CITY COUNCIL MEETING MINUTES 1-26-26

MINUTES OF MEETING OF

IRONTON CITY COUNCIL

January 22, 2026

6:00 P.M.

A regular meeting of Ironton City Council was held on Thursday, January 22, 2026, at 6:00 p.m. in Council Chambers.  Present was Acting Vice Mayor, Robby Brown, who presided, and members:  Hock, Harvey, Kline, Scott, Simmons—six.

            All persons stood for an invocation by Assistant Pastor, September Detweiler from Real Life Ministries Church, and then the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

            The Minutes of the Regular Council Meeting of December 22, 2025, the Joint Meeting of Ironton City Council and Lawrence County Commissioners of January 8, 2026, Public Utilities Committee Meeting of January 8, 2026, Finance Committee Meeting of January 8, 2026, and Regular Council Meeting of January 8, 2026, stood approved as submitted.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

            Mr. Brown said they have two invited guests this evening.  He said he would begin by inviting the representative from the Board of Elections, J. T. Holt, and Ironton City School Superintendent, Summer McCorkle, to come forward to the podium.  J. T. Holt said that he is the Chairman of the Board of Elections.  He was contacted by Mr. Haney regarding potentially coming here to comment on the proposed ordinance regarding sex offenders being on school property.  He said the Board of Elections thinks it would cause some issues, and he would recommend that you make an amendment to allow the Board of Elections to facilitate the voting of everyone no matter what their conviction record is.  He said if someone is convicted of a felony, unless they are incarcerated on a felony conviction, their voting rights are not suspended or affected in any way in the State of Ohio.  He said once you are released from prison, your voting rights are restored automatically.  He said on a misdemeanor conviction or even if you are in jail awaiting trial or any type of probation violation, that does not count to suspend your right to vote.  He said it is true that people can vote by mail, can vote by early voting at the Board of Elections, but he thinks they might just be fighting an unnecessary fight by not making an exception like for electoral purposes or when schools are being used for election, and they do use both Ironton Middle School, which is the largest on this side of the County, and Ironton High School.  Mr. Harvey said he asked for the City schools to get their input on things that were brought up like IEP’s and things like that that may be mandatory for a parent to be present.  He said he spoke with Ms. McCorkle before the meeting to tell her why she was here so we wouldn’t catch her off guard, but we want to know if there is anything that a parent would physically have to be present for that they couldn’t do virtually or docusign some of those kinds of things.  Ms. McCorkle said the circumstance of an IEP meeting where they would need the parent to be present if they have educational decision-making rights for the child, they absolutely could participate virtually and we could do an electronic signature.  She said her concern would be those events that require students to have their parental guardian present with them and who could be a registered sex offender and still have custody and educational decision-making rights for their child.  If that child was wanting to participate in an event where they would need that parental guardian with them, her concern for that child would be that that could be a missed opportunity for the child due to the parent not being able to attend with them.  She said that would be one of the only times she could think of—as far as the rights of the child and parent, what could be a barrier for the child.  She said, however, they currently have procedures in place if they do have to have parents on site with the child, who are registered sex offenders, they do have those guardrails in place currently.  Mr. Harvey said she had mentioned to him about a chaperone.  Ms. McCorkle said yes, they must give us notification and then they are supervised while on school property—we arrange for that.  She said as far as the elections themselves, we do not have school on those days so students are not on campus—that being said, that would be a concern if they were in session.  She said if they would have any type of legislation that would impact the rights of sex offenders could ultimately impact their own child in a negative way by barring their parents’ access to the facility—that is a possibility.  Mr. Harvey asked what verbiage she used if they were needed to be present for something around their educational opportunities or rights.  Ms. McCorkle asked, for educational decision making?  Mr. Harvey said yes.  Ms. McCorkle said they could be virtually present, as long as they are able to participate and then we would have signatures that could be . . . just as they do with parents who are incarcerated and still have educational decision-making rights.  They can participate virtually or via phone call and we do electronic signatures as well.  Mr. Kline asked what instances might occur where they would need to be there in person?  Ms. McCorkle said for a child to participate in after-school programming, she is thinking of Christmas concerts and those types of things that are related to the curriculum that they would need a parent to bring them to be present with them.  She said that could be a barrier—she is just thinking through what could be barriers for the child.  Mr. Kline asked, on election days there are no other extracurricular activities, such as practices, or any children in the buildings during election day at all?  Ms. McCorkle said that is correct, they should not be while the election is happening.  Mr. Kline asked her what her what her opinion is as far as proposed legislation to keep sex offenders away from events where there may be children.  Ms. McCorkle said that she is always going to air on the side of wanting to protect our students.  She said also, she is not an attorney with many of the State and Federal and liberal laws that could be conflicting there.  She will always air on what the best interest is of the child to protect them.  She said, would she support that?  She would not want sex offenders on our campus unless absolutely necessary or required by law, and there must be protections in place if that must happen. Mack Anderson asked if Ironton schools are closed for every election.  Ms. McCorkle said yes, it is not an instructional day.  Mr. Brown said he knows that she hasn’t had much time to think on this, but asked if she has any ideas on language they could put into that legislation to encompass some exceptions that she thinks are vital, but while still having something in place as a safeguard.  Ms. McCorkle said she appreciates this legislation for our children and to say what it needs, she would need more time.  Mayor Cramblit said what Ms. McCorkle said a minute ago, that kind of blankets the . . . making sure that they tidy it up, but unless required by law is a very good starting point, or you rule out the things that don’t apply to that on election day, which could be sporting events or whatever where it is not required to have a parent there—it could be something like that.  Mr. Kline said he knows they have a piece of legislation that is tabled right now, but he would like to work with Mack and Brigham to draft a new piece of legislation, and maybe she could come up with some ideas as far as what the City schools might feel to be . . . in coordination with that.  Ms. McCorkle said she would be happy to do that.  Mr. Kline said again, getting feedback from people in the public, he would also like to include language that would include parks, splashpads, public pools, public libraries, or any public areas where children may gather, or something of that nature, in addition to that.  He said there is nothing that says that a sex offender can go to the splashpad and watch children right now . . .  Mayor Cramblit asked if there wasn’t a law that says within so many feet of certain . . .  Mr. Harvey said it is within 1000 feet of the school, that is it.  Ms. McCorkle said one of the things that came to mind as well is that they are struggling with chronic absenteeism and getting students to school and another barrier would be that they would have to be very specific because a child may have a parent who is a registered sex offender and is their main form of transportation to school, so those are other things that they have to think about as well . . . setting those parameters.  Mr. Kline said he is going to work with Mack and Brigham to come up with an updated piece of legislation, and he asked if she could possibly email him some of her thoughts to include in that and he could send her a draft back to see if that would be something that schools would approve.  Mr. Harvey said he wrote down some things so he can also rough draft it and send it to them as well.

