Rasor for Stow

As the Beacon Journal reported, Marsh Road in Stow will be closed for 24 hours following a break in the sanitary sewer.

Also this…

My open hours are tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall in the mayor’s conference room on the second floor. If you are interested in discussing the airport issue and my discussion with the Federal Aviation Administration, please drop by around 6. At 5:30, some residents of Wyoga Lake are coming to discuss a noise issue. So if that pertains to you, you are welcome to join for that, as well.

Here are my notes during tonight’s council meeting:

We passed a commendation for Jack Edwards, celebrating his 228th blood donation. He was inducted into the American Red Cross Blood Donor Hall of Fame for that achievement. I was happy to vote yes honoring a selfless man like Mr. Edwards.

A Hudson resident made a moral claim after he caused an accident pulling out of a Hudson Drive parking lot. He claimed there should have been a “no left turn” sign. His claim of $6,376.76 was rejected by a 0-7 vote. Sara Drew wants the readers of this blog to know she voted “no” on something.

Regarding the contract with BFG Consultants, Mayor Fritschel does not want to call them “lobbyists.” The measure didn’t get enough votes for suspension of the rules because Joe Hickin voted not to, and Matt Riehl abstained.

After yesterday’s storms, there was some tree damages on 12 streets. Stow has a drop-off site for foilage that storms create (or otherwise) at Silver Springs Park.

We are going to repave some roads in September or October. Ellsworth and Charring Cross are two high-priority roads. It will be a “very, very small program,” according to service director Dano Koehler.

Wal-Mart is 20 spaces shy of what’s required by code. It has a chunk of spaces at 9.5 feet and a chunk for employees at 9 feet. The landscape percentage variance is going from 18 percent impervious surface to 14 percent. The actual landscaping will remain the same. The difference is that Wal-Mart and Lowe’s are now being considered separately. I’m about the free market dictating what happens, within reason and within reasonable safety constrictions. If Wal-Mart wants a store with fewer spaces, it’s good that they have to go before the Planning Commission as a procedural safeguard. Wal-Mart takes care of its property, particularly its stormwater basins. The only real reason to vote “no” is if you don’t like Wal-Mart’s expansion as an economic impact in the community or if you think the government should nitpick private businesses. Jim Costello and Joe Hickin voted not to suspend the rules, so it received its first reading tonight and was not passed.

Joe Hickin voted “no” against giving the VFW a variance to permit them to expand for gambling machines that are not yet legal, but might become legal. He thought we were putting “the cart before the horse” because of the uncertainty. I respect his opinion, but it doesn’t bother me so much because, as Jim Costello said, nothing will happen if the General Assembly does not approve these gaming machines. It passed 6-1.

My notes from last night…

Planning Committee

We heard about the variances Wal-Mart seeks for its expansion: reducing amount of parking spaces, reducing width on 339 of the parking spaces from 10 feet to 9.5 feet, and cutting landscape-to-impervious surface ratio variance from 18 percent to 14 percent. I think each of us had some qualms about what Wal-Mart wanted to do, mostly with parking, but no single issue was enough to stop the variances from going through committee.

Finance Committee

Your water rates will be going up from $3.13 to $3.26. This is a 4.2 percent increase based on Akron’s increased bulk rate of 9.48 percent.

We voted to extend the contract with BFG Consulting lobbyists through the end of the year for $25,000 for the purposes of fixing the municipal court problem. The Ohio General Assembly will be gone until the fall, so nothing is imminent. The mayor believes Stow has a “reasonable and good chance of doing what we want to do.” This $25,000 was already budgeted for. We have already used BFG for $23,000 in services. As the mayor said, we’re trying not to pay $450,000 to $500,000 per year on the court deficit.

The committee approved $15,000 for outside legal counsel on a “personnel problem.” The Finance Committee is capable of passing expenditures up to $15,000 without going to the full council, so it did. If the expenditure was a dollar more, it would’ve gone on to Thursday.

The committee approved to prepay about $19,000 for a water line to a residence on Progress Park. The resident will pay us back. I’m glad to see that water line be extended. I think it’s inexcusable for any street in our well-developed city to lack a water line.

The next 10 days are packed with city meetings.

– Tomorrow, we will have a committee meeting to discuss several important matters: a contract with a lobbying firm regarding the courthouse, expenditures on outside legal counsel, and the state of 2009 income tax receipts. We will then go into executive session to discuss pending/imminent litigation. The meeting starts at 5:30 p.m.

– Tuesday is a meeting to discuss the comprehensive plan at 7 p.m. in council chambers.

– Thursday is a council meeting at 7 p.m.

