mine was slow to get getting the audio
to come up
to join awesome
sorry no monkey bit bread bill i saw
that sorry
richard at least not for you maybe i'm
having some you don't know
richard it's amazing that you have
recreated this city hall conference room
in your living room that's impressive
looks like matt is on there you go hey
matt
awesome awesome well let's go ahead and
get started i don't know if we need uh
do we have to do a formal roll call for
a retreat
yeah i would say we do it's a formal
meeting
okay i will go ahead and call the 2021
betsy city council retreat workshop to
order mr harvey could you please call
the roll
ms fibel here mr klingler
here here's lamke here mr markham
that looks like he's being detained
somewhere does he have legal counsel
uh troy i didn't hear your response
you're here that was definitely here
rob i'm simply here here assad
here and mr sharp here
awesome and uh obviously bill harvey is
joining us our mayor's joining us uh
city attorney mark official is not able
to join us
this morning uh we all please stand for
mayor do you have a flag there one more
that we can there we go if we could all
please stand for the pledge of
allegiance
i pledge allegiance to the flag
the united states of america republican
to the republic for which it stands
one nation for god indivisible with
liberty and justice for all
great thank you so much everyone for
joining us a couple of housekeeping
things and then we're going to go ahead
and jump into
our agenda um as you may recall from
2020 we had
two retreats in that year and this
retreat workshop is really meant to be
a planning session for all of us to
discuss
our visions our goals and directions for
the future
of the city of bexley there are no
planned
deliberations and no decisions will be
made regarding any specific subject
general discussions regarding goals and
directions will occur
but since this is a workshop there may
not be opportunities for
public comments i do note that we have
at least one attendee joining us chris
borneo chris welcome
um so given that are there any questions
before we begin
on our first agenda item richard sharp
looks like you have your hand up
yeah um i don't do
mark's not on the board but um i we
probably might engage in a few
deliberations i don't know what
whether you would consider discussion
back and forth of deliberation so
like to maybe preface that and say we
won't make
just make won't make decisions is
fine and the other um housekeeping
announcement
i just wanted to let you know my
daughter had
a appendix situs surgery
this morning we took her in last night
so
if i'm about ready to fall asleep that's
why
oh i hope she is gonna be okay and we
wish her the very best um
if anyone at any time needs to hop off
we are slated to go through noon
although obviously if we get done a
little sooner
uh please hop off if you need to i think
there's at least
another council member that has
indicated that they may need to
temporarily temporarily hop off as well
and that's
perfectly perfectly uh fine
there is one agenda item that i'm going
to move up
slightly we are moving our cic
historical update
up on the agenda to 9 45
nate green will be joining us along with
the mayor to give us a historical
discussion on how cics have generally
come about
and i i added that to our agenda because
i thought it'd be helpful for three
of our newest council members to
understand the rich history
of how the cic came to be so we're just
moving that up a little bit earlier on
in the agenda at the outset i want to
say to each and every one of you
that it has been such a pleasure and an
honor to serve with you
over the past year we've had such a
challenging year
and there's really no one else that i
would be rather governing with
than this body of leaders who are so
forward-thinking
respectful open-minded and not afraid to
speak up so
i thank you all for for being that body
for me
our first agenda item is strategic goals
for the city regarding
dei i've talked to the mayor a little
bit
and asked him to kind of help me
lead this discussion regarding some
plans
as you know back in august of last year
this council by 7-0 vote passed
some amendments to our strategic plan to
increase and strengthen our commitment
to diversity equity and inclusion
and i know that the mayor wanted to
speak a little bit about
um some plans that he had regarding a
strategic
um strategic goals for this year mayor
would you like to go first
yeah i want to make sure that i'm
speaking to the right thing at the right
point of the agenda
so i i was i thought i was going to talk
about the updating of our strategic plan
or
is this okay okay so yeah i just want to
as you can see on the agenda um i have
provided a couple attachments
so the first one is um
kind of a broad overview of our existing
strategic plan and i
will note that it does not this was made
a while ago it does not include the
amendments but you guys are familiar
with the amendments because you just
passed them so the amendments
just assume that they're in here um
and uh full transparency
this document was created back in 2017
when uh we were talking about updating
our strategic plan and then
you know we ended up i can't even i was
talking to monique about this the day
there was
a lot of stuff going on we were doing
lots of other planning and
ended up getting pushed down the field a
little bit so
um firmly committed to in this year uh
refreshing our strategic plan and i'll
talk about that process but
before i did you can see what we were
talking about back in 2013.
i'm not gonna read through all these
because you guys know how to read
um you can see if you if you
you know depending on how long that
you've been on council you can see many
of these objectives have been
achieved that uh some of them
have uh are kind of ongoing um some of
them are aspirational
um but uh and some of them we're still
talking about doing so
uh for example i'm about to talk about
jeffrey park
um in our in our next slides here and
you can see that that's actually one of
our rec goals to have a park and forest
management plan for
jeffrey park so it's helpful to kind of
look through what we have done and what
we haven't done and there was even a you
know timeline and all these i know it's
very small text but
on your own device i'm sure you can pull
that up if you wish and
certainly seven or eight years have
passed and it's time for
a uh a refresh of that strategic plan so
i wanted to talk to you today about what
i'm thinking for that refresh
um a concept and a timeline
as i've thought a lot about first off
sorry background
um so the charter does require me to
prepare
a strategic plan submitted to council
and
address specifically issues of
residential and commercial development
infrastructure finances safety and
community
quality of life so that's that's
straight from the charter
the charter has laid out the process
like roughly of how how to do it and
and uh what to cover um you know
the history of these
the first one was created under david
madison
um it was a
it was fairly
what's the word
utilitarian it was a fair utilitarian
plan it's talked about like
core city services and we're gonna you
know uh
continue to provide them and that sort
of thing and then updated under brennan
and then our 2013 strategic plan was
more expansive than ones in the past and
specifically dealing with
development issues and some some more
specific
uh recommendations and and timelines and
targets
one of the things that has occurred to
me as i've thought about what it looks
like to refresh this plan which back in
2013 was based upon
a lot of community feedback surveys
workshops
online work was that we do a lot of
planning
all the time and the strategic plan
doesn't necessarily need to supplant any
other planning that has occurred
um and so i've started to think of this
more as a
umbrella document that unites existing
plans that are
that are adopted or
refers to ones that are under
development or should be worked on
because frankly you know strategic plan
is a good umbrella but then there are
going to be lots of things that we want
to get a lot more focused
on so i'm using the word canonization
uh maybe that's a little too religious
but i think it's more academic but i
think it is
it is a appropriate term uh to talk
about
the canon of plants because another
another challenge that we have when we
have plans is well is it still relevant
like what about the 1980 neighborhood
stabilization plan
is that still a relevant plan is it part
of our current canon of plans
so i think it is actually helpful for us
to define in our strategic plan
what are the plans that we currently are
viewing as active and relevant
to our strategy as a city so i think
canonization especially as we continue
to develop more plans
is important and then all the plans that
exist today
don't address everything so what are the
things that we need to add to that
to stitch it all together so that's
that's the concept that i'm going for
with our 2021 strategic plan
effort so i want to talk about what is
that canon so what are the
current what i view is current adopted
and active plans obviously current the
2013
strategic plan goes without saying it's
the current strategic plan i didn't put
it on here because we're talking about
the next version of that the diversity
equity inclusion strategy that you guys
adopted
as an amendment last year would be an
active plan that would be incorporated
into the 2021 plan
the current southwest bexley strategic
framework the common multiplier
master plan the bexley land use strategy
even though it's from 2011 is the
current land use strategy and it still
has really important development
objectives in it
the bexley zero waste plan the allen
creek park plan
which really is the schneider park plan
back when we were talking about it we
weren't sure if we're going to continue
to call it schneider park because it was
such a different thing than what
schneider park used to be
and then we have plans that we're
working on today uh the joint livingston
avenue plan that's about to be launched
the bike friendly bexley plan which um
we need to get
to council i think our uh our vendor is
going to be
circling back with us on that the
havenwood park plan that's
that's uh going through tree commission
right now and will be coming to council
and then the unified bexley design
guidelines which has been under
development for a little bit
uh with staff where we're taking we have
current residential design guidelines
we have the main street design
guidelines and they're
they're uniting commercial and
residential design guidelines along with
some historic preservation aspects
under one umbrella so that's under
development right now and the historic
preservation plan
uh with our historic preservation
steering committee
is at some point in time going to be
presented to you guys and there will be
a codification process of some of that i
would imagine
and then uh this is from my brain
and there are others i'm sure but i want
to refer in a 2021 strategic plan to
a road map for plans to come geoffrey
park master plan is one that has been
percolating for a long time it was
actually mentioned in the 2013 strategic
plan
um we have a we had a plan for the
mansion but we
one thing that's become really apparent
as we've continued to develop the park
and for example the pickleball courts
and
the garages every time we talk about any
change in jeffrey park it
involves like a a really broad
discussion where it's clear that a
little bit of consensus would be
important
so a jeffrey park master plan or or a
forest management plan or a preservation
i'm not sure what the plan is called but
i think that's an important thing for us
to pursue as a community
and we'll be talking more about that in
the coming year and then a land use
strategy updates our landing strategy
was last
uh adopted in 2011 um
and it is uh many of the recommendations
have been achieved and we're a different
community than we were in 2011 so i
think
that going forward uh when we have a
little bit of breathing room we need to
put back together land new strategy
commission
and uh and update that that plan which
is in our code
today the land use strategy commission
continues to be in our codified
ordinances
as a commission that is intermittent so
it would
form create the strategy uh and then
when it is time and when council deems
it appropriate i think there's actually
a window
i think not a window but it suggests 10
years or something
suggestive but when the council deems
appropriate land use strategy commission
gets reformed
uh and it gets updated
so any questions on that so far i don't
want to
richer sharp yeah um
would you add the uh the sewer and water
[Music]
of the epa plan
as a plan and also um
maybe a uh
be because we have the extra levy for
the
uh streets that we added maybe a street
plan
you mean a future street plan or
yeah you know in a document that
residents can
can easily look at as far as which
streets
are on the the like andy has
that you you should yeah
yeah i mean that's that's i guess i want
to be i want to
differentiate between a a plan that goes
through a community process and
and is adopted by council and has
a little bit more of a rigorous um
interface than
an internal so that the street thing is
based upon the condition of streets and
it grows
and every year it's different so like
how we're ranking the streets this year
and we can tell you kind of roughly what
we're gonna be looking at over the next
two or three years
it's dynamic it will change year to year
based upon observations conditions
the way that the street pavement
performs um
so i'll think about i'll think about how
to incorporate that as sort of a
organic uh reference maybe
and then uh one one other idea uh with
your summary of the uh
of the current plan and the the timeline
that you had
it might be nice in the new plan to
just summarize the old
keep that summary of the old plan
as an appendix and actually show
the ones that were actually completed
just as a
look back at our accomplishments i like
that
yep good idea richard
thank you um yeah
go ahead mayor you're going to talk
about i think our timeline here
yeah so this is just a proposal and
certainly
it's open to change uh but
the idea would be that we would start to
launch community engagement
um to find some small group listening
sessions um
you know either outside over coffee or
over zoom
allow people to sign up for them and
talk through
what do you want bexar to look like 10
years from now what do you enjoy about
bexley what do you think needs to be
improved
what you know what are challenges that
we have facing just take take ideas from
the community
um go specifically to community
organizations of which we have a
gazillion
and uh interface with um
you know what is uh what do those
organizations see in the same same
concept but probably through the lens of
the organization
and online engagement obviously would be
um
uh pretty frankly pretty easy and
standard and an important piece of it
i'd like to do a mail survey because i
think you get a different perspective
from mailing
you get you target you receive responses
from a different
group of residents and you reach people
who are not engaged otherwise on some of
the social platforms
and there are many reasonable people in
our community who are not engaged on the
social platform so
i think um that would be an important
thing for me
i want to differentiate how that is
different from our routine every
five-year survey so we do
like a five every five-year survey
that's due to happen next year
um that benchmarks some very specific
questions about performance and
expectations
and that is helpful and informative but
i would want to do a survey that's
specifically targeted towards strategic
planning and
envisioning for the community which is a
little bit of a different emphasis
uh and then you know it's been a while
we did a thought board for our alum
creek plan
i don't know if anyone remembers that it
was back in like 2012 or 13 we had a
we had this big like huge dry erase
board at the farmers market
that people could just write down ideas
on and i think it would be fun to have
that
again um just because
it's a fun visual and a fun way to
interact
so through all that feedback you know we
would
um we would i
i and i was going to ask uh monique
and anyone else who wants to kind of
help me synthesize this
retreat and come up with
the overarching strategy
and assimilate all that feedback into a
draft recommendation
the draft document would then get
workshopped at a public workshop
before coming to city council for
adoption
and the city council then would have a
uh a revised draft
um so um you know a revised final
draft and then any council
