two hundred thousand dollars swayed me you know so that's sure my two cents on the thing there's real considerations with town aesthetics and um you know trying to have a family oriented look forward that that

Those are real considerations that you can't really put a cost on. And once the genie's on the bottle, it's out forever. So yeah, I do take that to heart. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other comments from members of the Committee of Council on this topic? I think otherwise we'll just ask Ms. Fuller to draft us a permanent ban ordinance and we'll let that go its route and we'll see what comes out of it.

So I guess my question would be, if we do not pass that permanent ban, would our assumption be that we are.

Allowing it then or so what I would ask is that we would have this that's what you want to do. We have this at our next meeting that way you have time to deliberate on it and if it. If it passes the issues over with, if it doesn't pass, that does give us some time to come up with regulations and present those and have some deliberation on those.

And that was part of the. Reasoning to start now, right out of the summer break was to take and I'm assuming under that instance, we could extend a 6 month or finish it off. Whatever those regularly.

Does it make sense administration just to start the regulation process in terms of what we would need to do? In terms of how I mean, because I think at this point. Again, I'm not going to speak for council, because I'm not going to vote on this, but as far as I'm concerned at this point, if we're, you know, the. If we're looking to potentially ban it permanently, and that does not get approved, then based on what we've heard this evening, it only makes sense that our next step is immediately going to be to modify zoning requirements as necessary to limit. Exposure and to make this to keep this thing right So in a tight fist versus allowing it to be willy-nilly throughout the whole community, right?

So we have looked at what it would take just to adopt basically incorporate the similar restrictions that are for smoke and vape shops so the question will be do you want anything additional, you know and Which we can obviously share, you know We can look at some other communities and see what those are or and propose some things, you know for you

I'm sorry, can you clarify? Quantity, you mean number of dispensaries?

Not for just in general. Correct.

Yeah, with the big shops, we say one per square mile, I think is what the regulations are. So to just say we have, we're allowing one, if that is the route that you go, but I don't know if that's what you want to know.

I think that was in our discussion two years ago, and we were pretty sure that we could do that if council chose to do that. But I will confirm that.

The risk, and she mentions this in her memo, there is something to be said for consistency, you know, with similar types of things, but we'll definitely look into that.

Ms. Warren, Mr. Holmes, do we need another committee meeting on this topic, or do we feel comfortable... Thank you. We will adjourn this meeting of the Walsh Emergencies Committee. Mr. Sanders, I'll stay down. All right. Thank you very much.

All right, well good evening it's According to my watch at 7 p.m And welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of Worcester City Council being held here this Tuesday, September 8th 2026 tonight's meeting is in council chambers and is also live streamed on YouTube and our next regularly scheduled council meeting will be on Monday Monday September 21st okay that's my apologies I hit Tuesday down well that's not right Monday September 21st 2026 At this point, we do not have Mr. Abernathy this evening. We knew a couple days ago that he was going to be unable to attend. So at this point, we... Mr. Hussey. Here.

Mr. Malta.

Here.

Mr. Owens.

Here.

Mr. Paul.

Here.

Ms. Worden. Here.

Okay. We do have a quorum, and the agenda will remain as presented. At this time, I ask you to please...

Yes, Mr. Meyer.

All right counsel If I could have a motion to approve the minutes from our June 15th meeting so move is there a second Second all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed All right minutes are approved. I We'll move on to communications from the mayor. Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Good evening, Mr. President, council members. I was checking the calendar. We are one week short of being three months since we last met. So much has happened over the summer. Hope everybody enjoyed their recess. The city was busy. I'm just going to hit the high points here. Obviously, another summer of cruise-ins and music on the square sponsored by Main Street. We had a full summer of the Levitt Music Series down at the Art Center. I hope you had a chance to catch one or more of those concerts. They were exceptionally good. Ribbon cuttings. I'm just going to list them. Milk House, the Seaman Edition, Aid Station, Second Soul. Wayne County Community Foundation building, Wayne Center for the Arts, Art Park and Fab Lab, and FedEx. So a lot of business activity going on. On the political side, we've had candidates for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and the Ohio House and Senate all in Worcester campaigning at various points in the summer. So much going on there. Ongoing construction projects, the big ones are Gashi Street. You know, that's... For a long time, you know, I wouldn't see, to the non-engineers' eyes, there didn't seem to be a lot of progress being made, but lately we can really see it taking shape, and hopefully the end is in sight here. The Milltown Road multi-use path is nearing completion to the portion on the east of Cleveland Road, and they'll be heading west up the hill, and John would have more details If you had any questions, Chris has run pool. Progress on that is continuing. So that should be ready to go next summer, next season. Some specific things that happened in the last three months. The WTC property tax panel met on June 23rd. As a program, hopefully a lot of you had a chance to attend. We had leaders of the push for the constitutional amendment to get rid of property taxes there, as well as the heads of the Ohio School Boards Association, Ohio County Commissioners Association, and the Ohio Township Trustees Association. So you may imagine they had different views on the subject. If you haven't followed, they did not get the signatures needed to put that on the ballot this fall, but the issue has not gone away. The 23rd and 24th of June, GOLBA came to Worcester. If you recall back, the weather was just about perfect, and we've got some really rave reviews from our visitors. I think it was about 1,500 visitors to town for those two days, and because it was, you don't always get this, but they were here for two nights, so we had a lot of stay-over traffic that I know hit our downtown restaurants and JFB and the Bell Avenue places very well, so... A reminder of the value in connecting Worcester to our existing bike trails in the state. July 3rd and 5th, I got to limit myself on this one because I can talk a long time on that. Again, weather was not so cooperative that weekend, if you recall. It was beastly hot and we had thunderstorms that came through the area, but amazingly, everything went off like it was scheduled. We had the concert on the square Friday night, OLL community concert on Saturday, fireworks following and the community band concert and picnic on Sunday. Everything really went well. Gilning and the fireworks group, it's the Fireworks Foundation, really deserve some special mention. If you didn't see this fireworks show, I'm going to guess you've heard from someone that did see it. It was really special this year, and our biggest challenge probably is, okay, do we dare scale it back next year? We may have painted ourself into a little corner, but it's a good problem to have. The only disappointment, and I'm not making this up, we were supposed to get a flyover Friday night in the square, which would have been really cool, but our pilot, who was called named Grease, was in an automobile accident, unfortunately not too serious, but we didn't get the flyover, but I've been told that we're owed one, so there will be a flyover at some point to come. July 6th, we had a presentation from the Camp Invention Program. This is through the Ohio Inventors Hall of Fame. And they run a two-week program at Worcester High School for grades first through sixth. And we had a chance to go and visit that. A great program. We had a meeting on the 22nd of July with the Lovett Family Foundation. They came to town. They wanted to kind of see their project that they're supporting. And so what happened, there was a concert that night. Again, it was very well turned out. July 23, Mike Fritz and I were invited to present as part of a Chautauqua Institute program on municipal water supplies. And as you might imagine, Mike did all the heavy lifting in that presentation, but it was a lot of fun. August 5, we met with the Worcester Community Hospital leadership to talk possible ways for Wago to expand and take over some of the transportation they provide. As you know, we're always looking for opportunities to expand Wago's footprint and service area. Obviously, we're always looking for funding to go with it, and we do think there's some opportunities there for it to be a win-win situation for the hospital in Waco, so we'll continue to explore that. August 6th, Upkeep Bank and Company had a groundbreaking on South Market Street, and Mr. Sanders can probably give us more updates on the status of that, but right now, There's a big hole in the ground, and they have high expectations for a real nice addition down there, and we're looking forward because South Market is really an area that probably needed some TLC. August 8th, we had a summer staff family picnic at Freelander Chalet. Parks and Rec put that together, and it was well attended, and I think a lot of fun. The 11th, we had a Habitat House dedication for the new build on North Grand Street. The 12th, we had, and this is really Landry's, I think, initiative. She's doing a program called Lunch and Learn where different departments in the city offer a program over the lunch hour. People bring a brown bag lunch and they do a little presentation. The first one we did was at the fire department. Barry Saley put it on. And those that attended were rewarded with the opportunity to ride the bucket up on the new ladder truck, which was great. quite a thrill, and I not only partook, but I had my six-year-old grandson with me, so I think I'm, I've told people I think I'm in the running for Grandfather of the Year for pulling that off, so that was a lot of fun. 13 was the Maine Metropolitan Housing Association picnic that we all attended. The same day we had a meeting with the Worcester Advocacy Group, to talk about ICE, and I think that was informational. I hope we cleared up some misconceptions and made clear what our position was. A lot of the discussion we had earlier in the year in council on that subject. On the 15th was the annual 5-0 cookout at Bowman Beverage with the first responders, including Worcester PD and Fire. The 17th, there was a Jobs Ohio event at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. Panel of Governor DeDwine, Lieutenant Governor Trestle, Lydia Mihalik, and Matt Dolan. On the 19th, we had a swearing-in ceremony for six new Worcester police officers. So again, we're excited to have them on board. And I don't, are we fully staffed at this point as we speak? Down one?

No.

Down two?

Yeah, we're down. Okay. Several.

Okay. So we're temporarily, though, I think we were fully staffed, but that's always something we're chasing.

Right.