– The following Tuesday (the 29th) is my rescheduled open hours. Generally, it’s the first Tuesday of the month, but we have a committee meeting planned for July 6. These are particularly important open hours because Matt Riehl and I will be discussing my meeting with the Federal Aviation Administration officials in Washington, D.C. last week. The open hours begin at 5:30, but we won’t begin discussion of airport matters until around 6. Everyone is welcome to attend the entire time (between 5:30 and 7).

In the news…

You should pick up a copy of the Stow Sentry to see how multiple residents responded to Sara Drew and John Pribonic’s complaint of “meanness.” The letters can be found here.

The Press Club of Cleveland awarded the Stow Sentry with its Best Non-Daily Newspaper in Ohio Award. I applaud the Sentry, its managers, editors and writers. The Sentry does a great job covering all things Stow — and with a small staff. I am especially happy to see the paper begin to take a heavier editorial stance. I learned journalism in the shadow of John S. Knight at the Beacon Journal. Knight was a great leader from the editorial page, and he was every bit as influential as any elected official. The Sentry, through Mike Lesko, Marsha McKenna and others, have done a great deal to advance our community by knowledge, as well.

Speaking of the Beacon Journal, I read this article discussing employees who double-dip (collect a pension while continuing to work for the state in a different — or sometimes the same — capacity). I am working on a solution to see that Stow does not contribute to the problem. Currently, at least three Stow employees are double-dipping. I don’t blame them. They are working within the confines of the rules for the benefit of their families. But our leaders need to do something to protect our failing pension system and struggling city finances.

Is your coffee spilling in the cupholder on the way to work? Is it unsafe to ride your bike on the street? Does your neighborhood look like its wearing down, but you can’t quite put a finger on why?

These are all symptoms of the awful state of Stow’s secondary and neighborhood roads.

After hearing for the past year about how bad Stow’s roads are, I decided to test the theory. Does the data support residents’ complaints? The answer, as you can see below, is YES.

Let me start by explaining how the city rates its roads. The Service Department uses a 1-100 scale, based on visual appearance, structural damage and the extent of the stress on the road. A newly resurfaced road gets a score of 100. A totally failed road is a 0.

Here are other adjectives the Service Department uses to describe the scale and how many roads currently are within those parameters. Once a road dips below 65, it should be resurfaced:

100 – 91 Very Good (186 roads)
90 – 75 Good (133 roads)
74 – 65 Fair (64 roads)
64 – 55 Fair to Poor (46 roads)
54 – 40 Poor (49 roads)
39 – 0 Very Poor (53 roads)

If you crunch the numbers, you’ll see that 39 percent of Stow’s roads are in need of repair. But it goes beyond that. Once an asphalt surface gets bad enough, the city has to perform a more costly structural repair of the lower six to 12 inches, before resurfacing the top two inches. Here is how the rankings correlate to the amount of structural repair:

0 – 20 Rebuild; significant base repairs are required (17 roads)
21 – 50 Large amount of base repairs required, but not a total rebuild (66 roads)
51 – 65 Some base repairs, but typically limited to small areas (69 roads)

If the city properly sticks to its road program, each road will be resurfaced every 14 years. But Stow has deviated drastically from its Road Program in the past few years. Council has passed budgets that violate the ordinance requiring a 60-40 ratio between operating budget and capital budget. The mayor (with council approval) has taken $1.5 million that was supposed to be used on the roads and spent it for other purposes (i.e. paying a mortgage on a golf course, moving a court house, buying a $100K tour bus, giving raises in a recession).

Road repairs are an investment. Refusing to make them is nothing more than passing the problem to the next generation of Stow residents — or to the next mayor. Even if our income tax somehow returns to previous levels, we won’t notice because of all the structural repairs that are way overdue.

How overdue? Below are the roads that are rated at 20 or worse:

Cardinal Circle (Leewood Drive to Cul-de-sac)
Charring Cross Drive (Graham Rd to Kent Rd)
Moreland Avenue (Graham to Berger)
Wickley Avenue (Santom to Osage)
Edgewood Road (Graham to Wetmore)
Paradise Drive (Oak to Elm)
Ellsworth Road (Hudson to Springdale)
Newcomer Road (171′ N/Graham to Young)
Seneca Street (S End to 3729)
Yukon Road (Darrow to Kent)
Kenneth Road (Samira to 100′ E/Burton)
North River Road (Marsh to E Corp Line)
Oak Road (Graham to Paradise)
Sycamore Drive (Wetmore to Kent)
Waxwing Trail (Leewood to 198′ N of Leewood)
Gorge Park Boulevard (Kent to Pattyann)
Ritchie (Hudson to Galaxy)

Click here to find your road on the complete list: Street Index working copy

If your road is on that list, don’t sit by idly. Tell your neighbors. Hold the politicians responsible. Mayor Fritschel presented budgets that stripped a total of $1.5 million from the roads budget the past two years. The following members of council went along with the budget and resisted my attempts to put money back into the roads fund: John Pribonic, Sara Drew, Jim Costello and Janet D’Antonio.