feedback additional council feedback
would be incorporated obviously council
is welcome to have feedback at any point
in time
into preparation of a final plan and
then adoption
um hopefully by the end of this year so
that's
that is my thought process i you know
one of the challenges with this
and i think it might be one of the
reasons we held off a little bit in 2017
is when when you're doing concurrent
planning it can be kind of confusing to
the community as to what exactly it is
you're doing because you have so much
going on
the livingston avenue joint study is
going to be a big haul
this year it's going to be a lot a lot a
lot
and so another important piece of all
this will be contextualizing what
this is and how it relates to other
plans and
you know making sure that we're reaching
people but not giving them planned
fatigue
great mayor i'm glad you mentioned the
livingston um
avenue project i've got that one
scheduled a little bit later on so we
can do a deeper dive then but
given how much we just went over
are there any questions from other
members of council regarding
uh these various plans and proposed
timeline
um yes
yeah thank you i uh i just wanted to say
that
i really like the um mail and then
uh return from those people in our
community that
may not necessarily have a social media
platform i think that
that is a great concept and i love the
thought board
i don't remember seeing that but i uh
then like in your office how you have
your big white boards
um and that for a second when you said
farmers market i was like well maybe we
should have that at
giant eagle but then i kind of like the
farmer's market because then you really
are probably getting the 43209 residence
yeah that was that was back when we had
a um the market was by the
creek and it was
uh you know able to be put
placed in the ground for a season so
probably i'm thinking you know it's at a
park or maybe it moves around
different parks um i don't have a uh
i don't have an actual image of it
but this is can you guys see this pdf
that's actually what it that was what it
was the design document so that's
basically what it looked like had a qr
code and
um you know just
yeah you know find a physical space or
move it around yeah i like those two
concepts because i think it engages
people that we don't always get to hear
from
and i could see it being at you know
havenwood for a little bit being over
commonwealth for a little bit you know
like moving around to different spots
then you should drive it around like a
big ice cream truck
with a jazz band yes with ice cream too
actually
that's a good point and can you make
that electronic as well
i mean i'm sure there's a way to set
that up so people
who can think about it can add things
you know while they're sitting at home
and anything
just something that would be the online
engagement and polling piece of it bill
so that that would be
there would be an online piece to that
that would be um
a little bit different interface
yeah i will i will say that i like the
wide
range of outreach and ben i would be
happy to
to not only work with you on that but to
come up with different ways to
let our community know
what we'd like to do and to give them
ample multiple opportunities for them to
give some input
whether it's you know something as
simple as including
our water bill updating our website but
making sure that they know that
if they miss the survey in the mail
here's other ways that they could still
provide their input yeah
that'd be i agree and i'm probably going
to pull on some staff support
um from like maybe elena maybe
somebody somebody who has some um
expertise
that will help keep its on track for me
um and and help with the uh
memorialization
of different meetings that we might have
and you know
documentation so i think that's one of i
have learned that that's one of the keys
of making sure that these things move
along
bill harvey you've got your hand up yeah
one more thought ben
since we're doing this for what the city
is going to look like in 10 or 15 years
you need to figure out how to get our
high school students and maybe even
you know middle school students involved
in that because
they are the resident of 10 years
hopefully so
something else to think about it's a
good idea
can we bring that board to the main
event or something like that might be
a good idea oh yeah or uh uh
councilwoman lamke can i talk real quick
sure
um what about like a write your mare
like last summer
with the pandemic we did all of the
campaigns to
you know go to your police department
giant eagle
to city hall and kids loved that
what about write your mare you know drop
off put out a mailbox or the bin again
and uh great idea yeah and we can post
it up on the window at city hall and
people can kind of see what kids have
written
write your counsel you know get them
excited about it i think we probably
would
if we marketed that correctly i think
that could be very engaging
i agree that's a great idea great idea
we're looking at the community from a
standpoint of community organizations
that adults are in
we can look at community organizations
that our children are in
but i have no idea how to raise my hand
i always run zoom meetings
lower lower right hand corner there's a
gold and
kind of like uh where is it
lower uh kind of uh like five o'clock at
the middle of your screen
or laura you don't have to raise your
hand go ahead and go ahead and say what
you want
there's a status bar that will come up
when your cursor goes to the bottom
right well i'll just
i'll just keep looking but um i was just
going to say that that
i wonder if we could get a hold of some
of the teachers
in bexley schools or somehow beca and
have them
make that part of a piece of curriculum
for their kids to do i mean i think it
would be i mean that sounds like
something as a former teacher i would
have loved to have had my
my students do it could be a joint um
language arts
history assignment anyway and i would be
happy and love
to sift through some of those um
some of those letters so i mean i would
really enjoy that so
okay sounds like i've got some
engagement uh partners here thank you
ben one other thing that i thought of
might be great is we we've got
some amazing volunteers on our boards
commissions and
committees and i would love um once we
have
a general plan i would love for um
each committee or board or commission to
whether it's one of us
bringing this up at their individual
meetings but just to let them know
um because i think that they would have
probably a lot of rich input
and i'm having a great point to do that
as well
and actually what what also what might
be helpful
uh is something similar to what we did
with our land use strategy back
in 2010 we convened all of our boards
and commissions in one meeting
for a big workshop which was kind of
neat
it because it's rare for them to come
together
and you know they sort of riff off of
each other in a cool way because they're
coming from
sort of different angles so you know
you've got the rec board and tree
commission
these app and everybody um that might be
a
fun way to get some of that feedback
yeah i like it
richard you've got your hand up yeah i
was just going to say
um in instead of one person trying to go
through all the surveys
that maybe we have a council read the
survey night
um like kind of like a book club night
just kind of a social activity and
and read and tabulate all the cards or
various surveys it might be fun
thank you i will cry
i will crowdsource this all day long
thank you
can we incorporate like pictionary or
something like a game
you do can we do it at rock mill brewery
are we allowed to do that
beverages guys let's do it in the dora
let's do it in the door
mayor um i had one quick question if i
was going to send to olive council
an electronic link to all of these
amazing plans
is there one place on the website where
they're all dropped or would i just need
to cut and paste
every link and then send it out to our
council because i would find that
helpful
well i'm glad you asked that
councilwoman lamke because if you see
the link right here additional resources
link website plans folder
that takes you directly to all of the
plans
all right council and i just found out
my credit card has expired
yeah we're gonna need that number mayor
oh well we're gonna need to keep the
dropbox subscription or else
everything's gonna fall apart very
quickly so yeah
awesome counsel i will send all of you
the link to
that plan folder so that um
if you'd like you're able to go through
all of these various different
plans um one question i had for all of
us
is obviously if if all of this is geared
towards where do we want to see bexley
in 10 years i'd like to spend just a few
minutes thinking about where we'd like
to see bexley say in the next
12 months a little bit more on the
shorter term uh
time frame any thoughts or ideas there
you're asking me your counsel uh
everybody was a counselor
okay yeah well anybody i i obviously
want to focus on the long term but i
think we also need to
revisit the short term and keep growing
i i can tell you there are several
things that are being worked on right
now with
various oh sorry john robinson raise
your hand jen go ahead
i've been talking too much i i just
think it's one of the
really really crucial things for us is
that we make sure that we are visiting
the strategic plan that we passed last
year and the dei uh work
in particular um i i just
don't want too much time to go by
without us making sure that we
are doing what we said we were going to
do and
really um following the the guidelines
that we set out in
in the strategic plan and particularly
the dei
um um ordinance so
um i think it's really important and i
think our community is really um
is anxious to see how we're doing so
hold ourselves accountable there yep
great idea
um troy markham you were up next
yeah uh i i guess are you asking us for
uh some specific things that we'll be
working on in the next year is that
the question yeah maybe in the next 12
months
i think we've alluded to it and ben
definitely had it in his video
but uh you know the one thing i think my
big
project for 2021 is
one that i kind of came to council with
when i got
first elected back in 2016 which is
to expand the recycling uh here within
the city to extend that to
multi-family that's my area i've got
that on my list
i'm not going to let you down
and that you know i think that's one
thing that uh
that that has always kind of been you
know with me these last few years i know
uh
i've had a lot of talks with uh with ben
about that as well
when i moved last time i stayed in
an apartment complex for six months
while i was waiting for
my house to be ready and it's one thing
that i heard a lot about from the people
that live there is they didn't have any
recycling options you know they they had
to throw away they were literally
throwing away in these giant pens you
know glass and paper and things like
that and so
that would be my my number one thing
great
richard did you want to follow up on
that or add something new
richard's stepped away for a second oh
he stepped out i will tell you
we uh we've drafted for what it's worth
troy
with troy's help and elizabeth and some
the osu student group we have a drafted
ordinance for this
it's just a situation of um
esac and i think for troy we've talked
about this waiting a little bit until
business stability has occurred um and
you know we've kind of gotten a little
bit out of the fog of the pandemic but
um it'll it'll obviously yeah so i think
we're we're well primed for that
and troy we're not gonna let you down i
keep wondering by the way if richard's
gonna show up
behind me now or something you know
ready to go
um next up matt you had your hand raised
too
yep sorry unmute um hopefully
the common wealth park strategic plan
will will be put into action
that's kind of the parks and recs i
think goal for
for 2021 i know where mike's going to
present at the next
um board meeting for the parks and rec
but i hope to start to
see that development happen great
thank you um jess uh richard's not back
yet suggest you wanna
you wanna share with us your thoughts
yeah thank you
um matt i'm on his page the commonwealth
park strategic plan
um you guys have heard me talk about
green space
i think we're all on board with that but
i think covid was a time that we really
saw
some limitations in our community for
our park and rec department
and different activities that we have we
were a little limited when the schools
were not available
and so that commonwealth park um
the livingston area where we have green
space now and a playground all of that
is so
important to our community um and more
now than ever
it was very transparent during covet and
i think that's one of those silver
linings that it reminds us to
to look at that green space which we've
always held i think very high but even
more so now
than before so commonwealth park is
definitely um
one of my um one of the things that
i've heard a lot about from the
community and is something that i'm
looking forward to that strategic plan
happening and that green space opening
back up
in a um and
making that use better for our uh our
community
um and then you know jen i wanted to
talk about the diversity and inclusion
initiative
actually when you're talking about
making sure that we're doing what we
told the community we would
last night in our bzap meetings a big
part of what we have already done
with our diversity and inclusion
initiative has helped
with what happened last night in bees
app and some things getting passed
for our developments on livingston and
cassidy so i think we should feel very
proud of that as a board
and a community of what the cic and the
sport and the mayor
has said that we would do and we have it
in writing and
um because of that we uh were actually
able now with some of the things that
we've done as a council in past we're
actually able to have that
um to look forward to and happening for
our community
it the dei has held us as a community
accountable great thank you so much jess
it looks like richard is still
on the phone richard we'll we'll come
back to you in just a moment
um two things that i wanted to focus on
maybe in the short term just from my
my uh perspective is uh the first is
like jen and jess just mentioned um
continuing
uh our efforts regarding diversity
equity and inclusion we've made
some great strides i've had a chance
recently to speak to
some community members to
get their input and i think that we have
put in place
so many great efforts a variety of
efforts to
keep conversations going but i know that
we
can can continue to do more um so that
for me would be a priority and the
second
is i feel like uh
covet obviously is going to be around a
bit longer and to the extent that
we have any catching up to do if at all
regarding our infrastructure um
obviously i know kovit has prohibited
perhaps a lot of in-person things i'd
want to make sure that we
are on track
if not caught up on any infrastructure
repairs or
things like that so those two would be
my priorities
um anyone else have anything that they
would like to throw in
uh for the short term things that are
important to them or things that they'd
like to
um to have focused on
anyone else oh okay richard
okay we'll we'll come back to him
i'm sorry um i love
all of the ideas that everyone has
regarding the
parks and i think um though we haven't
been able to utilize them for the last
few months as much as perhaps we could
should
i think covet has made us realize that
you know just how important our outdoor
space is
and um schneider park and the whole
ferndale mayfield
um area has always been had a really
soft spot in my heart and i really think
that that's important on
all kinds of levels and and getting that
connectivity
and and and making sure that our
community is enjoying that
and um making sure that the individuals
that live
in the ferndale mayfield area feel like
they're part of bexley by
all of the rest effectively joining them
so really celebrating
that area and doing obviously doing
everything we can i mean it's a very
long-term goal getting that area
um such that it is
looking like and treated like and
feeling like and all of
that part of bexley is really important
and i know that the mayor's initiative
um
with livingston itself is really
important as well but i just think
there's
i just think snyder park and
the ferndale mayfield area ties in so
well with
all of everybody's desires the whole
um grain space the dei
there's just so much that that that can
that can help uh foster good in doing
that
so anyway thank you so much lori ann i
see that uh jen robinson's got her hand
back up
jen yeah thanks um lorian something you
said
