MINUTES OF MEETING OF
IRONTON CITY COUNCIL
February 11, 2021
6:00 p.m.
A regular meeting of Ironton City Council was held on Thursday, February 11, 2021, at 6:00 p.m. via video conferencing. Present was Vice Mayor, Craig Harvey, who presided and members:
Cleary, Haney, Hock, Kline, Pierce – six.
All persons stood for an invocation from Rev. Eric Barnes of First Baptist Church, and then the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.
Mr. Harvey asked Mayor Cramblit or Mr. Hock to record the meeting because he doesn’t see the media present.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
Minutes of the Finance Committee of February 11, 2021, and the Regular Meeting of February 11, 2021, stood approved as submitted. Mr. Harvey said in the legislation he signed and in the meeting minutes before that, he submitted a letter to from Mayor regarding the Income Tax Review Board and Mark Dickess’ appointment to that Board. He asked the Clerk to try to locate that letter and include it on the next agenda under Communications.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION
Mr. Haney said he had an issue, which is once again regarding zoning. He said Dave Lawless is questioning a house at 1024 South 4th Street. He seems to think that it is a Suboxone prescription distribution house, and he would like to know if we could look into the business in that house. He said Mr. Lawless doesn’t think it meets the requirements to be in that zone. Mr. Cleary said when they first moved in, he thinks it was Dave Lawless’ parents house, they bought it cheap at an auction. He said it does look like the typical kind of house they use. He said that is four blocks above him on 4th Street, and he goes that way frequently going to the Tool Rental. He said most of the houses have certain cars that you get used to seeing, but that house always has different cars, and 99% of the time they are parked the wrong way. He said it is not very well maintained, and what Mr. Lawless is saying about a Suboxone distribution house may be why. He said it seems like the people that are doing that or using it doesn’t have a lot of respect for the law. He asked the Mayor if he had talked to Dave Lawless and was looking into that. He said he did. He said he would suggest that the Mayor have the Police keep an eye on the parking. Mr. Harvey said Mr. Lawless also owns the driveway that is next to the house, and they park in that driveway illegally as well. Mayor Cramblit asked if they could enforce parking issues on public property? Mr. Anderson said if they are blocking his ingress and egress. Mayor Cramblit said he was talking about them parking in that driveway. Mr. Harvey said that would still be blocking. Mr. Anderson said he thinks they are trespassing in addition to the traffic violation.
Mayor Cramblit said, since they are talking about parking, he has been meeting with a lot of the downtown business owners, and parking is continuing to be an issue for them. He said as businesses start to expand and develop downtown, they really need to jump on this issue as soon as possible. He said the parking ordinance is very out dated. It is talking about meters. He said it needs to be amended or repealed. The recommendation right now is 2-hour parking in zones downtown, and also this is something they have Joe Sokol working on, Smart City Parking System, which monitors traffic. It would send a bill automatically if we would want it to bill people. He said his recommendation and their recommendation is that we use the ordinance which has a violation. If someone is violating, the first time they get a warning, or however we want to set it up. But there is a big need for some kind of control over the parking because there are a lot of employees who are taking up a lot of the parking for our businesses. He said the first step they could take is to at least put the two-hour parking in place. Mr. Haney said he would agree with that. He said he would like to get with Kevin Wood and look over some things with the one-way streets with the diagonal parking. He said he would like to have kind of study or do some research on how many spots they could have if they went with one-way back and forth like Ashland does. Mr. Cramblit said the KYOVA parking study is available on their website, and that is kind of what they basing things off of. Mr. Pierce asked the Mayor, is he saying that the employees of the businesses are taking up the parking spots for the clientele? The Mayor said yes, a lot of the time, and you also have second floor tenants. He said they need a 2-hour parking zone from a certain time of the day to keep things flowing. Mr. Cleary said the 2-hour parking will create problems unless you do like the Smart City Parking System. He said back in the day, they had parking meters in the whole city and had Carolyn Sheridan as the meter maid, and that job actually paid for itself. He said then with the change of administration, the first thing that happened was they got rid of the meters. He said they talked about putting up 2-hour parking, which is excellent, except what you will run into with this is if you don’t have some way to mark tires or something and record it, that will take an extra police officer or something. He said the most calls you will get will be from the people in the store saying these two cars have been sitting here all day, and we want you to come down here and take care of—they are violating the 2-hour parking. And if you look into it, it will probably be the employees from the store next door. He said the one who is the most successful when they took the meters out is Joe Unger. He said Joe and his employees park over in the City parking lot. He said if you are going to put signs up, you have to have a plan to enforce them because somebody is going to call numerous times and tell you that somebody’s car has been there all day. The Mayor said he agrees, and it would be up to the City with this universal system, you could have it send warnings or violations, or if you want to have a meter system installed for people to enter their license plate and purchase so much time. He said it is going to be more flexible with how it works. He said it would eliminate us having to hire any full-time employees or anything dedicated to that. This is just a billing system that is automated through the traffic cameras that we would have. So they could go with 2-hour parking, which is what the business community would like to see, or they could go with a metered system. He said he thinks they really need to find out if the billing that they get for sending out these violations is going to be cost-sufficient; if not, then they will probably have to look at meters to do that kind of thing. Mr. Cleary said he had no problem at all with putting meters back up.