We had a meeting on the 24th of August with the CFAS, that's the Ohio State branch leadership, about some possible housing initiatives down in the south of town, and we think there's some opportunities there. On the 26th, we had a first responders game with the Special Olympics team from Nick Amster, and Donnie Hall put that together, as he usually does, and did a great job of that. The 27th was a NAMI annual dinner. The 28th, and you'll be acting on this tonight, but we had the TURC meeting, the Tax Incentive Review Committee meeting, and you'll see that. 29th, some sadder news. As many of you know, we had a real tragic loss in PPM with Conor Schlau's death and a real touching memorial service on that day in I don't know that I would call this a positive, but I will say as tough as that situation was, I was very impressed with the leadership in that department and how they responded and how his coworkers came together and just what you'd really hope for and expect. Our Leadership Academy has begun. Many people I think up there have gone through that, most of you probably. The first session was on the 2nd of September. 9th, tomorrow is the second session. If you've got free time, Andre's presenting and you know that that'll be worth the price of admission so you can probably walk in and get a chair. The 10th, we're doing an interview with Ideastream WKSU. Looking forward to that. And then school started up so we have a meeting with Gabe Tuveger on Thursday and Friday morning is the full BAC meeting to start off the year. This weekend, the Wayne County Fair opens up. Also on Saturday, our own Kevin White is being inducted into the Wayne County Worcester High School Athletic Hall of Fame. And speaking of which, Saturday morning is the Worcester Invite. I always brag about this a little bit every year, because every year it gets bigger. Last count, there were 74 schools coming with roughly 3,500 runners, and there'll be about 8,000 total in attendance. So that'll all be on the west side of the Worcester High School campus. So if you want to see a demonstration of how pedestrians and bicyclists and vehicular traffic interact at a roundabout, that'll be a good opportunity. And on the 17th, we have quarterly meetings with the commissioners at the fair and also with WDC. What did I miss? Do you have anything you want to add? I don't know. I will do a quick touch on the agenda for tonight. We have 10 items of new business, all of which will require three readings or a suspension of the rules. The administration would request that council suspend the rules and pass items four and five on first reading. These would simply authorize us to apply for grants from the Ohio Public Works Commission on two projects, and we are under the deadline a little bit on those two. There's also some urgency on item seven, as Andre needs to have that passed by the end of the month. but we can do that in two readings as long as we get it done at the next meeting. So that's just a heads up on that one. Finally, some explanation is an order for items eight, nine, and 10. And you may have seen this before, but maybe for the public as much as anything, these all have to do with the recommendations from the Tax Incentive Review Committee for various projects. We know going in that we have some members that are gonna need to recuse themselves on different items. So we've broken them up with that in mind. Group A is those items that we do not anticipate any recusals, and you would be able to suspend the rules tonight if you so choose. Groups B and C are where we anticipate recusals, and because we're councilperson short tonight, those will have to remain on first reading regardless. So with that, Joel, was there anything you want to add?

I can share a couple things during the agenda items.

All right. The only other thing I'll close with, and I'm sorry Landry's not here, because she's had a lot of projects underway this summer, and one thing she spent time on is a new Welcome to Worcester presentation, and we just got that done last week, and you'll be some of the first to see it, so go ahead, Phil. Thank you. Hello, I'm Bob Reynolds, Mayor of the City of Worcester. People often ask me, what makes the city so special? Is it our world-class industry? Our historic downtown? Or the top-tier educational facilities? The truth is, it's all those things, but mostly the people that bring them to life.

Worcester City Schools is such a special place. It's so interwoven into our community. Worcester City Schools offers a real diverse range of educational opportunities. We have college credit courses. We even have a couple of options in welding, fabrication, and also health technologies where our kids can get a skill that they can utilize right after high school. We offer a lot of kind of additional sports such as swimming, lacrosse, gymnastics, bowling. a great band, choir, and orchestra. It still has that small school and small town feel, but with big school and big town opportunities.

From our quiet, tree-lined, historic neighborhoods to our vibrant new developments, when you choose to live in Worcester, you're choosing to live in a community that values stability and safety.

Welcome to my neighborhood. I've had the pleasure of living in Worcester for the last 11 years. Worcester is a connected, vibrant community and a wonderful place to raise children. Whether I'm shopping locally, heading to Oak Hill Park to meet a friend, or going to my favorite class at Flex Yoga, I am always greeted by friendly, familiar faces.

We're surrounded by great people with good work ethics, and we've been blessed by those folks for generations here at Worcester Brush, and we don't think that we would have been around 175 years without the partnership of the City of Worcester.

In Worcester, we work on a global stage. We're a micropotent powerhouse, home to industry leaders in agriculture, manufacturing, and healthcare.

Worcester Community Hospital is an integral piece of the health ecosystem in Worcester and Wayne County. We're a large community hospital that has a wide breadth of services, including an outstanding stroke program, an outstanding cardiac program, and women's services second to none. We have an oncology program that we do in partnership with the James Cancer Network. We think that we are able to help our residents have the full suite of healthcare that they need.

Whether you are an entrepreneur starting a boutique downtown or a scientist at one of our higher education institutions, Worcester provides the rich ground for your ambitions to grow.

Studying at the Ohio State College of Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences Worcester campus offers students a distinctive experience that blends the depth of a major research university with the access, experiential learning, and community connection of a smaller campus. with more than 3,700 acres of living laboratories that include farms, greenhouses, barns, shops, and advanced research facilities. Students worked on projects that matter locally, statewide, and globally.

At the College of Wooster, we believe that curiosity is our curriculum. We prepare students to make a difference in the world. College of Wooster student graduates move on to the top companies, professional and graduate schools in the country and around the world. They are ready and prepared for wherever life takes them.

But we also know how to play. Our downtown is the heartbeat of the county, a place for dining, unique shopping, and community celebration.

Everybody wants to be in a community that's exciting and growing and looking to see what's new and looking to invest in other opportunities across the board. There's a huge reason as to why my husband and I have decided to raise our children here and invest in this community. It's because it's so much more than home. It's where your heart is so happy and alive. It's exciting. I love watching every year, you know, you get excited about spring, you get excited about all the summer events and just seeing what's coming and what's new and Christmas and winter here are so fun. Those things, I think, are something very unique that Worcester is one of the only places that really offers that and embraces it.

From our ever-growing downtown to the trails of our hundreds of acres of parkland, there's always a new corner of the city to explore. Worcester is a city that respects its past while boldly building its future.

As someone that lives and works in the city of Worcester, I can say that our city is built on genuine hospitality. Whether you're visiting for the weekend, enjoying a night out, planting roots here, I think you'll find local businesses, restaurants in our community that are inviting. People here are genuinely warm and welcoming. You'll experience a place where you're not just a guest, but you're part of the community.

We invite you to find your place here. Whether you're visiting for a day or staying for a lifetime, Welcome home to Worcester. With that, Mr. President, that's all we have.

All right. Thank you. We'll move on to petitions. And also communications from the public, but we'll start with petitions. Uh, we have 3 positions in front of us, uh. Related to, uh, liquor control permits, uh, Ms Hamilton, if you want to read the 1st, 1 for us, please.

Sure. The first is from Ohio CVS Stores LLC, CVS Pharmacy 3321, located at 2284 Back Orville Road in Worcester. They're requesting a new C1 and C2 permit. C1 permits allow the sale of beer only in original sealed containers for carryout until 1 a.m., and a C2 permit allows the same for wine and mixed beverages.

All right. As in the past, we have three options with this to either hold a hearing in our county seat, to hold a hearing in Columbus, or not to hold a hearing at all. And with that, do I have a suggestion in terms of which we would prefer to do?

Move to waive the hearing.

Waived hearing. Second. Second. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Our next one, Ms. Hamilton, please read it for us.

This one is from Texas Roadhouse Holdings, LLC, Texas Roadhouse, to be located at 4881 Burbank Road in Worcester. They're requesting a new D5I permit, which allows restaurants to sell alcohol at retail only by the individual drink and glass and from the container for consumption on the premises where sold and may sell the same products in the same manner and amounts not for consumption on the premises where sold. Yeah. Sorry, it was a typo at the end of that. I just kept reading.

Okay. We have the same options with this one as well. Do I have a motion, suggestion in terms of which way we prefer to go with this? Motion to waive hearing. Motion to waive hearing. Is there a second? Second. Seconded. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. And our last one, Ms. Hamilton?

The last one is for the Worcester Marquette LLC located at 127 West Liberty Street in Worcester. They're requesting a new d5l permit Those permits are similar to the d5i except it applies to smaller establishments in revitalization districts.

All right And again, what say you council in terms of direction? We prefer to go with this ocean the way motion to waive. Is there a second? Seconded all those in favor signify by saying aye. All right Ms. Hamilton will return those back to the state with our choice, and we'll go from there. All right, communications from the public. We've got a few people that signed up for our agenda items. For clarification, Herbert Weber, did you want to speak about an agenda item or were you wanting to speak about a miscellaneous item?

A miscellaneous item.

Okay. All right. Very good. That's what we thought, but we just wanted to double check. And then we'll start off with Mr. Barnett.

Good evening, Council. Good evening, all the Worcester residents. This is the biggest crowd I've ever seen. You know, there's more than one reason I'm not signing. I can't speak for my neighbor, but we live there 24-7. We see what goes on. I did a little study myself this summer while we were on break. Every time I heard a squad coming, as soon as it hit my driveway, it hit my stopwatch. By the time it hit Kenny Street, I stopped my stopwatch. 10 seconds or less, each one, which is nice. Now you're gonna put a big curve right after my driveway. They're gonna curve in that way. They're gonna curve in that, curve in that way. 20 or 30 seconds. Oh, you might not think this much. Chief Fisher, how much is 20 or 30 seconds to save somebody's life? How important was it for you to get medical attention as fast as you did? Do I have to say anymore? I don't. Medical attention is one of the important things. And anybody who lives south of me, think about that. They're gonna take 30, 40 seconds longer to get to your loved ones. And for you, I guess get back from this microphone because last time.

