monique
i got my black book ready
got mine live everyone got there
looks like we're live on youtube
working on zoom
zuma's broadcasting
word has it from the fans at home we are
broadcasting
so welcome everyone to
april 27th city council meeting we are
all um thrilled that you are with us
um happy to see my um colleagues in
their windows i'll be
happier yet to see all of you
live and um in person all at once i've
seen you
here and there about town um
but it'll be nice for all of us to be
together so that we can continue doing
the work of our
of our community together so i want you
all to remember
as you always do i know that we are here
for the good of bexley and i would
ask that our good auditor would do roll
call now please
ms fiable here mr klingler
here ms robinson here
mr markham here mossad
here mr
sharp looks like richard is in the
attendees if
uh if um we could switch him over
up there he should be switching
yep
mr sharp
here yay and uh that's everybody ms
lamke did i call you
no but miss lampy's here okay that gets
everybody all right
we could all uh take a a look at behind
ben and do the pledge of allegiance
please
i pledged allegiance to the flag
the united states of america and to the
republic for which it is
one nation under god indivisible
with liberty and jewish justice for all
right
all right um i don't believe that we
have um we do have some special guests
but they're going to be
sharing with us some of their expertise
and some of the things that we need
help with today so we're gonna move
right on to public comment
um again this is a time period where
that where people who are
in attendance would like to share with
us
any of their thoughts we ask you to
please keep it to five minutes
we ask you to please give us your name
and your address when you speak
simply raise your eye your hand icon and
we will know that you want to talk to us
i am not seeing anyone i see lots of
lots of names i recognize
welcome welcome glad you're with us um
there'll be another chance for a public
comment
uh towards the end of uh actually at the
very end of the meeting
if we could now we're going to go ahead
and we are going to
go to um item number six on the agenda
um we are going to i am going to hand
uh this over to our chair of
zoning she is going to um
have some action on a tabled on tabled
ordinance 11
21. um she's gonna she's gonna ask us to
take it off the table then we are going
to go into a public
hearing we will then come out of
the public hearing after we hear from
some of
our residents if they have something to
share
and then we will exit out of the public
hearing but we're going to go ahead and
we're going to
do whatever kind of action we think we
need on this piece of legislation
right here right now i think i covered
it jess
but you fill in whatever holes i need
take yourself off mute
and you're on yes thank you president
fiable
um i would like to make a motion to
bring off the table
ordinance 11-21
okay there's a first is there a second
second thank you ms robinson i
appreciate it
and thank you for for noting who it is
that always it's helpful because not
sometimes i i don't hear the voices just
right there's a first and there's a
second by voice vote all in favor please
say i
i i those opposing sign
jessica it's all yours yes so ordinance
11-21
is basically our has been in the making
since
um early march we have had a group
of wonderful arb and b zap
members larry hellman karen boker kathy
rose
mayor kessler mike paplow ryan schick
and william heyer who have participated
in giving
feedback and knowledge to this ordinance
with that being said we recently had
some amendments from our bees app
and without further ado since this
council has
read this twice and you guys have been
well informed on what this ordinance is
tonight we are going to hear a little
bit more from mr kessler
mayor kessler and from karen boker karen
boker is our city
of bexley design consultant and she
and mayor kessler will just do a little
bit of an
overview of what the board of zoning had
to say about this ordinance
before we hear from the public i do want
to say
um as council as you guys were informed
and you were able to see
the garage code reform discussion that
came from b zap
i wanted to say karen you did a really
wonderful job of putting together a
forum code
which is going to provide great
illustration i believe as well as
language
that i think will help the process of
bezap for
garage reform and code for our boards
and our applicants moving forward so
karen and i know mayor kessler was very
involved in this as well i just want to
say great job
and i will hand it over to you guys
thanks thanks so much jess uh karen is
with us this evening as as you noted
karen
i was thinking maybe you could walk
through a bzap discussion and then i'll
i'll walk through the proposed
amendments to the ordinance in light of
that
sure thanks for having me and jess thank
you for the compliments
i've been interested in having the form
code
start being part of us for a very long
time and it's exciting to do that
um i'm just gonna give you a um
brief update i did send the staff report
i know it was posted just today so
if anyone hasn't had time i'll just
quickly go through our discussion
at the board of zoning and planning it
wasn't just limited to last week's board
of zoning and planning
we have actually provided the members of
the uh board of zoning and planning with
an updated
a google doc that they've been following
along with and making comments all along
the way
so that's been very productive as as has
the workshop the
work group um as all of you are well
aware about
the board of zoning and planning deals
with this issue um
frequently lately so there is a very
personal interest as well as the board
interest in
getting this done the uh board of zoning
and planning
therefore is fully in support of this
garage code reform
um and because we really do believe
without clarification we are getting
disproportionate amount
of zoning requests you know variance
requests for
zoning for garages uh there's just some
ambiguity to how it is currently warded
and hopefully these changes will change
that
the board of zonium planning also
understands the desire and i want to
make this
really clear because it's been a a big
part of
our discussion there it is a
it is an awesome board in that it's also
very empathetic to the needs of the
bexley residents
to um and the desires of the residents
to have garages
that keep up with modern current needs
more storage etc and i'm going to
talk about that a little bit um when i
talk about the square footage
the board of zoning and planning also
understands how difficult it has been
for both applicants owners and staff
determining calculations
uh and the lack of simplicity it may not
seem
on first glance that this new amended
code for garages is it's simpler because
it's still a lot of verbiage but it is
um from a staff perspective it
definitely is simpler
um lastly in evaluating
the amendments the border zoning like i
said just
at the risk of repeating just wants to
simply simplify the code
and create a balance before between what
residents want
and what is appropriate for our
neighborhoods lot sizes streetscape
so that we have architectural integrity
balanced with maintaining the needs of
our residents so there wasn't this kind
of
fundamental view of strict
minimization of garages but there was a
real deliberate and considerate
discussion over what residents need and
what's appropriate
i do want to just kind of things i
didn't talk about
in the staff report i don't want to go
through
an exhaustive way because i know you're
limited on time
but i just wanted to quickly point out
some of the main highlights that came up
in discussion
this is not in the staff report i'm just
going to kind of summarize it
there was a clarity needed
for some of the changes and i wanted to
point those out to all of you as well
the biggest change you'll find is the
difference in building heights
we have lowered the building height
for the well let me back up and say
first that you will not find the chart
reflecting
what is in um and i'm sorry ben i can't
remember the name the number of
the um ordinance but where the chart
that we have that spells out
the zoning sizes r6 r3
are we we correlated them but did not
define
these garage sizes that way because we
really had a
very deep discussion about the variance
i should use a different word but the
variances that are in lot sizes and one
of the diagrams that i have included
shows you that i studied
the lot sizes in great depth and
um it became very apparent that it would
probably be mistake to
to categorize these as uh strictly by
zoning
um by zoning areas
meaning r6 r2 r1 r3 you know those
and more by lot size because there are
um not not a not an extraordinary amount
but enough
differences in lot sizes that um
architecturally
and appropriateness appropriately
there it should be looked at
individually on lot size so
that was a big discussion i'm happy to
answer any questions about that that's
why we don't have the
zoning districts in that chart secondly
we added
um the eve discussion lowering the eave
height
and yeah that's that's a good one ben i
i don't know who's controlling it but
then yes if you're controlling that
that um this this graphic i think is a
really good
um illustration of what we mean by the
eave height the ridge height
and um building height uh we did we did
include an eave height minimum now
or maximum rather for for the code sorry
um that way we don't get we do we
definitely have
um we don't get
huge masses that go the whole
um size of the garage it keeps a good
it helps us keep massing in proportion
um in control
so that that's another thing adding of
the eve and then i the last thing i kind
of wanted to touch on and we talked
about a lot of other things too but i'm
just touching on the three the
things i think are the main issues we
talked about and you'll notice and i'm
sure many of you have questions that we
continued
we stayed with the square feet even for
the smallest lot size
um that we did that because we really
feel that
um that is an appropriate garage size
that for this day and age in terms of
how many cars and how much storage
people
need there will be very small lots that
can't accommodate that
and we don't need to worry about
specifying a maximum build
building footprint that's smaller than
624 for those specific lots
because there are other cross references
and cross checks to take care of that
for example
um side yard setback or
width of maximum coverage for accessory
structures
and garages on the property so i just
wanted to make everybody aware that
there will be properties that
can't accommodate by code 624 square
feet but they are
done in other ways and we wanted to be
fair to those who already have
624 square feet and not put a whole
bunch of people out of conformance
that is kind of the discussion that i
just want to touch on that's not in
there
and then the other thing that um that
you do have in front of you are the
recommended changes
um that we
do have that part up there ben or well
the recommended
the recommended changes are in the staff
report and i
one thing that did come out of this
whole exercise was the need to clarify
some of the definitions um because
what if we we have to be careful where
we use the words building height where
we use the word story where we use the
words ridge height
they're all relevant but they all have
subtle differences and
it makes a big difference how tall a
structure can be by
how we use those terms um
the other oh i did want to just point
out that the dorm
the for those of you who hadn't haven't
read it thoroughly the dormer
restrictions are actually a really good
tool for us as staff to also control
the amount of second floor math
and there is a provision in there also
that
dictates that when a dorm um i can't
remember the exact words but ben i know
you know i'm off the top of your head
um that dormer's face inward and not to
the neighboring properties
um there it is this step
exactly so we can talk more about any of
these specificities but
the um the staff report pretty much is a
summary of what i've just talked about
and if anyone has any questions about
any discussion
that went on at bees app or through our
google doc or in the workshops i'm happy
to answer them
and karen before we open up questions
let me let me follow that up with what
has changed in the proposed amendment
because i think
the two flow together ask questions
based on that so
um in front of you is the same document
that you have on the agenda it's a
changed version
from what you've seen before and the
changes are fairly minimal
the the the bullet points in karen's
report um
i think are are really helpful but they
they maybe don't show that like a lot of
these definitions existed in the first
version they were just tweaked a little
bit with these changes so
um we added a definition for first floor
wall height
and what that accommodated is an
instance where there might not be an eve
on a property
that was a concern brought up by the
architects and the board
and therefore first floor wall height
is an additional control on the mass and
of the structure becoming too large
so that was a direct comment from dzap
and was accommodated by this
change also there was
a little bit of a tweaking of the
finished accessory structure attic floor
area definition
it didn't change the intent it simply
changed it was it was a
some good feedback from one of our board
members that
made it a little clearer and a little
more technically correct
and then finally
demolition was spelled correctly in this
one so there you go
those are those are the changes and i
guess the point being that a lot of what
was just presented was what you've
already looked at before the the changes
from
the bees app were fairly fairly minimal
um and we we have talked about some of
the concepts that karen was
addressing but it's great to have you
here karen and then i think this is a
great time to open up
to questions from council great
thank you thank you karen so much um you
know that we
we struggled with this with an appeal
that came to us
and we are grateful for the clarity and
um
appreciate uh your expertise and uh
and you um holding our hands through
this a little bit it's nice so thank you
so much for being here and i'm
going to say kathy would have loved to
have been here tonight but she is on a
much deserved vacation this week we're
jealous
and happy for her
all right um it looks like there are
panelists here um
mark walk me through just a little bit
for two seconds if you would
um we are supposed to be in
a um public hearing right now
would it be better to hear from our
public
first since we are indeed in a public
hearing
on this matter or or should we go ahead
and
hear from council or does it matter
well it doesn't matter but i do think
you're right since it is a public
hearing i think it makes sense for the
public to go first
okay thank you that's what i was
thinking that i wanted to bounce that
off somebody else
all right is there anybody that's in
attendance who has
any questions um or concerns about this
piece of legislation
it's a big deal when we change our
zoning
and we want to make sure that we have an
opportunity to
an opportunity provide for all of you to
share with
us your thoughts if you have any
so president fibel we might want to just
remind them if they um
if anyone is new to tonight they would
want to raise their hand
yeah yeah don't i don't think that
i i recognize everybody's name on here
and i but thank you so much they
none of them are new but uh and i don't
see any hands raised using the
icon
all right i'm gonna take us back then to
the panelists to all of us
and yes ms lamke had her hand in the air
um followed by mr sharp
um actually i think mr sharpton had his
hand up first i'll let him go first
no that's okay uh i'm more than willing
to be second
he's so chivalrous
[Laughter]
thank you richard um my question might
be more for for
marker for the mayor but given if we
pass this we're kind of setting new
criteria
um for residents
is there a potential that someone who
either has someone that's already
pending before
um bzap would work on their criteria one
and then if it got appealed to council
if passed this is now a different
criteria
or do we have something stating uh
you know after this date it's this
criteria i just don't want anyone who's
got anything that's pending or
could be appealed to be stuck with an
inconsistent code
yeah i i don't think that um anything
passed by council can apply
retroactively to anything that's already
in the pipeline
we can have discussions about what it
means to be in the pipeline but i think
that's getting into the weeds a little
bit
and that regardless of what
might change with this ordinance the the
standard in place when somebody filed
their application would be
the standard that would apply i can't
recall is this
uh may or does this um ordinance have
emergency language or is it the
traditional 90 days
so it's 30 days yeah and i think three
days that's what i meant so yeah
just to and any application that has
been filed monique is is vested in the
code that existed as of the date of
filing
and so um what would
the risk is that you could have an
architect that
is not aware of the proposed tour
homeowner not aware of the proposed
changes
and starts designing right now and
uh the code goes into effect prior to
them filing their application
now that's i mean that's the
that's a possibility it's been fairly
well circulated among the architectural
community and
karen can attest to the fact that she's
spoken to many of our local architects
so there's pretty broad awareness of it
um and we'll continue to make sure that
that's true
um i also think that like the risk of
that is that they go to file
and they're made aware before going to
any zoning hearing that they need to
conform with the law so
i think that's a standard risk of any
any rezoning
okay it wasn't so much retroactive it
was more
you know for the time if it does get
passed for someone going before bzap and
then
being appealed to council i wouldn't
want two different standards
um to our residents that was my only
concern
thank you thanks monique good question
uh richard mr sharp yes thank you
um so karen um am i correct that this
only applies to garage slash
accessory structures that are detached
so different standards would apply to
someone who's building an
attached garage yes once it becomes an
attached
garage is part of the primary structure
so
um in fact that was with
great discussion that some of the
generosity of the
garage size was agreed to um because
what we have seen happen