            Mr. Brown said he would now like to invite their invited guest, Kevin Wood from Arcadis, to give them updates on projects that they are overseeing in the City.  Mr. Wood said they are the City engineers for Ironton and he was asked to come and provide an update on several ongoing projects.  He passed out a list of projects.  He said, as they can see, they have a lot of different projects that they are involved with here in the City of Ironton.  He said he will run through a summary of where things are and they should feel free to ask questions at any point.  He said the large project that has been ongoing for a couple of years—the Batham Lane and Orchard Sewer projects in the Green Valley area.  He said you can see on the agenda that there are three different contracts and the completion dates of each of those.  He said those are substantial completion dates but there are ongoing punch list items, primarily on contracts 1 and 2, which were all of the streets and storm sewers, and those will go into the spring where they will have to be seeding and reseeding and clean-up and some of those final items done.  So they have given the contractors until mid-April so that there is plenty of time to have some decent weather to get some of that work completed.  He said all of the project is operational, the storm pump station, the sanitary pump station—all of that has been operational since those substantial completion dates.  He said he has a note on there that at some point about doing an open house at that storm pump station to invite the public to come in and see where their money was spent at least on that component.  He is thinking that it might be best to wait until spring to do that and when they have done the final clean-up, so maybe April or May, but he will circle back on that.  He said another large project that wrapped up not long ago was the South Third Street project, which was torn up for a while.  That project replaced a water line that was continually breaking and then rebuilt the street and it also involved some storm sewer work.  He said the third project was on South Fifth and Maple and that has been completed as well.  He said that all of these projects have grants involved with them, too, and if anyone wants details on that, he can provide that.  He said they worked with John Haskins at the Waste Water Plant to install an emergency generator.  There were some power outages this past year and there was not a working emergency generator.  He said that was completed in November.  He said there is a reconstruction of Pump Station #7 that is in the works and will be completed by June 20^th of this year.  He said the Walnut Street Sluice Gate was completed in November.  He said the City received some funds to replace the bridge on North 5^th Street adjacent to the railroad tracks.  That was put out to bid several months ago and there were no bidders.  They talked with contractors and they are very concerned about working that close to the railroad tracks, so they are having ongoing discussions with the City and they will need to have more discussions about how to proceed with that project.