For you to sit in this chair and vote for this roundabout because you don't like me?

Because you don't like me? You don't deserve to sit in that chair. What if I'm sitting in this chair right here? Are you going to resign? Because it could happen. Now, let's think long and hard about this. Tell somebody you hate somebody, I'm voting for that project. Think about it. I'm not going away folks. I'm not signing because there is more than one reason. There's plenty of safety reasons. And I'm not signing. I don't think Davis either. I can't speak for him. But I tell you what, after the damage is done, I will see you in court. Thank you.

Thank you. Mrs. Barnett? Did you want to speak about the roundabout? Yes. Okay.

Mr. Reynolds, you know, I voted for you, and I'm a Democrat, and I am ashamed that I voted for you. You had no right to start laughing about the roundabout. I know that you had a meeting with city council, told them that you spent $400,000 of our money and had them to vote for the roundabout. We don't know up here who voted and who didn't vote for the roundabout. You people work for us. We here voted you people in. You guys need to start listening to what everybody in this room has to say. People are really upset. Mr. Paul, you got voted in because people wanted you to care about what people say and to watch your money. Is that not true?

I suppose so.

Okay. Jennifer, I cannot believe that behind closed doors You said that my husband had good ideas, but you didn't like him, and you're going to vote for the roundabout? You work for us. You don't work for this man. Am I right? Absolutely. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am. Okay. I'm sorry. You're fine. But it started off on the wrong foot when these two were sitting up here talking about the roundabout. I lived up there for four or five years. Then they started laughing. The mayor's supposed to be setting a good example for us. Am I right? Yes, I'm right. It just upset me that he just started laughing. And then Joe Montgomery starts laughing too. And then... City Council people don't like my husband and they're going to vote for the roundabout because they don't like somebody when we're the ones that voted him in?

Thank you. Carly Siebel?

address a couple of concerns that I have.

My questions are in reference to Resolution 2026-44 regarding the North Guyers Chapel reconstruction. I understand that it is to accommodate heavy truck traffic that will be going to Daisy and the new truck terminal of Mike Jarrett's. There's already State Route access to those areas, State Route 585, with a brand new roundabout that I think is only about one year old. Why do we need to widen North Guyers Chapel Road, which is all residential on the east side, Boys Village on the west side, to accommodate heavy truck traffic going through this residential area. That's my question number one. My other question or second one would be, how does engineering services appropriate how they access property to widen a road? don't know how that works but I'm just wondering how does that work because like I said the east side is entire residential one of the residences only has 33 feet to the road so those are my concerns and I thank you for your consideration thank you Henry Braun

All right, thank you.

I'm the resident that's only 33 feet from the road, and I don't really have any questions, but I have statements. The first one is by the time some of you, probably your great-grandchildren are sitting in your spots, they're all going to say, there's no food on the table. And what can they say? Oh, our great-great-grandpa, grandma, they built all these beautiful factories. There's thousands of acres of blacktop concrete. You can't grow nothing on that. But boy, we created 500 jobs, 250 part-time jobs. Ain't this great? And it's not just not Worcester, it's everywhere. And my next question is, does anybody stop Think about logistics before you let these buildings come in. You don't. Right? Let's build them. Get our money. Nowhere for the people to live. So what do you do? You take more farm ground to build more houses. It's ridiculous. Thank you. Thank you.

Rick King Good evening, I'm also a guy who's Chapel resident on the east side of the road where the proposed Reconstruction is I guess currently in the agenda. It says whereas all free traffic must flow through the Akron Road back Orville intersection So that is not completely a true statement. I work from home when I watch dozens of trucks go by daily. All right.

So it's already a nuisance.

I guess the biggest concern I have is the safety of the township county intersection of back over Bill Road and a guy or chapel because there's already been several accidents since I lived there. By putting more and more truck traffic there in a low visibility Intersection is alarming. We're not going to get rid of the hill there, right? We could obviously put in a stoplight which we know causes more more accidents Or we can have another roundabout right that would require lots of lots of activity to make that happen, too So I guess my recommendation is, as we already have a state highway, let's expand the state highway there to keep the traffic all on those roads to reduce the probability of accidents at two intersections versus one. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. All right, well, that was all that we had for communications from the public related to agenda items. So with that, we'll move on to our committee reports, which at this point, Mr. Jouzet, you had an ordinance committee earlier this afternoon?

Yes, we did. We reviewed our recreational marijuana moratorium that expires at the end of this calendar year and our options moving forward. I think we agreed as a committee to have Ms. Uhler Draft some legislation for us to consider at an upcoming meeting, looking at a potential permanent ban or potentially, um, uh, regulating them similar to tobacco and vape shops. So we will. Eagerly await Miss Miller when she returns from her Alaskan cruise or whatever she said right now.

Thank you Mr. President. All right. Very good. Thank you. All right, moving along. Next item, unfinished business. We have none. And since we judiciously handled that before the break, we'll move on to new business. And the first item will be, Mr. Paul will be introducing that. But before that, Ms. Hamilton, if you'll please read it for us.

Ordinance number 2026-16. an ordinance declaring the improvement to certain parcels within the city, an area herein referenced as North End non-school TIF, to be a public purpose and exempt from taxation pursuant to ORC 5709.40B, providing for the collection and deposit of service payments and specifying the purposes for which those service payments may be expended and allowing for immediate enactment.

Mr. Paul, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome back. This is a, I'm gonna ask Mr. Malaya to give us a little bit of definition, if you don't mind, for the public. You called this a North End non-school TIF. We have voted on TIFs in the past that affected the school system, so if you would like concisely in four or five sentences to kinda delineate the differences, that would be great.

Great, thank you. Tax increment financing is a tool to redirect temporarily property taxes that new development will pay. And these windfall revenues are used to fund infrastructure, public infrastructure in order to. Have the city be able to accommodate new development without having to reach into its general fund with. Tax dollars that all the other residents are paying a non school tip redirects everything, but. school windfall revenues so when there's a new development there are new windfall revenues and those would be collected in this project to support new roadway construction along with any ancillary additional infrastructure that might be absolutely necessary for the city in this location without utilizing any of the school districts windfall revenues thank you

So in this case, we're looking to expand opportunities and infrastructure in an industrial area, if I'm not mistaken.

Our following, I'm sorry, yes. This would provide needed circulation between State Route 83 and State Route 3. And that should help to alleviate some congestion points that we experience today when we go through the north end.

So, in English, we're trying to provide some relief on Milltown Road by moving up to Riffle?

Yes.

Okay. To do that successfully, we need to put in substantial infrastructure?

Correct. We're looking at about a $3 to $4 million project.

And this particular TIF is designed to help speed up the process and allow us to properly finance the project so that we can get it going?

Correct. One other tool we would use would be the State Infrastructure Bank, which would help us.

Okay. How would that work?

That allows us to take these payments that this would generate and finance that, again, allowing the project to be financed without general fund revenues.

Thank you. This is an item that requires three readings. It's the first time that I've seen it since I've joined council. Does council have any questions for Mr. Millay?

Mr. Paul, are you planning to keep this on first reading this evening? That's why I asked it.

Am planning to keep this on first reading this evening.

I think that all of us need time to study it further So Jonathan as it would not redirect school funds what funds are we redirecting so everyone knows so Any millage that relates to property taxation on this particular property would be redirected but for school district revenues I

And so that would include the general fund revenues that the city would collect would include largely county revenues as well. Uh, it would be also important to point out that, uh, C3 property generate more tax revenue for our county partners than any other district because of sales tax. So, in this way, Worcester residents. Can be able to support that infrastructure utilizing. Outside revenues that other districts are going to benefit from. It makes it more fair. Okay.

And these specific parcels, we already have the Texas Roadhouse on the one, the gas station going in on another, and then Car Wash. What did I say? Sorry, Car Wash. And then Menards on the big one, maybe?

Yes, sir, that's the intent that we would see that development sometime next year. This would be a tip that would become effective this year. It needs to be established the year prior to needs to be established before new development is realized. So our timer on this would be at the end of this year.

Okay. And because we'd be redirecting county funds, do we need their acceptance or their opinion in any way?

In the instance of the parcel TIF that we're discussing here and we'll discuss in the next piece of legislation, no. And the reason again is because this is a TIF that is constrained to commercial and industrial development, which again, the County benefits from that. And this is infrastructure that's going to encourage more of that. So in the long run, the County will have more revenue because of this project. Uh, that said, uh, you would remember, uh, when we're talking about residential development, we do need to solicit, uh, counties approval to move forward on those projects. So, our housing subdivisions. Yes. Parcel tips, commercial development. No.

Mr. if you could also break down just. Some of the differences, how does the service payment service payment program work?

So in essence, if you're a property owner, you pay the exact same bill that you would whether or not you were in a TIF. It's just that you will find a line item on your tax bill stating that you are making a payment in lieu of tax. And that payment still has to be paid, still a lien on the property. But that payment goes into the infrastructure fund that the legislation is authorizing. And that then allows it to be used expressly for new infrastructure. And as soon as it's deemed that we no longer need those funds to enact that infrastructure, then the TIF sunsets and everything goes back to normal. A portion of revenue will come into our general fund and to the county and so forth.

Last question. As the mayor alluded to earlier, the property tax situation is fluid, to say the least. While it's been put down for this ballot, there's still a lot of noise and coming back to do it. If we had changes to property tax, how would it affect this type of a TIF?

Hard to say at this point. If it was a situation where we abolished taxes altogether, we'd have much larger problems. But that being said, this allows us the runway to begin looking at options for development. Before we would commit to, I mentioned a SIB loan earlier, State Infrastructure Bank loan. we would want to really weigh that risk of once we commit ourselves to payments. But this, at the very least, allows us to begin looking at design and exploring the best avenues to support our road, no pun intended.