um kind of sparked something in my mind
i don't have
necessarily a resolution but i think one
of the things that we can always work on
as a city
is how we communicate with our residents
um you know we hear it um you know a lot
number of people will take to to
facebook and try to have communication
we all know that that's
not the best place to have any kind of
conversation but
you know how can we always keep working
to improve how we are communicating
really important information to our
residents so that we make sure that
people have the information that they
need
when they need it so maybe we add
communication to the list of things that
uh that we want to make sure that we are
on top of for the next year
good idea thank you i don't have a hand
raised feature
so because of the being a host so i
think you have to do it all
yes i do so um i i want to draw on some
of what you guys had said and just
emphasize a couple points first off uh
commonwealth was brought up a couple
times which i
love that it was brought up we have a as
a reminder we have dedicated
to a mid-year capital budget process if
you'll recall
and that so that's the way that council
is is going to be um
really active in that another way the
council's going to be active in that
is that the athletic field
appropriations as you'll recall
were put on hold depending that mid-year
capital budget
and we can do that you know you guys get
to define what mid-year is
um we'll have a we'll continue to watch
our financial returns
and and we'll have some pretty
interesting information i think come out
of washington the next week or two
in terms of what how that's going to
impact us financially as well
um the there are a couple ordinances
that are under development either
internally here or with council members
that are working on them to remind you
of one of them is the garage reform
ordinance for zoning of garages that's
an urgent
item and we're hoping to bring that to
council sooner rather than later
um the at some point in time we'll have
historic preservation
ordinance uh a board ordinance so we've
we've been talking about
um tweaking the way we have alternates
and the way we have
uh majority votes of boards to help with
better continuity
and more cohesive education of board
members and culture
um a
ferndale so ferndale mayfield ordinance
um to touch on what was said
i'm starting to get and frank reed our
our legal counsel and i had a
conversation about this we've been
working with franklin county public
health
on moving the ball forward with the
doubles that have
a contamination underneath them franklin
county public health has never done
this before so they're not super duper
comfortable with
the process and it's not that they're
uncomfortable so they're
you know you're asking a board that has
40 jurisdictions to focus on a fairly
niche
project in one city they've been helpful
but it's a slow process and it's a slow
move and so we
we've talked a little bit about creating
our own environmental
nuisance standards within our code which
we can do
so that we have our own enforcement
mechanism as well that goes beyond
you know the epa state of ohio
piggybacks off of those groups so that's
something that i think we might be
looking at
in the next six months um
schneider is a top priority for
completing that trail
and helping for that connectivity so
that's something we'll be working on you
talked about infrastructure
and also we will have additional
community garden plots i think under
construction this spring
to finalize the south garden and uh as a
south gardener
i would highly i would welcome i would
ask if
you guys want to join it's a great
experience it's a great way to really
understand and
appreciate what's been going on down
there so
just uh you could have a council plot if
you wanted and i'd be happy to help you
guys with that
oh that's good guys you could put it
next to mine and i'll water it
and then you can water mine whenever i'm
not around so we can maybe do you guys
just water mine the whole time thanks
um all right i noticed a few more hands
have gone up and
uh it is 9 45 so let's maybe see if we
can
uh just have a few additional comments
and then we're gonna welcome
nate green and turn to our historical
cic update
um just i think your hand went up first
do you want to add anything else just a
quick question to the mayor
um what do you mean by mid-year that we
get to decide on commonwealth
okay so so if you recall we
we have a balance in our capital fund
and
instead of appropriating the whole
capital fund
this at the beginning of this year out
of a preponderance of caution we said
we're gonna
we're only appropriating the top items
so like police cruisers and some other
stuff and then we're gonna hold off
and see how things go financially for
the city before
appropriating any additional so the
mid-year would i think we said sometime
in the summer we'd come
back and we would look at where we stood
financially
and determine what to do with any
additional capital appropriations so
right now there is not funding for the
commonwealth
athletic fields there was remember but
we
we let it go we said we're not we're
going to unappropriate it and hold off
on that project
similarly yeah so there are other things
there are other items that we have held
off on
and by the time we're talking about this
we're going to have a
arboretum plan for that section of
commonwealth as well there might be some
wisdom
in pursuing both of those projects at
the same time with the same contractor
so that that's what i was talking about
april
or may or june we'll look at it april
troy is your finance chair finance chair
april
i think beside is indicating she would
like that sooner than later troy you had
your hand raised as well
yeah i was actually going to uh i was
going along the same vein there
um i'm just going to remind that the
previous council appropriated that money
and i was going to have you refresh my
memory so that money is
has been unappropriated and we would
need to appropriate that money again
that's what we're looking at right yeah
we like yeah we let go of it
and and and because we had some high
priority items just from like public
safety infrastructure perspectives that
we
wanted to make sure we had adequate
funding for but
we did a good job of stocking more money
away last year after all so i think you
know we
there's capacity probably and it'll be
something for us to talk about
yeah and i think the term appropriate is
appropriate here because it's probably
appropriate that we think about that
as a new council and a new environment
as well
and as you said we may uh
we definitely we may have new resources
at that time as well
yeah yeah sure that's true
great um what i will do council just
because i know that we have
a guest joining us here
uh for our next topic if we have some
additional
things that we'd like to add to this
discussion if we have time at the very
end of our agenda item we'll come back
to
uh short-term strategic goals for the
city
uh mayor i think uh there is nate greene
if you're able to add him
oh he's here he's called oh i'm here i'm
in
i'm in what am i signing yeah i changed
it
you're correct now you were debbie oh
okay oh she must have sent me the i used
her
the link that she sent me ben great good
thank you so much nate for for joining
us as i mentioned to my fellow council
members
well we're going to mix up our agenda a
little bit and thank you so much for
joining us and taking time out of your
morning
i thought it would be helpful for at
least our three new council members as
well as
my myself and everyone else to
have some historical perspective on
the cic you had mentioned to me and i
think the mayor also mentioned that
there had been
um a lot of a lot of input and
exploring of how cics benefit cities so
if you can together or independently
however you want to do it give all of us
um
a historical update on the cic that
would be
much much appreciated sure
nate i'll start with
until it was formed and then why didn't
you take it since you were as a member
from from there on out you want to do
that yes
thanks the so the bexley cic was
recommended in a document initially i
think
it might have been the jeffrey randomly
the jeffrey mansion
master plan back in 2008 i'm not
positive about that but there was an
earlier plan that alluded to it and i
might be wrong about that then the
bexley land use strategy
affirmed reaffirmed that as a core
recommendation of the land use strategy
uh was that the that a cic be formed
and specifically mentioned that was
under a city-wide recommendation
uh create a bexley improvement
corporation um
it could work to promote economic
development
rejuvenate economically stressed areas
of bexley
and serve as the economic development
agent of the city of bexley
so that came out of the 2011 land use
strategy and then
we promptly pursued that
in in 2012 and it became
actually not an urgent pursuit but it
became an important
pursuit because we were in the process
of redeveloping our city hall
um bringing in a grocery store which is
another land use strategy recommendation
and a cic because
it has certain powers and abilities that
the city council does not have the city
boards and permissions do not have
was an important piece of that so some
of the things that a cic can do
that we can't just do on our own
cic can negotiate with
developers and property owners they can
pursue
development partners without some of the
same requirements for public rfps
that would apply to other uh city bodies
and this is all enabled by the ohio
statute the ohio statute has a specific
section about community improvement
corporations
recognizes the value of them and why
it's really important
for a community approval corporation to
have the ability to
to be more nimble and to have additional
and different tools
than a standard city council does
so the csc was formed in 2012 and
when you form a cic you need to agree
agree on a plan
together and so what the city did was we
agreed that the land use strategy from
2011
was the economic plan for the cic and it
continues to be that
so this the landing strategy is broad
enough uh that there are many
aspects to it that continue to be
relevant but that's what that kind of
further supports what i was talking
about when i talked about refreshing
that land use strategy in the next
couple years
um we formed the cic we had a decision
to make about
how many members to have there was a
requirement that
40 of the membership be elected
officials
and so we figured out how to scale the
size of it ended up with a 15-member
board
um and automatic membership of as you
know certain chairs of certain council
committees
the auditor the mayor and then a city
director that's appointed
and then um we formed it nate green was
one of our first members
and nate you want to talk about it from
there sure so
thanks ben and thanks everybody um and
yes
uh jess you mentioned i was on the board
of zoning appeals
her board of zoning and planning last
night so that was a late meeting but
you know it's it's one of the perks of
uh being the chair of the cic is
it's going to those kind of meetings um
obviously i'm being a little facetious
uh so the cic uh the community
improvement corporation i will just add
to ben's
uh the powers and duties you know
community improvement corporations have
been
uh in in ohio they've been part of ohio
law since the 1960s as a matter of fact
a lot of communities industrial
communities in particular around the
state of ohio
started their cics in the 1960s i ran
one for five and a half years in
circleville and pickaway county that had
been
formed in 1967 and so
they're a great tool and they're ones
that communities across
ohio use as their as city's
economic development agents to really as
ben talked about
perform the economic development
functions do real estate transactions
that that
cities uh you know are not
just have trouble doing uh on their own
so it gives a little more flexibility to
be able to do those
do those kind of deals um so as ben said
yeah i started
uh i was i was one of the first members
in 2012 and i've been on the board
for that entire time all with the
exception of one year i stepped off
for one year when i started uh with my
current uh business just because
it was there was a lot going on but uh
ben invited me back after that which was
good well ben and you all did
the city council did i don't you all
weren't involved but some of you were
i think lori ann may have been uh on
council then at that point
um but uh you know the the as ben said
that the impetus for the cic was really
that the
the giant eagle and the bexley square um
you know the cic
we we own the bexley square uh
we have a property manager uh which is
newmark
grub frank knight or frank grubb knight
that manages
that property for us you know we as you
all know we're all volunteers so
having us try to manage that property
would be uh
would be a challenge but they manage the
property for us
um the but we do one of the things that
i think
um that has been great throughout the
cic throughout the throughout the
you know nine ten years that we've been
uh going strong
is that we've got members of the csc
from all different backgrounds but
um they're very smart people and they're
very engaged
and that really pops up
in things like bexley square you know we
have we'll have
uh lease negotiations going on with our
tenants uh
and todd friedman who you all know todd
was our
two chairs ago uh and and todd you know
has been
has been an invaluable member just as
far as those real estate transactions go
um but so we have bexley square uh
and and we maintain that um you know the
bexley square
as as um uh jessica and troy
and monique know you know that's a
that's a great property it actually
allows us because of the fact that it's
full because of the fact that we have
brassica on the corner
that actually allows us to do other
things in the city and and
execute on that strategic plan and
mission that ben
talked about because it does allow us to
spin off some other money
and use that you know we're a non-profit
so we have to you know we have to
use our money wisely but we also have to
use it for the the functions and the
duties that are you know kind of laid
out in the plan um
so we own bexley square which is going
strong ben talked about
uh ferndale mayfield you know the city
how many years ago was that been that
the city started was that five years ago
or six lori anne how many
is that i don't remember sorry which
which part
oh the front when the fir when the city
started to uh
when the city gave money to the cic to
go about
uh buying those properties down there
yeah 45 years ago
it was probably 2015 or 16 that we
started encumbering money for that i
think
it was definitely before i started
becoming um before i was president of
council because i would have been
um yeah i think four years ago
maybe okay or yeah and that yeah you
know what lori ann that that might be
right
yeah it wasn't i think it was in 2017 we
bought those first units
as a matter of fact so that would have
been that would make sense um
so yeah so we own uh two units
apartment units down at ferndale
mayfield that we you know purchased for
the
for that for that reason to be able to
um really clean that property up and
then eventually
uh you know if possible maybe provide
some more mixed income
housing down there now that that's a
long term vision
uh we only own two units and one more
units
one more unit actually came up but it
the price was so astronomical that it
would have
never made sense for us to us to buy it
and it was a it was twice
two times the amount that we had paid
for the other properties um
those properties are going to be
demolished i think
probably in another well i would
actually say in march that those
properties are going to be
demolished so you'll you'll uh if you go
down there if you
you haven't you see people with any
questions that's that's what they'll be
asking about is those two properties
that'll be demolished
um so that ferndale mayfield you know
we're always
uh we we continue to look for
opportunities down there
uh to try to you know turn those
properties into something else and
the environmental concerns down there
are worrisome so we really want to make
sure that we can turn those
and get get those people out of there
especially if there's kids living in
those units
um so that's one thing we're doing you
know uh
two years ago uh well so one of the
other
you know corridors that we're focused on
is cassidy
cassidy avenue and we uh
two years ago we purchased a a
a building it actually it's a it's a
home but it's it
it's used as a commercial building we
purchased a building there
uh and i can't think of the address but
i mean maybe it's 489.