Mayor Cramblit said he needs a short Executive Session to discuss pending litigation with Council, Solicitor and Brett Thomas.
`Mr. Harvey said all councilmembers have an envelope sitting on their desks that is marked “Confidential First Class Mail”. He said he hates to betray their confidence, but so councilmembers don’t have to rush to pick it up, it is a letter from a group called CitizensServe to offer services for on-line processing of permitting, planning and zoning, code enforcement, licensing and inspection. He said secondly, he received a packet in the mail with a letter and photos, which he will submit as part of the Communications for our next agenda packet. The letter is from Rayetta Waldo. He said he has actually scanned the document and sent it on to the solicitors today. He said it is a three-page letter addressing Rayetta’s property on Zero Ora Richey Road, and it is 34 acres of non-inhabited land, and one parcel of land her daughter and son-in-law now have that is in the City limits; the rest of it is actually considered in the City limits, and she is requesting that we detach or de-annex the rest of that property for multiple reasons that are outlined in this letter. He said it mentions Ohio Revised Code Chapter 709, and there are certain qualifications to be annexed, and she meets all of those four qualifications with that property. He said a little background about that property specifically, when she deeded that parcel to her daughter and son-in-law, there were a lot of issues with trying to get City services set up out there, particularly with sanitary. He said at one point, not during Sam’s administration, it was recommended to do a septic because they were having so many issues trying to get sanitary out there to them. But a septic system is not acceptable in the City limits, and also that property has some coyotes and wildlife and plenty of deer, but you can’t shoot a gun in the City limits either. He said all of that is listed in here. He had a brief conversation with Brigham, not an official opinion, about that because his first thought was that it probably needs to go to the Annexation Committee to get a recommendation. He told Mr. Haney that he was the Chair of that Committee, and he asked about that process from the solicitors and you can be looking for that opinion because prior to the next meeting, Mr. Haney may have to call an Annexation Committee meeting to give that a favorable or unfavorable recommendation. He said it also requires an ordinance, and Mr. Harvey told them he would sponsor it to put on the next agenda to discuss. He specifically asked Rayetta if there were any plans to make any other dwellings out there, and she said she has actually tried for many years to think of utilization of that land, such as a subdivision for that land since it is within the City limits, but it would be cost-prohibitive as far as the infrastructure putting it out there, the roads putting it out there, and the amount of lots she could get out of it. So they don’t plan on doing anything with that land other than leaving it a rural, forested area. He said it really shouldn’t be in the City limits, in his opinion. He wanted Council to know that is going to be on our agenda next week. He said he would send that packet to the rest of them, but he didn’t want to send unprompted without any context. Mayor Cramblit said regarding the first thing Mr. Harvey brought up, they are actually implementing a Code Enforcement software. Secondly, he wanted to ask Mr. Harvey if this property was on a hillside? Mr. Harvey said there are multiple hills. Mayor Cramblit asked if that storm water from that hill contribute to our runoff inside the City that come through on 141? He said he is guessing there is a lot of run-off. Brett Thomas said the one parcel that Mr. Harvey mentioned is tied to the city sewer and gets city water. Mr. Harvey said there were numerous issues when they were building on that parcel, and another one is there is fire hydrant there at the end of Ora Richey Road, but it can’t reach the entire property and the water pressure wouldn’t allow them to even put out a fire at the end of that property if that was the case. Rayetta said Chief Mahlmeister told her that they could only go up to 500 feet with their hoses, so they can’t even reach the majority of that acreage. If there was a fire, they wouldn’t be able to put it out with City services. He said there is a lot to consider, but he wanted Council to be aware of it. He said he will send this information out to Council. Mr. Cleary said he worked with Rayetta a couple of years ago when they were building that house for her daughter, and there is a 12-inch sewer line and as you go up this road another 300 feet, it went down to 10 inch or 8 inch. He said he doesn’t know what that final size was, but that sewer line was right against the edge of her property and it’s in the City, so she wanted the sewer line from the house they were building to tie into it. He said it was a major deal. They had sewer people looking at it, and they said they don’t know if that house would make the line overflow or flood. He said they got that all worked out, and they built a beautiful home, and they had to go through the creek and they did tie into it and it was a dead end. He said the water was not an issue at all because they had the fire plug. But it was quite an ordeal to get it, and if you’re thinking of putting another house or two up through there, you would almost have to have a pump station or something if they’re going to get into the City sewer line, because there just wasn’t hardly enough capacity left for the one house. Mr. Harvey said he failed to mention that the last part of the letter talks about how you request a de-annexation, and you can do that through the local City legislature, which would be an ordinance, which is what she is requesting us to do; but if we reject that, there is also an option to go through court. She mentions the four factors that weigh in that decision, and that she meets all of those criteria. He said he will let Council review all of that and get an opinion from Brigham and Mack on the process that that needs to follow. He said Mr. Haney was the Chairman of that committee, and we may need one of those Committee meetings to give that a recommendation. Mr. Cleary said he would also sponsor that legislation.