Okay. I'm sorry. I do have one more question. What kind of velocity do we get in terms of improvement of speed and putting in the infrastructure? How much faster? One of the things you alluded to in your... is that if we did nothing, it slows it down, becomes a long-term project. What's the acceleration here?

So with this, we'll be able to commit to start moving on design within the next year to two years, whereas otherwise it would stay at the very back of our capital improvement plan. But with this and with funding coming in, it allows us to move forward on that design, and it allows us to perhaps be able to enact additional features into that design that maybe we could not afford otherwise.

Thank you.

I do have a quick question. I think Mr. Owens kind of opened the door on this and then Jonathan, you mentioned something about potential for other develop developable acres. So, and I think that's mentioned in these materials. So. More than 75 acres, in fact, are mentioned as potential future development. Um, but the current only covers about 35 acres. So, if the additional development occurs, because of this extension, um, does that new development contribute towards paying for the road? Or does the city only capture the revenue from the 4 parcels that we're talking about tonight?

So, as presented, we're only capturing the revenue from these 4 parcels. So should additional development, uh. arise and should that be necessary for us to do the infrastructure we could include that and that may allow us to pay things down faster again it will be a case-by-case basis doesn't make financial sense is it necessary because again we do have our other partners who are seeing tax revenue redirected as we do these but we would evaluate that based on the type of development We're specifically looking more at mixed use on those 75 acres, so that could include residential, which may not always be a good fit for TIF.

Jonathan, has the non-school TIF always existed, or is this a fairly new tool in the toolbox? Because this is much more palatable than the November massacre of 20.5.

So no, I do appreciate that. Now this is an attempt to be able to balance out the needs of supporting our partners and getting the infrastructure that we need. It is a newer tool. It is a tool that does not always make financial sense, but for larger scale developments, when that opportunity arises, It can make sense in this particular instance, we have an infrastructure project on our 10 year, uh, capital improvement plan. We have new development that is going to benefit and, uh. Impress the need for that infrastructure even further. So, in this particular instance, it makes financial sense to move forward with it.

What's that line of demarcation for large enough versus not large enough visit acreage? Is it. Total investment.

I would say generally from a revenue standpoint, we would be looking at something that could meaningfully allow us to advance a project forward that that would support. If we're using a 10 year, 75% traditional TIF with income tax sharing, we get into some interesting math and it doesn't always make a good fit for a project, a longer term TIF. like this with additional state tools can work.

And, yeah, just so I'm clear as well, so it says here in the packet, this will be a 100% 30-year TIF or until the loan is paid off for the project?

Correct. The state does have loan programs that will go up to 30 years. Hopefully, we won't need that. But for that reason, most communities that utilize this tool do put those terms in, and that gives us flexibility and future administration's flexibility as well.

And there's no... There's no sign-off mechanism or voting mechanism that the county has to approve or any of the other property tax receivers.

Correct. And that is a correction to some information that I'd sent out early on. Again, the difference being the residential TIF versus the commercial TIF. But there is no sign off. The state, again, looks at this as the other entities are benefiting from the city's residents making the infrastructure possible.

Is there even a notification requirement or no?

Technically, no, but we will just out of courtesy. Okay.

Mr. Gaff, any questions for Mr. Millan? Mr. Malta? Council President Sanders?

No. I'm good. Thank you.

I say we move this to the next reading.

Because of notification requirements, we will need to take this all through the readings as well as the following piece of legislation, but we appreciate it.

Fair enough.

All right.

Let's move on.

It's at its first reading. We'll move on to the next item, Ordinance 2026-17, which Mr. Paul will also introduce, but Ms. Hamilton will read for us first, please.

Ordinance number 2026-17, an ordinance declaring the improvement to certain parcels within the city, an area herein referenced as Guyer's Chapel non-school TIF, to be a public purpose and exempt from taxation pursuant to ORC 5709.40B, providing for the collection and deposit of service payments and specifying the purposes for which those service payments may be expended and allowing it for immediate enactment.

Mr. Paul, the floor is yours.

So, Mr. Malaya, if I'm correct, this is also a non-school TIF? Yes, sir. Okay. So care to break down the case because we have some very concerned citizens, and understandably so, and how this will affect them.

Sure, this is a financing mechanism again, to be able to affect infrastructure and 1 of the projects that is needed in this area is additional traffic circulation. And in particular, along to the prop, this particular properties. Eastern border, we have an unimproved road that. could benefit with reconstruction for future industrial access. We do talk about the proposed Transportation Improvement District project. However, other concerns in this area include the roadway right in front of the property. Also, sanitary sewer capacity is an increasing constraint in this area, which is a good thing to have with Additional industrial productivity, but in order to make sure that we can continue to provide, um, that's in the future. We expressly mentioned that is also being another feature and then anything in addition that would help with circulation that could be improvements to the intersection at. Airport Road and 585 as well. So we do list major target projects that we're aware of imminently. But again, with this piece of legislation, it gives us some flexibility as we continue to evaluate traffic demand in this area, especially with Jarrett opening at the same time that we see FedEx and making sure that we have a harmonized, safe transit flow through this area.

Does anybody on council have questions for Mr. Malay at this time?

Yeah. So, Jonathan, I have a couple of questions so. We can tip a parcel that was abated.

Yes, in this case. Much longer runway, because we're talking a 30 year frame. We would need to enact the TIF this year to be effective. However, those first 10 years are going to be largely tax exempt. The non-school TIF portion means that we're not affecting any school district millage. However, it does mean that any of the millage that is not exempted through the enterprise zone in this case would go into the TIF fund. And that is why in our metrics, we see a smaller amount of revenues for those first 10 years. And then we see them building afterwards. So a project like this would be a much longer term plan. giving us time for design and analysis and review of other opportunities to be able to best address traffic concerns in this area.

And then functionally, how are we going to redevelop this road? I guess I didn't even realize it was city-owned. I thought it was more township or county.

So, about half of it is city owned today, and it's been a point of concern with truck traffic going to the north. Um, now, again, for the purposes of this effort, we're looking at the site immediately and could this allow for future economic development at the parcel? Uh, but additionally. Going beyond that, we have other opportunities to evaluate, which would again include general circulation through this area.

Okay, so if I'm understanding you correctly, which we should be considering with both of these tips, not just the, the merits of the financials of it all. But also the merits of the projects or other potential projects in the area.

For both of them, like, like Jonathan mentioned, for instance, going back to riffle road, that's been in our comprehensive plan the last 3 comprehensive plans. So 30 years. We've known at some point we're going to need another East West, you know, um, type of connection there. So these aren't. Projects that are on a wish list or just came up. These are ones we. That have been on the list and on our tenure infrastructure plan, if nothing else for quite a while. Just because we're observing the amount of traffic that's been.

Continue to increase in these areas. Okay. Well, just with this 1, what so what do we have to do? And do we have to work with township to. So, we'll take that.

so if we're talking about the road reconstruction piece of it yes there there would be coordination there um historically they've been very happy to see us utilize that and affect those projects because that takes an expense off of their shoulders Sure.

Right. Does that put the maintenance side onto us for both sides?

It would if we were to do that. Correct. Yes. So we would want to do that with an eye toward, again, we're seeing development on this frontage along Guyers Chapel at that site. At that time, that makes financial sense for us to do that.

I believe with the current maintenance agreement that we have with the township. That it is already hard to maintain.

So, I don't think we have any, no, we do. It's 100%. So we've had a maintenance agreement with the county for lots of different with the townships in the county for all the roads. In around the edges of the city, you know, we've in and out where the, where the corp line goes in and out. So there's portions they, they maintain there's portions we maintain. So this is 1, it absolutely has been ours. The majority of it for as long as I can remember having those.

So are there details to that agreement? Do they or do we just.

Our tax dollars pay for that extra the agreement is for all of it. covers all the roads that are shared use or shared ownership around the edges of the city. So we try to balance that so that they're paying some, we're paying some. So it goes both ways. There's other areas that are in the city that they take care of. And that includes plowing and salting and those kind of things too. So we try to balance that out so it's fair.

Is the east side of the road township property or city property?

Township property. So one of the things within our agreement is when we get to issues of reconstruction, which we may need for economic development for this site, that becomes more of a negotiated item at that point beyond the scope of just maintaining what's there today.

Are we advanced enough in the project to understand how much of these people's yards we're going to be taking?

So I believe we're talking about... If we're talking south, if we're talking the connector between the roundabout and back Whirlville Road, all of that, I'll have to defer to Mr. Rice here, but would be in the county road occupied.

Well, to answer the question, that's item six on the agenda is to authorize the engineering. We haven't started anything. That's all I was asking. Okay. We got the funding for the engineering.

Just wanted to know if we had any preliminaries. That's all. Okay.

I would say with the, the tax increment financing for this project, this is a funding mechanism to affect infrastructure in this area. It may include the transportation improvement district project that we're going to going to talk about. It can include that. It doesn't necessarily have to.

Jonathan, the projections show revenue increasing from about 36,000 dollars annually to more than 146,000. Uh, what specifically causes that increase and how much of the projected revenue depends on additional development that we haven't gotten commitments from yet.

We have no commitments today for additional development and the numbers that you see are purely the existing infrastructure that is there. We see the outline of the building here today and that difference is the tax exemption falling off. Yes. Oh, you're welcome.

Mr. Owens? Mr. Gaffey? Council President Sanders?