um that's on cassidy and really the
point there was to
[Music]
hopefully you know assemble some
properties and get some more commercial
activity
uh on cassidy avenue so that's another
property that we own and manage we have
that facil that that building itself
is uh i believe it's actually fully
leased although i think we're getting a
new tenant on the first floor here soon
um we have another property manager that
manages that it's not it's not the same
property as bexley square
but again you know we we're volunteers
so we need somebody that's there day to
day to do those things
um so uh you know for those of you that
are not engaged in the csc meetings um
you know that's
our goal really is to is to look at uh
the the strategic plan the city has done
um
looked at look at mixed income
opportunities look at other commercial
opportunities
where we can come in and we can we can
impact projects um
that maybe have not uh not been able to
move or not been able to have activity
on
and that we can step into and kind of
put push those projects forward and uh
you know bring new economic activity uh
on onto those onto
those sites so you know we are uh we
we um we we look at different
opportunities all the time
um you know those of you that i
mentioned that are on the cic
you have you hear about those
opportunities but
um it's you know it's a it's uh um again
like i said it's a great group and i
think um we're moving we're moving
things in
in great directions you you all know you
know the current things we are in
contract to buy 420 north cassidy
we're actually going to probably close
on that uh next week or the week after
um that has uh that property we've done
phase one and phase two environmentals
reports on there's there's some minor
contamination there that we're gonna
have to clean up
but we're in the process of of closing
on that property
and doing that so um what else
what else what did i miss ben or or jess
or
i would i would add to just a complete
profile
of the what you did which is fantastic
and by the way
nate has been you've been such a great
chair and
you're you're thanks man and and uh
the past couple zoning hearings if you
guys have seen them and just heard
heard nate talk you get a good feel for
that
um bexley square you might have
mentioned this
part of the deal with baxter square it
used to be it was bought
initially by the city then transferred
to the cic and part of the deal is that
the cac returns 120 000
of income every year to the city that
more than pays for the debt service
associated with our relocation of city
hall
so that's that's the economic agreement
piece of that and then the remaining
earnings from the
bexy squares retained by the cac any
money that the cic
makes has to be spent in accordance with
the agreed upon economic development
plan
and any property has to ultimately be
returned
to the city of bexley so it's it's an
independent entity in a sense
but everything always flows back to the
city itself it's not it's not like it
has some sort of
separate charter you know ben that's a
great point and i think that that's
something too as you're talking
you know you all i'm sure you interact
more with citizens in bexley than i do
um but that is a great point ben that we
are really an arm of the city and
there's not a
um you know an economic but we're not
we're not some independent body that's
doing things
uh you know on our own and and and not
without anybody else's direction or
approval so that that is a good point
though
well it came up one more thing uh the
land under giant
eagle is also owned by the cac so that's
a that's land leased to giant eagle
and and ultimately 420 north cassie
although it's going to be
potentially developed with the mixed
income housing development
will the underlying land will be
retained
by the cic and there will be basically a
long-term lease
land lease essentially to the to the
developer and then at least back of a
portion of that as
uh retail so just because we like
complications it's not at all it's not
at all confusing but
not at all um so that's or condom
minimization whatever it is
that's ultimately what happens the um
i want to affirm the importance of
planning nate you guys alluded to it
already but
in the dei strategy it was not an
accident that there was language in
there
because it had been talked about by
council so much
there was language in there that was you
guys adopted last year
um it was written originally by a
council member
and the language said continue to
encourage the cic
and their efforts to identify affordable
housing opportunities for people with
low incomes as part of new development
included but not limited to rezoning or
rehabbing current and future
future buildings and projects that
language was a pivotal piece
of the zoning discussion because council
through a strategy that you guys adopted
mentioned zoning mentioned the cic
mentioned affordable housing spoke
specifically to it
so the plans that you guys pass and
approve do have
a whole lot of um uh gravitas
in informing the way that the community
develops in the way that cic
ultimately as a development agent is
able to act and is able to
accomplish those objectives
thank you so much nate and mayor one
thing that i felt was important to share
when i became a new council member
i remember hearing that the city
was able to environmentally test
at ferndale mayfield only within the
city right-of-ways
but because the cic had purchased the
two doubles and was now
the landowner that actually uh
enabled us to be able to do extensive
testing or additional testing that we
would otherwise not have been able to do
would would either one of you be able to
speak about how that process came about
ben you want to talk about that i think
you're you were more engaged in that
than i was yeah
so we had done you know we had really
struggled
to take what we knew because we done so
much testing i have a map somewhere it's
going to take me a second to pull it up
but we tested
all over our rights away all over the
parks and we we
looked to the development community for
advice about how do we
you know get get the knowledge of
exactly what's happening underneath
where people are living
and one of the recommendations that we
got was to test all through the
right-of-way and be able to just prove
it through saying you know it's
everywhere which it was
but that wasn't quite enough to compel
the board of health to take action
so our next step because we knew there
was absolutely no other way we could
get that information was to purchase
some properties and
test them so we actually bought them
because we knew it was part of long-term
redevelopment but we bought them to test
them
you know it takes a while to to perform
a phase two they're expensive
and we wanted to test out these
assumptions so
we did that we closed on the property we
tested it we found that those prop
the two properties we we purchased were
identical essentially and
results to the areas we had tested
before both under the park
and throughout the right-of-way and uh
we created a voucher program and a
relocation program for the residents
that were living there
once we knew affirmatively that those
results were the same
so we basically created a we created the
equation
that could help inform future future
work in that area and that was really
important and in fact it helped a lot
yesterday i was on a call with
franklin county public health and one of
their board members who's incredibly
concerned about equity of course and
about human health
and we were able to point specifically
to this exact program to show
what a fantastic program the cic and the
city had created and
enabled through council to handle um
compassionately assisting homeowners and
sorry tenants and families uh relocating
from a what is
currently a hazardous condition so that
information was used then to
provide a more forceful request to
property owners to test eight of them
voluntarily did it
all eight properties came back with
pretty much the same results
and now the board of health is
determining how to take action on
those results and that's kind of where
we are right now with that
great thank you thank you for adding
that piece it was important to me to
understand it but also to share it
with my fellow council members richard
sharp you've got your hand up do you
have some questions for
um for nate or the mayor regarding the
historical cic
updates yeah i just want to make sure
i'm remembering things correctly and
understanding the relationship
so even though the cic
has less than a majority of
public officials and
it is totally controlled by
the city through the appointments and
the ownership or the
establishment of the entity
is that correct then yeah that's correct
richard the
the yeah the city council appoints all
the you know the
the private members i'll call and the
and the public members are
uh you know by statute or by
bylaws yeah and the other thing to add
to that is that
this isn't required but it's just a
tradition of rcic
that elected officials have not sat as
executive board members so the chair
vice
secretary treasurer those have all been
traditionally
filled by the appointed seats not by
elected officials
correct and then um
so the city currently owns directly
city hall is that correct yes
and the cic owns bexley square the
cassidy avenue
the two units at mayfield ferndale and
the giant eagle property
and potentially the 420
cassidy property and correct richard
it will not have any financial
ownership of the livingston property
uh actually richard we have a very very
very minor ownership in the livingston
property interest then
okay very minority interest richard it's
a weird
bird it's a weird financial minority
interest that has to do with having a
non-profit partner
involved with the high tech funding it's
it's so hard to explain it's outside of
the norm
sort of it is and it's not and i would
say it's also not um
as ben said there's it's not a financial
there's no there's really
there's no financial benefit to us in
that it's it's because we're a
non-profit and they needed a non-profit
partner okay so there's not a share of
revenue that passes through like a
limited partner
or something like that there is a
no because the majority of the the way
that that that process works is the
majority of
the rents we'll call them it goes back
to the the
the investors in those projects which
are usually
uh institutional bank investors or
those kind of people okay there is a
little bit just to be clear
there it's kind of muddies it but it's i
just want to be
fully transparent about this to the
extent and i think jen probably
just comes to your communication point
and trying to explain some of this stuff
it can be complicated but there's a
there's a share of the developer profit
the double developer fee on the upfront
that the cic would participate in
but only on but ben that's only on
cassidy that's not on
livingston you're positive about that
okay yeah well i mean the last
you're not well i hope i don't actually
think it's on i don't bet i don't think
it's
i don't think it's unlimited i could be
wrong but it's the way the models that
they've shown us it's only on cassidy
and on the
on the livingston piece it's it's uh
there's no we don't get any benefit out
of that
i thought that there was a developer fee
component of that participation
it's not a huge it's not a huge thing it
helps us offset the cost of casting
and whether or not it's both projects
the point being that
yeah and nate i want i'm just throwing
myself under the bus
i keep on we continue our we are
learning new things
because this world of li-tech financing
is so unusual
and you know we have good advisors but
it's just a
very complicated deal and it's just
different than what we've worked on
before so i want to
jump in i'm be jump in here um only
because i am looking at
um the time and i know that there's
probably some additional information
that needs to be had
i do note that we have some other hand
raise as well
um so that we can stay on track but
richard did did you have any uh uh a
last
question before we turn it over one last
okay one
one last thing is um i know
housing prices have like throughout the
city and throughout the region
skyrocketed the house next door to me
just
sold for more than double the price it
was bought for
nine years ago um in one day and so
um i was
wondering given given that because
well i was going to put an offer on it
but i
couldn't i'm given the
um impact of those rising prices i mean
is the cic coming up with
are they thinking of a strategy to keep
the plan moving forward
and it can be rhetorical you can say
it's something we're considering but
well i mean i think richard it's it's a
yeah i think it's an evolving thing and
we are we talk about it a lot
uh you know this mixed income piece we
talk about a lot we thought a lot about
it because that's how we
that's how the partnership developed
with community builders because we sent
out a rfi two years ago
um to to get you know to get interest
in this this mixed income housing so it
is something we're thinking about
and uh we'll continue to to to
figure out as we go forward and and very
specifically the the horizon on freno
mayfield
is it's a redevelopment horizon that
will incorporate
additional affordability mechanisms
most likely i think a true mixed income
project seems to be the one that keeps
talk percolating around that which is
where we're
we're looking at market rate and
affordable affordability
um so that'll you know that'll be the
one of the biggest uh
projects that cac works on in the next
few years right
okay thank you i'm done thank you so
much richard troy i think you had your
hand raised do you have a
question regarding the history of cics
for either nate or the mayor
yeah thank you for the update on the
ferndale mayfield because i think that
sort of
you know is always kind of moving in the
background you know
as we're here i have two questions uh
about that
um and the first is do we get any sense
that there's a change
in the dynamics of the occupancy
of the remaining units there since you
know since the activities that that
we've pursued
and the second is can you update us uh
just on what you know about what's
uh the the two the
the big the two big buildings there that
i believe
just changed ownership maybe like a year
ago how how is that going and
and uh what's up with that in terms of
occupancy and changes thank you
um so the i don't have any hard data on
how
our work down there has impacted uh like
for example crime rates
or or what's happened specifically the
doubles
which would be an interesting thing to
look at because there's just
structurally different and
you know it you could that would be
interesting
uh incidentally the sorts of police
calls that we get
i haven't heard the same type of police
calls over the past couple years as we
used to have so i but that's subjective
and i need data behind that
with the 72 unit building that is
managed by alex picasso and owned by him
he's completed the environmental
remediation so it is now
uh compliant with epa regulations which
is good news
um i think he's continued to struggle as
has every property owner
and i think it's a problem of physics
those buildings
are you know long central corridor
hallways
low ceilings small units and
very difficult to change in terms of the
uh the dynamics that exist within those
developments so i know that he struggled
with that and we've had conversations
about it
he's contemplated selling it again um
you know the basis that he has in that
is way beyond
anything the cic is i think able or
willing to
take on um it's not a land basis
whatsoever so
that's going to be a challenge it's
going to be uh you know there's been
lots of concepts about
converting it to senior housing tearing
it down and making a part of
redevelopment
it's it's going to be a challenge in the
future
what kind of remediation did he do there
ben and i remember he came before
council and spoke
and he seemed very earnest about the
work on that
yeah so it's a a little different than
what we've done at the
the park because um he had
so much of that property is covered with
asphalt
and building and the building is all
above grade
so um that's what's called an
engineering control
for the environmental piece of it so
that the part that needed to be
remediated was
the exposed land so in this instance
with these prop
with this property that's essentially
you can see these trees in the grass
right here
those two sections and then against the
building
on the north and south side so what they
did was they excavated two feet all
around everywhere
there are no more mature trees there
anymore and they refilled it with clean
soil that was the way that they handled
it
um you know it uh
from a landscape perspective was
negative uh but from a
uh and they're you know replanted and
there will be eventually some maturity
there but
from an environmental perspective
everywhere else covered with asphalt
that is a cap
as we're the footprint of the building
so that's how they did it
you can't do that with the doubles
because the doubles are
sub sub they have sub basement kind of
units on the first
lower lower level below also
so those are living spaces that have
physically settled in many situations so
there's intrusion from
an access to the underlying ground and
you know digging all around those even
if you could would be
um economically just not viable
mayor can you just kind of hover over
the two that the cic owns just for the
benefit of all looking at the map
yeah the one that's 925 here and then
is it i think 937 or is it 941
941 yeah nine four so those two
right there right there okay thank you
so much troy did you have any other
questions before we go to
jen no thank you very much
thank you jen you are up thanks monique
um this question is to either uh nate or
the mayor
um nate nice to see you after a long
time youtube
on the uh on your tiny zoom square um
my question might be an easy answer
might not
um so if this is something that we uh
that i need to do a deeper dive
offline i'm happy to do so but when um
the cic purchases property or
land within the city is there generally
a long-term
plan associated with each purchase
or is there an opportunity to purchase
land
um and then kind of you know have it
kind of in your back pocket for when
things come down
down the road help me kind of understand
um
why property is purchased in in
specific areas i'm thinking specifically
of the
um the um property on
i'm pointing to cassidy can't you see
on the cassidy not the art with anaspace
but the other
um you mentioned that it's purchased and
and you it is fully leased
um is that part of a longer term plan i
guess is the question so
yeah it it um i mean we you know part of
the that strategic plan that city
planned for
from years ago that the cassidy avenue
was a is a corridor that
is of importance it's of importance um
to you know we we know that there needs
to be some redevelopment that's
going to occur there just because of
some of the properties that are there
that are
a little bit tired and need to be
redeveloped so
um when we purchase properties typically
it's part of
a a long-term vision
for uh that corridor i'll say whatever
the corridor may be
um it also may be um
you know part of oh there there you go
so that's it so it's right it's right
next to there it's
it's near that dairy mart and so we kind
of looked at that property and said if
we you know if we want to ever get
control
of that and try to redevelop that area
that's kind of a key property so that's
why we did that
um 420 north cassidy is in that same
vein it's
you know it's it's one that became
available it's on the corridor
we know that it's a property that um
i mean it has great value and it and it
continues that goal
of redeveloping north cassidy so yeah
jen i mean it's not there's not an
individual plan for each property
necessarily
but they fit into a longer term vision
for
for those corridors i mean even if it's
something on we might have you know
there's always been that long-term
vision for main street and and the
city's done a great job of
things there on main street so if
there's properties that become available
that we can
we can step into and and uh
try to you know um you know uh
facilitate redevelopment of we'll do
that we'll do that there as well
great thank you i appreciate it great
question
jen thank you um i see that lori ann's
got her hand raised
laurie you figured out the raised hand
feature well i had to go to the
attendees and ask because i think bem i
have me
on as a host because i don't have a
fancy icon at the bottom of my thing
that has a
picture of a hand but i'm not sure am i
on his host ben
no no okay i just found my raised hand
i swear maybe you gave me yours thank
you i don't know
anyway anyway i'm going to take my put
my hand down because there's nothing
that drives me nuts more nuts than
knowing whether or not people still have
their hand up or anyway
um my my is piggybacks on
jen's question just a little bit and
it's not a question it's an answer to it
um i
never learned more as a council member
than the two years that i had the
privilege
of going to the cic meetings
there is nothing that this group does
without plotting and planning and
strategizing
they listened so carefully to
my passionate plea to put um
mayfield and ferndale on the top of
their to-do list
not that that's why they did it but they
did listen
carefully and i think um they knew that
our good mayor's
interest in that area was very strong
too and and
and they listened so so carefully and
um they do plot and plan and i want you
to leave
this meeting nate feeling very
appreciated
um i say all the time how much
volunteers
are such a core important part of our
community and i come from a volunteer
background so
i know how important it is for
volunteers to get
something out of what they do and if
it's nothing more than a pat on the back
please feel our warm pats on the back
and please know that you are appreciated
and please take that
those words of of gratitude back to your
to back to your the rest of your crew
please please please
i definitely laurie ann we we i will do
it i i appreciate it and i thank you for
that i mean i um
i've served you know for a long time uh
my
uh i come from a public service
background i worked in the public sector
for for
14 of the last 21 years so you know i've
always had a goal of
helping out my community but lori ann
thank you for those uh through those