is if people want a bigger garage then
they just say
we'll tear down the old garage and put
it put one on the primary structure
which it doesn't matter then if it's a
garage it's part of the primary
structure
and it goes with those setbacks and and
donating codes great question so that
still is an
option if someone wanted to
have some sort of extra livable space
above the garage that they would need to
have it designed as part of the
primary residence yeah i mean if
if it's part of the primary residence
then what goes above it
could be um it just would have to follow
the zoning code of a primary structure
correct thank you
all right thanks richard
anybody else have any ques other
questions um
for karen or for the mayor
um president fiable if i could just
clarify um
that i've said this in the past but i
want to say this during this public
hearing that there is a component of
this that we've not talked about
yet in this meeting just now which is
that section
um four i think hold on
uh does provide a new provision um
that doesn't exist today which is that
in a situation where you have an
accessory garage structure
and you're removing it you do need to
get a certificate of appropriateness to
not replace
that garage structure so that is a new
concept
and again the logic as we've talked
about before was that
we are seeing examples of garages and in
the nearing the end of their physical
life
i have a garage near the end of my
physical life and
as that happens we are seeing examples
where we just have kind of abandoned
slab
sitting in the back of yards and we're
losing stock of covered parking spaces
and even as we're struggling with folks
who want to make
extra large garages we have other
examples of of losing
uh covered parking spaces which has a
number of
ways that it impacts the fabric of the
neighborhood
mexico's historic fabric has these
detached garages it's one of the reasons
i think karen spoke about
we want to encourage detached garages we
don't want to create a situation
necessarily architecturally
where we have a preponderance of
attached garages and similarly we don't
want to lose that
that fabric so it puts extra pressure on
the situation where you want to
remove a garage and not put one back you
need to come before the board and get a
certificate of appropriateness
all right thank you mr mayor
anyone else um from council at the
moment that has any questions or
concerns
i do see a hand troy marco mr markham
yeah i just want to ask a follow-up
question where you're you were just
looking at that
uh that section four
i mean i i think i understand what that
means but it does say
without a replacement plan so
what does bees app what does that mean
does that mean another garage has to be
a
plan has to be submitted for one to be
demolished or
is there something else besides that
that would count as a replacement plan
yeah so if you if you had a situation
where you had
um this these are kind of niche examples
but they exist
you have another garage that has other
spaces
or you have an attached garage that has
spaces and you're getting rid of your
detached garage
you wouldn't need to have a replacement
plan because in this instance you have
adequate
off-street parking spaces that are
covered this would require it in the
situation where you
would buy to demolish in your garage
reduce the number of parking spaces
below two enclosed off street parking
spaces
did i answer your question yeah i i
guess
yeah sort of um i i guess
like i i'm not a builder and so i try
and think about you know what this
language means it's sometimes
not as obvious to me so
you know you're we're just concerned
with preserving
off-street parking here right so if
there's a a carport or
some alternative mechanism that's
presented that is that's what you're
looking for
uh looking for basically not not
to have a overall reduction in the
number of garages in the community that
there will continue to be
opportunities for people who are buying
properties and
actually to park their cars off the
street um and um
you know that that that just be
perpetuated
uh it's basically it's a preservation
tactic to preserve the existing fabric
okay that that makes sense to me i just
didn't know if that
if that wording meant that another
garage had to be built
uh but really what we're looking at is
to come up with just some
ideas that we're not losing we're not
demolishing a garage and then
grassing it over with you know something
like that without without maintaining
parking spaces thank you
thank you um troy um richard you have
another question sir
yeah um i was looking at the wordiness
as well
and we refer at the beginning of this
section
demolition of attack detached garages
then it says no garage accessory
structure
i'm just wondering why um
we're not either using the same
terminology
and that brings to the question if
someone
was converting their
um existing attached garage
with that to living space without
a replacement plan that's not a
demolition um
is the intent that they would have a
replacement as well
anybody have an answer for that one
it's a great question um i don't think
in all the years i've done this that
i've ever seen anybody enclose their
garage to be living space without
additionally proposing uh either
detached garage or a different spot for
their
attached garage we might have a member
on this panel
ranch houses that where i notice it the
most like
i've seen it in berwick before but
to richard's point the the way i read
this
section g if example
of somebody converting an attached
garage it would not
require any approval or
well would require approval certain
approvals but
there wouldn't be any it's not a
demolition as i read this and it would
not
result in having to have a replacement
plan
mark wouldn't that be a separate
ordinance too since this ordinance is
dealing with
accessory structures which is not yeah
yeah i think you're absolutely right
about that yeah
those those kind of conversions
typically just come through
architectural review
makes sense not zoning richard was that
helpful
yeah i'm i'm i'm still a little bit
i'd prefer the language to be the same
throughout the paragraph
because i think it sometimes can be
confusing but
other than that it's helpful thank you
yeah they are they are rich they are
used a little interchangeably in our
code but
i understand what you're saying so
you're saying it should be
demolition of garage accessory structure
or demolition of detect
no no detached garage
yeah um because other other places it
refers to garage and accessory structure
so
i don't want it to be assumed that it's
a typo that they left out the word and
or
have any confusion so does that satisfy
your concern
and um this third line from the bottom
of that paragraph
thank you nice job richard
perry all right
council anything else
i'm going to ask the attendees one more
time before we go out
of our public hearing to see if
anyone has any anything else that they
this won't be the last time that that
attendees can but i just want to
announce that we're going to go out of
our public hearing
okay with that exiting the public
hearing
um i am going to ask um
jessica if she has assad um as
chairperson of uh the zoning committee
do you have any action
on the proposed amended ordinance number
11
21 i do and i want to remind council
that this
is an action taken on exactly what
president fiable
just said it is just the proposed
amended ordinance 11-21 garage zoning
update revision 7.
um i would like to make a motion um
um to approve this actually i think
we're making a motion to amend
um yes amend yes mend this make it a
motion to amend this yes
okay is there a second to amend um
ordinance 11 21 i says
second thank you for sure um
is there any conversation from those in
attendance concerning the amendments to
um ordinance 1121.
anyone on council have any questions or
concerns
about the amendments to ordinance 1121.
mr harvey mr fibel yes
mr klingler yes mr markham
yes ms lamke yes ms robinson
yes assad yes mr sharp
yes right
thank you so much everyone that uh the
amendments have been um
included and now i'm going to ask massa
do you
have um any action on amended
ordinance number 1121 yes
um i would like to um take a vote
on the amended um ordinance 11-21
okay so is that an emotion that that's a
a first motion to approve is there a
second motion to approve
second slamkey thank you ms liam okay we
have a first and we have a second
any further questions or comments from
those in attendance
any further questions or comments from
those um on council
mr mr sharp yeah i'd just like to make a
statement that generally i'm
opposed to restricting um
uh residents rights um as far as
um what they'd like to do with their
property however i understand
the um intent of this and
um i know i i have a brother-in-law who
built what he called it
garage mahal so
especially with neighbors and whatnot
but um
i since there are additional uh
remedies that residents have by choosing
to
add on to their house as a an attached
garage structure i am i feel the
those options still remain to residents
who really need
a larger space than what the detached
uh provisions allow so i will be
voting in favor of this ordinance thank
you richard as will i i am so i am so
grateful for all
um all of bisep's extra work um karen
thank you so much for yours
we are grateful um uh chairperson assad
has sung your praises on a regular basis
um every time this ordinance has come up
she has
applauded all of you and and we are
grateful for her leadership as well so
thank you
miss sod and and um i know that we
had some real trouble
um as a council coming to the conclusion
on it on a garage that was brought
forward to us um and we were very
very confused although we thought that
we felt like we knew what the spirit of
it of
of what our what our rules were saying
it it
the rules were very unclear so thank you
for clarifying those
so does anybody else have any comments
or questions concerning
this before i ask mr harvey to do his
job
i don't see anything mr harvey please mr
klingler
yes mr markham
yes assad yes ms fiable
yes ms robinson yes mr sharp
yes mrs lamke yes
question passes all right
thank you all very much thank you very
much
thanks karen thanks karen
you can hang on karen if you want to
stay i know you have
nothing else here karen come on you know
karen has been on that like 3 a.m
meetings i think she's like pizza
i've had my share of 2 a.m but thank you
thank you thank you for being part of
our daily update today was a daily
update
thank you no problem thank you
take good care of yourself all right
we are we are to the president's report
and i have to find my notes just a
second let me click on them
see what i have for everyone um i just
um
i want to make sure all of you remember
that we have to get our
um financial statements done
um monday uh may 17th
2021 it's really easy guys if you
haven't done it
please do the ohio ethics commission and
for uh
professional conduct just want to remind
you of that i'm going to keep reminding
about that until i probably do it myself
so forgive me for bugging y'all about it
um i also want to tell you
that um the bexley
um celebrations and events team and ben
may be giving you
i don't know what the mayor's report
says but he may have some updates on
this but we are working
really hard trying to figure out
wonderful ways to create shared
experiences
with our community so that we can
continue to
build a strong bond between our citizens
um
as it stands currently we're planning to
host all our traditional independence
day activities
sunday july 4th um the john barr
5k parade and evening celebrations and
fireworks
how these events will look is unsure
at this time we're waiting for further
guidance from the governor's office
regarding parades and processions and
what protocols we'll need to follow
um but we're hoping to get some of this
information soon
um but we're trying we're trying real
hard to figure out ways that we can do
this we really
um are moving forward with trying to
decide what bands and what movies and
and um what kind of food trucks we're
going to do and how
we can keep our community um
safe and healthy but strong
and together and welcoming all at the
same time
and we're really having a good time
doing it
and the more fun my committee has doing
it the more fun
i know um the community's gonna have so
um stay tuned i just wanted you all to
have
um just kind of a clue as to what to say
to people
when you're out and about and mingling
um
so that being said don't think that i
have
any other comments um
or reports of information to all of you
i know that um mayor kessler and i are
starting to uh
select dates perhaps in may for our um
i think we have a it's quarterly we have
a quarterly round table
with um lots of different leadership um
throughout the community and it's always
always so productive so
i will keep you um up to date with that
and um unless anybody has any questions
for me
i am going to turn it over
to our um city attorney who i know has
an
update for all of us important stuff to
hear about mr fishel
sure so um i know everybody all council
members received a copy of the appeal
that was filed from the bees apps
decision
pursuant to our city code regarding 2300
livingston east livingston avenue
development
under our code council is expected to
hold a hearing within 30 days with some
exceptions that may apply
in this situation the appeal was filed
april 23rd
um as i mentioned before um and maybe i
hadn't come to a definitive
conclusion but i definitely did not have
now that from a substantive standpoint i
need to recuse myself
from any representation of the city
including advising the city about
you know some of the ins and outs of the
appeal i mean frankly catherine
cunningham does most of that anyway but
i've been involved in some of the other
ones
um but since i sit on the cic i just
don't feel like that would be
appropriate
uh in my role as a lawyer i mean again
there's special rules regarding lawyers
that don't necessarily apply to council
members who are sitting on the cic
as council members um so um
i have reached out to catherine in my
hope and i don't know if the mayor has
any
um any update information
my hope is that she will meet with
council and executive session to discuss
this pending
litigation um and outline the options
and the different uh considerations for
city council so
we are on top of it again there there
may be
may or may not be issues with city
council hearing that appeal
um but i don't want to get any further
thank you um mr fishel that is
my report thank you sir we appreciate
your report and we appreciate you thank
you so much for all you do for us
um i think we can
um move on um oh we have a hand
raised sorry mr markham question
troy uh mr official ultimately what's
the mechanism who makes the decision
whether that comes to counsel or goes
somewhere else
when it comes to counsel the decision
that council has to make is
given the circum unique circumstances in
this situation
is that council will have to decide with
catherine's
um input and advice is whether there are
reasons that council can't hear the
appeal
uh for either legal or
appearance of impropriety issues to be
very general
and i'm not trying to presuppose a dece
a conclusion when i say that so that's
something that you folks will have to
decide upon if that is
uh you know one way or the other if
council decides
not to hear the appeal then then the
other thing that
you will have to work with ms cunningham
on is
how to
issue that determination while still
allowing of course
the allen's right to appeal the common
police card which
obviously that can't be removed just
because
council decides not to hear an appeal
good question troy uh mr sharp question
uh this question is for you president
fibel and
the mayor as far as if there's been any
uh conversation with catherine as to
a date that we plan to have that
discussion i believe that um
mr fishel requested
that catherine do that with us
at our may meeting our very first may
meeting
but she has not to my knowledge gotten
back to him
um so if we can't have it then there
there may be a need for a special
meeting
so correct on all accounts okay so
so stay tuned would be what i would say
mr markham here your your hand icon is
up
do you have a further question i didn't
think so but i just wanted to make sure
okay any other questions for um mr
fishel
all right thanks so much we'll move on
to
our administrative updates then and
we're going to go
right into the finance department with
mr harvey i know that he
has his report up ready for us i would
love for him to give us some
um updates sure
the highlights might have for us
i want to add to lorien's
reminder of the ethics forum that you
also owe
have to file your federal state and city
taxes by
may 17th as well so you don't want to
miss any of those
anyway the uh the may the march report
is up on the screen
uh not a lot of information here uh
may i'm sorry march revenue is
down below our budget and as you recall
we lowered our budget
uh based on the pandemic we're still
sixty thousand dollars below
for march i don't know if that's um
if that's indicative of anything other
than the fact that
taxes the payment of taxes has been
delayed a month and that might just be
uh the impact of that delay people not
paying on time
as you can see for the year we're still
360 thousand dollars above where
we budgeted so we're still in fine shape
uh the general fund has about a million
dollars more in it
than than we budgeted so financially
right now i don't see anything to worry
about
but we'll obviously keep an eye on the
city income tax
my guess is april will be up and may
will be up
uh just because they traditionally are
because of
payments due and and we'll be receiving
some of that money from
from uh rita and others as as we get
paid
but i'll be happy to answer any
questions um
if anybody has any um
all right let me see don't see any any
hands in the air
for audit or harvey anybody
oh matt klingler does
hey bill can you email me uh a copy of
that
report i don't see it in the packet that
i downloaded off um
the website sure sure yep
it should have been there but i'll get
i'll get one out to you right away
did everybody else have one or you want
me to email it to everybody
i'm going to send a link it's linked on
the agenda
i'm going to send that link right now in
the chat okay
all right awesome thank you thank you mr
harvey for always bringing those to us
um on a on a monthly basis we we
appreciate it
um next is the police department chief
do you have anything
other than your written report sir no
ma'am i do not
all right thank you so much i know that
um
i know that officer uh or um sergeant am
i getting it right