As we've been talking about both of these, Joel mentioned, or Mr. Montgomery mentioned here just a few minutes ago that the extension on Ripple Road has been in our sites for a couple of decades now. So my question is related to both of these. Why now? I mean, if, if, as an example, Ripple Road, if it's been on, or if it's been in our projection for a couple of decades. Why are we now creating this tiff to help fund this? Why didn't we fund this 10 years ago? If we would have funded it 10 years ago, I mean, it would have been a lot less expensive.

Maybe, but it also would have been entirely out of our unless we would have got a grant, which we wouldn't have had real good criteria to get 1 because there's lack of development at the time. Um, we, we just paid out a general fund is most likely. So we're going to we would with this scenario, it's not going to do that. You know, we would probably use a. A sip alone and then pay it back with the revenue. So it costs the taxpayers much less city taxpayers. The other thing we do, if you go back and look is at those plans, if we try to look ahead, those are always 10 year plan looking ahead 10 years. And so, in each 1 of those complaints, where do we expect the city to grow? And then what infrastructure would be needed to support that? So, at that time, starting 2 to 3 complaints as well, we really expect development to happen to the north. And if you saw in the last couple of plans, there's focus areas. That's where the city and the residents said, we really should focus commercial to the north. Those kind of things and some residential in certain areas. So, based on that, we tried to our best to look 10 years ahead and say, probably within that time, we're going to need this East West connector due to the increased traffic volume. So, we just been sort of watching and waiting as development has happened. So what's changed is. Over on referral, we have, we have Myers, we have a lot more housing units in that area. We have people looking at. That area bounded by friends bill Smith, the Western and route route 3 there. For development, if you remember, we put a sewer down through the southern piece of that when we got rid of the list station. It's prime for development. That's always been 1 of the infill areas we've looked at and so. That's why now it makes sense to move forward and to fund it with as little taxpayer. Residential taxpayer dollars.

So so it's potentially possible that, I mean. As we work through this, at least again, and I probably should have spoke more about this from the previous legislation, but. With riff road, I mean, we couldn't theory go through this build this and then that property, because at this point we have no control over that property. That property could sit for another decade on done and we could have nothing more than road between. Between friendsville and route through that, at this point would be nothing more than a secondary access back and forth East West, but yet would not necessarily. Promote any additional development on that property that it basically is going to dissect.

No, but it would be justified based on the increase in the last 10 years of traffic volume and development. Right?

Which, okay. Again, I still don't entirely understand at this point, based on what you just said just now, why we wouldn't have been looking at this sooner, but that's fine. I withdraw the question. Anything else?

Let's move this to a second reading.

All right, very good.

It's had its first reading. I do not apologize for being out of order earlier. I signed up for both an agenda and a non-agenda item to speak to. I wondered if it would be possible for me to use a portion of my two minutes to speak to the agenda item now and the remainder when we get to the miscellaneous portion.

I'm assuming you want to talk about the Burbank Roundabout? Yes. Sure.

I apologize, Mark. That was my fault. I forgot to relay that.

Mark 1636 street, I just wanted to speak briefly. I would prefer if the round instead of around about the potential for the Winkler merging into old man road. I would say 1 of my concerns is when you get to the crosswalk situation, we'll now be introducing a new kind of round about situation. And then on top of that, you're adding a pedestrian situation, which would be a little heavier than most of the other roundabouts. So you now have uncertainty entering it as well as suddenly having to stop potentially for pedestrians. And while I understand that roundabouts are safer for pedestrians, 1 of the things that does increase is fender benders. Um. If you do go ahead with the roundabout, I would ask that you consider making those crosswalks speed tables. I talked with Westerville. They have them and they've indicated. It's not been a problem for them with plowing. Thank you.

Thank you. All right with that, uh, Ms Hamilton, we'll move on to resolution 2026 dash 41. if you'll please read it for us.

Resolution number 2026-41, a resolution declaring the necessity and intention to appropriate certain property interests from property owners adjacent to Burbank Road, Oldman Road, and Winkler Drive for purposes of proceeding with the Burbank-Oldman-Winkler Improvement Project and allowing for immediate enactment.

Ms. Ward, the floor is yours.

Thank you so this resolution relates to the plan Burbank old man Winkler intersection improvement project, which would construct a peanut style around about to improve traffic flow and safety in this area. In order to construct the project, the city would need to acquire small portions of permanent right of way and temporary construction easements from several of the adjacent properties. The city began making offers to affected property owners in November of last year. with updated offers provided again in March. While agreements have been reached with most of the affected property owners, there are still a small number of parcels for which agreements have not yet been finalized. This resolution begins the formal appropriation process for those remaining property interests so that the project can remain on schedule for construction in 2027. The city intends to continue working with the effective property owners in hopes of reaching voluntary agreements before court proceedings become necessary. The project itself is intended to improve safety for motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, improve traffic flow through these intersections and better accommodate future traffic in the area. I intend to leave this on first reading tonight to allow for community feedback and for all council members to weigh in on that. I know Mr. is not here and he does have some comments that I'll make during future. Um, peace on tonight's agenda, but with that, I'd be happy to turn it over to, um, John rice. If anybody has any questions about the engineering aspect of, um, what this might entail. Any questions from any.

Council people, Mr races, anything changed since the last time we looked at the plans for this project.

Just some very minor changes, um, trying to avoid a couple of properties and then trying to. Add some safety measures, uh, based on feedback. Um, with the crosswalk specifically. Okay.

The other thing has changed since we met right before break is there were 4 property owners at the time. There's now only 2 properties that have not agreed. So, actually, the map in your is not quite accurate because some of those have actually been.

I think we'll get into this later, but have any of those changes radically adjusted the.

The cost in 1 way or the other. Okay.

Okay, then we'll just leave this on for speeding.

All right. Thank you. We'll move on to Resolution 2026-42, which will also be introduced by Ms. Wharton, but Ms. Hamilton, please read it for us.

Resolution number 2026-42, a resolution authorizing the Director of Administration to prepare and submit an application to participate in the Ohio Public Works Commission, OPWC, State Capital Improvement Commission, State Capital Improvement, and to execute contracts as required in allowing for immediate enactment.

All right, Ms. Wharton, the floor is yours.

Thank you. So, this is another item related to the Burbank Oldman Winkler improvement project that we just discussed and the resolution authorizes the director of administration to apply for up to 500,000 dollars in grant and or loan funding through the Ohio public works commission state capital improvement program. The current construction estimate for the project is approximately 2 and a half million dollars. The city is also pursuing a separate 500,000 dollars in federal community project funding, which is a grant. So, obtaining funding could further reduce the amount of local funding needed for construction. The design of the project has been completed, and the city is currently working through utility relocation and right of way acquisition and preparation for construction. The resolution, um, does need to be passed tonight and take effect immediately because the application deadline is September 17th and this is council's final meeting before that deadline. There is no cost to submit the application as I mentioned earlier. Mr. Abernathy is unable to be with us tonight, but he did send me an email. Um, he said that he supports this project, but he wanted to offer a couple of questions to Mr. rice with the development of the roundabouts. We've seen a significant improvement in the traffic flow for that area. Have we not and do the current traffic patterns considering the 2 other roundabouts still support investing a significant amount of money into the peanut roundabout as it does appear that traffic flow in the area has improved. Do any comment on that? Mr. rice.

Yes, based on the, um, traffic analysis that was done by the engineer. Based on current traffic counts with. Those roundabouts in place, if you look at it, and we went through all this in a presentation a while back, but if you look at the level of service. With the signals in the intersection configuration, as it is right now, the levels of service, or these are these in some cases, whereas with the roundabout, it will improve them to a, for the most part. So. Level service, like a report card is good sees these not so good. So, yes, it will still make an improvement. It is still justified.

All right. Um. Like I said, I am going to motion to place this on third and final reading this evening. And after that, we'll take any questions.

All right, motion to suspend the rules. Is there a second? Second. Seconded. Ms. Hampton, please call the roll on the suspension of the rules.

Ms. Worden? Yes. Mr. Owens?

Yes.

Mr. Huze?

Yes.

Mr. Paul? Yes. Mr. Malta?

Yes.

Mr. Gaffey?

Yes. Okay, rules are suspended.

And if anyone has any questions for Mr. Rice, now will be the time to ask them.

To be clear, this is us applying for money. It is free money or potentially a significantly discounted loan. Is there any obligation if we get awarded this to complete the project? Does it bind the city to anything?

No, we are not. We are not bound.

Okay, and if we get the money and do not do the project, I assume we just give it back.

Yeah, okay. We don't get it to begin with.

Okay. It's a reimbursement. Oh, the only thing it would affect us is, you know, when the. The state committee is looking in future projects, they will look at whether 1 of the criteria is, have you, you know. Completed your prior prior project, so that would project history kind of against us a little bit. The 1, 1 thing 1 update is, I think the last time we talked, we knew we were being considered for funding at the at the federal level. What we've since found out is it made it through the committee process. We are now on the list. Um, for the, the house's appropriation for the transportation. The transportation housing, urban development appropriations bill, so we're in the text we're there for 500,000 dollars. So, the only thing left to happen is, is the reconciliation process with the Senate. You know, so we're 90% based on history, you know, since we've already made it through the biggest hurdle for that being awarded those funds. Just a little more secure in that since the last time we met.

Any other questions. All right, I'll move to adopt.

Motion to adopt. Is there a second? Second. Second. Ms. Hamilton, please call the roll on the adoption.

Ms. Wharton? Yes. Mr. Owens?

Yes.

Mr. Huze?

Yes.

Mr. Paul? Yes. Mr. Malta?

No.

Mr. Gaffey?

Yes. Okay.

All right, so it is adopted. All right. Very good.