comments i really appreciate it um
it's rewarding you know there are those
long meetings that uh
are not as rewarding but um you know
it's rewarding and the things that we
get to do and the things that we get to
see
and and uh the change but i really
appreciate that lorien and i will
um you know i think ben and i both at
our meeting on we have one i think
actually tuesday i was gonna ask
don't we have them coming up next
tuesday we do we don't
need you i don't mean enough bad
we don't you know it's funny man because
we remember remember having that
discussion
about how we were gonna switch to every
other month that really
never went anywhere oops
zoom so i can quickly supplement
it's really helpful to have this
conversation council understand the
thought process behind purchasing
because i think you're going to see more
of it down the road there's a question
that gets asked every single time the
cic talks about acquisition
and that is is this something that the
private market would do on its own
every time if the answer to that is yes
largely the csa says never mind we're
not going to touch this
but if the answer is no this isn't this
this redevelopment is not going to occur
without
additional nudge then the cic wants to
get involved if it makes sense
via our strategy so the property on
cassidy
was somewhat opportunistic it came up
for sale so it was
it was an affordable price point and we
knew that by controlling an inner
parcel it gives us lots of options down
the road for assemblage
so you'll see the cic potentially
continuing to
strategically purchase property that can
be rented and pay for itself
while holding a potential assemblage
position down the road
in areas where it's not going to happen
on its own we have a lot of areas like
that where
you have these kind of onesie twozies
and developers aren't going to sit
around for 10 years patiently waiting
for the opportunity to assemble property
that has a low return over that 10-year
period
but the cic is well positioned to do
that so you'll see a little bit of that
and and and for everything like that you
see
you can know that there are multiple
other opportunities constantly being
vetted
that don't go anywhere for whatever
reason
um and there are some projects like
right now there are properties in my
head where i'm like i wish
they were going somewhere uh but you
know you have to have a willing buyer
willing seller
and uh i just wanted you to understand
that thought process
thank you so much mayor um and nate
thank you
so much for giving us yet more of your
time
and for serving as the chair of the cic
and for answering
all of our questions it was very helpful
to kind of understand the
updates and the history of cics and we
very much appreciate your time
this morning not a problem
council we are going to take a quick uh
break we're just a few minutes behind
our schedule but if i uh
can see everyone back on say 10 40 let's
take a quick break and then we will
resume
uh with the rest of our council retreat
agenda
thanks nate thank you thank you all very
much
thanks for uh thanks for the questions
and talking
thanks nate great thanks bud give that
boy a kiss for me
all right we'll be back at 10 40
everyone
foreign
monique did you see i sent you the final
video project that phil put together
yesterday
that was awesome you have such a
beautiful voice
oh you are going to say that publicly
because we are still recording jen
robinson you have a
beautiful beautiful singing voice you
are
very very sweet it was fun yesterday to
have a chance to do some recordings but
the video looks i'm so proud of them
great oh it's only 10 36 all right i'll
be back in just a few minutes um i know
everyone doesn't need to be back until
10 40 so i'll see you in just a few
bye jen you do
have a lovely voice oh you're sweet
you're very sweet you know since we're
recording
i know shall we all sing together
seriously when i saw that um
nosy rosie i was like did you rename
patty
sorry patty i know this is being
recorded that is really funny
how's rosie doing she's doing pretty
good good
yeah she's uh we're sort of eager to
have the
uh weather get warm again so we can
start uh socializing her a bit more you
know
absolutely we're still talking about
fencing in a portion of our yard so that
our dogs can uh have some
room to run which is the south bexley
garden is now really intriguing because
in order to put a fence in we may have
to take out
part of our garden oh yeah um
which is fine because it was huge and
we never really utilized it over the
last couple years as much as we should
so
but yeah i love dogs
it's been a rough i'll tell you what uh
it's been a rough time for dogs and us
because
we do have fenced in you know area and
we use it so much like we the dogs will
be back there just hanging out and so
without that they're inside and they've
been inside for
three months now you know yeah well
in our american eskimo all he wants to
do is be outside
right and the little one can't be
because her little puzzle freeze so i
mean it makes a difference having a
uh an available fenced in area just for
the dog to
you know whatever you know and run so
yeah we'll
we'll figure it out ground's frozen what
are you eating there troy that looks
good i'm hungry
hold on i don't know if that picture
will look good or not though
is there bacon in there no i forgot to
pick up bacon at the store
so you were getting bacon yesterday i've
got some bacon
no i didn't get it though i didn't get
it i forgot to get it
you got bacon there yes i made you know
i do this a lot i make like a half a
pound of bacon for the kids in the
morning and then
it always ends up being ready a little
after they've already had their
breakfast
and i'm like come on guys so i give them
i give them roadie bacons bacon's from
the right ben i did the exact same thing
i do the exact same thing that's why
you're making the night before
of course and of course you bake the
bacon like that let's let's not
let's be careful i don't i want to sit
in a pan
just bathing in grease oh it does in the
in the pan in the oven 350. that's what
the baking really does you know i
actually made the bacon my bacon bacon
you got a big
bacon yeah it's the one thing i all are
hilarious
have you ever stuck the eggs in the pan
with the bacon and donuts yes
i am yes in the oven
yep yep do tell so you just put those in
there too and then you
put them in real bacon though that's a
lot of grease about halfway through
oh it drains off it's great good flavor
mayor we need the best thing
to town yes you don't have to eat all
that
i cook my bacon then put the eggs in the
grease yes
yes my mom had a coffee tin growing up
where she would put the bacon grease
and the old folger's tin with like the
plastic lid and it would be
under the sink and every time she would
make like
vegetables this is so midwest she would
get out the bacon grease take a scoop
plop it in the pan and then make green
beans or broccoli or brussels sprouts
my dad actually does not go with gravy
i do that i do have a countertop i have
a countertop bacon
container bacon grease container
in in the south don't they call that red
eye or something like that
we call that kurt's gravy that's what we
heard's gravy it's not for
everything but it's a good little it's a
good little tool to have
pro tips all right let's change gears as
much as i love
a good bacon cooked in the grease and
all that good stuff all right i'm going
to bring you guys back to center
um thank you so much for uh for for kind
of
plugging along this morning we're going
to change gears completely
and turn to safety and health uh in
bexley
there's three things we want to talk
about the first is the
livingston avenue rfp
mayor i'm hoping that maybe you can take
the lead on that one
the next is going to be regional crime
and then the third is a discussion on
virtual versus in persons meeting um and
i was hoping maybe
uh um that we will have a discussion as
a council on what uh would be best to do
i think just sod wanted that one added
to our agenda item
so mayor if you can just refresh our
memory on where we are for livingston
avenue
in collaboration with the city of
columbus that would be great
i have some new hot off the press
information for you so
um great it's a good time to give an
update
so we put the rfp out it was awarded to
mbbj
and then columbus came back and said
after kind of talking through it and
looking at the scope they said you know
we want to we want to actually take this
a little further because the scope of
the plan
is to address the area of livingston
between
essentially kenwick and
allen creek drive right and so what they
said was
any any of the traffic uh suggestions
in this area um should extend to
uh james road to the east um
because you know if they were doing
traffic coming features for example they
wouldn't want to just
randomly stop the mechanic they would
want them to continue to have some
continuity
so that got into a pretty deep dive of
what the traffic management
can wick it i'm not sure where can how
far is kenwood down there
that is um i think it's just before
james right it's about two
it's about two blocks east east of
chelsea okay yeah they're good that's
what i
that's what i'll say you guys are making
me one block east of chelsea
it's the bexley bypass through south
bexley
it's essentially like what gould uh
would uh essentially what almost what no
not gold there is a the gold would be
the alley
uh kenwick is the next street over so
yeah it's right by wings restaurant
on main street down to down to
livingston
so here's chelsea here's livingston
kenwick is right here is where the light
is
so the the scope was from alum creek
drive or maybe even nelson road right
here
to ah sorry this is getting hard to see
oh my gosh i do not need to do street
view google oh
sorry google really wants me to do
street view right now
okay that's not helpful um
so now nelson to
uh kenwick which is kind of like where
christ the king church is and they said
let's keep going to james
now that's not a huge extension as you
can see
um but it did end up opening the lid on
the traffic study piece of it and
in columbus you know the more people got
involved the more they got
uh asking for more and more things of
the traffic study
so essentially we went from a hundred
and fifty
sorry a hundred thousand dollar plan
shared to a hundred and fifty seven
thousand dollar plan
which columbus has agreed to pick up all
the additional costs so because it's all
for them
traffic management um which is good
um what am i sharing right now so
to bring you back we are um
essentially so the uh so it's the
timeline so
what we're looking at here is gathering
information over the next couple months
and you can see in front of your screen
and i'll i can
send this to you um what the next couple
months have with a working group
and a steering committee so there's
going to be a working group the working
group is the professional staff
of both cities that are coordinating
this from a staff perspective so
you know do we have the data that we
need do we have traffic counts like all
this
all the raw work that would happen
behind the scenes is the working group
on the city of bexsuicide the working
group is going to be represented by
elena andrews
myself and andy bayshore on the city of
columbus side it's going to be a
combination of service department and
development
department i think employees the
steering committee
and out by the way elena andrews is
going to be my point from the city
perspective as the
as a highly organized individual
who is good at uh keeping us all on
track
and does everybody know who she is i
don't know
nope looks like that so elena is the uh
is his staff
she staffs the tree and public gardens
commission she's she's like the karen
boker
if you've seen a zoning meeting of tree
in public gardens
she's a landscape architect and
also an architect she's a she's a
trained architect and a landscape
architect
and um is a
does work for us on a design perspective
but also on an organizational
perspective so she does
she helps make sure the tree commission
meetings are are going
in the right direction and that there's
follow-up with the plans that are
approved and that they get inspected so
she does a lot of different things
but her background before being a
landscape architect was in campus
planning work as an architect
so she has a very solid background in
planning which is what makes me
i i think i mentioned her also with the
strategic plan makes her really
good resource on the contract basis to
assist us with the sort of stuff
she heavily assisted with the jeffrey
didn't she
yes so commonwealth park master plan she
was
a she was the chair of the commonwealth
park master plan as a resident
she lives in cassingham it was not a
professional position for her
so she uh she was a volunteer through
that which was awesome
um so then the steering committee is
differentiates from the working group
the steering committee
is going i think i brought up a list to
you guys of
the sorts of organizations that we were
going to ask to be part of that
um and i'll bring it up again here but
the steering committee is designed
to encompass stakeholders
from um key
neighborhoods and organizations that
interface with livingston avenue
so you can see the
the steering committee as currently
proposed and by the way this is
you know this is draft concept as it
says i don't yet have columbus's
input on this this is my document
so from our side i'm anticipating that
we would have somebody from the school
district from the sbna
from arb visa tree public gardens
commission capital university chamber of
commerce
cic and um the jccc
is in here but under a columbus side
because they're technically a columbus
organization um
and jewish columbus the mideast area
commission
maybe somebody from temple beth jacob
because there's a whole lot of
consideration of walking to synagogue
and how that is impacted by
livingston avenue safety columbus city
schools eastmore
driving park in berwick so that's a
potential template that gives us about
15 members i think
which is at the high end of of um
uh not being unruly i'm not sure who
high end of manageable um and
obviously anyone who you uh
who you feel any group that you feel
makes sense let me know the idea here
would be to
i've already talked to this is old i've
talked to south bexley neighborhood
association for example
i've talked to the livingston avenue
columbus ohio safety group
and i've just said if you have a member
that you think would be the right person
for this
let me know and it would be they would
proffer that name and
and that's how the steering committee
under this concept would get would get
made it's not it's not as hand-picking
representatives of those groups
oh i'm sorry were you gonna um can you
go back to the timeline real quick
yeah so the steering committee would
then
convene and sorry there's like a lot of
detail here this is the detailed version
of the timeline
so this is all about all the work that
they're going to do the steering
committee would
convene and
help kind of you know be a be a touch
point for the consultant that's
consistent throughout this
you know help make sure that there's
knowledge of an organization of the
different
public workshops and of course
there will be multiple public workshop
opportunities
and help give feedback to the consultant
about the potential recommendations that
are coming out of those workshops
and finding their way into the form of a
draft plan
so that's what months three to six
involves they've
synthesized they've taken all this
information they've started to formulate
some ideas and then those are getting
further informed by public workshops and
steering committee input
into a draft plan and then
the next phase the draft plan is
further honed based upon an additional
public workshop
and then it makes its way into the hands
of
various governmental entities that would
need to approve it
so in this instance we would ask for
approval from the bees app
as a planning board and city council
and then uh columbus area commission and
columbus city council
would adopt as well which is really cool
so we would have a joint jurisdictional
adoption process
and by the way i don't think this has
been done before so
here in this region that's kind of neat
thank you mayor for the timeline and the
additional detail i had
um just two quick questions obviously a
lot of this
is building and building and has
separate phases but is there anything
that can be
done by either this council or bexley in
the short term
regarding livingston or can we not
because the jurisdiction falls under
columbus i just get worried with
accident after accident and i know that
uh our residents
are looking for solutions
so there has been and will continue to
be quite a bit done
but the ultimate conclusion is that um
enforcement which is the kind of the
mechanism right now is not adequate
um there's been additional columbus
resources given to traffic enforcement
on limited avenue
even as they were in the midst of a
blitz on that you know several weeks ago
there was another car that went through
a property um and the police department
in columbus
shares what is a fairly
common observation which is that it's a
it's an infrastructural issue it's not
it's not enforcement alone is not going
to change
um the driving habits on livingston
avenue
i think there's another piece of this
and you have it on your agenda later on
which is like it's not
it is not it cannot be divorced from the
idea that um
regionally we're seeing an uptick in
criminal activity
so that criminal activity isn't just
violent crime or property theft it also
involves traffic
and driving and driving behavior and you
know there was a
marked increase in speeding in the in
the region right after right as the you
know
pandemic was launching and the streets
were more available for driving on
um just there's macro forces at work
here
which are taking a situation that was
difficult to begin with
and it's like a little tipping point
situation which is tips
because of it's teetering a little bit
on the edge so
um i don't yeah
columbus is d is taking it seriously i
guess is is
the point i want to make the council
members of columbus are acutely aware of
it they're they're the reason that the
city of columbus has really
taken what was a a partnership of
you know agreement columbus was agreeing
to do this but now columbus is
a co-leader which before they were not
so that's that's really cool to see
um i shouldn't say they weren't i should
say that they are especially a co-leader
now
um and we've had multiple meetings with
columbus police leadership
over this topic and the safety director
and the assistant safety director and
they're continuing to provide extra
police resources to it but it's
it's it's we all believe that those
infrastructure changes are gonna be
necessary
okay great um i see that just sod has
your hands up
um ben can we get a copy of this on
email
yep that's awesome and then just food
for thought
and addressing monique's concern about
the now
have we ever explored a volunteer
citizen safety patrol yes
okay we have and uh
if you want to if you want to get our
police department
uh to wax lyrical and passionately then
you should you should ask them about it
um i there's been talk about a volunteer
patrol
um and i i don't want to go too deep
down into the weeds with it we could
talk a little bit more offline but you
can
you can imagine some of the stories that
have emerged over the years of vigilante
justice that occurs
have has occurred in conjunction with
self-declared or even official sort of
volunteer patrols that are that are
going on and i think there's a big
concern that
people who aren't adequately trained and
don't have adequate resources aren't
necessarily going to be
the best the best at that type of
enforcement but
mostly those conversations historically
actually have occurred around like
driving through rallies at night and
just kind of keeping an eye on things
less
i'm not sure how a volunteer patrol
could slow traffic
i i was just kind of envisioning um with
summer coming up
and schools and kids um
that maybe there could be a volunteer
hours and again i'm just
you may already have an answer this but
volunteers could help with the
crosswalks getting kids on bikes
and walking pedestrians across the
street for certain hours of the day
when kids would be trying to get from
you know south
bexley over to the parks um
board the jcc some of those crosswalks
on livingston that people have addressed
not necessarily
all day long but just something that
maybe we could offer that we were
exploring for certain high hours of the
day where these parents could finally
feel like you know what
my kid can cross because i know x
volunteer is going to be there today i
don't know
yeah i think um if you look at the data
and i don't mean to be a downer on this
so if this is something that people like
has a grassroots support and it works
well
then that's awesome but if you look at
the data the the
the accidents that are most that have
been occurring have been occurring with
vehicles going into property
um there was a pedestrians truck on
livingston avenue as you guys know
last year that was not a situation that
would have benefited from the com
from your recommendation it was a late
at night somebody was jaywalking
and it you know it would not have been
prevented by by that concept
the um we've had similar ideas raised
for school crosses as you could imagine
um and every single time ptos that have
come and approached the city to
organize volunteers we've given them
resources through sergeant overlay we
have never ever once
succeeded in having reliable volunteer
support to create that system
so that and that's involving people with
their children near the schools
where they're concerned about the safety
on a daily basis which is obviously a
more immediate kind of concern
maybe than what you're talking about so
um if if there was legitimate grassroots
support for that i think it could work
but to date i've not seen that model
successfully executed
it relaxed on people who are very very
committed to it
right thanks jess did you have another
question before we move on to
matt no okay matt klingler you're up
thanks i just had one question you
mentioned earlier that the
the the budget was going up from 150 157
000
and city of columbus are they picking up
the whole tab for that or just the extra
7 000.
