HomeMy WebLinkAbout10/07/1991
Minutes of
RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
Dublin City Council Meeting Page 1
Meeting
DAYTON LEGAL BLANK CO.. FORM NO. 10148
October 7, 1991
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The regularly scheduled meeting of the Dublin City Council was called to order by Mayor
Jan Rozanski at 7:30 P.M. on Monday, October 7, 1991. The Pledge of Allegiance was
repeated by all with all members being present.
Mayor Rozanski: Entertain a motion to approve the minutes of July 1, 1991.
Dan Sutphen: So moved.
A. C. Strip: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Any additions or corrections? Hearing none.
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Amorose: abstain
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Entertain a motion to approve the July 15, 1991 minutes.
Mr. Amorose: So moved.
Dan Sutphen: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Any additions or corrections? Hearing none.
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Campbell: abstain
Mr. Strip: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Entertain a motion to approve the minutes of August 5, 1991 Council
Meeting.
David Amorose: So moved.
A. C. Strip: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Any additions or corrections to the minutes. Hearing none.
Mr. Sutphen: abstain
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mrs. King: abstain
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Entertain a motion to approve the August 19, 1991 minutes.
David Amorose: So moved.
A. C. Strip: Second
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Mayor Rozanski: Any additions or corrections? Hearing none.
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Sutphen: abstain
Mrs. King: abstain
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Campbell: Yes
Mayor Rozanski: Any correspondence?
Myra: I have none, Your Honor.
Mayor Rozanski: I have one Proclamation I'd like to read. (Proclamation read designating
Saturday, October 19, 1991, as Community Bulb Planting Day in Dublin.) Ladies and
Gentlemen, on October 19th at 10:00 A.M. at Avery Road Park, there will be a bulb
planting demonstration given by Nancy Gill of the American Daffodil Society and
immediately after that, they're asking for volunteers to plant bulbs in the different parks
around Dublin. I think we all appreciate come spring, the beautiful daffodils out along
Route 33 between Frantz Road and 270, and all the other park entrances and corners we
have planted. We had our City Beautification Awards this Sunday and if you look out in
the hall, you'll see many pictures of houses throughout Dublin, and businesses; and I think
each and every one of them, this spring, had spring bulbs growing in them, which made it
a colorful picturesque landscape. So I encourage all of you to help us plant our spring bulbs
and get out and work with Parks and Recreation Department on the 19th. Next, we'll move
on to Comments From Visitors on anything that's not on tonight's agenda.
Comments From Visitors
Sarah Andres: I'd just like to thank one and all for proclaiming the Bulb Day, and on
behalf of that, I have a bag of bulbs for everyone to take a sample home and plant them
either at the entrance to your Civic Associations or get out in one of the parks and plant
them there.
Mayor Rozanski: Thank you very much, Okay, Mr. Chaisson.
I'm Jack Chaisson, I live on Whitecraigs Court, and I'm here as spokesperson for the
Concord/Dublin Emergency Services Committee. I wanted to comment on the recent
articles that have appeared in the Dublin News and Dublin Villager, and on the letter with
regard to the letter that was sent, addressed to Councilperson Denise King from the Citizens
Against the Boundary Change, urging the Safety Committee of Council to withdraw the
lawsuit. We were copied on that letter and were asked by the Citizens Against the
Boundary Change to review the facts and figures and to hopefully support their
recommendation that the lawsuit be withdrawn. We've reviewed the letter and we
respectfully decline to support their suggestions. I have a prepared statement which I would
like to read. First, we must congratulate Concord Township for having passed the fire levy
in November 1990, which incidentally was endorsed and supported by the Emergency
Services Committee, and for proceeding to improve the level of emergency services that are
provided to township residences. It is unfortunate that this action was not initiated until
after our successful petition campaign, and the enactment of emergency resolution by Dublin
City Council to withdraw the boundaries. For years, 1975 through 1990, Concord
Township collected fire district taxes from the rapidly developing Concord/Dublin area,
which is, of course, the northern part of Muirfield, and did nothing to upgrade their
emergency services. They failed to provide full time paramedics and they failed to build
another fire station closer to the most densely populated section of the township. Now that
they have started to improve those services, unfortunately it's too little and too late. After
reviewing the facts and figures that were presented by the Citizens Against Boundary
Change, Emergency Services Committee have found that Concord Township's emergency
services are a long way from being at a parity level to the emergency services that are being
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provided by Washington Township. Among the important facts and figures are that
Washington Township presently employs 26 full time paramedics and 7 part time
paramedics, while Concord has only 6 full time and 9 part time paramedics. Another fact
is that Concord now is providing 24-hour paramedics and if they do go out on a run, and
there is a second run called in, they have to rely on mutual aid from Washington Township.