yes detective sergeant bricky
always has some words of wisdom for us
and he's warning us about
summer being you know a time where
people like to take
some of our property off of our hands um
so uh that would he always has some good
pieces of advice for us does anybody
have any questions for i do see
a hand at least for the chief it looks
like it's jen robinson ms robinson
um i thought this might be a really
great time to announce that we have
received
chief a grant from the bexley community
foundation
uh much as we have done in the past we
will be holding another police
appreciation event but that
money also includes dollars for uh for
training
i've been in contact with um sergeant
overly about some training that she's
gonna do this year but this includes uh
dollars for training for next year so
um thank you to the bexley community
foundation and i'm so glad that we can
continue to support the police
department
in both events that show our
appreciation but also to support the
training that
i know our officers pride themselves on
so um good news
thank you ma'am it's very much
appreciated thank you for the support
absolutely anybody else have anything
for um the chief all right and we will
wish him well
and tell him to keep his officers safe
thank you sarah for all you do
thank you ma'am all right i think we are
too
andy bayshore and i think andy bayshore
is on vacay
am i right he is but he just couldn't
stay away
so i'm out of it i was like andy
yeah d dude
what is up with that
but i don't have anything else to add to
my written report tonight
all right does anybody have any
questions or comments for our andy
bayshore
it looks like ms lamke does
andy i'm so glad you're on tonight i
have to brag to you about how amazing
the service employees were
during this saturday's bexley cleanup
day
they were out there 6am meeting our
residents taking heavy loads out of the
cars and helping us
figure out what can be shredded what can
be recycled what needed to be sorted
and they did it with the smile on their
face so um
you've got a rock star department and i
just want to make sure that you knew
that
thank you very much thanks andy
uh mr sherpa also has his hand raised
richard
thank you andy um for all the work that
your department's doing and for
your report each time um just
to um keep people from asking
periodically
as well do you mind adding a segment on
the
sewer remediation program to your report
and then like maybe once a month or if
it's easier just to
put it in there each time and update it
once a month maybe
absolutely not a problem thank you
thanks richard anybody else have any
questions before we let andy bayshore
get back to his vacation
all right looks like you're a free bird
mr bayshore take care of yourself
all right you too thank you see andy
see you all right let's see i think
next up is um michael price and the
recreation department
thank you madam president nothing to add
to my written report
it's a rockstar report thank you
look at look at that look at the
registration
funds going up up up
all right does anybody have any
questions for michael price
looks like richard sharp does richard um
michael thank you for uh sending the uh
worksheet
i haven't had a chance to look at that
regarding the jeffrey mansion
project is there anything that you would
like to highlight
about that worksheet
uh yeah i'd be happy to go through it
real quick mayor
can you possibly pull that up i can't do
you want to
i think that's part of the ordinance
that's coming up right should we have
that conversation during the ordinance
i don't i don't mean to that would be
great let's do that
mr sharp is that okay with you that's
fine
okay um any other
comments or questions for mr price
all right i think we are
moving on to the mayor's update am i
right
am i right uh-huh yep
um okay
so i trust you all have read this and
our students and my updates so i'm not
going to read everything to you
but i do want to highlight that a couple
things
um so drexel avenue andy talked about
the sewer work that's starting water
sewer work starting this summer it
happened this summer and
next summer we will be working on the
surface of drexel and it's not going to
be just a simple
overlay of pavement most likely it's
going to include some traffic calming
installations
so we're going to have an initial may
12th public workshop at 5 p.m
uh we're going to be sending out letters
here very shortly to residents who live
on the street to let them know about
that
um and just to solicit feedback there's
a survey that's part of that that our
traffic engineer is
completing and putting online to just
solicit input on how to
calm traffic different ideas for common
traffic and there will be a follow-up
public workshop
in mid-june we're working with our our
traffic engineer carpenter marty
uh to go through that process i'm pretty
excited because i think there's some
really interesting opportunities on
drexel avenue
um so it'll be interesting to see how
that goes i just wanted to make sure you
guys are aware of that
there's some detailed information here
about the american rescue plan
it is similar to what we've shared in
the past but it
we have a little bit more like explicit
information still waiting on that
important final guidance from the
treasury department
i do have a karzak expenditures report
in here
really not been a ton of change i just
condensed it to a more readable
uh easy format than the other one that
was kind of crossing over different
years and that sort of thing
uh we did sorry we did meet with the um
external appropriations committee last
week and we expanded the household
impact assistance to allow
um up to ten thousand per household
total
in the past there's a five thousand
dollar cap we have not added more money
there's not a need currently for more
money
it's just addressing needs for residents
who have been chronically impacted by
covet-19
and i will tell you darn has been doing
such a fantastic job administering that
program
and a very conscientious and careful way
so i i don't know what we would do
without that partnership
there were a couple photos on there uh
we had a
vaccination clinic uh hosted at capital
university parking lot
vex the urgent care was a partner as was
franklin county public health
and we vaccinated over 80 individuals
uh in the city which was great um and
the cleanup day
you guys have heard about obviously
monique did a great job talking about
how successful that was
uh we we um to add to that we took
a record number of drugs in at our dea
drug take back day um you know every
single
container we could fill with shredding
was filled with shredding
we did a great job with goodwill's a lot
of e-recycling so it was a really
successful event
and um got a couple trash talk photos
there
uh that's continued to be a super fun
event so if you haven't made one yet
um please come join got some coming up
um
in the coming weeks and that's my report
question for mr mayor anybody
i see somebody has their hand up uh
looks like
troy marcum and jessica assad troy
i'm going to lower my hand as i speak so
i don't forget thank you troy
yes you know i want to echo uh something
that the mayor just said because
sometimes you see these numbers on these
sheets and everything
and i want to reiterate for you guys
especially what a great partner
darn is in this because it's not just
money you know it's not just checks and
money that's going out
there they do such a a thorough job
of managing and overseeing these funds
uh they are boots on the ground
they are tailoring uh the these funds to
the needs of uh specific
people and family and situations in the
community so
i just want to reassure you that the
money that goes that we you're
appropriating for
for them is really in my opinion
not only well spent but also very
thoughtfully spent and
with an eye on maximizing the the the
effect in the community so
i i i could not um agree with
um troy moore you know
troy and and the mayor and um bill
harvey and i
sit on that uh cares group
and i you know forget the fact that they
have to be so organized they also have
to have an amazing sense of emotional
fortitude
to be able to continuously um
help some of these people who are
desperately needed
in need of help and and it is amazing
that covet has struck so many
different people um so
we are very lucky thank you troy um
i thought was it just it was jessica
that had her hand up yep
is sod yes um i couldn't agree more
darn is an amazing organization and what
they do for the community we are all
very lucky for those volunteers
mayor kessler quick question for you i
saw some tim hortons and some of those
trash talk pictures so i'm wondering is
that a part of the deal
no god kids love tim hortons and we're
in
this particular group of kids it's just
awesome
these were some some a couple different
families and they they actually
the parents provided the tim hortons
after the cleanup
i was circling back around to pick up
the trash bags when i
uh intercepted them outside of tim
hortons
and uh what i think was really fun to
watch with this group is
when you when you've got a trash pickup
where there's just some fairly dramatic
trash so just to give you an idea
this is this is a truck after one hour
on livingston avenue right so
um these these kids just dug into it
like i would they were like a bunch of
piranha i would turn around
in a parking lot two seconds ago
i you know blink and it's just clean so
it was just
it was awesome watching the work with
enthusiasm and they said this is awesome
can we do this more
and they were like maybe we'll come back
every month so um
it's a it's a it's fun the bad news is i
think as we actually clean everything up
there's a little less adrenaline
involved so
we got to keep it exciting nice job i've
heard great things from community
members asking about it
and uh sports teams asking about it
sports teams yep it's the thing oh it's
awesome
great job all right any more questions
for the mayor
all right then with everyone's
permission
i am going to move on to the consent
agenda
and it's all yours mr fishel
was i understanding that there might be
an amendment to the minutes
i forgot about that you are correct um
let's do that first and then
i'll read the consent agenda with the
amended minutes
great um massage would you like to um
tell us
your amend uh the amendment that you're
proposing please
yes the amendment um to city council
minutes from
april 13 2021 would be
on my report which is page six of the
minutes
just the first sentence
would be great if it read miss saad
wanted to thank our local bexley artist
aj oshie
anna sokol and dahlia knops for
contributing their artwork to be
showcased in the bexley artist bike rack
series
right i will second that motion is there
um
any discussion from council on amending
the minutes
um all right yeah voice vote is fine
um all those in favor please signify by
saying aye
aye those opposed same sign
all right so amended the amended
uh minutes of 14
uh 13 or 4 13 21
um are on the consent agenda as item
d on our consent agenda is there
any um does anybody have i'm sorry
now i have to read it oh now you have to
read it
okay oh that's right i'm so sorry
forgive me
okay so on the consent agenda we have
ordinance 13-21 to appropriate eight
thousand eighty-nine dollars and
forty-five cents
from the unencumbered general fund to
pay for replacement of a jeffrey park
stage and ten that were destroyed during
a storm in 2020
that was introduced by mr markham
ordinance 15-21 to appropriate fifteen
thousand seven hundred dollars
from the water fund to pay for water
line reconstruction in conjunction with
the 2021
street reconstruction project introduced
by mr markham
and resolution 03-21 to confirm the
mayor's appointments of claire
sabias uh to the recreation board that
was introduced to mr
by mr klingler and now the amended city
council minutes of 413-21
thank you mr official is there a motion
on the consent agenda please
motion to approve miss lampke thank you
miss lamke is there a second
second jen robinson thank you jen um
any questions from those in attendance
on the consent agenda
panelists okay mr harvey
ms lamke yes ms robinson
yes mr klingler yeah
ms fibel yes mr sharp
yes mr markham yes assad
yes all right consent agenda passes
thank you everyone
all right now we are going to move on to
um item number
11 please and thank you which
are ordinances or resolutions with
visiting presenters that would be
elena andrews we do have to have this
red though if we could please mr fishel
this is a third reading correct this is
a second reading
okay so we have a second reading of
resolution 04-21 approving the 2021
park landscape plan that was not me
barking
introduced by mr klingler all right
um thank you mr klingler
can you take it away please yes
hello everyone um thank you so much for
having me here today
um i have a powerpoint presentation that
um i'd like to share with you
um that basically is the um the process
that we've been going through
the last couple of years for the
havenwood park so
um i will go through that i will try to
do it relatively quickly in the interest
of time and then
at the end if you all have any questions
i can certainly take
the questions am going to go ahead
ben i'm going to stop your screen share
and share mine go for it
alrighty well hopefully everyone can see
that so um
havenwood park um i'm sure most of you
um
hopefully have been by it it's one of
the four city parks
in bexley um we've got jeffrey
commonwealth havenwood and schneider
and as we've been working on all of
these um it's really come to the city's
attention
that havenwood really is in need of of a
refresh and so really the purpose of
this
was started in that um it's just it's
kind of past its its prime it still
is a wonderful park we use it with uh
you know the community uses it jazz in
the park uses it
but the desire really was what can we do
to actually bring it back up
to um its original design intent and
make sure that it can last for the next
100 years in the park what's interesting
about this
is we actually um i reached out to
the bexley public library so a little
bit of a shout out to
david distal horse who was able to find
some of this information
in his archives where as early as 1912
actually the bexley
plaza which was a large area that was
just south of maine
was basically opened up and it was
advertised to the public
as a new community that had you know
sidewalks and streets and trees and how
great was this going to be and so you
can see here just a couple of
um things that both plotted it out you
can see the oval shape of
they called it the bexley plaza at this
point um and so that is actually
commonwealth park
and then some advertisements that were
in the columbus dispatch
um in both june and july which i love
that you know you can
the ladies could get a paracel if they
came to the opening and the man
could get a cane um and so this has an
interesting part in um
the city's development as it um as it
grew
looking and finding the sanborn fire
insurance maps
you can see in 1922 havenwood park still
existed there had been
some um discussions that there was a
some oral for
forklore that someone had deeded the
park um as a sale of their home we
weren't able to find that
it appears that the park was always
planned to be a part of this
neighborhood
and then in 1951 interestingly they
called it beach park
and um we were can only assume that's
because of the beautiful beach trees
that are in the park there is no
evidence that we can find when it was
officially started to be referred to
as havenwood park
so the guiding principles it was
important for us
to we reached out to the community we
had
an open call to the residents to say hey
would you like to participate in this
a small group of people decided to join
um the design process
and in one of our kickoff meetings um
the phrase that this is the park that
has nothing
was was brought up and it really
resonated with everyone um that was
participating and that this really is
it's
it doesn't have a playground it doesn't
um have
i mean it has some benches and things
like that but the idea that it's an open
usable park that people use as their
front yard um that that's really
something that people wanted to maintain
so with the first um guiding principle
that um was decided was to provide an
organic experience and that so many
activities happen here from um
bird watching to photography to kids
studying to
people doing yoga and tai chi to art in
the park and then
obviously um the jazz in the park it
really is used a lot by
um everyone in the community and
shockingly a lot of people who are not
in south bexley they don't even know
that havenwood park is actually there so
it's this nice hidden little
gem um down in south bexley
the second guiding principle was to
maintain the intimate informality of the
park
there was not a desire to actually have
you know
playgrounds here the kids run through
the trees they climb on boulders
really wanting to keep again that that
natural feeling
with adding some amenities that could be
used um some more benches some places to
sit
and things like that but really nothing
too formal
and transformational within this park
we wanted to promote education and
awareness a handful of the trees are
labeled
as part of the arboretum the park this
is a great place for people to come
and to make sure that we can actually um
identify both the trees and the shrubs
with plant material that um
works in the the conditions that exist
in the park so when people are coming
here they can actually
learn a little bit about plants that
they might be able to use and share into
their yard
the fourth was to provide appropriate
hardscape elements
um they're the stone wit retaining walls
you'll see some photos a little bit
later
um they're falling apart and there there
was a desire as
because of some of the activities like
the jasmine park that is there
can we provide some kind of minimal
hardscape just to make
setup and having some of the tables a
little bit easier for people to actually
use
um the sidewalks um you know can we
actually talk about the entries into the
park
how do we actually notify that people
that this is how you can actually come
in and not
or not we talked about having
a tree succession plan and talking with
grant archer the arborist
there is in fact a tree succession plan
the the city does monitor the trees
and to make sure that as trees age and
they come down
that new ones can be planted and so it
will not
all of a sudden we won't have a an area
where they're all going to die and it's
going to completely look like a
different park
and finally providing signage there is
no signage
at havenwood nor actually is there even