so it's going from 100 to 157 um
100 i'm sorry yeah we've we've and
we we have yet to totally finalize the
split
but we were already skewed more than our
share at the beginning because columbus
had only budgeted like a certain amount
for it
so i i need to get back to you guys on
exactly how that's going to work we've
encumbered 50 grand for it
um i think that
when when the when the bids came in at
around 100
and columbus had budgeted 25 and
has had budget implications way beyond
ours
i think we were talking about maybe it
would be a 75 25 just to make it happen
and there so now it's looking more like
it'll be 50 50
across the whole board but i have
okay i have to go back and fully analyze
our
funding sources for all that good
question matt
thanks anyone else on council have
questions
regarding livingston avenue before we
kind of delve into our next topic
nope okay all right mayor you kind of
alluded to this that
livingston avenue and some of the
traffic and speeding issues delve into
the regional crime and you can't really
separate the two
i know at a council meeting a few weeks
ago
you and the chief explained some of the
ongoing
issues regarding crime not only in
bexley but
in columbus and i was hoping that
council could have a discussion
on some of those issues including
whether or not
we should look to see if we have
appropriate resources or if there's some
novel ideas on what we can do given that
it's not just a bexley
uh white problem
any any con jen robinson you've got your
hand up i'm so sorry i almost missed you
you're muted
it was in the sunshine
um actually this is something i've been
thinking about
um over the last couple weeks um
given that um the chief has talked
specifically in our council meetings
about what's happening
um with young people in
this the columbus system and
um i'm curious and i i don't know if
it's appropriate
as a counsel for us to
make some sort of statement resolution
about
how because we are affected right by the
crime that's happening
is that do we have i guess my question
is do we have any standing
as a council to make some sort of
of comment on the fact that they're
that youth in particular who are
committing crimes are
uh are being turned back out onto the
street
um more quickly because the system is is
um so taxed um
there's a question in there somewhere
it's just like how do we make
how do we keep our city safe
from the crime that is coming into the
city
um by perpetrators that are are really
young do we have the ability to
to do that i guess is is my question and
my thought
i love that question jen just fyi
yeah mayor i do see that you have up on
the screen the letter to judge brown
that i think you had referenced at a
prior counsel meeting
has that letter already been sent or oh
okay
no i've been uh i have mixed feelings
about this letter
and i think it's a similar challenge
that council will have in
in passing a resolution which by the way
jen you guys are obviously
totally able to do it any time you can
by resolution
um uh you know pass a statement or
um ask for you know changes i think you
know i i
we we have i and other mayors and
managers have struggled to figure out
how to best engage on this because
we um there was a
joint police chief's press conference
that occurred a week or two ago
and then there was a very uh strong
pushback
from the uh the court uh in
basically saying you know these are
reform initiatives that are under away
they are um
they're necessary and um
basically kind of saying that there was
scare mongering going on it wasn't
really accurately portraying the
situation from the part of the police
and safety uh professionals now our
experience is not that it's
scaremongering
like i believe firmly that there has
been a
uh we've seen it firsthand we have
proof of crimes that have occurred um
and suspects who have
been filtering through the system
without retention
so i i believe that i'm going to send it
i just have
wanted to make sure that my words are
properly conveying
my appreciation for the need for reform
in the justice system because i believe
in it
and also the need for
safety and accountability
so i think council is absolutely able to
do to make a statement like that
and um i'm not sure if others have we're
going to be
the central ohio major managers group is
continuing to pursue this
in terms and it's not just the judicial
it's not just the juvenile judicial
system it's a
it's a it's an issue beyond that because
you know there are obviously some some
effects when we don't arrest
um individuals for certain types of
of crime that then kind of spill into
other categories
so i think we just regionally are trying
to grapple with
uh what is what has been a increase
in certain types of crime mayor would it
be possible it's for
um all of us or or me or whomever to see
a copy of that letter before
um before you send it i'd be curious to
read it
and um also a shout out to the harvey
who is the one who actually put this
idea in my head um
so yeah i i
i understand the complexity um
understanding that the system
on the whole is broken and so by making
a statement i wouldn't
it's a fine line right between offending
those who are working with us in order
to ensure that we stay safe but at the
same time recognizing that there are
shortcomings so
um if anybody is is interested in having
a further conversation with me about
that
um lorient yes uh and jess perfect
um one of the three of us meet and and
see if there's something that we can
construct that would
um be empathetic to the situation but
also recognize that
we are definitely seeing uh the increase
of in in more violent crime in our city
um
and it's not something we want clearly
so thank you thank you bill for that
idea
that's a great idea uh jen and bill i
know that it's been on the news lately
and i know i've seen some quotes from
judge brown in the news regarding this
so
hopefully some good change will come um
bill harvey you had your hand up next
uh yeah just to say that
i think this is something we ought to
work toward
fixing the the excesses of where we're
punishing people maybe that shouldn't be
but i think it's important that you guys
as a group
coordinate with the mayor and probably
mark fishel
to make sure that what we say is really
what we want to say
and not just go off and say something
that might offend people i
think that's part of the issue that that
ben's struggling with with the letter
you've got to coordinate
that so just something to think about as
you go forward
hey thanks troy markham
yeah i would uh echo i think what bill
harvey just said that uh
i'm definitely not against this but i
think you need to take extra care
when you're crafting a resolution on
behalf of all the city council members
we'll probably want to move slowly on
this and maybe take into account
a lot of different perspectives on how
something like this would be received
by different members of the community
and uh
just to clarify too ben you are
is that a draft that you're considering
sending or you are sending that i wasn't
clear on whether that was
i'm cons i'm considering it i feel like
a communication is necessary
um or
might be necessary i'm just i'm trying
to understand my part in it i mean i
um the the
action is necessary let's put it that
way action is necessary what is the best
way to achieve that action
we have a regional coordinated effort
that we're discussing
um you know does a letter for me
really is that is that the most
meaningful way that i can
help to achieve uh action so that's
those are
that's the sort of that's what i'm
thinking through um and i'm
i'm keeping a close eye on what's
happening and how it's evolving and
there's
you can just rest assured that there's a
lot of coordination at the regional
level about
this topic both among the safety
officials throughout the region and also
among the political leaders in the
region
another thing you might consider is
reasonable council presence i mean
you might ask lori ann if that's
something that and i
would be happy lorienne to connect you
to anyone who you are not yet already
connected to i know you're very
connected
uh but um there i already know of other
council presidents that have expressed
similar concerns and so i'd be happy to
make those connections that might be
another way to think about it
i would love for you to share with me
the names of those just
i am not in the least bit anxious about
reaching out to them
by myself um but if you just
give me who has that would be
that would be helpful and then maybe we
can get a whole bunch of them
to join with us jen and jess and just
talk it through it might be really worth
it they could ask i mean with zoom
lots more things are possible right
we i think we definitely need to take
advantage of that and it's certainly
true that
with the caveat that bill and troy have
expressed that
having a joint resolution among a
multitude of jurisdictions would be far
more meaningful
i think so too and i think and i think
the comfort
in doing that would be there'd be a lot
more you know
anyway but what troy and bill have said
is we will not take this lightly
it will be very carefully looked over
thank you i know it's obviously very
complicated mayor i had a question for
you obviously we want to
um um be um
reactive and uh you know once
a crime has occurred there's a certain
process but in terms of being proactive
do you feel that we are sufficiently
staffed and providing the right
resources at the right time
and in the right manner as much as we
possibly can regarding
um some of these crime issues
yeah i mean we've we have kept uh full
staffing and our shifts
we've moved our you know we've moved
some resources
into different shifts uh as it's made
some sense
um we're uh we have a
application that's looking pretty good
into the community foundation for some
um you know to help help assist
residents with
uh getting security devices on their
properties to assist them
um and our detective bureau this is
crucial
and this is how this all kind of ties
together our detective bureau is doing a
fantastic job with the cases that they
are
are responsible for and i understand
you're asking about productivity but
that's a piece of the puzzle because
when what we're seeing is repeat
offenders coming
and cycling through our communities not
just bexley but the region
if we're not prosecuting those
adequately and we're not you know
we're not investigating adequately then
we're not going to get anywhere so
the challenge is we're investigating
well we are
trying to prosecute well and then what's
happening
after that right so that's uh
you cannot separate the the proactive
piece to the uh
the reactive piece they're very
intertwined we are
put put another way we've we've come
under criticism in the past
of being having four cruisers at all
times and a two and a half square mile
footprint
we have a high density of police
officers for our geographical region
we also have a higher density of units
than many other areas so
i mean there's some logic to it um
so i guess my point is that we are we
are well staffed with safety personnel
okay thank you for for addressing that
um any other comments or questions from
um from anyone regarding um
the issue of regional crime before we
move on to our next agenda item
okay all right next up is a discussion
regarding um virtual versus in-person
meetings
i believe uh jess asked me to add this
to
the agenda in light of covid
jess would you uh uh maybe want to share
some some thoughts and input with us yes
thank you
um i just think as lorianne has
mentioned multiple times that
you know um covet changes month to month
and where we were gosh you think about
march of last year when we were all
trying to figure this out and we had to
pull together a special city meeting and
so things change facts you know vaccines
are
out um people are getting vaccinated
spring is upon us and schools
are going back to full day um
this you know upcoming march uh 22nd and
some are already in full day so
i think as leaders in our community we
need to just take a look at
and revisit you know some goals of when
we
feel that we can get back together in
person how we can do that safely
um again where we were march of last
year to where we are now to where we
were in june to where we are now
we actually have studies um again
vaccines are out
and our schools are getting back to uh
full day
so i think it's just a time to look at
our roles as leaders in our community
and what
and how we want to lead and what that
looks like and um
and and not looking at that would uh
would not be a good thing so
i'm sure we have different opinions um
as a council
and we always work well through that but
i think it's a good time to have
discussion
on those um differences and and uh
look at some goals of how we can get
back together personally
um as the zoning chair and zoning arb
and um and being a part of those
meetings right now for a r b and b
zap we all know as teachers say
kids are better in a classroom um you
know
we're better as leaders i know zoom has
its benefits we're better as leaders
when we're making
policy and legislation in person and um
i'm also not just looking at as what we
can do as council but
how moving forward i can help my boards
get back
to in-person meetings as well because i
know that that would give some relief
to these extremely long meetings um
and how things are displayed and the
communication that happens
so i i come to you not just as a council
person that sits among this group
but also trying to um help out my boards
who are making a lot of big decisions
right now
for our community in the city thank you
so much for
for raising the issue i see that richard
has his hand up richard
yeah um this question for the mayor i
saw there was a group meeting
at city hall yesterday four or five
people that had screens it looked like
maybe it was a court court proceeding
uh mayor's court proceeding i because i
didn't really
pay attention to who was involved but it
looked like they were
having a zoom
sorry that's a that's a classroom
that's a class from bexley high school
with steve shapiro a small class
and they have they're following all the
school protocol within that i'm not
complaining
i was just saying i was just um
you considering using that type as a
model for
phase in um in person where maybe
council
starts in person together continuing
zoom and i think maybe
continuing offering zoomed connections
for residents
at meetings even at the point where we
open um in person again to
um residents that that's a benefit for
maybe people were shut in or have
commitments
i know one of the bza meetings it was
kind of convenient to
have zoom on and background and when it
got to the topic i wanted to listen to
you know i can i could go rather than
sit for hours
at in in person council meeting
those are just thoughts i had so thank
you thank you
[Applause]
uh jen robinson well first of all let me
start by saying that i would like
nothing more than to be in a room with
all of you guys again
um zoom fatigue is real um i think
sometimes we get
um i don't know it's it's definitely
harder to
to pay attention for the entire time uh
that
we are staring at these screens um that
said i i
have just a couple reservations about um
getting
back um in a room together
um you know and and then maybe this is
something we talk
um through more with our covet task
force but
you know abby norris turner's you know
words keep ringing in my ear about
the the length of potential exposure if
you're next to somebody even masked for
you know closer than six feet um for
you know a period of over 15 minutes
your risk does go up
and um while i would feel perfectly safe
with you guys because i
would have a better understanding of who
you've been with and where you've been
um the public coming in is a piece that
concerns me
um because you know we all are are
keeping safe but
to be very frank we're all keeping safe
in our own ways
um i would feel better about getting
back in person
if we all were kind of in that group
that was starting to be vaccinated
um and i keep waiting i keep waiting for
the
you know i think we're at 65 like i keep
waiting for the 60 and the 55 and the
you know the 50.