Keep speaking your mind in the newspaper and at council meetings. Don’t let the Good Ole’ Boy Network intimidate you. The future of our city is at stake.

Meanness? That is how Sara Drew and John Pribonic characterize some of the letters to the editor and “website blogs” in their own letter to the editor this weekend.

Let me clear the muddied line between being “mean” and being “blunt.” The former is done to hurt someone. The latter is done to express a message without confusion. Those letters were blunt. This blog is blunt. But it is not mean.

What is “mean”? Let me take some examples from the Good Ole’ Boy Network’s conduct in the past six months: 1) Spreading untrue, yet serious, rumors about elected officials. 2) An elected councilperson calling residents to scream at them and threaten them regarding their letters to the editor. 3) Cussing out an elected official via repeated anonymous e-mails.

The writers of these letters to the editor, on the other hand, put their names on something with substance. They laid their reputations at stake to take a stand on how their city government is operating. And, despite Sara Drew’s accusation of “inaccurate and misleading facts,” those residents provided truthful statements. On the contrary, it was Sara Drew’s letter from the week before contained multiple untrue statements, such as:

SARA SAYS: “The courthouse building has been financed by the court’s own funds, not the city of Stow.”
The TRUTH: The courthouse building HAS NOT been financed by the court. Rather, the city financed it, and the city has not yet told the court just how much it owes on the mortgage. The court has paid some money toward the building, but it did not pay the full amount in 2009, nor 2010.

SARA SAYS: “The city owned the home that the Stow Senior Center now occupies, and the work of remodeling was completed by in-house staff at a minimal cost.”
The TRUTH: Yes, the city owned it, but we paid $175,000 for it. And it cost $58,000 to fix it up. Is that a minimal cost? I’m not saying the Senior Center was a bad idea. I actually like it, but be honest about the numbers.

SARA SAYS: “The golf course is an asset owned by the city and has made an operating profit each year it has been under city ownership.”
The TRUTH: According to the state auditor, Fox Den did not make an operating profit last year — and that’s before you toss in the almost $400,000 in annual payments on the mortgage.

I’ve been fielding calls and talking to people around town about these councilpeople writing letters to the editor. And it’s hypocritical to complain about lies when the very letter they signed was full of misleading (or patently untruthful statements). People think it’s ridiculous that elected officials are battling ordinary concerned citizens in the newspaper — and the politicians don’t even know the facts about their own city.

…

While I was in D.C., I recognized something. One-party rule is bad for all jurisdictions: local, county, state and federal. When the GOP held all the branches of government in Washington, problems happened. Now that the Democrats have absolute control, you see the same thing.

It’s certainly not about Republicans vs. Democrats at Stow City Hall. I think Jim Costello (a Democrat) is a thoughtful representative. I think Janet D’Antonio (a Republican) is open-minded and fair. But you have others whose short-sightedness and political warfare is frightening.

This should be a time of growth for Stow. Surrounding communities see Stow as a city with great upside. Rather, we have let 150 streets fall into disrepair, have passed three-straight annual budgets with six-figure deficits, and have looked like fools because we have councilpeople whining and lying in the newspaper.

And it brings me back to the one-party rule problem. For the past few years, it has been one party. Those days are over. And Sara Drew doesn’t like it. She hates people writing letters to the editor. She can’t stand this Web site. She probably isn’t in favor of losing her image as Ms. Positive.

After almost six months in office, I don’t claim to have all the answers. But I take pride in the fact that our residents are beginning to hold our politicians accountable for their votes.

It’s not meanness. It’s democracy.

I had an informative day today in Washington, D.C., acquainting myself with how the federal government works with cities.

We had seminars starting at 8:30 this morning, followed by meetings with federal agencies. Here are some notes…

– Rep. John Boehner spoke with us in the morning. As House Minority Leader, he discussed the state of affairs in Congress. He is a fascinating speaker, and if things in November go a certain way, he likely will be the Speaker of the House next year.

– A representative from the National League of Cities spoke about health care reform and its impact on municipalities.