The City received an ARC grant and that will be used to pick up where the South Third Street project ended at Lorain Street, and they will pave up to approximately Jones Street—that will be put out to bid in the next month or two and that work will happen this coming spring.  He said they have worked with John Haskins at the Waste Water Plant to do some work on the buildings, replacing roofs and windows and that sort of thing and rebuilding five sewer lift stations throughout the town.  He said they are addressing some EPA comments on those plans and they should be wrapped up by the end of April.  He said regarding the Truck Wash Bay project for the City, they have completed design and the City is working on permitting and they will get that constructed this year.  He said they  have been working with the City this past year on reconfiguring the way the City’s storm fee is collected, and that has been an ongoing discussion with the committee that we’ve had to make it a more fair method of collecting storm fees.  He said that is ongoing and they hope in the coming months to have that finalized.  He said if you are familiar with the Batham Lane Green Valley project, the City purchased what was formerly the Rice property to place the large storm water pump station on, and that sits in one corner of that 5-acre property; but on the remainder of that property, the City is planning to develop housing, and there are nine or ten housing lots.  He said they have designed the street and the water and the sewer and those sewer and water plans are being reviewed by the EPA for permits so that the City can move forward when they are ready to construct the street, the water, the storm and the sanitary so that housing can be constructed there.  He said the next item is tied into that project as well—it replaces a lift station and runs new sewer lines up near the old swimming pool site to fix a problem that was up there with that sewer now, but also provide sewer for that adjacent property for housing to be developed there.  He said the new water meters are being replaced in the City—there were a lot of old meters that weren’t reading correctly, and the contractor is saying that project should be completed by the end of February.  Mayor Cramblit said a lot of the meters weren’t reading at all.  Mr. Wood said yes, the City has had to estimate . . .  Mayor Cramblit said they have had to go out and manually read them.  Mr. Wood said these new meters will remotely transmit the reading so that the City can more efficiently and fairly bill for the amount of water that is used.  Mr. Wood said they may have heard of PFAS, which are the forever chemicals that a lot of river communities have issues with those chemicals being in their drinking water.  So the EPA has provided grant funds to help remove those at the Water Plant.  He said Ironton received a $149,000 grant to pay for the first step of remedying that, which is a general plan which they are working on right now, as well as to pay for testing that will be required.  He said their general plan will be done by the end of March and then they will work with the City to bring a contractor in to do testing on the water to determine the best method for removing the PFAS.  He said the next phase would be constructing the infrastructure at the plant to do that work.  He said it is a multi-phase project and so far it has been all grant funds, and their hope would be that most or all moving into construction would also be grants.  He said at the riverfront the City has installed containers there over the last year or so, but a separate riverfront project which he is referring to here is part of the Appalachian Community Grant Program, and Ironton received funds to construct a sea wall and dock, ADA access from that dock to the upper level, and a sidewalk across the upper bank.  He said they also have an ODNR grant to install volleyball courts and playground equipment.  He said the work that they are involved in on the sea wall and all of that, the contractor says that they plan to start work the first half of March.  He said that work by contract all has to be completed by October—that is a requirement of those Federal funds.  He said the next two projects are projects that they will be working on—it’s for an emergency generator at the Water Plant and some major components at the Waste Water Plant that they have been talking with the City about cutting them loose on beginning design on both of those so they can apply for grant funding for construction and then move those to construction in the future.  He said the last item on the list—in the fall they did an application to the Ohio Public Works Commission for funding to . . . he mentioned earlier the South Third Street project and the smaller project which will go to bid to continue that a little further north here in the next month or two.  They submitted to OPWC to continue that street improvement on Third Street all the way to Center Street.  He said they should hear in the next month or so whether the City would get that grant or not.  He said he is open to any questions Council may have.  Mayor Cramblit asked if Mr. Wood could clarify what the truck wash bay is.  Mr. Wood said the truck wash bay would be used . . . like you have the street sweeper and the truck wash bay is where that material could go—it can be used to clean any of the City equipment, rather than have all of that debris wash off into the storm sewer, it would take it to the sanitary sewer.  Mr. Brown said, regarding the Third Street water line and street reconstruction project that is completed, one thing that he noticed in driving through that end of town is there are a decent number of dips and bumps, most of those being near where there are either manholes or drains.  He asked if there was any contingency set aside for that?  Mr. Wood said John Elam asked that same question earlier and he told him that he will follow up with the contractor, but rather than just telling him that there are some manholes that might be unlevel, he would like to go to him with a list.  