COMMUNICATIONS – None
REPORTS – None
ORDINANCES – None
RESOLUTIONS
RESOLUTION NO. 21-03 – 2021 SALARY RESOLUTION – ESTABLISHING SALARIES FOR NON-UNION EMPLOYEES
Mr. Cleary said this Resolution was given a favorable recommendation from the Finance Committee this evening. Mr. Cleary moved, seconded by Mr. Haney, to pass Resolution No. 21-03. Mr. Haney said he wanted to thank Mr. Harvey for all of his work on this Resolution. He said he was disappointed that they had some negative comments and negativity from people who are involved the Resolution. He said he has been employed for a decade, and there are times when the insurance goes up, and we don’t get a raise. He said they worked very hard on this and made sure that the increase was off-set and nobody would be upset. But he doesn’t understand someone being upset about getting a raise. Obviously, if it wasn’t enough, then maybe somebody should work harder and show supervisor’s that they will work more, but to receive a pay increase and complain was very disappointing. He said he thought about voting no on this or amend it, but he doesn’t want to hold up the progress of other people who are deserving a raise. He said he is going to vote yes on it, but he is still disappointed.
Motion passed unanimously. ADOPTED
MISCELLANEOUS
Mr. Harvey said to Mr. Haney that in Finance Committee meeting before he joined, they were talking about the organization meeting of December 1, 2121, whenever the new Council is sworn in and they go through the positions that Council appoints. He said they typically do that every two years during that organization meeting, unless someone is terminated or resigns. He said they were talking about how during that time, he has never seen it during his time on Council, but they need to add the Civil Service Clerk to that organizational meeting and appoint the Civil Service Clerk. He said he would remind Mr. Haney because he will need the set-up of the organizational meeting. He said none of them could remember Council appointing the Civil Service Clerk, and he thinks Mr. Cleary is going to take care of that under Miscellaneous this evening. He said the opinion they received was that the Civil Service Clerk really should be included in the Salary Resolution because it is paid by the City, it is appointed by a Council and it is a non-union position. Mr. Cleary moved, seconded by Mr. Haney, to appoint Jonda Vaughn as the Civil Service Clerk and add it to the Salary Resolution with her salary. Motion passed unanimously.
Mr. Haney said he didn’t know if everybody got the email he sent with the quotes about the leaf collection equipment. He said that was the only person he could find, but if anybody knows of any other companies, let him know and he will contact them and try to get the best prices they can find. Mr. Pierce said on his email those quotes didn’t come through. He said he may want to send them again as an attachment. Mr. Harvey asked Mr. Haney if he had asked Jeff Townsend if he had any suggestions on somebody that did that kind of work. He said it seems like something that would be in his wheelhouse. Mr. Haney said he had not contacted him, but he would. He said this company said they have worked with municipalities and they understood where we are on the river and understood EPA mandates, etc. He said it sounded like they work with a lot of towns along the river. He said this company has references from other municipalities, and they are willing to give us any information we need.
Mr. Kline said Mr. Elam sent out an email out earlier from Mike Burns from Baird and Associates just to check in that we are in compliance with our bond covenants for the waste water storm bond, and he wanted the Clerk to make this part of the minutes.
Mayor Cramblit said Terri Smith already gave the letter to Mr. Harvey about Mark Dickess’ appointment to the Income Tax Review Board.
Mr. Kline moved, seconded by Mr. Pierce, to go into Executive Session to discuss litigation with the Mayor, the Solicitor and Brett Thomas, with no action to follow. Motion passed unanimously.
Minutes were taken by Marta Leach, Clerk.
In attendance: John Elam, Finance Director, Mayor Cramblit.