at commonwealth
and the image that you see here was an
image that was taken from the
commonwealth
master plan that how can we actually
have some signage that identifies that
yes this is
havenwood park but also is there any
opportunities to have some
informational signage um the image that
you see here
is the signage that was installed for
campus now at drexel circle
and would that be appropriate or not for
this park
so some of the initial observations with
the park
it's actually almost symmetrical on the
east side and the west side
just in terms of the plant material and
and some of the trees
so that was something that you can tell
that a while ago there was
an intentional landscape design we have
not been able to find
the original plan for that but just the
way that things are set up you can tell
that at some point this was thought out
there's a layering of various plant
material from the variety to the taxes
to some
of the the lilacs there are dogwoods
and all of that kind of moving forward
then there's
you know somewhat of a main entry in a
secondary entry we're a little hesitant
to actually label it as such
but if you had to say there was a main
entry it probably would be off of
cassingham simply because there's not a
tree
um in the center um off of euclair of
that kind of
um entry coming in off of the sidewalk
but people this is a very porous park
and so people really just kind of filter
in
from you know all the sides
there are a handful of accessories from
a little library to a bench to a picnic
table that's falling apart there's
frisbee golf
um here are some of the images of uh the
the dry stacked stone walls that are
really just falling apart
um and then some of the curbs that are
along here
where they're in need of some something
to help with a mulch that just is kind
of
running down into the street there
there is a lot sadly of declining or
missing plant material
there's some tree stumps there that we
were able to find um there's plant
material that just is
it just looks bad and just really just
needs to be replaced
we did talk to grant about the large
beach in the center of that tree
some residents expressed concern simply
because um
there's some kind of large branches in
the center that that have been uh
pruned out the tree is very healthy it
is solid it is structural there's no
concern
from an arbor standpoint of any kind of
danger and that
and um we want to be able to try to that
the tree is beautiful and is probably
hundreds of years old and so we want to
make sure that we can keep it as healthy
and alive
as long as we possibly can
so what are the opportunities that
everyone sees within this park
where there's a opportunity to
potentially have a ramp that comes in
off of cassingham
to make things maybe a little bit easier
for some of the people
coming into the park either with
strollers or or wheelchairs
there's an opportunity to have a small
area of hardscape pavers that could
accommodate
the temporary stage for jazz in the park
and some
tables new stone retaining walls around
the perimeter basically replacing the
ones that we have there
also with the idea of installing lower
ones
on places where some of the mulch is
running out because there's not any
either plant material or hardscape to
actually retain that
introducing some more boulders
throughout for kids to sit and to play
on
adding more benches and then that led us
to the actual design process itself
so you've been seeing this as an aerial
of um havenwood park so you can see
euclair
and cassingham north is actually
oriented north um
is up on your screen these are all of
the existing trees in their approximate
canopies um within the plan and so we'll
drop off the aerial so it's a little bit
clearer
so you can see uh what we're going
through and the first thing that we
would like to do is actually add
new perimeter stone walls that would
basically
corner each of the different things with
a new exception that they would actually
return
into the park and help to find the entry
into that park
and adding retaining walls on the north
side as well as extending it on the
south side somewhat just to help
maintain the existing plant material
this would
be the hardscape element that would come
in with a ramp off of cassian ham and by
a ramp basically a gentle slope that
would come in
from the sidewalk level to come up
there's probably
eight inches of difference between the
sidewalk and
um the lawn area and then what you see
here
is a plaza the rectangle that you see is
a six inch elevated stage
that is about 20 by 16 feet that the
temporary stage
could sit on and when the stage is not
there people can use it we can put
tables and chairs on it kids can play
around on it
we would be adding in a lot of a variety
of different types of shrubs just to
infill
and just make it feel a little bit more
complete
most of this happens around on the edges
you can see kind of all in through here
as well as also adding some plant
material on some of the slopes
to help retain the soil erosion
a handful of new trees that's really not
necessary to add more trees in this area
but just a evergreen we thought would be
nice as well
as a weeping purple beach here just a as
a small
homage to the name of the park back in
1920s
on the corners the idea is to add
add some perennials but also to add
annuals at each of these corners
this is similar to something that we
would like to do at commonwealth
park and if you think of the annuals
that you see in drexel circle
that this would be the same annuals and
so in some of these areas that are all
throughout the city of bexley
we would start to have a commonality of
plant material that kind of
start to tie together all of these
public spaces for the community
this is more of a formal plan
of what this would look like with the
plant material actually called
out we would be using the standard
benches and picnic tables
that the city has been using you can see
at city hall and we're trying to
create that as a standard for all of the
parks moving forward
just some detailed information on the
hardscape elements
the pavers that we would like to use are
a blue stone in the same pattern and a
rectangular running
bond pattern that you see back behind
the city hall patio so we can again
start to tie together and have the same
material that is used in all of these
different areas
just a very simple limestone solid piece
of limestone tread that would be the
outline
of that raised rectangular area
simple ohio boulders and then a dry
stack limestone wall
the intent with this is that this would
actually be constructed properly
with the necessary drainage back behind
it gravel and weed mats and so you're
not going to have
the the conditions that you see now with
the soil actually coming through and
things kind of moving down
the top course would be mortared so that
it would be safe for kids to basically
still kind of run along
all along the top of that
so the next steps we have presented this
to the south bexley neighborhood
association
um on in march and um they all
appreciated it
and we then reviewed it with the tree
and public gardens commission
march 21st a signage package for the
entire city is now sort of underway um
and so that's something that will be
incorporated into that
we still need to get a cost estimate on
this to kind of see all of
how how much this would all cost and the
desire is
um to actually have irrigation on this
park there's a water line that is
running through the center of that and
so
we most likely would be able to irrigate
the beds to help with the health of the
plant material
and just to maybe give it a little bit
better chance of surviving and so those
are some of the details that we're
working out and
then obviously presenting to you all
tonight
and i did want to just have a uh end
with a special thanks to
um the community members who
participated in the meetings and
provided valuable input to this
and with that i will stop and
open it up to questions i'll bring it
back to the plan
um so if anyone has any questions we can
refer to that
thank you um does anybody have
anything that they would like to ask
elena
i see um assad's hand isn't is raised
jessica yes elena i just wanted to say
what a nice thorough presentation that
you put together here
i actually as of now not have any
questions for you because
you any question i was going to have you
presented on so
i'm just looking forward to um i guess
from here getting
the estimate on the project
and that would be my question and and i
don't know that that's for you
eleanor so much as it's for the mayor is
this
is it your intent for us to um
and for and forgive me for for not
knowing the scheduling and how this
would work
do we normally approve plans before we
have the pricing on it
it sounds like oh all the time
let me contextualize that that's a great
question
we have as you guys know we have a
fantastic partnership with
the bexley community foundation and some
other funding partners
one of the ways that we get that funding
is we have a
plan in hand so we can say this is what
we're doing and here's what it's going
to cost
and we're asking for that money so we've
had a really good success with that
i will tell you that there is something
afoot that i think you need to know
about
because i think it's it's vague but it
is
developing and i think it will impact
this project
and some others and that is that there
is
there's talk right now and i i don't
again i don't have that many details
there's talk right now about
putting together a package of multiple
projects in parks throughout the
community
to do a big year of the parks in 2023.
now i know that sounds a little far off
and i'll explain to you why we're
talking a little far off
the reason we're talking about 2023 is
because we're talking about
some pretty significant investments in
parks throughout
the city and some of the ways we've
talked about the commonwealth park
arboretum feature this
project the plaza on main street for
schneider park some pocket park
developments that are under
concept and planning and some other
projects
that i'm probably even forgetting about
and the idea would be that we have
everything lined up
and that we go with a large package for
grant fund and that's been encouraged
by some folks in
some organizations that provide funding
and so that's
that's a potential now that doesn't mean
that we don't
maybe separately trying to fund this in
advance but it is an interesting and
intriguing concept to do a big
one year kind of uh parks parks uh push
if you it also happens to line up with
our next round of main street
tiff projecting um we're rolling off of
our
10-year project here in a year from now
so everything's kind of lining up around
this concept that we might be able to
kind of double up on funding and
and really make some really interesting
splashes
in the community so uh but regardless
uh this is something that we would take
once it's approved
nothing here is you know out of keeping
with other projects that we do nothing
here is opulent and so there's nothing
here that we're like
this is impossible so we take it get
pricing on it and then we would seek
grant funding
at the appropriate time thank you mr
kessler that's really exciting
i love the idea of a major push to get
our perks
um even more special than they already
are
so might imagine who's inspiring that
particular concept
i'm imagining take a guess that's what
community member might be pushing that
idea
i'm i'm i'm i'm thinking of her
right now
it's yeah we're talking about it and
we're dreaming a little bit which is
good all right
well i love it when we think big it's
wonderful
council members forgive me because i
don't know who had their hand up first
but i'm just gonna go with it ms
robinson
thanks president bible and elena thank
you so much for this this is really a
great presentation
as as of course i look at this i think
all of this sounds really really amazing
and you of course being on the ground
and
presenting to different organizations um
especially those who are directly
surrounding the park
and use it on a daily basis what has
been the feedback
um are there any concerns expressed and
um you know how are you kind of
addressing those
as we uh look at these plans in front of
us
overall i would say that the feedback
has been fantastic
um people are very excited about it
they're happy that um this park has not
been left out um they appreciate that we
have not
changed a lot of the structural kind of
integrity the overall feeling
of the park um the plant material
there's been some discussion about the
plant material whether or not we could
have more wildflowers or not and i think
some of those are things that can be
constantly
evolving and changing um as we
as we move forward the plant material
that we chose were all things that would
provide seasonal color things that you
can see in the images that are down
below
um the park is very green and so we
wanted to introduce things that had
variegated leaf colors some purple
colors
the red twig dogwood so you see
something that's nice in the winter so
we're trying to
um use what's there to be conscious of
saving money and just infilling with
you know some splashes of color the
biggest discussion um
has really centered around the hardscape
element
um that you can see there as to whether
or not um it's necessary or not i would
say that the
the people that we um have presented to
and have participated in
um we did talk a lot about um
how big it should be how small it should
be it is um
the just i did kind of jot down a couple
of figures
the overall square footage of it is only
about 1300 square feet
so it's not it's not massive um we tried
to keep it within as you can see
the um the east side of that bed and so
it felt more
like it's in that area rather than
having something that protrudes out into
the middle of um
of the park the uh there's a picnic
table that is there that
the residents move up and kind of move
around and because the
you know grass is just somewhat uneven a
lot of the people who use it really like
the idea of having a hard skate place
where
tables and chairs can be where they can
sit and have meetings and do homework
and do whatever and artwork
where there would be a flat surface um
there was some discussion about whether
or not it
should be raised or not in terms of
having that area
should it be raised or not um should it
just be
flat in general people said okay would
be nice to to have it raised for the
kids to play on whether or not it's a
tripping hazard
they're you know there are steps
everywhere you know as you walk in the
community i don't i don't think
necessarily that it would
be a tripping hazard per se there's
plenty of space to kind of move around
the
the perimeter of it and the the idea
that
kids could use it as a stage themselves
when you know a formal event is not
happening
seem to outweigh um some of the cons and
so that would that
that has been probably the biggest
question is whether or not having that
hardscape element would be there now
we have uh come up with an optional plan
of um
what what would happen to that side if
that hardscape element was not installed
um that we can certainly you know kind
of share with you
people are interested in but in general
this is pretty much the
the idea that people are supportive of
this plan
great i i appreciate you taking
the resident's comments to heart and it
sounds like you've really done a great
deal of research on this so thank you
that
that is my only question i i'm going to
jump in here and i
and i'm going to beg mr sharp and miss
lamke to to forgive me just because
um it revolves around the idea of the
hardscape because there was a
a resident who um i sat with
and and she actually talked
and collected signatures from um
probably close to 20 people i have it
but it's in the other room so forgive me
um that suggested that they really
didn't
want um that um
a hardscape i haven't circled around to
talk to her i know that she's
um she is in attendance i i know that
she um
shies from from speaking so i don't know
that she will
um she will talk to us tonight but um
i um i also had asked and i was hoping
that maybe
um we might be spoiled and um
ask one of our service guys to actually
you know use some chalk
um to kind of give us an idea of how big
that space would be um just maybe before
our um next meeting um yeah lori that's
that's definitely so i mean grant and i
have done that in
some of the other um installations in
the city that we've looked at so we can
certainly go out there and
flag what that would look like um and
just
use some landscape paint and spray it
down onto the ground and just people can
kind of get a sense and walk out there
and see what it would actually look like
happy i can certainly circle back with
grant could you do that
sometime before our next meeting um
and kind of give me a clue when you do
that so i can
go out and do that and potentially meet
with some of the neighbors and see what
their thoughts are
um of course when it comes to that okay
thank you so much i am and again i am so
sorry to to interrupt like that um
uh uh monique and richard but i just
knew that it segued well into my
question richard your question or
comment sir i'm so sorry
monique was actually raised her hand
before i did
monique no actually richard had his hand
raised first now
i'm kidding i'll i'll go over here
my my question actually uh does relate
to that hardscape and the bluestone
pavers
um elena forgive me if you've already
touched upon this but
what are the approximate dimensions of
this space
around the pavers on which a band could
perform i see it's kind of
grayed out but what are the approximate
dimensions
of that box around the square
so the so the around the square so the
square itself
is 16 going east to west by 20
going north to south then there is a six
foot walkway here and here this is
14 feet from edge to edge then we have
another six feet
around you know in this area this is
a 12 foot wide path that would lead down
to the sidewalk which is approximately
20 feet
so overall from you know this point to
here
is about 36 feet and it is 32 feet wide
um and we have it you know kind of
sitting within
um between the the trunks of these two
trees
it is somewhat if you draw a line of the
center of this
it lines up then with the center of
everything everything's like a little
bit skewed
in this park and so the hopes were that
we would be able to get it somewhat
lined up with that
i did talk with grant about um how would
this type of installation impact
um this tree that is in this location he
doesn't necessarily have concerns about
it because
um we're not we're only in you know 25
percent of its root mass and so we
should be okay