um i just don't know how long that's
going to be and um
it's so complicated just because i'm
seriously all i want to do
is not be staring at this little zoom
square
and i appreciate the you know
the ability to have um communication
that's completely different one-on-one
and that there is
real value to that um and
you know my hesitancy has nothing to do
with not wanting to do
that it just is that
we can only control so much and once
those doors
open we have much less control over
who's coming in and who's going out
um and i think personally i would feel
much more comfortable if we had
all begun that vaccine process and maybe
that will happen
here in the next few months so maybe by
the time we get to may and june
this that point is moot but those are
just my
my two cents worth ben i was suggesting
that maybe we um talk to
the task force about this
um you know this particular i know we we
have talked to the task force about
several other
events and and things that are being
planned but specifically council and
that that public
component um which is as i just
mentioned
a little concerning but that's it i
could talk in circles for an hour on
this because
there just is no great solution um but i
just
the health and safety of everybody in
our community and all of you
um is foremost in in my mind
councilwoman
can i respond to what what jen was
asking about and
so obviously be very happy to talk to
the kova 19 task force about it and i
can
with about 95 accuracy predict what
they'll say
if you would allow me to do so but i i
will i'll i will follow up with it
which is that they'll say not to do it
they'll say wait they'll say wait until
everyone has had a vaccine
and um that the general population has
had a vaccine especially if we're going
to have a population in attendance
now you guys have every right to choose
a different path that's your council
and i'm not going to in any way shape or
form restrict what you choose to do as a
council
i will tell you that i'm not going to
choose to be in person with you
until i've had a vaccine and i'm not
going to have a vaccine
until the the franco county public
health
has told me that i am appropriately
windowed for that vaccine
although there are plenty of legitimate
ways other people have had you know some
excess vaccine that's been left over and
all that stuff
so but i could participate on zoom and
anyone
who's not comfortable can do that it's
your guys's call i
i i'll follow up with the task force but
we've had enough conversations
that i feel very comfortable with what
they would advise and i think it's
to jen's point it's very different from
a classroom setting and a multitude of
in a multitude of ways um
and one more point which is that city
staff i would feel
uncomfortable asking city staff to
attend under those conditions
so they would again they could also zoom
in with a council that's in person
and the one final point that i have to
make is even if if there is agreement
that that in person with a mask is a
safe way to do it
i think that communication over zoom
without a mask
is arguably in some ways more effective
than it would be even in person with a
mask
and i'm done it's your meeting how to do
it thank you dear jess i appreciated you
raising this
and i thought long and hard about how i
feel on this
obviously it's a very very individual
choice
but i think that as city leaders we do
set the example
and from where i see it
even though some restrictions have
lately been
lifted or eased maybe not lifted it's
not the right white word
i now am double masking it i'm still
limiting
uh my activities um you know
it wouldn't be possible to have council
meetings outside but as long as i'm
going to be indoors
and double mass and still
worrying about covid i would not feel
comfortable
returning in person i would obviously
respect
anyone who does want to come back in
person
but i'm not sure that that's going to be
the choice that i would would make even
if i did attend i would still stay
masked i think it's a hard heart issue
and i would leave it up to each council
member to decide what
they want to do but if we are setting
the example of city leaders i think it
would be
really troubling if we are a meeting and
then god
forbid um there was an exposure
um so i i would feel very uneasy about
returning
in person now i will say that
i would love the in-person conversation
i missed that
so so much but i also note that since
our meetings have been virtual
i feel like public participation and
public comments
are up and that has been a nice silver
lining through
all of this so whether or not we come
back in some hybrid form
i would still encourage us to uh to keep
the uh up and up from public
participation that i've been so pleased
that we have had but
at least for me i would like to continue
virtually uh
for now i see that richard and laurie
have their hands up
richard did you already speak on this
yeah i did i had a follow-up i had a
question to jen's comments i was
um i've been um
i wasn't sure whether she was talking
about an either or
or a blended approach
um i i was talking about phasing in
blended with um continuing with the
guidelines as far as
10 people which cancel in if the mayor
wanted to attend
auditor and
that would be nine people and mark would
be 10 so that would be
in within the guidelines and not opening
up to residents
in person during the phase in time
um and also continuing
zoom even after residents are allowed
because i do feel that provides an
excellent
additional opportunity for residents to
participate
great thank you richard lori you have
your hand raised as well
well i just want to go on record that i
indeed did already ask
the task force about this about a month
ago and i don't know that if jen
then remember me doing this but i i did
ask
them because richard has been um
has posed this question to me before um
and they they and and no uncertain term
said
not a good idea not a good idea um
and uh one of my
one question i have is is it even is it
even
feasible are we allowed to go back i
guess we can because we did that at the
beginning didn't we um
where there's no public allowed in
while we're there um i i'm just
really i'm just i just feel like we've
made it this far
and yes you know i love people and you
all know that i want to be with all of
you in the same room
i mean it it and you cannot i mean it's
just not the same i mean i cannot
see all of your facial expressions while
we are
and your body language and we all count
on that we really do
and we can see and it means something to
us it really does i mean
and it helps us to to um
[Music]
to make a decision about things i know
that when troy starts scratching his
head
he's not sure about stuff i can't always
see
all of you on the screen like i'm seeing
all of you now and and that's hard and
some of you
and and and richard wiggles a little and
he gets anxious about things and i just
can
yeah you do i mean i just appreciate
that so much so i i am
feeling it guys but we have made it this
far
and i don't know what these stupid
variants are going to be
and i just don't and and most
importantly
i don't know what
the long-term effects of people getting
it's going to be
i one of my dearest friends was in the
hospital
for over a week a guy that
doesn't smoke doesn't drink is in fairly
good
shape is no older than i am and he was
in the hospital he caught it
and was there for over a week and and
he's thinner than we've ever seen him in
his entire life
it just takes a huge toll he's still
wheeling he got out almost a week ago he
is still
still wheeling around an oxygen tank
just fyi
so i i just the thought of one of you
getting it and and and it's scary to the
scariest thing for me
is is the potential of giving it to
somebody and how guilty we all would
feel
giving it to someone it's just i don't
know if it's worth it guys
so that's all i have to say thanks so
much lorianne mayor did you want to um
chime in yeah just um
my argument just to be clear is is based
upon our public health advice but also
like kind of selfish because frankly i
can't afford to be in quarantine for two
weeks like
you know like just like the preservation
of we've talked about preservation of
government
and you know it's just the and the off
chance that something should happen and
we're in that room together for that
period of time
that would just be a very bad outcome
right like if we're all
if we're all even just proactively
quarantining because of
somebody has walked into council and had
a positive that they found out about and
contract trades back to that
i do want to say something there's been
a civil lining to
additional participation on zoom i 100
agree with that and monique if this is
too much of a segue
i think it's also related though which
is i think one other thing that i would
encourage us to contemplate
as we continue on zoom if we do over the
coming months
is how do we make sure that the
relative anonymity of the zoom platform
doesn't result in a lack of civility
i think across the board we're seeing a
lot a lack of civility in our
country in our local online forums and
um i have noticed it percolating into
our in our meetings a little bit because
people are
in a totally different environment and
um just communicating differently than
they do
when you're face to face and i think
that's been a challenge so i would
totally agree and
affirm and validate those of you who
have
talked about a return to the normal
because i think that has been a
negative lining to the silver lining so
is there a way for us to think about
civility
and decorum and um
ways to encourage that in our meetings
in a way that not nannyish but just like
in a positive proactive way that's
meaningful just a just a question enough
thank you mayor i think that that is a
really good point because
not only do we um want decorum as
council members but we would also
want our public to feel welcome in
addressing us
um you have your hands raised your hand
raised as well
yes i just wanted to kind of follow up
to everybody's great conversation on
returning
in person to council i think that we had
great convo and that's all i was looking
for is to revisit this because again
we're at a different time
in this unique time of covenant this
pandemic
and really from what the mayor just kind
of concluded with is really why i wanted
to revisit this
is the civility um and
and where we are as a society and where
we sit as leaders in our community
number one i want everyone to be safe as
well um
that is my number one priority i believe
in masks i
had to live the life of mass before the
pandemic
because of a close family member with a
pulmonary
issue and a double lung transplant
so um i guess i was kind of conditioned
to this new world before the world
was but with that being said i think we
have to look at where we are
and what we have learned so i just want
to go on record today
to remind us as a council to keep that
all of these things in consideration
with anything that i do with
my children and myself this new world is
usually asking me to go online i'm sure
a lot of you had experience with this
now and you do a my health check
where it asks you a number of questions
that you have to fill out
and you know sign off i do this daily
with my kids and their activities
and that is just another kind of like
way to keep safe when you're going to
participate that you've had an answer i
do not have a runny nose
i do not have a fever i do not have a
cough
and you consent to that so that may be
something that we want to look at moving
forward in this new world
we do know via the cdc that they have
said that six feet apart and masked
help keep you safe um i do believe i'm
going to go on record and say this that
our pre-counsel at least i
i do support our pre-council meeting in
person and i believe that they can
safely do that with a small group and i
think it's important
um for their leadership
and how that transpires for us um
i do believe that zoom is great but i do
again find those challenges
and when we're tasked with voting on
legislation and policies
um you know i do not take that lightly
and i think we're better in person
um jyn touched today on the
communication in the city and how
how can we continue to be a voice for
our residents and make sure they feel
heard i think that's as much as zoom
allows people to come and participate
um i still just feel like that's
probably why we're seeing more of
people not feeling like they're getting
their answers because we're not all
seeing each other
and then lastly i think we need to just
keep considering who on council
um if you've had an antibody test and
are you showing antibodies
um have you been vac vaccinated so i
just asked that we continue to have
these conversations
thank you so much jess all great great
points i appreciate the thoughtful
discussion and input from
from this group does anyone have
anything else to add on this before we
move on to our last
and final agenda item
jess you still have your hand raised was
that
okay okay sounds good
okay our last item was one that uh i
believe misat also wanted to
add regarding some possible training for
our
members of our boards commissions and
committees i believe she's spoken to the
mayor about this so if either one of you
would like to
jump into that that would be great
um so mayor kessler and i have had some
great discussions
and um this is really an initiative
looking across
all boards and just um
re um like we all
i think we all welcome training right
and um
we have new like new council people come
in at one term and then you have you mix
with the old and
there's things that um there's a history
there that people may have and then new
members may not have received the same
um information
so we just believe it's a great time to
look at some board
training on um you know
i know i and i'm sure jen i'm sure we
could all say uh matt that we always
um value more information on sunshine
law
so that's something we would look at
with our board training
processes of meetings how how the
process should go
options um what the options you have as
a board member
and if you are to vote something down
what are the proper records and protocol
that needs to be taken
for those of you who again have chimed
into some meetings that we've had with
our tree commission
or our arb or a bzap sometimes we have
board members who simply put their hands
up in the air and they say what is my
option
we all had a quasi-judicial hearing that
we were a part of a few months ago on
garage garage ordinance and
variance that was being asked and we all
had to look at public record
and look to see what our committee
committee had said as far as the votes
and the facts and finding
so um we've all been there to kind of
see
see that process and i think it's our
due diligence as
a council to revisit
with all of our boards and give them
what all that means and that training
um so yeah so that's what we're looking
forward to doing here um this spring
for our boards so mayor go ahead yeah
for a little further
thank you jess by the way and for
bringing bringing this up um
we and i'm in full agreement and jess
and i were talking about it and we've
already
first off we do routine board training
and we it's the topic
of board training tends to tends to be
somewhat reactive about kind of what's
the hot
the hot issue or what's the flaw in the
system
i shouldn't say flaw but where where are
some areas where we could see some
coordination and growth um first off we
do onboarding training with new members
we've been doing that for several years
now it was it is newer it's not
something that
historically has always been done in
bexley but new members get onboarded
with the relevant portion of the code
that they're working on working through
or under the jurisdiction of and then
sunshine law ethics law
which is practical matters pertaining to
the board
any question and answering uh we usually
do the onboarding with kathy rose myself
and katherine when it comes to
a zoning board member and then
routinely have retreats and or trainings
throughout the year the ones that i had
slated for this year
were two two different trainings one
that would focus the spring on procedure
and options and civility and decorum and
some other just procedural issues
that's actually evolved even in the past
five hours
because i've been interacting with again
with the board chair of the bees app
and uh we've been brainstorming some
ways to
uh basically respect our applicants and
our members
by limiting how long those meetings run
and providing for some fail-safes
so they don't spill over too late and we
have some really good ideas so
i have a feeling bzap will probably have
a retreat of some sort to talk through
agree upon some new procedures that will
allow you know
if it's a packed agenda we'll maybe
allow an earlier start
we'll maybe define the end time of the
meeting that absolutely will end at this
point and then we'll be picked back up
at a time that's certain
um in order to avoid some of the stuff
that we've seen happen last night that
meeting went till 2 a.m
the last applicant was
a garage and they
came on and they said i'm sorry my
architect has gone to bed
which is not funny because it's not fair
you know it's like you're here for a
variance hearing and the
one of your experts is no longer able to
participate because it's
it's outrageous that you're still
meeting at 2 am and it's not fair to our
applicants
it's not fair to our volunteer board
members so that's that's
going to be part of that conversation as
well um and it does tie into
the discussion about training ties
directly into the conversation about
that we've been having jess and i have
been talking about this and i've been
talking about it with staff
and with our board shares about
perhaps not having alternates anymore
not that our alternates our alternates
are great by the way we have fantastic
alternates
we have great members it has nothing to