We'll move on to the next item, Resolution 2026-43, which will also be by Ms. Warden. Ms. Hamilton, please read it for us.

Resolution number 2026-43, a resolution authorizing the Director of Administration to collaborate with Worcester Township to prepare and submit an application to participate in the Ohio Public Works Commission, OPWC, state capital improvement and to execute contracts as required and allowing for immediate enactment.

Ms. Ward, the floor is yours.

Thank you. So, this resolution authorizes the city to work with Mr. Township to apply for funding, just like the last 1 we talked about this is for proposed water line extension along old Columbus road to the township's plan. New fire station at high and Columbus roads. Groundwater in this area, or I'm sorry in this area is not portable and without a water line, the township would need to rely on a tank or sister at the new station, which would also mean that there would be no fire hydrants available at the site. Because the city and township already provide mutual aid to one another for fire protection, extending city water and providing hydrant access would also benefit emergency response for both communities. The project could provide some additional long term benefits for the city by extending our water service into this area and potentially supporting future development as well. Tonight, we're only being asked to authorize the application for funding. This does not obligate the city to accept or spend those funds and a separate pre annexation agreement with Worcester township would come before council. Um, for consideration at a later date before the water line extension could proceed similar to the previous resolution. This does need to be passed tonight and take effect immediately because the application deadline is September 17. Um, yeah, so I would like to move to places on 3rd and final reading.

Motion to suspend the rules. Is there a second? Second. Seconded. Ms. Hamilton, please call the roll on the suspension of the rules.

Ms. Wharton? Yes. Mr. Owens?

Yes.

Mr. Huze?

Yes.

Mr. Gaffey?

Yes.

Mr. Paul?

Yes.

Mr. Malta?

Yes. Okay. Ms. Wharton?

Thank you. And then I'll throw this back over to Mr. Rice in case anyone has any questions about the engineering side of things. Although, again, this is just to apply for funding. All right, motion to adopt.

Motion to adopt. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Hamilton, please call the roll on the adoption.

Ms. Wharton? Yes. Mr. Owens?

Yes.

Mr. Huze?

Yes.

Mr. Gaffey?

Yes.

Mr. Paul? Yes. Mr. Malta?

Yes. All right. I'm going to get those applications in and see what happens. Oh, next item resolution 2026 dash 44. another miss warden item, but this Hamilton please read it for us.

Resolution number 2026-44, a resolution authorizing the Director of Administration to accept Ohio Department of Transportation ODOT Transportation Improvement District, TID, grant funds for engineering design services for the North Guyers Chapel Road reconstruction project, enter into an engineering services agreement with CESO, Inc. for the design services, appropriate funds from the Capital Improvement Fund for the project, and allowing for immediate enactment.

Ms. Ward, the floor is yours.

Thank you again. This, uh, resolution is related to the North guys, Chapel road reconstruction project that we've just discussed. Um, the city has been awarded a 125,000 dollar grant. Through the Ohio department of transportation's transportation improvement district program to help fund engineering and design work for the reconstruction of the North guys, Chapel road between back orville and. The project was originally included in the city's 10 year plan with engineering anticipated to begin in 2027 receiving this grant would give us the opportunity to begin that work sooner with a significant portion of the engineering costs being covered by outside funding. The resolution authorizes the city to accept the grant and to enter into engineering services agreement with, which the city's worked with numerous times and they've been selected through this process. Um, I do have 1 question before we move forward, though, Mr rice in our in our packets. I saw that the estimated total cost at 185,200 dollars. But then it says we're being asked to appropriate 190,000 dollars. The resolution appears to appropriate 125,000 dollars from capital improvements fund. So I just wanted you to clarify the total engineering contract amount, the amount being covered by the $125,000 grant, and then the city's share of the cost.

So the engineering contract is $185,200. Typically, I like to have a little bit of a cushion. That's why the $190,000 is what I asked for the appropriate amount. and then the grant is in the amount of $125,000.

Okay, so then we would just be on the hook for the difference between potentially $190,000 or $185,200 and $125,000. Okay. All right, this resolution would financially benefit the city by helping to pay for at least two-thirds of this project. So I see no reason to delay putting in this application. So I'm gonna make a motion to place this on third time reading tonight motion to suspend the rules.

Is there a second? Hamilton please call the roll on the suspension of the rules miss warden.

Yes. Mr. Gaffey.

Yes.

Mr. Who's a yes. Mr. Paul. Yes. Mr. Owens.

Yes.

Mr. Malta.

Yes

Mr. Warden? Thank you. Are there any questions for Mr. Rice about this?

Based on a question that we received earlier in the night, John, can you speak to how the engineers would access private property to kind of make those assessments and things of that nature? If I remember your question correctly. Yeah. Okay.

Like during the surveying work, whenever they initially go out, or at what point?

How much of my front yard are you going to take? Well, we're hoping to When you have

And it's a busy street because they're trapped before they do anything.

Well, I feel like if I could clarify this, this is thank you and we appreciate your comments. Greatly, but this is just to establish funding for the engineering. So we can. use the experts to figure out where these problems lie i don't think anybody here is in the business of making things less safe for our community that is not going to happen and thank you for the comments appreciate that mr rice or maybe joel what is the scope of work that we think might need to be performed here obviously road widening maybe to an extent maybe curb gutter

i don't think i don't think this is going to have curb and gutter because it's on the on the outskirts and we're going to maintain the real nature of it however the pavement will be a little wider and like i said we're going to take a very close look at those vertical curves and see if we can adjust those because yeah if you drive it it's it's like a roller coaster and people likely don't go the speed limit and it's To me, right now, it's not very safe to drive on it. I'm looking at the ODOT traffic count. There's 1,600 vehicles a day that drive on it. Right now.

Stretch of road?

Yes.

Right.

Right now.

How much of that is semi-traffic?

I don't know. I'm just looking at the raw count. But what I'm saying is that road, if anyone's driven it and knows what it's like, it needs to be improved.

It's a country road, leave it a country road. We'd like it just the way it is.

If we wanted to live in the city and live on the roundabout or live on a cul-de-sac or live on a dead end street or pay HOAs and everything else, that's where we would have bought our home. But we bought our home in the country where we want to stay.

Well, thank you for the public comments, but we are going to move this to. I motion to adopt.

Motion to adopt. Is there a second? Second. Second. Ms. Hamlin, please call the roll on the adoption.

The drama. Waiting for a second. Ms. Warden. Yes. Mr. Gaffey.

Yes.

Mr. Huze.

Yes.

Mr. Paul.

Yes.

Mr. Owens.

Yes.

Mr. Malta.

Yes. Okay. Well, we'll get Kesco involved and see what they, or Kesso involved, and we'll see what they come up with. Moving on, Resolution 2026-45. Ms. Hamilton, if you'll please read it for us.

Resolution number 2026-45. Resolution accepting the amounts and rates as determined by the Budget Commission and authorizing the necessary tax levies and certifying them to the county auditor.

Mr. Paul, the floor is yours. Basically folks by certifying the taxes and the levies. This is the first step in our budgeting process for next year So for us to be able to calculate Proper budgeting we've got a hat. We got to know what's coming in and what's going out This is part of the what's coming in piece of that so for us to be able to start that process we have to accept what the Budget Commission has Concocted for us. There is a And if that's the right word constructed for us to be, but there's a, there's quite a bit of information on schedule a, but it does tell us specifically what we're looking for. And I think we all know that this time of year is budget time. So we need to have these things done.

Am I miss remembering didn't we do something close to this right before we left?

Yes, I can answer that. Thank you. It's okay. So, yes, we did that. We, we, uh. You pass the city tax budget, the city tax budget that goes on the budget commission and the budget commission certifies this inside millage sends it back to city council city council. Has to either accept the inside manager or not. So. But it's pretty significant. I think it's 3 and a half million bucks. It is and this is annual.

Yeah. I mean, we see this. Yeah, there's no change every single. Yeah. And any of them, I mean, the dollar amount changes, but in terms of the process, it's the same thing.

And I'd ask everybody to keep in mind that our municipality has been able to. Keep our debt under control compared to a lot of municipalities our way. So the information they've given us, they have a pretty good track record on that.

So, um, yes, sir pardon my ignorance. I was not around in 1976. Yeah, this charter levy. I didn't. Yeah, this just jumped out at me. I've never noticed this before.

So what is it? So that that was. When we established, I guess our city charter included in that was. A small part millage that was both.

Just like our general fund or something? Yes. Interesting.

It's my understanding that we don't need to have three readings on this. So, I move to accept. Second.

Okay, well, we've got it set up for three readings, so this is needed or not.

I'm sorry, I've moved to suspend the rules. All right.

Motion to suspend the rules. Are you still second? I'll second that. All right. Ms. Hamilton, please call the roll on the suspension of the rules.

Mr. Paul.

Yes.

Mr. Huze.

Yes.

Mr. Owens.

Yes.

Mr. Gaffey.

Yes.

Ms. Warden. Yes. Mr. Malta.

Yes. Move to adopt or accept.

Motion to adopt. Is there a second?

Second.

Ms. Hamilton, please call the roll on the adoption.

Mr. Paul.

Yes.

Mr. Hussey?

Yes.

Mr. Owens?

Yes.

Mr. Gaffey?

Yes.

Ms. Worden? Yes. Mr. Malta?

Yes. All right. Very good. We'll move on to Resolution 2026-46. Ms. Hamilton, please read it for us.

Resolution number 2026-46, a resolution accepting the Group A recommendations of the Worcester Tax Incentive Review Council with respect to existing enterprise zone agreements, community reinvestment area agreements, and tax increment financing reports and allowing for immediate enactment.

Mr. Paul, the floor is yours.