um within you know having that area and
we're not really
impacting this tree much at all at this
point okay thank you so if
i'm understanding right it also looks
like
this would be the entrance off of i
believe that's
cassingham where if you have a stroller
or a wheelchair and you want to come
into the park
that's one way that you can get in but
if jazz in the park were going on you
would then have people
with strollers or wheelchairs coming in
directly
behind the band and then having to go
around
am i correct on that yes if they choose
to come in this way
yes was there an alternate location
possibly for the for the hardscape other
than
at one of the two entrances into the
park
no we we looked at this this actually
has the most gentle slope
in the other ones and again i think the
i the thought was trying to keep
all of the hardscape elements in as
small of an area as possible
rather than necessarily having it you
know a stage is here and a ramp is over
here in this area to try to collate
locate it in that area
with jazz in the park only happening a
handful of times
um in the during the summer that it does
didn't necessarily seem to
to dictate that it would need to have
that much you know
impact as to where that stage would be
located um and so that was the thought
of why it would be all in the one
location
now people do get into the park with
strollers you know
by themselves i mean you could still
necessarily come in off of the euclid
side or just kind of go off road
coming off of havenwood north or south
but we wanted to try to keep everything
just in the one small location
so to minimize the impact of what the
footprint that that hardscape would have
great thank you and then my final
question i know mr sharp probably wants
to
get in here as well but um what is the
condition
of the grass generally throughout haven
wood i know a lot of what you mentioned
pertains to the perimeter and the trees
and some of the
greenery but what's the condition of the
ground
in havenwood and does this plant affect
um
or give that some love yes yes
the the condition of the grass is pretty
bad um and so as part of this
um you know particularly if we're able
to bring in irrigation
um we would be able to rehab the grass
and slit seed it and you know kind of
spruce it up a little bit more
and try to bring the grass back into a
condition that is a little bit more
enjoyable um one thing that we did talk
about
with the residents who are at the
meeting is that if in fact i mean we're
going to have to do a little bit of
managing expectations with the community
in terms of if this is irrigated
that that means that the grass will grow
faster and that the city might not be
able to mow it as much as like
say you mow your yard and so the grass
might tend to get a little bit it will
be healthier but it might get a little
bit
longer um and so that's something that
we'll have to work with as we um
work with the maintenance department um
and grab maintenance to try to
understand how are we going to maintain
this part
great thank you so much for answering my
questions good information
thank you great questions monique um
richard
uh yes uh thank you elena um i
attended a couple of meetings where this
was presented and there were uh
uh lots of uh comments in support of
this so i
i acted as comments the one
um and to answer
a question that i think president 5 will
ask was
have we approved plans before that
haven't been financed
commonwealth park uh one of the at least
one of the jeffrey
um park plans was approved
a number of years ago the
environmental sustainabilities
40-year plan was passed without
specific funding as well as our epa
sewer plan
without specific funding even though we
generally knew the 40-year cost
of that so
anyways it's not unprecedented and i
think it gives
the city an opportunity to do some of
the low-hanging fruit
items so um that become apparent if the
trees cut down or
um for damage or anything like that
you have a plan to to work from and also
um south bexley neighborhood association
i know
they have periodic fundraising programs
um one of them was to purchase a
bench i believe that's there and maybe
uh they have plans for another one
it seems like i remember hearing
um so the only issue that i
have regarding the hardscape at the east
end of the park is the six inch height i
um i think it's a uh
tripping hazard for kids as they run
through if they run to their parents who
are parked on casting ham you know
that maybe they may be there for i mean
um some of these activities that are
there are with really young children
and you know how really young children
can't
um adjust visually on their feet
to to everything and so i i think
that can present a problem i have no
problem with
a design feature that's right there so
you
you know where the stage
stage the stage so contrast in that area
it would be fine
i think also if there's if there are
tables put on
that that was mentioned
there's a fall hazard for
older people who might um be backing up
from a table
or walking around the edge and
their ankle twist or something on the
edge of that that
lip so i do think that needs to be
um strongly considered
illuminating but i like the design and i
like
um the contrast that that
that box provides um
on the plaza the other
ancillary item is whether you had
considered recommending to the city
to restore north haven wood drive to a
brick
south haven would brought drive right
now as brick
i think it would maybe add to the
aesthetic nature of the whole area to
have both sides brick
no that did not come up but i think
that's a great idea
and i'm good that is an interesting idea
i like that
um are you do you have anything else for
us richard
okay mr markham has his hand in the air
troy
hello ms andrews how are you good troy
how are you
i like to talk about trees but i love to
talk about grass
and you have made me very curious here
uh when you
said mentioned irrigation before i
assumed it was for the beds this is a
rather
large area to irrigate for grass
are we talking about perimeter are you
how do you envision the layout for that
i would talk to an irrigation consultant
um
it would be they would have to be
retractable heads um that would then pop
up and um would you know it would be
more along the lines that you would
probably see
in golf courses where it would want to
come out
maybe on the perimeter the one thing
that i would want to be conscious of
though
is um the trees um and to make sure that
the spray of the head isn't kind of
hitting the trees and kind of damaging
that
so if we are able to irrigate it for
the grass we would definitely want to
you know talk with the irrigation
consultant and then work with grant and
the arborist to kind of decide
what is going to be the healthiest way
to kind of move through this to make
sure that we're moving forward in that
so there's no irrigation plan in your
designs here it's just a component
that's included as a possibility
okay exactly exactly thank you
thanks mr marcum mayor kessler has his
hand in the air
mayor thank you uh madam president uh
just a couple
uh thoughts to add to the conversation
um the because i i've heard the concern
about the state
knight of the stage the plaza section
here and
the the rise it's not an unusual
condition in parks to have
sort of a long elongated sort of change
in grade
almost like a sitting area it's a fairly
common condition that we see in many
parks
throughout our city and in other places
and it provides a point of interest and
point of gathering actually so i think
that's one thing that i think is
has has come to the surface as we've
talked about this
um it's and i wanted to differentiate
between that and the idea that this is a
quote unquote stage it does provide a
slightly elevated area where we could
have
um you know performances or jazz at the
park or whatever
and i will i will say to council don't
take it lightly the fact that
when we set up a stage in the park the
amount of
um hours that go into setting that up
and tearing it down are not
insubstantial so
just having a very moderate feature to
help with that and to
to make it unnecessary um
is i think something that would be
really helpful i also want to point out
that when the stage is set up
it's taller than this it's sharper than
this
and it sits out unattended for a period
of time
anytime that we do that so um i also
want to respect all the comments
some of the comments we've received from
community members with concern about it
i'm not trying to brush those off i just
wanted to provide a counterpoint from an
operational perspective
and a park interest perspective
mr sharp raised the idea about havenwood
and brick we tried to do that actually
a few years ago but you'll notice
havenwood north is is beautifully
repaved
in the process of doing that we took off
the old pavement to see if we could
restore the brick
the brick is not uh restorable um
it's just too far gone below havenwood
north it would require
a tear out concrete underlayment and
brand new brick provision which isn't
out of the question i just wanted to
provide that
little bit of experience that we've had
on havenwood north i agree i share that
idea that would be really
that would be a great interface
is that it mayor kessler that's it thank
you
all right council anyone else have any
questions before i turn it over to our
guests
to see if they have anything to share or
to ask
or to comment on all right
anyone in attendance all you need to do
is please raise your hand using your
hand icon
we'd love to hear from you
all right seeing none oh
we do have someone someone did raise
their hand
mr pitts hello how are you
we're well mr pitts how are you well i'm
great but i am unfamiliar with the uh
rules of the road here is this the
opportunity to comment about
anything or just this topic just this
topic sorry then i'm going to go back on
you okay but it's going to be a bit it's
going to be at the very end
of the meeting all right i will i will
wait
to the ends of the world to comment all
right you're in new york
welcome welcome welcome all right
all right um let's see
uh
i think that's all we have for miss
andrews
uh madam president there's a moto g7 oh
we do see others
on that have questions all right um
i think your talking has been permitted
moto g7
play if you could please identify
yourself
this is constance lewis at 663 euclair
thank you
and i would like to say what a wonderful
job elena has done and i'm looking
forward to it
when is the earliest that this project
can start
ben so connie i don't know if you heard
my comments about maybe having a
concerted
uh effort with multiple parks at once
but
i would say that the earliest a project
like this could start would probably be
in 2022 just based upon our funding
rounds and the way that works um and
that
it's possible it's a 2023 project but
our goal would be 2022 or 2023.
well um is it possible it could be
sooner
or say this i think south beckley
neighborhood association
um has funding or very soon has
funding for another bench um could that
be installed prior to
this plan uh yes in fact we've already
yeah we've already agreed to that yeah
so that's
i think somebody mentioned you know
parts can can start so the bench
will you know has the the material
selection there is
is part of this plan and uh it's
compatible with the other bench that was
installed and so yeah absolutely
there's no reason to wait on that sort
of a fixture that could be
continuing the information that we got
uh was for a four foot
bench i believe the bench that we've
already put in is a six foot bench do
you want all of the benches to be six
feet or
four foot we so we already corrected
that that was a uh
that was a little bit of an error but we
corrected that and um
sent that information to pat oh
wonderful
so um i'm assuming it's more than than
the four foot bench
cost wise yeah although we we've
negotiated a discount with that vendor
so it's
not incredibly different it's but we can
would it be would it be less expensive
to purchase
all three of the additional benches
i don't believe so okay all right
well thank you and thank you again elena
you've done a marvelous job
thank you so much connie does anyone
else fro
in in attendance have any questions
madam president if i may um
i just want to offer a long elena can
flag that and we can offer
an opportunity not just for you to meet
on the on the street with any neighbors
but elena i would like to offer
ellen i'm going to volunteer that
eleanor could also be on site to kind of
help navigate that and
answer questions as an on-site guide i
would love that
give me an excuse to see you so i think
that would work
all right sounds like a plan great all
right
um mr klingler um if it is
oops is it mr klingler's is this no this
is that was
uh uh yeah it was mr klingler's with
your permission i'm going to move us on
to third readings
yep all right president point of order
sure um something that was raised by
mr pitts was regarding um public
or comments by residents and i didn't
notice it
missing in the agenda is this a change
from
our prior um agenda format that there
was not
the opening
resident comment period we had it no one
no one no one asked no no one
no one raised their hand i'm sorry i
didn't hear that
no it's fine it's fine thank you so much
because i would have wanted you to catch
me on that one thank you
richard i appreciate it all right if we
could please move on to
um third readings amended ordinance 1421
please
all right amended ordinance 1421 to
appropriate 180 thousand dollars
from the recreation fund and to
appropriate 350 000
from the uncovered general fund and an
additional 150
000 from the recreation fund to pay for
expenses related to the jeffrey mansion
expansion mr markham thank you mr
officials so last time we had a second
reading on this we did
we actually did not make an amendment we
decided we did not need to we corrected
the map
on this um uh
michael price sent us all a jeffery
mansion financial
update just a little bit ago
it is an excellent document
i am going to suggest uh
that we will after asking for questions
and comments
that we will table this ordinance
uh to give city council members time to
go ahead and take a look
at the financials uh that were sent
i know probably about half the city
council here
was not present for the initial project
um
presentation and uh maybe we appreciate
the chance to catch up on
what the finances are here since we are
asking for a fairly sizable increase
um if will tabling that mess things up
as far as the finances are concerned
guys
getting things done i think we should be
okay
to go one more one more read okay
all right then um i would also
ask that we uh have an opportunity to
look at this before we take a deep dive
into it with mike price um unless
unless people want to take a deep dive
into it um
now and i am having problems juggling
sorry to see who's got this who has
their hand
raised it looks like richard sharp has
his hand raised richard
yeah i'm i'm fine with that uh
suggestion
uh but i wanted to call attention to
counsel the
uh there are two tabs on this worksheet
there is one more detail change order
tab at the bottom
if you click on so don't overlook that
part it's not just a simple one page
summary thank you richard
good to note miss sod i was just going
to support
what you said president failed i'd like
to take a deep dive
um on my own later as well
all right anybody have any
other questions or comments about this
ordinance
um before i see if troy has action on it
um mr sharp your hands in the air again
sir
i screen changed on me i'm trying to get
it to find it
it's okay i just want to make sure you
don't have any questions
okay perfect um let's see if anybody in
attendance has any questions um
or concerns about this particular
ordinance
i don't see any madam president yes mr
miss mr uh mayor i just wanted to
reiterate for those who hadn't heard
this um
as you look at this the there are three
categories of changes
and i'm not sure that did did you cover
that mike i didn't
no errors commissions and i think it's
important to note this as you
counsel look at this errors and
emissions field conditions under changes
so those that repeats down with current
change orders as well as
what we anticipate will be future the
errors and emissions are instances in
which the architect
did not catch a condition
on site or did not incorporate it into
the drawing
field conditions are issues where
unexpected conditions were found during
construction
and almost to an instance these aren't
things that we could have waited on
or that wouldn't have happened if uh you
know we hadn't done the project so that
includes for example the largest piece
of this is
of course the terrace work on the front
the patio work
that was an urgent item that regardless
of the project would have had to have
happened and that's true as well
of the other item here at the bottom so
the lion's share of what we're looking
at
are deferred maintenance expenses that
would have applied to us no matter what
arguably actually less expensive because
we have a mobilized
construction crew so i wanted to
contextualize that and help
that help that context come out a little
bit and looking at that
all right thank you um council questions
uh matt klingler so i guess
with all those things in context um
regarding the errors and omissions
does the architect or engineer have any
financial responsibility with those
am i do you want to answer that one yeah
there's been no
indication that they would have any
financial responsibility for those
okay
counsel any other questions
all right mike go ahead yeah
thank you madam president the only the
only thing again i would reiterate as
relates
to the ordinance that is on its third
rate is again 150
000 uh is is
new requests for funding the other was
a result of reappropriations of funds
that had previously been
set forth for this project
okay and none of it would have been
possible without our friends from the
bexley community foundation so we can
always reiterate that
all right thank you gentlemen
um mr markham do you have any action
on this piece of legislation this
evening
at this time i would make a motion that
we move amended ordinance 14-21 to the
table
um there's a first is there a second oh
second
thank you jessica assad um all those in
favor signify by saying aye
aye aye same sign
all right that ordinance is tabled and
um we're going to move on to second
readings if we could please
mr was muted sorry no worries
in order second rating ordinance 16-21
to amend the capital stadium lights
planning approval conditions
in light of pandemic based changes into
capitol university's athletic schedule
in order to allow for two time licenses