– An expert in federal grants explained the procedure for applying for (and complying with) federal grants. In 2009, the feds gave out $500 billion in grants (not including the stimulus package). That accounted for 17 percent of the total budget. About 8 percent of that money went directly to local governments. To learn about what grants are available, cities can visit www.grants.gov.

– A speaker from the National Associates of Manufacturers spoke about the impact of EPA regulations on manufacturers. He estimated that EPA compliance has cost the economy 2.1 million jobs.

– I spoke with three upper-level managers in the Federal Aviation Administration regarding Kent State Airport. They gave me a rundown of the relevant federal law and we discussed potential solutions. I intend to reach out to the affected residents to examine those ideas. If you are a resident upset about low-flying planes, click the “contact me” button above and I will fill you in.

– Last night we got into town and Rep. Steve LaTourette provided a private tour of the Capitol. It was truly an amazing experience. The beauty and majesty of the Capitol revived my sense of pride in country. LaTourette took us onto the house floor, where Matt Riehl and I re-enacted the displeasure shown by Sam Alito and John Roberts during January’s State of the Union Address. I also visited the Supreme Court and Library of Congress. This town is amazing. Below are some pictures, but not of the house floor, where photography is strictly prohibited.

Capitol during day

Supreme Court doors to the courtroom

Capitol during night (an amazing sight)

Statuary Hall in the Capitol

Capitol dome from inside

Tonight, we had an informational meeting on tax incentives. Our guest speaker was Matt Sutherland, a senior tax incentive specialist for Ohio Department of Development.

I knew a little bit about how we granted tax incentives, but this meeting filled in the blanks regarding how it works together with the school district. The school board members also attended this meeting. Stow’s most common incentive is the Community Reinvestment Area (CRA).

Here is basically how the CRA works: We exempt taxes that businesses pay on improvements to real property for a given time. For example, if you want to double the size of your factory, and the expansion costs $5 million, then you normally would have to pay a lot more on property taxes because of the increased value of your property. Stow can come in and exempt that added tax cost in exchange for a promise to hire a certain amount of employees (or relocate to Stow). We can crunch the numbers to ensure that it makes good sense for our tax base. Mike Weddle and Ken Trenner do a great job with that.

The school district isn’t always so keen about these deals because of the obvious: It cuts down their normal share of taxes from that land. But the school district is not without remedy. Under Ohio law…

– The schools get a veto for any exemption greater than 50 percent of the addition of property tax.
– If the school district does not choose to exercise its veto, then the schools receive 50 percent of those property tax losses to the school OR 50 percent of the boost in city income tax revenues, whichever is greater, for as long as the CRA is in effect (usually 10 years).
– If the school district does not have the authority to veto (i.e., the exemption is less than 50 percent), then the school district is entitled to a 50 percent share of increased income tax as soon as the increased income tax surpasses $1 million. (And yes, you might be thinking, “What if the increase in taxes is $1,000,001?” In that case, it’s counter-intuitive; Stow would have much been off not making that extra dollar.)

That assessment is accurate, or at least I hope so. Janet D’Antonio and the school district treasurer Catherine Bulgrin were asking questions complex enough that our guest expert, Mr. Sutherland, has to get back to us on the answer. Stow has agreed to three or four CRAs in the past few years. Generally, they pop up more frequently, but businesses simply aren’t expanding nowadays.

During the meeting, Mayor Frischel made a good point. Schools can’t really be upset with a CRA, she said. Without the abatement (and thus, without the property enhancement), the schools would get a 100 person share — of nothing. Rather, the schools get a 50 percent share of what amounts to found money. Of course, that assumes that the city is judicious in granting abatements. There must be causation between the city’s offering of the abatement and the company’s decision to expand/relocate.

In other news, I’m leaving for Washington, D.C., tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to seeing the Supreme Court, White House, etc., but I’m also excited to discover some solutions to problems I have heard about since taking office. I’ll report what I learn here, as always.

Charter Review met last Thursday and came to some important conclusions:

– The group agreed by a 5-2 vote to put term limits for city council on the ballot. It appears that the limitation will be a total of eight years.

– By a 4-3 vote, the commission rejected an amendment to expand council terms to four years.

– Following up on the unanimous desire among the commission members to achieve consistency with term limits, the commission voted 4-3 to also put Mayor and Law Director up for repealing term limits. Finance Director also will be on the ballot for adding term limits.

– The option to appoint Law Director and Finance Director failed by a 5-2 vote.

– Doris Stewart will draft qualifications for Finance Director and present them this Thursday. My guess is that the position will be opened up for people with more than just an accounting background. Here are the current qualifications, under Sect. 6.02 of the Charter…

The Director of Finance shall have knowledge of municipal accounting, taxation, budgets and financial control, and shall hold an accounting degree from an accredited college or university or have had at least five years’ experience in corporate, business, municipal, county, state or federal finance in a management level position prior to his/her election.