He said he told John that he would reach out to Mike Pemberton, but it would be best if he could say, here’s this address and that address, etc. and these need adjusted, because he wants to give them specific instruction on where they are.  He said he has driven it and he will check that out as well, but he would like to get some input from the City on exactly where those might be.  Mr. Brown asked the Mayor if that is something that Mike Pemberton can handle.  The Mayor said yes, and when Mr. Wood mentioned that just now, on the design of the road, does he have those certain . . . for it to drain particular ways . . .  Mr. Wood said yes, the street is crowned so it all drains to the curbs.  The Mayor said where the catch basins are, is there like a graded part that is causing those dips because it has to drain in a particular way?  Mr. Wood said no, the street is crowned so the water will drain to the curbs and in some areas there are curb drains, but if they are like sanitary manholes, and there are a lot of manholes and things in that street for sanitary and water valves and all kinds of things, it sounds like from what you are saying and what John said, some of those manholes may not be quite level.  He said they remove the street and then they repave it, and if a manhole is too high or too low, they need to adjust that to grade, so there may be some out of kilter. Mr. Brown said that is some of what he is saying, but what he has noticed too is kind of all the way across the road, areas that are slightly raised up or some areas where there are dips—more than just the manholes—and he was concerned about that getting worse.  Mr. Wood said he will look at that again but if there are any particular areas that anyone wants to mention, that would be helpful.  He said they wouldn’t be able to address the pavement issues until the asphalt plants reopen but now is the time to bring it to their attention.  Mr. Brown said his other question is related to the riverfront improvements.  He thinks that the last time Mr. Wood was here with updates, there were a lot of details still being worked out on how far that funding was going to go and what all was going to be included in that project.  He asked, have we made headway on that?  Mr. Wood said yes, this project, like every single riverfront project, the plan that he passed out last time was kind of the grand plan, and when the contractors priced the project, there was not enough money to do everything so what will be included with this project is . . . at the water level, below where the containers sit, there will be sea wall that juts out into the water and a concrete dock for boats to dock, and from the downstream end of that dock there is an ADA sidewalk that will go up from the dock to the entrance drive that comes in through the floodwall, and then up to the parking lot.  From the parking lot there will be a sidewalk that extends all the way across the top of the bank over to where the volleyball court and playground will be.  He said there will be four light fixtures along that upper-level sidewalk, and there will be one set of stairs from the dock up to the upper level.  The grander plan had two sets of stairs but that had to be removed due to budget constraints.  He said he can forward the updated rendering.  Mr. Kline said he was asking for Ms. Tussey, he asked, as far as working on the punch list for that, has there been any solution for the drainage on the four or five homes they have been talking about?  Mr. Wood said he knows that there were two yard drains installed, one on either side of drive to her rental property, and he hasn’t heard anything and he doesn’t know if there has been any heavy enough rain since then to . . .  Ms. Tussey said there hasn’t been.  She asked, how did the drains look when he looked at them?  Mr. Scott said he drove down about a week ago and we hadn’t had a whole lot of rain but they were mudded up a little bit over top, which he had some concerns about.  He said they haven’t had any super heavy rain, but given that it had drizzled and they had been swallowed up by mud and dirt.  Mr. Wood said that all of that project has to be seeded and the seed has to take, and at the end of the season . . . that was one of the later things done as they were getting into the really hot weather, and it didn’t seed.  That is part of the reason that they extended these contracts out to April because on many of these areas, spring is going to come and there won’t be grass—they are going to have to go back in and reseed and clean up.  He said over the entire project until the grass takes to hold around those types of structures, that will be something that will have to be maintained until it does seed.  Ms. Tussey said she had seeded it herself and she has the greenest and prettiest grass down there.  She said that is not the problem—and it’s actually 12 homes, not 4 or 5, that have that problem.  Mr. Wood asked, if there is grass around it, how can there be mud on it?  Ms. Tussey said she guesses that water runs to it and it brings dirt.  Mr. Wood said if it is all grass around it and sidewalk, there shouldn’t be mud unless there is mud on the sidewalk or something.  Ms. Tussey said she is tired of mud sitting on everything.  Mr. Wood said he is sure that everybody was tired of mud the last two years.  But again, in the coming months those are all things that will still be monitored on the punch list.  He said there is a large retainage withheld from all of the contractors until all of that is addressed.  Mr. Brown asked if he could verbally add one more thing to the punch list.  He said he just learned this today—Mr. Wood should have an email from Walt (he can’t remember his last name)—at 1543 Florence Avenue there is a curb drain in front of his home.  One of the neighbors is draining a pool right now so you can very much see the water flowing to that drain.  He said it’s flowing there, however, it’s diverting apparently under the curbing—it’s going somewhere but it’s not going to the grate.  So his concern is that it could cause some erosion under the sidewalk towards his home.