in 2021 to operate stadium lighting in
which the lights are on
past the hour of 30 pm but off prior to
the
hour of 11 p.m introduced by ms saad
thank you mr fishel this um ordinance
speaks for itself we
dove into it a little bit more at the
last um
council meeting at its first reading i
think the
mayor's comment that s the sbna
um group is in favor of this um
speaks um highly of this happening
so basically just because of the
pandemic
um capitals athletic
schedule was not able to receive their
one
evening night of uh
lights and so they're asking for two in
the
2021 year and mayor kessler also touched
upon the fact that
due to the pandemic um sports related
activities at capital and
universities like capital or many
organizations are limiting their
spectators
so even though there would be two um
evening nighttime licenses
um there would be most likely still
limited spectators in attendance
so not as big as crowds as we're used to
great does anyone uh
thanks jessica for the for the um
summary does anybody have any questions
from council on this
um piece of legislation
anybody in attendance have any questions
on this piece of legislation
all right um with your permission um
jessica we're going to move on to the
next ordinance consent agenda
um i'm not comfortable with that one
being on the consent agenda
i think i would like that one to be
heard again
but thank you
um i just want to make sure that if
there is anyone um
that has concerns about that that they
have three
uh chances to to share if you if you all
don't mind
um ordinance uh 1721 please
all right second second reading of
ordinance 17-21 to amend
chapter 1478 unsafe buildings to include
provisions for unsafe sites introduced
by ms
sun yes thank you mr fishel this
ordinance
is put in place basically to
help put provisions out for unsafe
buildings
i did a deep dive into this last time
right mayor kessler
so i think that um again this one also
does a nice job of
speaking to the to exactly what it is um
another safe haven put in place for our
community
that currently could be addressed
on certain projects that we have in our
community
any questions on this ordinance
from mayor kessler's or anything else
that you would like to provide
to council yeah thank you mr quick
update
mark and i met late last week about a
variety of topics and um he did
bring some um some items to my attention
that he felt like
this ordinance could incorporate so i'll
include you in on that but i think we
need to
make a couple tweaks so i would expect
an amended version to be circulated
uh next week nothing dramatically
different in terms of intent or
purpose but uh just some some shoring up
i would say of the ordinance
okay thanks anybody have any questions
about
this one council
mr sharp um
do some of those tweaks uh relate to due
process
or are the are those provisions similar
to um
of the other um
i think you said we had another
ordinance that related to um
oh yeah the nissans and abate abatement
there's
periods of times that that residents or
property owners are allowed to
remedy or cure
the defect um yes so it's identical to
or it is part of our nuisance there is
due process in that but mark would you
like to
expand on that at all
no i think you're right i think there's
due process in that built into chapter
1476 um um
already so this would fall in within
that scope
um again with all the bells and whistles
to protect
uh let homeowners uh or property owners
uh before we would go on their property
or take action as a result of the
alleged existing nuisance
thank you both
um anything else um from council on this
one looks like mr
klingler has a question sir is the due
process you're speaking of
in 1476.03 that they get 30 days
the owner gets 30 days to remedy
mark that's part of it but
there's also going to be other there are
also other issues already built into the
law
in terms of us having to have reasonable
cause to go into their property
and to potentially obtain a warrant
which is part of the amendment that
you're going to see
so so um but that yeah that
that's part of it that absolutely again
in this situation
uh you know and this is a longer
conversation and one that i'm not as up
to speed on
as i will be in two weeks just because
it's an epa
or an environmental related issue there
are many nuisances cover
potential nuisances covered by 1476
that um our remit
can be remediated within 30 days there
are nuisances
that specifically would apply or be
subject to
the proposed ordinance amendments here
um that would be difficult if not
impossible to fix within 30 days
um so so i think this is that this this
ordinance would take things to kind of a
another level specifically protecting
or allowing the city to address certain
environmental related nuisances
that again may or may not be remediable
if that's a word within 30 days but
that's part of it here
and again you know one of the things
that ben and i spoke about when we met
talked about this ordinance last week um
was some information that was provided
by frank reed our the city's
environmental attorney
so i'm gonna have we're gonna have to go
back and revisit that to make sure
there aren't any other tweaks that need
to be done um
from an amendment standpoint so
thanks everyone for the extra work on
that uh mr markham also has a question
troy
yeah i just want to say uh you guys have
built up a lot of suspense for this next
reading on this so uh
i am i'm looking forward to the hearing
right
it's going to be in code so you guys
have to get your decoder ring out
all right we'll do that everybody get
theirs um
i think monique is gonna prepare a
binder for us
okay it's gonna help all right
um anybody else
have any questions anyone in attendance
have any questions about this piece of
legislation
all right um miss sod with your
permission i'm going to move on to
our first reading ordinance 18
21. all right as
ms fireball just said ordinance 1821
is a first reading to appropriate 50 000
from the general fund for purposes of
paying legal fees
in 2021.
yeah we should point out that this is
not money going into mr fischel's pocket
um yes no it's going to other people
um so unfortunately yeah sometimes uh we
have some ordinances where
we have some extra money or some money
coming back and this is not one of those
um we have uh need to appropriate
additional money to cover
our legal fees um mr kessler
is uh running up some legal fees here
that i think you
tell us a little bit about you guys have
been helping out don't worry
um yeah so actually it's interesting we
should we started
we just talked about public nuisance and
then came to this the lion's share
of unexpected legal fees so far this
year which have been
as you can imagine based upon this
ordinance uh pretty substantial
uh arise arose from a public nuisance
case
uh that you all might be familiar with
um in which we successfully
prosecuted a pretty serious public
nuisance that was occurring
in one of our neighborhoods so um that
was a 30 000
legal bill um and from that we
as i just said were successful and we
cured an issue that had been occurring
for many years
and had been unsolvable up to that date
with uh some of our other more standard
tools
the remainder has been a little bit of
zoning cases being more than expected
but usually we can accommodate that
but then our community choice electric
aggregation
project has been um you know just been
it's been a little bit more drawn out
than we'd anticipated now that one's a
little different
an asterisk to what mr markham said is
that
those fees are recoupable and the event
that we do move forward with that
community choice
electrical program so those are those
would be reimbursed back to the city
through the
the program itself and um
we'll have some updates for you
hopefully i would hope at the next
council meeting
um with where we're at with that so
that's an if though
um so yeah that's that's the long and
short of it happen answering questions
anybody have any questions we have
monique lamke has her hand in the air
monique
mayor are you able to give us um any
more
information on how the 50 000 came about
uh it's obviously not an insignificant
amount of money but
how did you come up with the 50 000 in
this ordinance
so that yeah i'm sorry if i was too big
that's exactly what i just said that
that's what i was trying to say thirty
thousand dollars came from a public
nuisance case
uh and twenty thousand dollars from our
um
our uh electric community choice
electrical aggregation program
okay so the 50 000 is actually a fairly
conservative
number yes so that's a good point so
that's assuming that we don't
continue to have unexpected legal costs
now we do have
a little bit of a buffer in our normal
budgeting process
um and you know it's really hard to know
what sort of things are on the horizon
for the rest of the year so i also will
point out to council that this is the
second year that we've had to have a
uh additional legal appropriation it
might be a reason for us to
next time um and this is not meant to be
sparky but next time we have the
budgeting process and i'm explaining our
legal you know fees and how we do need
to raise that number there's a reason
for that so it's
it's not and and i do want to commend
mark he what he looks at every single
legal invoice
he is very judicious in the way that he
you know make sure that we're
we're getting good value we're not using
you know high
we're not using the premium
uh outfits in columbus for legal
help unless we we absolutely need to
so we try to really be careful about the
way that we
um spend those funds all right thank you
so much
president bible i'm sorry i didn't raise
my hand can i chime in or something
please do it's fine mark please so two
things and i appreciate what the mayor
just said again i i have you know made
an effort since i became law director
to try to do more than um
what maybe was traditionally done and
again it's not meant as a
criticism or anything like that about
anybody else
but there frankly are just some things
that the city would is
much better served having people with
the expertise i mean as you know the
aggregation thing is
not something that most lawyers can do
and catherine cunningham just does a
phenomenal job for the city
so you know again so i just felt the
need to explain even though nobody asked
me to
um the other thing i would say is that
you know to
somebody's point we don't know what's on
the horizon we do
i mean it is reasonable to believe that
this year
starting this year and into next year
there will be
not an insignificant number of dollars
spent on
the 2300 east livingston appeal i mean
that has just
been an issue that you everybody on this
call know
on in this meeting knows has been has
created some um
diversity of opinion and certainly um
i would expect that the folks pursuing
the appeal will pursue this
a long way um and not just be satisfied
with what
council does um so again that's
something to keep in mind
i'm not saying that all of that money
would you know there isn't enough money
this year to pay for that
um even with um after this uh
additional appropriation but like i said
something we
for sure know about
thank you uh for chiming in um mr fishel
troy you had your hand in the air you
are do you
no longer need
no i don't think i had my hand in okay i
thought you did forgive me
mr sure does richard yes um mr official
answered part of my question uh the
second part of my question was
going to be whether the
there'd be any additional legal expenses
relating to the charter review
ballot issue
i do not anticipate that that is
something that
i plan and take care of within
the course and scope of what you're
already paying me for
i think it was summit uh maybe 10 years
ago but i don't think
that's going to be necessary
thank you mr fishel on both accounts
thank you um anybody else have anything
further
with this one anymore
i did have something to say even though
i didn't have my hand in there though
just to
clarify that this number i think i think
it has been said
but just in case it's unclear that this
number is a
proactive amount that hopefully will
carry us through
uh the rest of this year as well so
let's hope does anyone in attendance
have any questions
all right um then with your permission
troy
we are going to move on to our
am i correct for moving on to tabled
ordinances
i know the aggregation one is going to
stay tabled but
um mr klingler do you have action
on the um
on the dora yeah i would like to make a
motion to
take the ordinance 10 21
regarding the dora off the table all
right
um is there a second second jen robinson
thank you jen we have a first and we
have a second all those in favor please
signify by saying aye
aye aye those opposed same sign
mr klingler mayor can you pull it up and
update the uh
group on some of the tweaks we've made
yeah so um councilman clingman i
regrouped after the last council meeting
and this latest
uh greatest bexley patio
proposal has the hours being
uh 4 to 10 pm monday to friday 11 a.m
saturday and sunday so
pulls it back i think we started being
the latest hour
pulling it back to 10 o'clock um
also uh mark did some legal research
about one of the questions that we had
was whether or not
we could allow the door just for the
sake of having an expanded patio space
but then not allow uh sip and stroll or
you know carrying the drink throughout
the door uh
mark correct me if i'm wrong that is not
uh able to be exercised from the uh
dora um concept it's it's built into the
rc so it's not like something we can
just kind of pick and choose
it has to be contiguous and it has
certain minimum and maximum
um square
area yes you are correct
so those those are the changes in
response to some concerns that we've
received
um from from residents about you know
maybe the changing the character or
or the intent of main street i have
spoken
had a couple other calls since our last
council meeting some residents i've
spoken with had really i think very good
conversations
um clarifying some questions and talking
through it so
that's that's what i have matt is there
something i missed
nope not that nothing i know of i just
just to update um i did go back and
double check
the all the restaurants uh the only one
that's open past 10
is uh rusty bucket on friday and
saturday they open until they're open
until 11. so
the rest of them do close at 10 or
they they vary in hours throughout the
days but 10 seems to be the common theme
for most of our restaurants
between 9 and 10. thanks for the extra
work guys we appreciate it
um matt ben mark thank you
uh jen robinson has a question jen
yeah thanks president fibal um i know
this received a lot of attention at our
last council meeting and just for the
sake of making sure that all of our
residents know to pick
you back up off of jess's great idea
last time
let's can we make sure that this has
some prominence in the
bexley blast and maybe um a special
location on our website so that people
who have questions about it or want to
see what we've done
beyond um the last council meeting can
can see what those changes are
i think the changes are great and i'm
glad that we took the extra time to
listen to what
residents had to say i have a feeling
that they're going to be really happy
with it so
if we could just make sure that they
have the information that would be great
great idea jen i agree i agree um mr
markham has a question or comment troy
lower my hand before i speak so i
remember i was actually going to say
pretty much the same thing that uh ms
robinson just said
um i appreciate the changes that are
made here i know we had some residents
speak
with concerns last time i do
feel that we've done a pretty good job
here
of addressing those concerns i feel
very comfortable that we remain flexible
enough to
uh protect the the all the interests of
the community here
uh the residents that are there and also
the uh the residents and consumers uh
that will uh benefit from the bexley
patio
um so i i will say uh good work to
to all of you and also throw in that um
i you know i know sometimes we hear you
know the criticisms and that's good that
we
we respond to those i personally heard
from several residents
this last week who are very enthusiastic
about this
and so i encourage them to write letters
or emails i don't think
i don't think that they did i didn't see
any correspondence but i did want to
pass that along to you
anecdotally and also uh expressed that
uh i will be in support of this because
i do believe that most of the community
is probably behind this
and uh the concerns of the residents
near there
i feel confident that we will continue
to uh to take a look at
that environment and uh and make
modifications if needed to
uh to protect the interests of those
residents
so thank you thank you mr markham
i think i think this was um i think the
changes
were um reflect how we handle a lot of
new things
and a very conservative you know put a
few toes in the water and see how it
works kind of way
and i really appreciate um the second
look um is there anyone
else um in council that would like to
speak to this
and the changes mr sharp
sorry just to bring this up um the
backseat
public library um am i overlooking it
on the services business they
were they actually contacted yes they're
included in the dora
yep they have been made aware
um and they're and they're okay with
their parking lot and property
because i didn't see them on the list of
um establishments
yeah that's that they are in in the
geographical boundaries and they've been
made aware of that and i think actually
somebody even asked me last week if they
were because
there there was such these uh
friday night uh food truck events
they've been having have been so
successful so specifically that was
asked
of that and i think it's important to
note that just because a property is in
the dora
does not mean that that property owner
has to allow people to carry on their
property i mean they can
easily restrict that on their own so
that's not a
that's not a license automatically that
says it has to happen
i i uh madame president may i make a
quick comment um and that is first off
this has been really great working
through this and councilman klingler uh
deserves a bucket loads of credit for uh
uh taking this idea and running with it
so uh thank you matt
i you know as as uh as we just looked at
a 50 000
you know legal appropriation i want to
point out that in very many
circumstances we do
what we did in this which is we poach
the great work of the city of gehenna in
this instance
and uh retool it to be bexley
and benefit to the tune of tens of
thousands of dollars in savings
uh in in doing that so i want to thank
hannah for unwittingly
template to work off of thanks kahana