Excuse me. I think I need to recuse myself. I know you didn't mention me earlier, but my employer is included in this first round, in this first group. Given the fullness of the room this evening, I'll just back up, if that's all right.

Understood.

Okay, well, that makes that simple. We won't have enough to do it to suspension of that. I do have a question about this. Mr. Doherty. If you can give us a little bit of insight on this. When we look at group a, and it looks like there was a lot of continue, continue, continue and looking at the notes, we had to modify for Worcester growth with tech for which was bought by American axle, which is now a division of. Um, and what happened.

So I'm going to let Jonathan explain, but I can explain it maybe a little briefly. So what happened is their employment level dropped. So the committee made a motion to take the abatement to zero for the last year, since they didn't make their commitment.

Were they habitual offenders? No, no, no.

There's fortune 500 they're a fortune 500 company I get it I so yeah, they must skinny they're laying down and they went to was a 125 Jonathan I Don't worry about yes.

Yeah, were they voluntary layoffs or were they I can't speak Or was it through natural attrition do we know I

So, we don't want to get into business specifics in a public forum, but our understanding is that there's an opportunity to. Grow that employment and 1 of the things that we require when we do tax exemption is we're extending a break and we're in return looking for a certain level of performance and. Uh, that being said, our contracts have automatic clawback provisions as well, which would be more punitive than what the tax incentive review council is recommending.

So, the idea is to preserve the relationship. Yes. Okay, just wanted to understand.

Yeah. And we have thought back twice since I've been here in the last 23 years, and in both instances, the company.

They won't have any problem attracting somebody else. I get it. I just There's going to be questions about accountability on that and it's important for us to be transparent on that Okay, we'll move to any questions about this We'll move to second reading First reading on this

Ms. Hamilton, if you please read resolution 2026-47.

Resolution number 2026-47, a resolution accepting the Group B recommendations of the Worcester Tax Incentive Review Council with respect to existing enterprise zone agreements, community reinvestment area agreements, and tax increment financing projects for immediate enactment.

And before Mr. Paul, Ms. Warden will be rejoining us. And I must recuse myself, Mr. President. And you must recuse yourself of this one. Very good. All right, Mr. Paul.

This is pretty cut and dry. Looked like there were basically continuations of what we did. Didn't look like there were any major adjustments. I'll leave this for the second reading.

Okay. Any questions from council? Okay. Well, it's had its first reading. You can rejoin us there, Mr. Huze. I must have expected we were gonna have much more conversation. That's all right.

That's probably the quickest piece of thing I've done since I joined council.

Anything with it?

Thanks, Steve, for allowing me to finish my yogurt. I know, there you go.

Well, we know he's going to come back, and at this point, we can't do anything with this next piece anyway.

Yeah, so let's just move forward.

Let's go ahead and have Ms. Hamill please read Resolution 2026-48.

Resolution number 2026-48, a resolution accepting the Group C recommendations of the Worcester Tax Incentive Review Council with respect to existing enterprise zone agreements, community reinvestment area agreements, and tax increment financing projects, and allowing for immediate enactment.

I think the important piece of... Well, before Mr. Paul... Mr. Gaffey's going to recuse himself with that. Mr. Paul.

Group C is one company. It's an important company to our community, and that's Worcester Brush. So if anybody has any questions about that, but it's a continue as is. Yep. So if there are no questions, let's move to second reading on that.

Okay.

Even faster.

Well, these are all good stuff. Hopefully, we'll have full council next meeting. At this point, we can get through some of this. And with that, we'll move on to our miscellaneous portion of the meeting, which at this point, we have a large number of people to sign up. I guess, Mr. Gooch, since you're first on the list, we'll just start you off.

Just use the remainder of my time, so I don't exceed that.

I never started with the 1st time.

I recognize the importance and usefulness of the flock cameras for the police, but I think we ought to reconsider the use of those. There's a fine line between that usefulness and the gradual loss of our constitutional rights. My concern isn't with our local police department abusing the system. I'm confident our police department will have safeguards in place. My concern is outside agencies accessing our data. It's still a flock system and they will have access to it. I feel as though I'm a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but there are things happening in our country that I never imagined would happen. And it's easy to feel confident the extreme won't happen until it does and it's too late. I would recommend that the city consider having a community forum to discuss the flock cameras so that people can understand how they're being used, how they function and also be able to ask questions to better understand the situation. I appreciated the comments in the Worcester Weekly story, but they still left me with questions. So I would just ask that you keep that in mind, and if you do go forward with that, you want to keep in mind the size of the venue, because I believe the library was full the other week. And I just want to leave you with this quote from Benjamin Franklin. Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Thank you. Thank you. Ian Burns.

You guys might be hearing a lot of Ben Franklin tonight. So I have over 300 signatures of Worcester residents. So imagine 300 more people in this room. These are all people who are objecting to the flock contract. Now, I'm deeply concerned about the exponential growth of mass surveillance under the guise of stopping criminal activity. That's why I've been up in the farmer's market with others collecting these signatures. There are three Supreme Court decisions that currently regulate the use of technology in surveillance and create guardrails for law enforcement. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that police must obtain warrants to track cars with a GPS device. The Carpenter v. U.S. decision required warrants to track individuals on their cell phones. And this was again confirmed in twenty, twenty six with the versus the U. S. decision. These rulings protect our fourth amendment rights by requiring the police to show probable cause and obtain a judicial warrant. However, mass surveillance, and it's not just flock throw all of these protections out the window. Across the country, access to flock data requires only a case number to be inputted into a computer. This means that the expansion of private AI mass surveillance has raced ahead of judicial oversight and is circumventing our constitutional projections. And none of us should be okay with this. I've heard some people describe Flock as just another tool to solve crimes. However, there's an enormous difference between an officer using their professional judgment to run a license plate and versus a continuously running automated system that can literally create a heat map of all of our locations and behaviors over time. That's what Flock does, or is capable of doing. The proponents of flock and AI mass surveillance tap into our fear. And as a result, we have begun to descend a very slippery slope. I ask the council to not be seduced by the propaganda and sales pitch of a billion dollar surveillance industry.

Good evening, my name is Bob Sigler and I reside at 3654 Sugarbush Lane. I'm sympathetic to law enforcement needs for advanced tools, technology, and initiatives to keep us all safe and further justice. I've kept an open mind and I've remained objective and listened intently to associates and friends in law enforcement and the court system, advocates for and against surveillance camera networks such as the Flock Camera System. And there's no getting around that this is an outside entity that is collecting and administering data through a process that is becoming highly suspect. When it comes to the audit process, the public is at the mercy of an outside entity with the means to provide data arbitrarily. I mean, this is different than a contract for emergency dispatch software or GIS mapping or even Marx radios. I'm not comfortable with data being collected and archived on anyone, especially without their knowledge from an entity that is not sworn to serve and is only accountable to a bottom line in making a profit. the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. As a combat veteran, that oath has no term, and I'll take it to the grave. And other veterans like me are sharing their uneasiness and their suspicion that networks of surveillance cameras are actually violating the Fourth Amendment rights of United States citizens. I know that's something that would be for the courts to decide. But it is apparent to a growing list of communities that contracting with the flock camera system is unsound. That contracting with this outside entity is a mistake because in doing so is willfully forfeiting the public trust. There are many things that could simplify law enforcement, increase efficiency and effectiveness, but... No method, tactic, practice, or technology is worth sacrificing the public trust. Mayor Reynolds, city officials, and council members, I appreciate your duties and commitment to the city of Worcester, and I thank you for your attention.

Hi there. I'm Bonnie Nair. I live at 1935 Brookside Drive. So all across the country, citizens just like us has been speaking to our local elected officials about our concerns with flock safety and other mass surveillance systems and companies. Two years ago, when the flock proposal crossed your desk, I'm sure that you had no idea. You knew very little about them. Neither did we. But in the last few months, the news is saturated with horror stories. ranging from improper database searches, stalking, incorrectly read plates, and company omissions regarding product features and data practices. Studies show that mass surveillance, like automated flock license plate readers, do not deter or reduce crime, and they don't even help police to solve or close cases at any higher rates than they did without them. Beyond the bad actors, flawed technology, misinformation, many of us believe that these mass surveillance companies are a violation of our Fourth Amendment rights by creating a dragnet or a geofence in our community. It seems like technology has advanced faster than the laws. And I urge the council to reconsider the contract with flock or any other mass surveillance system or company until such a time as the courts decide whether or not freedoms that are in danger.

What I want to talk about is the false sense of security for arts. Right. Um, health care and. Since the systems we build shape the world that we live in, I would like to live in a world that is built by us and not by billionaires. I would like to live in a world where we care for each other enough to spend our time and our money and our efforts on doing things that actually keep us safe. Increasing our access to food, housing, healthcare, the arts, quality education. These are the things that will keep, we keep us safe. We build the world that we can live in together. Thank you.

Thank you.

Kiefer Dillard.

Hello, my name is Kiefer Dillard.