            Danielle Fletcher, 1392 County Road 1A, said she has been dealing with some issues regarding the data center.  She knows we have talked about that the last few meetings.  She said with doing more research and dealing with some sensitive topics, she would like to ask Council to initiate an ordinance or a resolution to dissolve the Lawrence County Port Authority or rather a transfer of assets to the City.  She said her reason for that is due to Bill Dingus monopolizing all of Lawrence County.  She said one man should not have so much power over our local trustees, our Council members, and our government.  She said we need to protect our County.  Mr. Brown said as far as he knows, he doesn’t think that we have authority over the Port Authority as a whole.  Mayor Cramblit said no, we don’t have authority over it as a whole.  Mayor Cramblit said no, we don’t have authority over it.  He said he is on the board, and there are 10 members on that board.  He said they dissolved the Ironton Port Authority in 2013.  He said he doesn’t know how you go about doing that.  Mr. Brown asked the Mayor if he could explain a little bit more about the function of the Lawrence County Port Authority.   Mayor Cramblit said it is a quasi non-governmental entity and it is a way to work with economic developmental projects that your standard governments cannot manage.  For instance, they have the Depot right now and they are leasing it through the City.  The City at the time didn’t have the money to improve the Depot Restaurant so it was leased to the Port Authority on the terms that they would put all of the money into improving it and they would collect the rent until they were fully paid off for what they did.  Things like that, whereas, the City typically would go through a bidding process to have to first sell it as is or put the money in itself, which it didn’t have.  He said that is one example, and the Splash Park, the riverfront—it’s like something that we own that we don’t want to necessarily turn over, and it gives them the ability to negotiate as you would in normal business dealings where a city or county or any government entity cannot do that.  He said, as far as its establishment though, he has been on it five or six years, but it has been around longer than that.  He said he doesn’t know if you can start another city one or not.  He said he doesn’t think we can dissolve that one—you could request the properties that they have in the City, which is entirely too many anymore–they have sold quite a bit of them.  He said he doesn’t know the processes on the legal side of it.  He asked Mack Anderson.  Mack said the Lawrence County Port Authority was created by the County Commissioners.  We didn’t create it and we can’t dissolve it as a City Council.  Ms. Fletcher said she’s not necessarily trying to dissolve it, it’s more or less trying to come up with a resolution that would protect the Lawrence County residents as a whole because with everything coming to light with the data centers and the transfers of property that greatly affect areas that are not even zoned, the LEDC we know owned 88 properties.  Bill Dingus acts as the head of the LEDC, which also is a conflict of interest because he has two other powers over the Chamber of Commerce and as the head of the Port Authority.  She said he has personally threatened her and some of her neighbors as head of the Port Authority—that is not okay.  So she is trying to find some kind of security and protection.  Mr. Hock said they received an email from Brigham because this has been ongoing conversation about legislation concerning data centers, and he recommended that Council have a workshop and he would think that that would fall under the realm of strategic planning—if he’s wrong, someone should correct him.  He was thinking that it would  be a good idea to maybe figure out a good time to meet for that so they can discuss that legislation, and he feels like port authorities could be part of that conversation.  Ms. Fletcher asked if that would include the Secretary of State or the Auditor of State?  Mr. Hock said no, this would be a workshop just for Council members.  Ms. Fletcher asked if it would be open to the public.  Mr. Hock said yes, it would be open to the public.  Ms. Fletcher asked when that would be.  Mr. Hock said he is Chairman and Mr. Brown and Ms. Simmons are on the committee.  Mack Anderson said the whole Council could do it as a Committee of a Whole, if you want the whole Council involved.  Mr. Hock said he knows when we have dealt with similar situations, we have ran it through Strategic Planning.  Mack said they could do it either way.  Mr. Hock asked if there was a time in the near future, or a weekend?  He said he feels like they would need a Solicitor to be able to iron out the details.  Ms. Simmons said maybe they could even do it after the Waste Water Treatment budget workshop on Saturday, January 31^st .  Mr. Kline said that workshop they were going to do at the Sewer Plant though so he doesn’t know if they want to do that at the Sewer Plant—you’d probably want to come back here.  Mr. Hock said he knows they were talking about meeting at 8:30 a.m., so maybe they could do that beforehand if that’s good for everyone.  The Mayor asked what the discussion was going to be about.  Mr. Hock said they didn’t have any ordinances on the Agenda tonight because we needed to have a workshop, so it would be to discuss potential ordinances and the overall situation of how we plan to address zoning.