– The Commission will reconvene Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Boards and Commissions Room on the first floor of City Hall. It looks like they tackled all of the hot-button issues last week. I’m happy with how everything came out. You can read the minutes from last week by clicking the following link: Charter Review Commission Minutes 060310

– Before that, Council will meet with the School Board tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:30 in a special Committee-of-the-Whole meeting to discuss tax incentives.

Here are my notes from tonight’s meetings:

Planning Committee

– The Acker-Moore VFW wanted a variance in order to build an addition for video bingo, which is not legal yet, but might soon be legal if a measure passes in the Ohio General Assembly this fall. We moved it forward by a 3-1 count. Joe Hickin didn’t like allowing the variance for a currently illegal purpose (although the addition won’t occur if the law doesn’t pass in Columbus).

– We WILL have a meeting on Wednesday where the School Board will come and talk about tax incentives. It was first canceled, and now it is back on. You might have seen a cancellation notice in the Stow Sentry. Please disregard that. It is at 5:30 in council chambers.

– Economic development director Mike Weddle told us that things are moving along with PolyFlow and that Stow is frontrunner for this very exciting company. Its award-winning technology converts used plastics into fuel. I offered my services to do whatever I can to bring PolyFlow to Stow.

Finance Committee

– Eight banks offered to do business with Stow as depositories, so the Finance Committee reviewed eight pieces of legislation. Only one bank, CF of Fairlawn, did not have a branch in Stow. Janet D’Antonio made a motion to remove CF from the list of available banks, and it passed. I disagreed, because we want as many banks as possible to hopefully get the best rates. The more competition, the better. It’s a different argument to desire preference to be given to a Stow bank. In this instance, however, you’re removing the one non-Stow bank from consideration altogether and potentially relinquishing an opportunity to save taxpayer’s money on a better rate, in case CF offers a better deal. Those seven pieces of legislation will be decided on Thursday.

– We discussed the merits of hiring an attorney to negotiate with our unions. We traditionally spend between $10,000 and $60,000 on these negotiators. I favor the wait-and-see approach. If we can’t come to an agreement, then we can bring in the pros. I think we owe the taxpayers to put forth a good faith effort to negotiate with the unions before immediately bringing in outsiders. Think of it this way: Any money we spend on an attorney is a sunk cost — it doesn’t stay in the city coffers and it doesn’t go toward compensating our employees. It should be the last option, not the first.

– Joe Hickin mentioned a legal opinion that Sara Drew requested from Law Director Brian Reali. Below, I’ll post what she requested:

1. Does an individual Council member have the authority to meet with an outside vendor in an attempt to discuss possible contracting with that vendor for a service to the City? By authority, I mean does an individual Council member have standing to represent the City if he or she has not been asked to represent the City by Council as a whole or by the Mayor?

As an example, if I thought it might be a good idea for the City to hire a company that could take over City operations of pruning and managing all the trees in the Parks, rather than the in-house arborists, would I have the authority to contact tree management firms and meet with them on my own?

2. If I did meet with a possible vendor prior to any RFP’s being sought, would my meeting with a potential vendor compromise that company’s position if they subsequently chose to bid on the job? Would it matter whether or not I had provided that company with specific information (i.e. using my example–if I had provided that company with the approximate number of trees owned by the City, number of employees currently needed to manage the trees and the amount of money/salaries of those City employees, etc.)?

3. If I, or any Council member, had privately met with a vendor and that vendor subsequently was awarded the contract, would my position be jeopardized once my prior meeting with that vendor came to light? In other words, am I then in danger of violating any ethics laws, presuming I am not accepting a bribe, kickback or other benefit from the vendor? Obviously if a benefit was derived from the awarding of the contract that would violate ethics laws.

Because these sorts of opinions take up time from our busy law department, I asked her why she requested it. She refused to give a straight answer. Sara Drew plays political games. It’s not the first time she’s wasted our legal department’s time as a method of intimidating her fellow council members. You also saw her attacking residents in a letter to the editor last week.

On the other hand, I am looking for solutions for the problems our city faces. This week, I’m going to Washington, D.C., (on my own dime) to meet with the Federal Aviation Administration in an attempt to solve the airport issue, to meet with the Army Corps of Engineers to learn more about storm water management in an attempt to help our friends in Wyoga Lake, and to meet with the Economic Development Administration in an attempt to bring ideas back to Stow on attracting new business and grooming start-ups.