do with alternates or bad and
normal members are good it has to do
with continuity so
when you have an alternate come through
and they hadn't been the last meeting or
even a board member it's coming through
there's just like that continuity and
the culture doesn't develop the way it
needs to develop you as a council
educate yourselves constantly because
you're sitting in that same seat all the
time right
so the culture and the education doesn't
occur in the same way
and so you guys are probably gonna have
an ordinance come before you as a
proposal that would
eliminate the alternate positions for
the next appointment cycle
and um also change the right now in our
code
uh it requires a vote for example a
seven member board a vote of four no
matter what
so even if you have a quorum of five you
need four members
to vote so changing it to a majority of
the quorum not
not a majority of the board total
by doing that it's another fairness to
applicants issue
if you're not going to have alternates
and you have five
board members show up at a seven and
you've got ten cases and you're telling
every applicant they have to have four
votes in order to get past
that's not a that's not a very fair
position to the applicant who has to
wait a month if they don't like those
conditions
so that that's a proposal that we're
thinking through as a way to help
with uh with these are complex issues
complex zoning hearing
hearings um they're not you know this
we're asking a lot of these volunteers
and so that's the thought process behind
it we certainly are in mayor obviously
our
our boards and commissions and
committees they're they are volunteers
they are members of our
community they are giving selflessly of
their time
and away from their families and their
personal time
and i want to make sure that we
appreciate each
and every one um i did have
a couple of questions and i know you and
i had been chatting about this before
if and i know we have a new website that
is still
being tweaked and updated and it is
fantastic
it is definitely an upgrade from the
past one so i appreciate that
um but is it possible for us to
maybe considering or to consider
adding the email of the city staff
member
for each board or commissioner committee
for example
rec board meets i believe uh one
wednesday a month
um if someone wanted to uh
give some thoughts to the rec board
is it possible when they look up rec
board on our website
that say mike price's email address is
there so that that member of the public
would know then that mike price is the
liaison
rather than folks trying to directly
email all of these volunteers
yeah and i actually i feel like maybe
you've said that before because i
thought i'd done it and i just went
there and it hasn't happened yet so i'm
gonna
oh that's a good reminder and not it's
more than just
a consideration of the time of the board
it's a legal issue like
you know board members can't be
considering outside information that's
not part of the hearing
so we can't we it is not prudent to
provide
contact information for board members of
zoning especially zoning quasi-judicial
boards
um or set any sort of expectation that
they're going to be able to be
responsive to those that side of the
hearing
so yeah i appreciate you uh raising that
that just occurred to me one of uh
one of the concerns that i had heard um
previously was that
um it uh it sometimes could be hard to
figure out which staff member
uh was in charge of each board so if
we're able to just make that a little
easier to find on the website that would
be
great and then my last question was um
do we still i know on our new website we
have individual emails for each of us
um do we as a council want to discuss
whether or not
we um still keep the city council
at bexley.org or the elected officials
at bexley.org i don't know if i saw that
on the new website but maybe i
overlooked it
yeah i think i'm going there right now
it's it's individual email addresses
there's not the
there's not the group one um but i mean
it could be added
it's just the council's decision yeah
what would folks think
of uh of adding that or keeping it the
way it is now some of you may not know
that uh
um that when it moved over to the new
website it just has our individual email
addresses mrs robinson you have your
hand up what do you think
um well my hand is up for a different
reason but on this particular issue
um i think one of them we don't need
both elected official and city council
if we choose one of them i think
it is helpful i mean it's convenient for
the community to be able to get to all
of us at once and then
if they want to reach one of us that
option is is there as well
so that's my hot take on that do you
want to move on and get everybody else's
consensus before i ask my other question
um no go ahead and ask it now we we've
got time
um so um this goes back to training and
instead of
talking about board specific training um
do we require
any of our boards to go through any kind
of like implicit bias
or um you know sensitivity training at
all um and if we don't could we maybe
once a year make that be an offering for
for board members
um i know certainly another one that we
did with um
catherine nolte i think is her last name
uh that was
very you know in depth i'm not
suggesting something like that but you
know at least having
um you know
an opportunity for um those people who
are serving the city to have access to
those kinds of trainings too i think
would be important
i i feel like we just did it but it must
not have just been done we did it with
kerwin but it was was it 2019 maybe
it feels like it was just yesterday so
that's
some something we can certainly
facilitate you know even
maybe it's once a term so if if there's
overlap with two years it doesn't
necessarily have to be an every year
thing but i think it would
um be important that you know during
each
um section of time that there are um
you know new people coming in um or just
as a refresher i think that would be
important
all right thanks so much jen richard
you've got your hand raised
yeah i'd be in favor of continuing uh
one general email availability for
the olive council but it might be
helpful to
put next to that you know
a phrase short sentence that says
for issues of general information
to counsel um you may use this email
if you have a specific individual
counsel
question or desire a response
and then please
direct your question to a specific
council member
okay or something like that um ben's a
good word
smith but there there are sometimes
people just want to respond let all
council know
of the situation and um i think
lori ann's general responses and and
guidance
is good and i don't feel that then we
all need to respond to those specific
questions but if they know
they want a specific response or
expecting a specific response
they do have the option of emailing us
either individually
or several of us or whatever
thank you so much i think it helps
manage expectations
yeah any other comments from
folks regarding this issue
i do have one monique um so i i went to
when we were setting up our website i
went to a lot of other cities to see how
they did it
and um there were kind of two major
models one was
form a form that would be filled out
online as opposed to an email address
and i know that doesn't seem like much
of a distinction but it what it allows
you to do is you go to that form page
and
what richard just said it can be
accommodated at the top of it that says
i think it's helpful because i think
residents often
don't understand who to email about what
right so they just send
a blanket email you know city council
my fire hydrant needs to be painted
you know so at a forum you can give
context to say
you know here's what we here's city
council's legislative body
email us of course with any thoughts
that you have but our primary you know
here's here's what our focus is if you
have a
service concern um you know here's
here's how you take care of that
almost like guides them through a menu
and the other thing
if you're going to so then you don't
have to actually even specify
if it's city council at or elected
officials act it's a
it's a form to email to get to city
council
and um maybe it also has the disclaimer
that if it's a
administrative issue they might get
follow-up from the administration as
opposed to from a council member
um the other thought was if you're going
to use an email address
and i s on the on the chat here troy and
jen disagree with me but
i feel like it's actually a little more
helpful
to be a high remedy to be
elected officials at because i never
know how to respond when
someone emails city council city council
at
and they're asking what is a very
traditionally purely administrative
question
and i don't want to butt in because i'm
not you know i don't think that i'm who
they really meant to email but yet i'm
the person that can easily answer the
question so as you guys know i'm not
that shy about butting in but i i just
it
feels like a kind of on awkward
interface and i'm not quite sure how to
handle that
thank you so much mayor i'd be willing
to um
to work with you and kind of wordsmith a
little bit and try some different
scenarios and then maybe update
council in the future but i
i do think it would be great to make a
few additional tweaks to our
amazing website so that the public
has various ways to contact us
and yourself troy you've got your hand
raised as well
yeah i think you know maybe it's
worthwhile to consider option c
you know maybe we need a designation
that says city officials or
you know there's a phrase that kind of
is a little more inclusive but also
maybe a little more defined i i do feel
like elected officials i don't
think anybody understands who that's
going to go to except for i know
you know there's a general idea of who
an elected official could be or might be
but
city council then they might believe
well this is not going to go
to the mayor or it might not go to etc
and so
maybe we ought to think about a term
that we feel is a little
descriptive but also maybe a little more
inclusive even it
you know whatever
and it is helpful to have a a group for
our general information sharing
um not for deliberations but um
just to to share information
um amongst us ourselves um
the research that we might have done
regarding an issue or whatever
um that again that's not the liberation
that
that we have access to
thanks so much richard um anyone else
have any comments
um regarding this
okay those are all the agenda items i've
got listed
for our retreat uh we do still have a
few minutes
um is there anything else that folks
would like to briefly
discuss i can tell you that i always
appreciate the healthy
and respectful civil discourse from my
fellow council members
and the mayor and our city auditor i
feel like today has been a great time
for us just to
take a few deep breaths and reflect upon
what a challenging year it's been but
also to plan
a little bit going forward so i do
appreciate each and every one of you
anyone else have anything that they'd
like to raise before i ask for a motion
to adjourn
okay i've got two hands up uh richard
first
okay rich i think richard beat you to
the punch okay since
um i had to step out um i don't
think this issue was um addressed i
don't
uh jen are there any plans for
juneteenth of this year
and um i i think you talked about some
surveys of residents of things like that
but it might be also at that particular
event
to have surveys available for visitors
directed towards visitors of
all visitors but um so we can get
feedback from outsiders of how
we're perceived if there's anything that
we need to do
i i know um we we have
a number of people that work here um
in bexley that don't live in bexley in
numerous businesses and their
input i don't know that we always seek
to get that
so judd do you want to respond to that
i'm sure i can certainly respond to the
june teen portion of that although i do
think it would be really interesting
to have a survey available for for
people visiting
um the city it is always interesting to
hear uh what other people think about
um you know how we're doing what we're
doing um in terms of juneteenth richard
um i will have a update for uh
an update for council in the next uh
probably not
this tuesday's meeting but uh wait a
minute
probably in two meetings um i'm actually
working with a group of about
seven eight uh residents in the city
we're putting together
not only an event for the day of june
19th which is a saturday this year
but also a couple events that will lead
up to
and kind of put in a greater context um
what it is that we're doing and why it
is that we're doing
it um we have a lot of great stuff going
on and i'm
really excited to share it with you but
i'm just not privy i can't do it quite
yet
we're still um dotting all the i's and
crossing all the t's
thanks so much jen for staying on top of
that absolutely
mayor you've got your hand raised yeah i
wanted to noodle a little bit more if we
have time on what jen said earlier in
the meeting about communication
because i want to make i want to i think
and i i don't
oh no okay so i'm not sure she was
talking about this but i know that i've
struggled recently with
the specifically the issue with the cic
and the um the developments proposed
in terms of how to appropriately
communicate and answer questions that
the communities had in a way that
doesn't violate
um you know
is it the city communicating is it the
you know applicant's communicating we're
sharing it is it the cic so
that has been a challenge for me and i i
i wanted to
i guess say that if you guys are seeing
areas where
you feel like there's a communication
void and you feel like you have specific
recommendations please like reach out
and say like you know for example
i think recently i've had heard from a
couple of you that we should have a
faq on those developments and
i agree with that well again one of the
challenges is from whose perspective is
that faq written
and how authoritative it is and who has
the authority to write it
certainly i don't feel it's appropriate
to write that from the city's
perspective but maybe the csc so
that's been a that's been a that's an
unusual thing for us where it's like a
you know a little bit more challenging
to figure out how to how to communicate
and be
provide good and correct information so
i didn't know jen if that's what you
were alluding to if you had other things
in mind
because i you know i i like to think
that we do a good job of communicating
overall and it's something that i
care a lot about so if there are things
that you know if there are blind spots
please let's talk about them i guess
that's my point we didn't have a
specific
um thought in mind um then it was
you know and perhaps this is yet another
not so silver lining of covid but
there's been
so much conversation where people just
take to social media
um and i know this is you know certainly
not new um but just
anytime we have the opportunity um and
to your point
um where we see that there might be an
opening or a way to communicate better i
think it's it's just important that we'd
be reminded that we jump on top of those
uh my suggestion was in no way to to
suggest that we weren't doing well
already because it is a challenge and
just to recognize it as such i think is
important
yeah and i guess like to the social
media point it used to be that you could
get tagged on the buzz or whatever and
answer a question
and you know that it's not that would be
it but there would
everyone would know that's where the
conversation's happening and
that question's been answered and
whether or not they agree with you at
least they know where to go
now it is you know people have gotten
kicked off the buzz and they've
started new groups and that group
doesn't like this group and now it's
like
it's and it's replicated people are
posting the same thing everywhere it's
become
so unmanageable that's why i so i have
just so you know
i have personally disengaged from the
bexley buzz i think i maybe shared that
with you guys
i am not on that at all or on any other
group like it
because i can't effectively communicate
through that forum like it's not
it's no it's nothing to say it's bad or
good it's just like it's not
it's not an effective use of my time or
of communication and so
the question is how do we fill there is
a little bit of a void there
and so i've tried to do that by
communicating
through our official channels if needs
if information needs to be put out
people know where to find it and i think
that's still important to do
and then i guess the question is okay
what is it that we're
what where how else can we or what else
should we be covering that we're not
covering
i guess mayor thank you so much for
for speaking to that um i do
want to challenge each and every council
member to give some thought and if they
certainly have
ideas or suggestions to not be shy about
reaching out
to you regarding that solely in the
interest of time it is 11 57
i promised that we would be done no
later than noon
so i would probably say that this could
be a very rich
thorough discussion but if we could just
hit pause
on this and if you have individual
suggestions for
the mayor that is going to be my
suggestion
thank you everyone for participating in
our retreat and for sharing your ideas
so freely and for all the service that
you do to give back to bexley
given that could i please have a motion
to adjourn
i will motion to adjourn but with that i
want to say
what an efficient and productive meeting
you led monique lampke
so congratulations thank you so much i
get a second please
second by jen robinson all right all in
favor say aye
aye all right this city council
retreat is adjourned thank you all have
a wonderful friday and again it's a
pleasure serving with each and every one
of you
two minutes early do you get some sort
of a word for that
sing us out