thank you
for paying the legal bill i'm just
kidding i mean obviously there's legal
review but a lot of the work
uh went in you know it came from another
city and it's an example of places where
we do
really try to be good stewards of our
finances and
and uh and when we're able to maybe we
should invite them to the first main
event this year
great point that's a great point ben
when the wheel has good tread there's no
reason to reinvent it so thank you so
much for
for investigating and researching and
doing your due diligence
on this one um prior to me asking
on mr klingler if he has action on this
piece of
legislation i am going to see if anyone
in attendance has anything they would
like to
share with us concerning this piece of
legislation
mr tim pitts
all right unmuted how are you tonight
we're good thank you
please give us your address sir 270
south dawson avenue
all right thank you all right and i
think i have five minutes but i'm not
going to take all five minutes
to the pleasure of everyone on the call
um i have
two comments for everybody and um i'm
interested to hear the perspective so
so number one i had the pleasure of
introducing the bexley brew fest two
years ago
uh to the community and it was very
different at the
time i worked closely with the the the
bexy rec to kind of explain the vision
and the goal and the purpose and
i know that the element of introducing
alcohol for lack of a better term was
kind of new and different
um and it's not something the community
had really done before so i i
would imagine although i had not heard
some of the comments on previous
meetings i would
imagine that some of the concern you
know what is this going to do how is
this going to change things
um i i would say unequivocally from
my perspective that this idea
as it's been rolled out in other
communities has only had a positive
impact
i acknowledge the concerns i don't think
that we will
see any of those concerns come to
fruition
i think it encourages community i think
it encourages
business which is really important in
our small city
and i think that it is a fantastic idea
um i am not a councilman right
i don't hold public office so people can
choose to believe the following comments
or not but i know a lot of people in
gahanna and i know a lot of people in
surrounding communities and um for those
my age we'll call this segment of you
know 30 to 45 or 50
um the change in that community has been
very well received and it's
if you've been there of late it's
created
an environment of togetherness and
openness and celebration
and at the risk of sounding like kevin
bacon in footloose
i won't bring out any quotes from any uh
passages or anything like that but
i think it's probably long overdue and i
will tell you that from introducing the
brewfest
that had its you know detractors and
concerns and all were valid
it all worked out just fine and i will
tell you that
if nothing else you as as councilmen and
council women
and the mayor and everyone involved with
this city
you've always done a really good job at
implementing things and then evaluating
things
so i would encourage the the the
councilmen and women
to consider implementing this allowing
it to happen and see what happens
you can always reevaluate you can always
you know
you take the time to consider this
wasn't what we were looking for it was
what we were looking for you can tweak
it
you can make it better but i would
encourage people who are nervous about
it to just
think um big picture give it a chance
see what happens and um
and i i i can't say unequivocally enough
how i think this will be a positive
thing for the community
i do think that emerging from this long
slumber that we'll call the covet
pandemic um
will help you know the attitude towards
things like this are very different
right now but i do foresee
in the next year things um needing
something like this getting everyone out
i
would like to see many elements of
bexley
you know turn into many elements that
the gehan has put forth i i'm there
often i see people walking around i see
people enjoying themselves
having a good time so i won't beat a
dead horse i'm in
fully in support of it and while i am
not a council person
i represent a lot of people that feel
the same way kind of similar to what
councilman markham just said we talk
about it often
folks know that the legislation if you
will is out there people are excited for
it
so it encouraged the council to to vote
appropriately
um and then my final comment because i
know i'm within my five minutes at least
i think i am
you are i i have i have not had the
opportunity to sit on a ton of these
calls although i have been on many
um listening to you all tonight for the
past couple hours
i i wanted to just take the moment to
say
despite the environment despite the
virtual nature of everything that we're
doing despite the fact that
you all have lots of other commitments
besides this it's
heartwarming to see you all putting in
so much effort
to making this city a better place and i
don't think that's said enough so for
what it's worth thank you
and um keep up the great work and that's
all i got
oh tim pitts we need you to come on
every every council yeah
yeah you got it thanks tim yeah have a
good night everybody thank you
thank you you need to make sure that if
this does pass you need to spend more
time
uh in bexley in less time in uh in
gahannam
you got it all right all right anybody
else who is in attendance
that wants to um share their thoughts
all right mr klingler do you have some
action on this piece of legislation sir
yes i've motioned to approve ordinance
10 21.
all right there's a first is there a
second second second
richard sharp i think was the loudest at
least um
sorry sorry mr markham
uh any any final comments counsel
just one thing um mayor kessler did a
ton of work on this
so he he pointed it towards me but uh no
he's
he's humble uh very humble he he did a
ton of work and
deserves a lot of credit as well so
let's talk it out man thanks thank you
i'm vaccinated i can do this
me too perhaps we'll toast each other on
the on you can toast each other on the
dora
uh anybody from um in attendance would
like to have a final word on this one
mr harvey hassan
yes ms lamke yes mr markham
yes mr klingler yes mr sharp
yes miss fibel yes it's robinson
yes awesome right all right guys
bring your backpacks let's go to the
dora
um president fiable and mayor kessler
yes
just real quick on the page of the dora
um on bexley city website
yep can we just put that we voted on it
yep we will do that and actually i
um i had abc6 had asked me to
talk a little bit about community events
and covet in the summer and so we had a
quick little interview this afternoon
and then they started asking all these
dora questions and i have a reporter
asking me to
text if it passed so
it continues to be a great interest so
yeah we'll the word will be out
sounds right i'm going to send a mac
clean your cell phone
i think that'd be awesome
[Music]
richard sharp your hands in the air do
you have a comment sir
you're muted nope okay
all right so can we um
uh can we move on to um
to committee reports i know that richard
had suggested
that we shuffle um uh
committee reports around so that he or
she that is last
is not always last um i
i will see if we can make that happen um
next next go around but this go around
we're just gonna
do it the way it is presented if that
is okay with everyone we're going to
move to
service environmental committee richard
sharp
do you have that
fine madam president thank you for um
keeping me off the top villain
i i i feel
embarrassed being always first all right
well we'll we'll
shuffle things around now i don't want
to i don't want to be a
hog like uh troy is all but now
hey seniority has its privileges
anyway um even though um we continued
with
ordinance 12-21 um being on the table i
do
have a timing issue
and meeting planning issue
to bring up with the mayor that
plan of operation and government
ordinance requires two public meetings
and two-week notice
so i want to remind him of that wording
uh so that as we're going through the
summer we don't
forget to to plan that in our
schedule i think uh mr sharp i believe
that actually happened
um but both of them yeah the
notification
and i i'll i'll defer to mark or bricker
but i think we've satisfied our
requirements already for the uh
for the public meetings that sounds
right
i'd have to go back and look for shelby
notice the meetings at which it would to
be read which is
a little bit different than a public
hearing relative to zoning i think but
uh
i i i thought the wording said uh public
meetings so
um i may be wrong i don't have it but
your tips right now but anyways we'll
double check that make sure we're in
compliance
then the second thing is i didn't get i
didn't think to ask
andy bay shore but maybe the mayor is
aware
um is there any areas of the city that
have a columbia gas line
project on this year
or did we luck out and i don't remember
i don't remember any notice about i'm
not aware of any active ones
i'm aware of some punch lists that we
have for different
past projects but i'm not aware of any
current projects
okay i i didn't think i remembered
hearing anything but
um i just want to make sure in case
residents need to be
prepared for their street um
i'll double check that and i'll let you
know
um and that's all i will talk about
tonight
thank you richard so much um finance
committee
um troy marcum chair troy
yeah so uh you uh the rest of you may be
wondering why you haven't heard a cic
report from us
uh the last few meetings and it's not
because we're
keeping that information from you uh the
cic did not
meet uh this last month their next
meeting will be
monday may 10th just before the next
city council meeting so
we will give you the full report on that
meeting at that time
thanks mr marcum i really appreciate you
guys keeping us up to date on what's
going on with the cic
they do some amazing things and we like
to hear about them
um safety and health committee uh jen
robinson chair
jen yes i've been waiting all uh
meeting with my book here that i'm so
excited to share with you
um i bragged on the um bexley community
foundation earlier but i get to do that
again and to announce that they
are supporting all of our efforts for
our city's first annual juneteenth
observance um and the
even more exciting part of this is the
pre-events that lead up to our first
annual juneteenth observance
start tomorrow with a presentation on
this
amazing book that i am holding right
here
that is one of the most powerful books
that i have read in quite some time
um the book is called the 1921 tulsa
race massacre a photographic history
and we are lucky enough to have the
author himself coming to do a community
presentation
tomorrow this has been advertised a lot
we've gotten a great
uh deal of feedback um the event is a
virtual event tomorrow at seven o'clock
um information can be found on the
city's website and also
um in any social group that you might be
involved in on facebook we've uh we have
a number of people on the committee who
are really
actively engaging people to to join in
i'm happy to say that residents from
outside
of bexley will be participating as well
and our partnership with bexley city
schools
and they are actually um creating space
within
their history and social studies classes
to discuss the massacre
prior to tomorrow's event um
and that has actually moved to some
schools beyond
bexley city schools they've heard other
school districts have heard what we're
doing
and are really anxious to uh to
participate as well
this is a partnership with the bexley
city schools that
we i am certain will continue
as we um look at juneteenth celebrations
in the future but
uh dr carlos hill we are so fortunate to
have him
speak to our community tomorrow check
him out he has a number of youtube
presentations that he's done and he
offers such a fascinating and
important look at telling this
shared history through the eyes of the
victims and the photographs that remain
from uh
from that event which is 100 years ago
may 31st and june 1st of this year so i
hope you all can tune in
it will be recorded if you can't but i
look forward to seeing as many people
there as possible into rolling out the
next
program that will feature our very own
dr scott king owen in may that i'll talk
about
um after tomorrow's event so that's it
thank you to the bexley community
foundation
and i am really really excited to offer
this to
to the community and can't wait to hear
feedback
thanks so much jen uh zoning and
development committee
jessica chair yes troy thanks for
catching the cic i'm gonna let you do
the minutes of the next meeting
um jen i'm going to piggyback off of you
and sing your praise on juneteenth i am
loving everything you're doing with this
i had the opportunity to finally meet
with the college experts um storefront
this past week richard albeit um that
works there has been reaching out to me
for a while but due to covet and
vaccinations i haven't been able to meet
with him in person
um they did say that they are going to
be one of your sponsors because they are
a um minority owned business
and so i was very excited to hear that
collaboration
so good job jen robinson and i also
welcome any other council members who
would
like to be put in contact with richard
to go in and see that storefront
what a difficult time to open a small
business during a pandemic and they did
just that in november
it sounds like things are going well for
them but anytime
that we can all you know learn more
about
and support those businesses that come
into our community
with different ideas outreach ideas that
we
can share with them that might help
their small business i think that's a
great thing so let me know if you
you would like me to help you facilitate
that
also just wanted to touch really quickly
on something that is very exciting
that's happening in august
this past weekend i signed up for my
third pelotonia ride
and with team bexley um
i am excited to share more about what
that looks like for our community this
year
um in the few months ahead with mayor
kessler and president fiable
and our very own doug allman i'm sure a
lot of you know that a lot of the
pelotonia staff reside here
in the wonderful city of bexley but the
great news
is that this year we will have three
routes coming through
our wonderful community the 20 mile the
50 mile which as of now i'm
participating in
and the 100 mile so there's going to be
a lot of fun things ahead
for us to be involved in as a council
and as a community with that ride coming
through our community
so stay tuned thanks jess we will
we appreciate it um
all right um recreation and parks my
klingler chair
matt
just wanted to say that i councilwoman
lamke and myself had a wonderful
opportunity today to
tour the jeffrey mansion project with
mike price and it is awesome
so it's it's in really good shape um
money well spent on the extras for the
porch
um and and all the all the
all the things that are going on there
it's um it's an amazing facility and i
hope all you
all you guys and gals get over there to
uh take a look at it
um and
that is all i have i just want to say
that we toured it and it looks awesome
so thanks matt michael michael has been
really generous with his time and he's
going to give
um uh just sod and and me a tour
i think i think next week sometime so um
anyway so grateful um to for all his
hard work i just can't imagine
being um the rec department chair and
you know
person kind of in charge of organizing
that whole mess
i mean i could hardly handle a
a kitchen change so can't imagine
anyway um all right um we
are to judiciary and strategic committee
monique lamke chair and monique has done
an amazing job um walking us through the
charter review
uh commission's recommendations um
matt and i um worked with
her on that and we had um mr fishel
and mr harvey helping out with that and
we are so grateful for her leadership
and she's going to continue to walk
counsel
um through this through this process so
monique
i'm passing it on to you lady great
thank you so much i'm gonna ask our
mayor to bring up the
powerpoint actually if if you could
and while that is kind of sitting up on
the screen
i wanted to echo what president fibel
just shared
our council committee met on february
17th
march 3rd april 7th and april 21st
together with bill harvey and mark
fishel to develop our recommendations
on the proposed amendments suggested by
the charter review commission
we knew that those proposed amendments
were the collective work of
15 very talented and patient bexley
residents who met
for two hours at a time twice a month
for well over a year
and we are very very grateful for their
service and thoughtful consideration
of our charter after extensive
discussion
and consideration of the report of that
charter review commission
we did come up with recommendations for
some issues to be possibly included on
the november
2021 ballot noting of course that the
board of elections
has the final determination on ballot
language
um and for tonight's presentation it is
meant to just
be a very brief overview of our
recommendations
and at the very end as you will see we
also have a list of issues that perhaps
council
could address at some point be a
legislative action or during future
discussions
please bear in mind that these are only
recommendations
of three council members i look forward
to
at our next meeting on may 11th
introducing an ordinance for its first
reading
at which time we will take a much deeper
dive as a group
and start our council discussion with
all of us present on what uh possibly
should be included
on the ballot uh that being said uh
matt klingler did a great job in putting
together
the powerpoint that you see up on the
screen
i'm going to briefly go through some of
these but our
council committee came up with five
bundles
for our recommendations to include on
the ballot
the first bundle copied word for word
section one as shown up on the screen
with no changes
we also recommended that section two
regarding nondiscrimination and citizen
participation be included
we did have however two additional
changes
as you'll see up on the screen the
sentence that starts
the city strategic plan shall
incorporate and maintain thank you mayor
for highlighting that
i did take that from section 8 because
we felt that the charter review
commission made it clear that diversity
equity and inclusion were extremely
important to them
so while we did not include the rest of
section 8
in our first bundle we did feel like the
highlighted sentence before you
should be included so that was
taken from section 8 and added to
section 2.