COMMUNICATIONS

            Mr. Harvey moved, seconded by Mr. Scott, to receive, file and make a part of the minutes accept the letter from Julie Harris, regarding 1050 Clinton Street.  Motion passed unanimously.

REPORTS – None

ORDINANCES

ORDINANCE NO. 26-06 –   AMENDING THE TEMPORARY BUDGET FOR THE CITY OF IRONTON, STATE OF OHIO, FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDING DECEMBER 31, 2026 AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY was given first reading.

Mr. Hock mentioned that Ordinance 26-06 received a favorable recommendation from Finance Committee.  Mr. Hock moved, seconded by Mr. Kline, to suspend the rules and give Ordinance 26-06 second and third reading by title only.  Motion passed unanimously and Ordinance 26-06 was given second and third reading.  Mr. Kline moved, seconded by Mr. Hock, to adopt Ordinance 26-06.  Motion passed unanimously.  ADOPTED

ORDINANCE NO. 26-01 –   IMPOSING A MORATORIUM UPON AI DATA CENTERS AND DECLARING AN EMERGENCY was given second reading.

Discussion:  Mr. Harvey asked Mayor Cramblit if he or anyone else reached out to Vertiv.  The Mayor asked if he was supposed to.  Mr. Harvey said he just remembers talking about asking Vertiv’s opinion about this Ordinance.  The Clerk said she thinks that Mr. Haney said he would, but she wasn’t sure.  Mr. Brown asked if maybe we should invite them to a portion of the workshop.  Mr. Hock said if they would like to come, they are more than welcome.  Mr. Hock said that he knows we discussed this at the last meeting, and the hope was to get some ordinances put together, and Brigham sent us an email saying that we need to discuss it a little further.  He said that his whole idea is that this would be a safeguard.  He doesn’t think that this legislation is anti-AI, he thinks it is very similar to the rehab moratorium that they had.  He also doesn’t think any of them are anti-recovery but they had to do that because it was a similar situation where an industry was coming into town and there were checks or balances as far as our zoning was concerned.  He said that he doesn’t want to make a motion if it’s just going to fail, but he would like to try and see if they could pass it tonight.