I live at 208 East Henrietta. And other people have made eloquent statements on the subject and stole the Ben Franklin quote I'm sure all of us were going to go for. But... The classic retort to like, oh, we're giving Flock all of these freedoms and they have access to all of these things is no, which I don't think is really a coherent argument. But if you guys did, in fact, manage to out negotiate a multibillion dollar company and secured our data, I would love to congratulate you. But I somewhat doubt it. And I'd love to have a look at that contract. In my mind, not only is this massively morally objectionable and constitutionally full of bullet holes, it's also a really bad deal. When you see something on the internet that's free, you know you're paying with something. You're paying with your data. You're paying with information that's used to target you with advertisements, so on and so forth. And they're doing that with Flock. But we're also paying for it. And we're paying for it up to four times. One with 3,000 bucks a camera, which, mmm. And we don't own the camera, we don't own the data, but we're still paying for it, and we're still paying for it with our data. And we're also paying for it in our utility bills, because these things make a lot of megapixels of data, and that data needs data centers. And those data centers have increased everybody's utility bills, as I'm sure you've noticed. And also, they make mistakes and Flock doesn't accept the liability. If a Flock camera made an incorrect reading, as they are wont to do, we'd be paying the bill if we got sued. And this is just not really, in my mind, a great deal for the community, even if we wanted to be mass surveilled, which... I don't believe we do. But what the city is doing with this data is really tangential to the point that we don't own the data. Flock has it. Flock can give it to whoever they damn well please because they own it, at least in all of the other contracts that have been unearthed from city councils. These are for corporations and three-letter agencies. They're not for the people. You can say it's for safety, but it's not your thing to declare. They're not our cameras. They're for flock or whatever replacement Dragnet owns them. And I'd like to thank you for your time and hearing us all out.

Thank you. Shechlin Okay, I knew I was gonna butcher your last name in my apology The service I was

listening to somebody calling for alphabet, and I finally realized it was me. I tried to get a hold of Mr. Montgomery on the phone, and I was never able to do it. It was just in response to the bike paths and the more safe options that we have moved throughout the community. We used to, as a family of five, oh, I've been in Worcester for 52 years. I just love that I throw that in.

It was a nice little thing to do down there.

We used to ride up Princeville Road to Pleasant Home, down to Overton, down to the Overton store, and back into town. We'd never dreamed of doing that now. The bike paths, I think, are great. I see families with little kids on trikes. I see women walking dogs on a leash. And my concern is we now have e-bikes. And I've also seen e-bikes on those. And we have people with earbuds. You can't hear them coming, and I just hope that the city considers doing something I think they belong in a street and not on a bike path So before something serious happens. I hope you consider that So thanks for your time.

Thank you Nathan I'm not even gonna try to butcher it Sorry

Uh, Nathan, I'm a student here at the college, and, um. I'm not going to go on about what they said as well, because they put it much better than I ever could. But. As someone who's studying, so I'm sure. Are you familiar with the concept of a social contract? In case anyone here doesn't know. It's, um, there's a duty between both the government and the common men, you know, in turn, you respect us, depending on your political affiliation. You may houses may feed us universal basic income, whatever. I'm not here to ask you for any of that. I'm just here to ask you to show us just a little bit of respect a little bit of. trust in us. I feel, I just feel super unsafe with the flock cameras everywhere. I remember coming back to campus and sophomore year and just walking down the main street with my friends and everything like that. I don't feel, I just, I don't feel safe. I feel very uncomfortable and knowing that our data is being sold and we're being used to train certain AI systems and the flock cameras, which I'm not a president here, but can anyone say that it's actually affected their their taxes or anything like that. Because I know, at least at the College of Wooster, our tuition has gone up a ridiculous amount over the past two semesters. And I don't mean to be that guy, but I think it's pretty unfair that we're having to pay for our own, you know, having an iron fist above our heads. Thank you.

And last, Herbert Weber.

Thank you for letting me speak, even though I signed up in the wrong sheet.

Good evening, City Council, Mr. Mayor. My name is Herb Weber. I live at 2102 Fisher Drive. ALPR, automated license plate readers. It's a bit of an understatement. These cameras read everything in the field, not just the license plate. These high-resolution cameras scan everything and process the images in data centers, including location and date and time. Officially, law enforcement only gets license plate, location, date, and time information. However, to get the license plate, the system evaluates everything it scans. How does it know what's a license plate, an advertisement, or a bumper sticker? What does it do with all the information, like phases of people, make, model, color of vehicles, where people and cars went, how often, and when? It uses it to build patterns and make predictions with the surveillance at work. Now, this can be helpful for law enforcement. However, it also means everybody is treated as a potential suspect. Your data is accumulated by a private company with minimal oversight as to what happens with it, and it is vulnerable to hacking and abuse. Am I worried that people know when and where I go grocery shopping? Not really. Is it any of your business? Absolutely not. We are not in control of our information. What will it be used for, how long will it be stored, what is stored and what is correct. Big Brother is watching you but not talking to you. Now, the Worcester PD's core values are respect and communication. Treating co-workers and the public with honesty, dignity, courtesy, professional communication. ALPRs do nothing of that. To build trust and relationship needs face-to-face communication. A computer program cannot make the nuanced distinction needed for communication. It cannot supply context. ALPRs are a business. Private companies are making money off my data without my consent and without compensating me. Use the money for ALPRs instead to build community. Law enforcement officers should have the time to talk to people in our community on a one-on-one basis and the resources to interact with them. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Miscellaneous portion here of council members. I guess we'll start off with Mr. Gaffey. I knew you were coming down the switch.

You had a 50 50 shot. I know. No, um, I just want to say, you know, it is actually good to be back after recess. Um, a lot of business to take care of and definitely, uh, appreciate the opportunity to do that. Um. Just want to thank every single person that came tonight. I think it's very important for us as counsel to hear from the public. And, you know, it's important that we have this forum for people to come and share their viewpoints and opinions on various matters. And so thank you all for coming and sharing your thoughts and concerns. And I'll leave it at that.

Okay.

Ms. Wharton.

Thank you. I think everyone's heard enough from me tonight. I just want to say I'm going to support whatever the law says with the use of flat cameras. One of the speakers tonight mentioned that perhaps we suspend the use of the cameras until the courts make a judgment. I wouldn't be opposed to that, but that's going to be something that's up to all of council to decide. But I thank you for your input on that matter.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. Malta. Thank you. Thank you all for joining us. It means a lot to me when I see a full house. And if we need a bigger house, we will make that happen. So 300 people want to show up or 3,000? There's 27,000 people here in our community. I invite them all. I greatly appreciate the input. And again, all those in viewing, we do have a lot of viewers as well. We get a lot of phone calls after meetings. So we do appreciate it and all the input. I do want to feed a little bit into the flock I think we have some questions to answer for all of us, but I do believe we have multiple flock systems in use, but I need some clarification on that so before I go any further. We need to be sure. What our contract here at the city is, and if there are any other contracts within our community. As I believe there are, but we'll leave it at that tonight. Thank you all. Thank you.

Again, thank you all for coming out. Um, we need to hear from you. Um, Mr mayor, Mr Montgomery. Um, if we did want to do some kind of event where people could get up and talk more, have a bigger venue. Do we have a do we have a mechanism like that? Would it need to be. You know, Mr, who's I calls a laws and ordinances committee and we relocate somewhere. What would what would that look like?

You can do that in multiple different ways. You know, we could schedule a public meeting if if if that's what. You know, it was wanted, you could call a committee meeting and make it call a work session. You know, we've done that in the past on larger issues. If if you feel.

Those things were needed, so we, as a body would just need to decide essentially.

I mean, I don't want to speak for the mayor. That would be my request. If council wants to make that call, you know, I would say it's up to council to decide if they want to do a meeting.

And, you know, as far as having, there's certain things go with having a council meeting or a committee meeting in terms of, you know, public notice, advertisement, things like that. If you're looking more for like a town hall event, you know, that could be, you know, I know there was an event at the library a couple of months ago Nobody from the city was asked to be there. You know, if there's a group in the community that wants to organize an event at a larger forum, once, you know, a presentation from the city would be open to that. Again, you know, once you, there are certain restrictions that go into it once we make it a public meeting type of setting, where, you know, we have to do the advertisement, you have a council discussion. And if you're just talking about a town hall where people talk and your council is not taking any action or not deliberating anything, there are a lot fewer rules involved with how it's conducted. I would keep that in mind. So on the one hand, I would say, yeah, we'd cooperate with anything you want to do officially. But if you do something unofficially, a lot less rules to how it's conducted.

Okay. Just wanted to clarify that. Thank you all for coming out and letting us know your thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

Thank you. Mr. Rizze. Glad to be back. Thank you everybody who turned out and hopefully everybody has a safe and prosperous Wayne County Fair. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.

Mr. Paul.

Good evening. First of all, I want to thank the public for coming out. Emotions are high on a lot of issues. Appreciate your passion. We get to the best results by getting everybody's opinion and trying to listen to them. So that being said, I do want to thank the Boys and Girls Club of Worcester and the YMCA. Between the two organizations, they provided invaluable, safe summer activities for 282 of Worcester's children this past summer. I don't think either organization necessarily gets the recognition that they deserve for taking care of our youth and allowing our people to go to work. So, congratulations to them. I believe we have 32 new employees through Worcester City Schools. Is that right? We want to welcome them to our community and thank them for their service ahead of time. The Wayne County Veterans Service Commission asked me to bring up that they will be having a Wayne County Veterans Resource Fair at the Greystone Events Center on Thursday, September 24th from 10 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. This event is designed to assist veterans and their families in finding resources available to them all in one place. Finally, I think we all know fall provides us with a stunning time to go outside. The Wayne County Chapter of the Isaac Walton League of America will hold a public open house from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, September 19th at 6928 Cedar Valley Road in West Salem. The chapter will be providing lunch for people who are out there at lunchtime. If you want to have lunch and you want to participate, there will be all kinds of activities for adults and for children. Please contact Roger Schrader at roger.schrader at gmail.com by September 12th. The Isaac Walton League of America has been a non-profit leader and advocate for conservation for over 100 years. The Wayne County chapter of Isaac Walton serves as caregiver to the oldest tree farm in the state of Ohio. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, do I have a motion to disband this meeting? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

When the battery's dead.