we also added the very next sentence
which begins
bexley mayor's court mayor if you can
highlight that sentence
as well that section was taken
from section 18 um in keeping along with
the
charter review commission's
recommendation um
regarding how those who come to bexley
mayor's court
should be treated so we as a council
committee felt it was
important to include that sentence from
section 18
and to bundle it as part of section 2 so
we have included that as well
we also consulted with mark fishel
regarding some tweaking
of section two so what you see up on the
screen
would be section two of the first bundle
moving on to section three diversity and
hiring and con
contract oh there's the klingler dog
nope that was the final dog oh that's
the fiber dog i love it i love it
sucker's asleep
uh regarding section three uh we did
talk to mark fishel
and he has wordsmithed it uh a bit
uh but what you see up up on the screen
is our suggested language for
section three 3 as part of that first
bundle
we also included section 4 and the only
change that we made from
what the charter review commission
proposed was
we added the word discriminatory before
impact and that was a change from the
word disparate impact
again at the suggestion of our city
attorney
and then we added um
one last part of the first bundle and
what you're noticing is there's a common
theme and thread through all of these
sections for the first bundle
really tied to diversity equity and
inclusion
our committee felt strongly that there
should be
a provision on the ballot regarding
gender neutral pronouns and terminology
as used
in our charter so mayor if you can
scroll down just a bit
i had a chance to look at other
charter proposals regarding gender
neutral
pronouns and terminology we felt that
the simplest
and most straightforward language would
be something similar to what you see her
here on your screen i also believe that
charter review at some point perhaps
discussed
um seeing if they if something similar
should be included
but this is a new addition to what
we think should be included and
concluded
in our first bundle so everything that
we just showed you
is really tied to diversity equity
inclusion
and consists of five separate
sections the second bundle
is a standalone bundle and that is
section
section dealing with the citizen review
board
our council committee felt strongly that
this
should be a standalone it should not be
included as
a bundle um with with other provisions
we did have discussions on whether it
should be included under the first
bundle
but we felt strongly that this would be
something that
our residents would want to vote on
alone
so we did not make any changes but
the citizen review board would
constitute all of such uh
all of the sec the second bundle
moving on to the third bundle as council
may recall we've had extensive
discussions about
staggered terms and aligning the terms
of those who sit
and graciously serve on our commission's
boards and committees
so if you look at
the next several screens they uh they
pulled out
four particular sections of the
charter's proposed amendments
um they are section 13 51
52 and 58 but the language stays the
same essentially it indicates that
where needed the mayor with the
approval or concurrence of counsel can
appoint terms shorter
than three years and that's the common
theme running through those four
uh sections and those four sections
would then constitute
our third bundle and all with the mayor
just scroll down those
um thank you to mr klingler for
highlighting in red
and doing a side-by-side comparison so
that everyone has the benefit of knowing
what the language is that's being
proposed
and then the fourth bundle um is
regarding the ability to remove
the city attorney this was actually
not only included in the charter review
commission's proposed amendments
but our city attorney felt strongly that
this should be on the ballot
and our committee agreed essentially
this gives the ability
to the mayor with a concurrence of
council to remove the city attorney
for for any reasons not just those
previously listed
as up on the screen and we also felt
that this should be a
standalone section as well so it is not
included
in any other bundle the fifth
and final bundle is
regarding some nuances about
the meetings the logistics of our
meetings you'll see
on the left side what
was previously existing in our charter
and you'll see on the right
we've tried to clean it up a little bit
to indicate what we think
would be more clear language so this
fifth bundle does include section 24.
we did make a change based on
discussions with our city attorney i
want to call your attention
on section 24 the wording in red
on the right we did want to emphasize
that
it would provide at least six hours in
advance notice of a special meeting
but we also wanted to make it easier
for council members perhaps to perhaps
waive service or acknowledge that they
have received service
so we have added the language on the
right
i believe the language we specifically
added was
provided the member acknowledges receipt
mark official felt that that would
make it simpler and alleviate any
issues that would arise with notice
moving on to section 66
this was recommended by the charter
review
as being able to make it easier for
issues to come to the ballot we did hear
from
specific members of the charter review
on why they felt
section 66 should be added
as you may recall there were some issues
that were discussed for possible
inclusion on a ballot this past fall
but because of our existing charter that
was not to be the case
so this edition 466 and the language
that you see here proposed on this
the screen would make it easier if our
residents feel that there is a
particularly important issue that they
could get to the ballot
and not have to wait as long as they
previously would
under the current uh charter and then
finally
uh section 77 uh we wordsmith this
little bit
this is regarding um
mayor can you scroll down a little bit
or is that all that's included on there
okay
the the big change in 77 was
the charter review commission wanted to
make some updates on how
proposed amendments to the charter are
circulated and shared to our residents
uh we our committee tried to be mindful
of
changes in technology or electronics and
uh platforms that could exist between
now and the next 10 years so we
wordsmithed it a bit
and that's the language that you will
see on the right
um and then finally what what i just
showed you are the five bundles that our
council committee has come up with but
we also wanted to share with you
a general list of the things that
we thought could be considered possibly
for future legislative action uh by
council those are the
four sections that we felt we wanted to
share with you
as being up for consideration for
possible ordinances in the future and
then the last
section is things that we pulled out
from the charter review commission
that we would uh we think could be
addressed in the future by council as a
discussion
uh by further input a mayor if you're
able to scroll down to
group b um
i'm sorry group c sorry i did say b
sorry about that
um we we did have discussions about each
of these but at the end of the day we
felt that
perhaps these sections could be
addressed again in the future or with
additional discussion
at the appropriate time as i mentioned
at the outset these are simply
recommendations
of three council members i look forward
to
at our next council meeting uh
introducing an ordinance for its first
reading
and it is my hope that at that time we
will do a much deeper dive
i'm so happy to hear that everybody has
their notebooks on proposed amendments
compared to our original charter does
anyone have
questions for me or questions of our
committee
on this powerpoint i didn't mean to go
into so much detail especially because i
know it's been
a little bit of a later evening but if
anyone has any
quick questions that i can answer in
advance i'm happy to do so
i don't see any hands raised i'm going
to
uh oh matt klingler does have his hand
in the air
matthew just real quick i know monique
already thanked
mark fishel and bill harvey but i'm
going to second that
bill and mark provided a lot of insight
and a lot of
good good ideas and and things we didn't
think of and
really intelligent people and um i
appreciate you guys
devoting your time to helping us we are
so
so lucky to have the two of them i i
couldn't agree more matt thank you so
much for
for um pointing them out to everything
man and president at the
community i i just want to clarify or
explain a couple things that
um from a technical standpoint the risk
of
speaking after i was just told i'm
intelligent and proving otherwise
but so and and this might have been in
monique's
memo but i just want to so just from a
procedural standpoint so folks can
understand this
the reason we're talking about bundles
is because
we are a lot i mean there there is no
limit on the number of
issues that could be put on the charter
by city council
but if we bundle things then of course
it's an all or nothing thing
but it also reduces the number of issues
that city
that the citizens will vote on one way
or the other
and so what happens is that the and some
of this will be reflected in the
ordinance that you'll see for next
meeting
um is that by law what we have to do
is we the the ballot will have summary
language describing
what the proposed changes are in a
particular bundle
which will be a particular called an
issue on the ballot
um that summary language is what has to
be approved by
um the board of elections and then the
actual
full language will be broadcast on the
city's website
um it has to be mailed by charter it has
to be mailed to all
electors of the city and then there also
has to be a full
copy of the entire le proposed language
not just the summary
at each uh voting site so that's again
to sort of tie some things together when
monique's talking about bundles that's
why
sorry yeah thank you so much mark for
doing that and as
as i mentioned i know that at our next
meeting we're going to do
a much deeper dive and i'd be happy to
also maybe
uh have you and mr harvey share some of
the discussions that we had about the
timing
uh especially um towards june and
whatnot by when we would need to submit
this
to board of elections um i think mr
sharp has his hand raised
yes i'd like to uh thank the
subcommittee and
all who assisted in that process and
coming up with the recommendations um i
like the bundling
aspect having a common theme
i think it's a lot easier for residents
to
interpret and make decisions
and so thank you for that i want to go
back to the group
b and c and just to make sure that
residents and
myself understand uh what you're talking
about group b
was my understanding that those are
items that are to be considered
not to change um
the charter but maybe can be
addressed through ordinances
whereas group c are basically items that
might still be on the table
for potential inclusion in a november
ballot
or be considered for
um more robust
ordnance detail
that might address the issues that the
charter review
made is that correct um i think
generally that that is correct
uh group b was um the collective
list that we put together where we
thought perhaps an
ordinance would be more appropriate
rather than trying to
include a change on our in our charter
and then group c obviously we as a
council
at our next meeting could have a
discussion on whether we want to bring
any of those or actually any of the
other
proposed amendments up for discussion to
include on the ballot we just wanted to
keep a list
of things that we felt we had done a
deeper dive on
some of the things on group c i believe
uh
mark may have told us hey you can't do
it by a way of ordinance and that's why
it's not included in group b
but it is included in group c
thank you
great um anyone else have any questions
thanks for for listening to me talk so
far oh bill harvey's got his hand raised
bill
yeah i think one thing that should be
pointed out to all of council members is
what monique has been talking about is
the result of a lot of work by
the commission it does not mean to say
that
if any of you have issues that you think
we should talk about
and should be thought about as part of a
charter change
you shouldn't bring us up this is the
perfect time to bring those items up
to discuss those things just because
nobody else thought about it doesn't
mean
it shouldn't be talked about and i will
say one other thing i know we
traditionally have done these
i say traditionally over the past 10 or
20 years
every 10 years there's nothing to say
that
this council or another council can't
bring items out
like group c items every two years or
every four
years just because there's something out
there that you think needs to be made
and i want i think it's important that
we keep that in mind
as we go through this process that's all
i had
yeah thank you for for sharing that bill
obviously there was so much
uh collective thought and wisdom from
our
charter review commissions um what you
see before you especially on the five
bundles
is just what our council committee felt
uh
needed to perhaps rise to the top
but certainly as a council we are going
to go over
all of those amendments and i look
forward to
that that discussion
anybody else have anything to add for
this evening before we
go to the next agenda item
ms lamke do you have anything else you
want to add
nope that i think i have said plenty
thank you so much and
like i said at our next council
committee or our next city council
meeting
i anticipate uh introducing um an
ordinance
uh so we can have a more in-depth
discussion on these
proposed amendments thanks thanks
monique thanks so much for your
leadership with this thank you so much
for
for walking us through that so so
effectively
thank you all right you know before you
before you move on
i i i want to go back and mention
something very important
i think that dora should have a later
end time on tuesday
the first and third tuesday of every
month don't you
i i think that's something worse
the good news though is we can we can
work on that as we move forward
that's right matt and i already worked
it in this very fine print you guys
missed it
all right ladies and gentlemen we still
do have one more public comment
um is anyone in attendance have anything
else they would like to share with
council
before we close out this evening um jim
wilson
please sir
your talking is permitted just on you
there you go remind us where you live
jim wilson jim wilson 2404 bexley park
road um a former member of the charter
review committee and very briefly
wanted to thank the council committee
for
very very good work their diligence
in taking the large package of
suggestions that we
brought to them was amazing and i just
want to commend them
and urge the rest of council to take
very seriously
their recommendations i think
particularly with respect to
uh the diversity and inclusion
provisions um they've improved our work
and i would strongly urge the council to
take their recommendations
and send them to the voters thank you
very much
thank you mr wilson i don't know how he
can suggest that we've improved them but
because thank you pretty amazing
um anyone else um and attendance want to
share their thoughts
uh with council council do we have a
motion
is this the last time or virtual
i think it is yes so see you in person
watching watching you i will motion to
adjourn
all right matt klingler this is historic
maybe guys
i will second and i will see you in
person
all right all those in favor of all of
that please signify by saying aye
aye bye everybody
bye next time we will think outside of
our square