Mr. Hock moved to suspend the rules and give Ordinance 26-01 third reading by title only.  Mr. Kline said that he understands what Mr. Hock is saying, but he wants to do it right through legislation and he wants to be cognizant of our largest employer in the City.  He doesn’t want to be knee-jerk and say, no we can’t do this, but he wants to be strategic in how they do it.  He said, for that purpose, he is going to vote yes to suspend the rules, so if it is the will of Council to go forward with it, he will vote no if it does go to third reading for those reasons.  He said he wants to be strategic in how we attack zoning and where it could or could not be located, he wants to go through that, and he wants to be cognizant of people who depend on those jobs.  Mr. Hock said he wants to be cognizant, too, but at the last meeting he thinks we were all hoping to have some ordinances on the table.  Mr. Kline said that he wasn’t aware of the intricacies of it, but he thinks we need to do that now.   Mr. Hock said yes, it is a complicated subject.  Mr. Harvey said he wants to be cognizant of Vertiv and their input.  He thought it was the Mayor who was going to invite someone from Vertiv to give their input because he doesn’t want to send that message without telling them the intent of it.  He has had people ask him why we were discouraging businesses, and he told them that it wasn’t that, we just want to attack this through zoning.  So he wants to extend them that same opportunity.  He said he also thinks if they don’t pass it with six, it is going to take 30 days anyway.  Mr. Brown said that he is very torn and he completely understands the logic that Mr. Hock mentioned.  He said he also understands from Mr. Kline that he doesn’t want to give the wrong optics to our largest employer in town.  He said he thinks it would be an easier thing for him to concur on if maybe they shorten the duration of that from a year and make it maybe three months just to give us time to work through that legislation piece, and that way maybe it doesn’t appear like this is just a band-aid while we work on the bigger issue.  Mr. Hock said that he forgot that Mr. Brown wasn’t here when they went through something similar with the rehabs and we ended up having to extend that moratorium; but the way that this is put in place, it can be rescinded at any time so it doesn’t have to last that 12 months.  He said that if we get our zoning sorted out, it would be a matter of just passing another ordinance to rescind it.  Mr. Brown said that he gets that, but for him he feels like the optics might be a little bit better if it was seen as a short-term thing rather than a year-long thing from that employer.  Mr. Scott seconded Mr. Hock’s motion to suspend the rules and give Ordinance 26-01 third reading.  Yays:  Hock, Kline, Scott, Simmons – four.   Nays:  Brown, Harvey – two.

RESOLUTIONS – None

MISCELLANEOUS

Mr. Harvey said with all of the snow we have, we have had a lot of calls about roads and specific questions about why we have City vehicles that appear to have plows on the front of them but we don’t actually plow roads.  He said he knows there is a reason but he doesn’t recall what it is.  He said he told them that he would ask, but there are various surfaces in town, concrete, blacktop and brick, and he knows that is one of the many reasons that we don’t because we don’t want to pull up brick or pull up blacktop that we just put down.  Mayor Cramblit said whoever made that statement is not valid.  He said we do scrape the roads and we do salt.  He said they have to take care of the main routes, primarily the on-service roads, such as Kemp and Spruce, they are also part of those where they have hills—there are also some hills out 141 that we have to address and Second Street, Third Street and Park Avenue—those are the ones that we have to hit.  He said the last time the snow hit, it was a matter of ice, snow, ice, snow, and it was 16”, and we used the amount of salt in that three-day span that we use typically in an entire winter.  He said if they want more, it would be a good time to start increasing the Street Department budget.  Mr. Harvey asked him, in his opinion, are we as ready as we can be for snow?  The Mayor said yes, we can only do so much.  Mr. Harvey said the specific request was about bus traffic.  The Mayor said they can’t hit every street in the City, it’s almost impossible.  Mr. Brown asked if the plowing starts as soon as the storm starts.  The Mayor said the salting is usually the first process and that is as soon as .  . . we don’t try to get too far ahead of it, and that way if it doesn’t come, it is a waste.  He said they start salting as soon as it hits, and then we start plowing and it makes it a lot easier if we have the salt down already.  He said the problem we run into here in our area is we get a lot of freezing rain which is difficult to deal with once that hits.  He said when they are focused on Second Street and Third Street and all of those other streets first, the ice may already be . . . so it’s a waste of time trying to scrape the ice.  Mr. Harvey said also, he thinks somebody already reached out to the Mayor and/or some other council members about 13^th Street possibly being a one-way street because of the people not parking on 12^th Street and they usually park on 13^th or their garages are there.  The Mayor asked if this was about the alley?  Mr. Harvey said yes.  The Mayor said technically the alley, but this was a dispute between that person saying it is 13^th Street.  He said they wanted speed bumps and he told them if they bought speed bumps, we would put them in, but we don’t buy speed bumps.  Mr. Harvey said the ask for him was that it maybe be one way.  The Mayor said the problem they had was with people speeding.  He told them that we could get some signage, but he doesn’t know if it will fix anything making it one way.  He said that part of it wasn’t brought to him.  Mr. Harvey said he just wanted to put it on his radar.

            Mr. Kline moved, seconded by Mr. Hock, to receive, file and make a part of the minutes the December 2025 financials.  Motion passed unanimously.

            Mr. Kline moved, seconded by Mr. Harvey, to adjourn.  Motion passed unanimously.

            Minutes were taken by Marta Leach, Clerk.

            In attendance:  John Elam, Mayor Cramblit and Mack Anderson.

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Clerk                                                                           Vice Mayor

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Mayor