Washington Township, on the other hand, if they're out on a run and a second run comes
in, they will send out paramedics on a fire truck, which would get to Concord/Dublin
quicker. The letter also mentions that Concord Township has hired an architectural firm
to remodel and upgrade their existing fire station and to design a second station that
eventually would be located in the southern portion of the township closer to
Concord/Dublin. Of course, the second station would require the passage of an additional
tax levy to fund it, plus time for site acquisition, design, and construction. Realistically,
we are looking at three to five years for that to happen. In the meantime, Washington
Township's fire station on Brand Road with its higher level emergency services, is located
approximately 1-112 miles from the closest home and 3-112 miles from the furthest home
in Concord/Dublin, while Concord's fire station on Dublin Road is located approximately
3 miles from the closest home and 5-112 miles from the furthest home in Concord/Dublin.
It is safe to say that at least 80 % of the homes in Concord/Dublin are closer to the
Washington Township Brand Road fire station than the Concord fire station. In conclusion,
we urge City Council to take no action on withdrawing the lawsuit. We look forward to
a favorable court decision being rendered, whereby the boundaries will be redrawn and
Concord/Dublin will become part of Washington Township. We will gladly pay the higher
level of taxes, but there are already in place higher level of emergency services. One
additional fact that I did develop, or Chief Bostic, developed shows the inequity of the
situation right now, during the first 6 months of this year, Washington made 50 emergency
service runs into Concord Township; and Concord made 1 into Washington Township.
Washington Township made 27 fire runs into Concord Township, and Concord made 1 fire
run into Washington Township. We certainly urge to stay the course and proceed on the
course you have been. I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Steve Smith: I'd like to be able to tell you that I have a decision in my hand from the
Supreme Court, but I can't do that. We talked to the Supreme Court last Friday afternoon,
and we're advised the same thing we'd been advised the previous week, and that is that all
the cases prior to our case have been decided and that this surely was one of the older cases
that we could expect a decision on soon. And that's what we got. Unfortunately, or
fortunately I guess as the case may be, I'm not, this isn't a court where I am permitted to
approach a justice and ask what is happening. You talk to the Clerk, you talk to the silent
people, you talk to various other people in the Supreme Court, but as a lawyer we are not
allowed to try and influence the Court. The other good news, I guess, is there has not been
any other decisions come down that appear to be later argued cases. Thank you.
Denise King: Jack, I was just asked that you provide a copy of your testimony to the other
members of Council, if you have it in that written out form, because as always, you do
good homework, and I think those facts and figures are some that we'll need to call on
again. If it's appropriate now, it may also be useful for Dana to give us a brief look into
the work that he has been doing that's relevant to this issue, or he could hold that off to
Staff Reports, but then I'm afraid some of the interested parties will be gone.
Mayor Rozanski: Dana, why don't you go ahead whil~ we're on the subject.
Dana McDaniel: I won't go into a lot of detail but I'll tell you basically where I'm at. I've
developed a rather lengthy survey which I passed out to all the fire chiefs in Concord,
Washington, and Perry, and I've received that information back. I've been beating down
the door of the State Auditor's office, getting information in regards to budgetary
information, I've got all that stuff gathered and now I'm getting it loaded onto computer,
trying to do some things like that, to analyze the data that I have. And basically what I
informed Denise of the other day was, I intend to cost out five different fire operation
scenarios to give you some options in the future in terms of fire service, and that feeds into
a lot of bigger pictures in regards to levies and paper townships, and the things you've been
looking at before. So it's just information, for information only, you do what you want
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with it. I know that you are all trying to understand fire service a little bit better, and I
think once I got into it, I realized just what a complex animal it was, and how little I really
knew about fire service. And hopefully, I'll be staff expert anyway on fire service by the
time I get done with this, and maybe at least inform you of tax structures and where that
stuff's going, and what the fire departments are doing. And I'd like to say that the chiefs
have been most supportive in giving the information, they've been really great. But yet to
come, I have to get a Solid Waste Management plan and a couple other things out of the
way, and I'm trying to balance those, so I apologize for taking so long. Hopefully, within
the next couple weeks.
Mayor Rozanski: Anybody else have any questions for Dana or Mr. Chaisson or Steve
Smith, or the chief, for that matter? I have one, Chief. Seems like there's a greater
disparity in the number of runs this year that last, even with the improved service in
Concord, the ratios seem to be even more off this year than ever. Can you give us some
explanation? So, you're not waiting for a call from Concord?
F'
Tim Hansley: I think to maybe just insert just slightly from what really is happening, and
the Chief said it, but you may have missed it through the cracks a little bit, and that's that
Washington is really divided it's way to itself, in a sense, with both stations, when they
need the second medic, or the second engine on a run, let's say into southern Muirfield,
which is their territory, as opposed to calling Concord and wondering about 7 or 8 or 9,
whatever minute response time, they know that Station 91 would be the first backup, so
that's how the running card is set up now, they are each way to themselves, if you want to
look at it that way. On the other hand, Concord is using them more often, so that the gap
is even wider than it's ever been. We're calling them much less, once for fire, once for
squad, since 93's been opened. And they are calling us more often because now we have
a running card system that our police dispatcher uses, or provides that service to them. So,
it's an automatic response from Washington into Concord, and not an automatic response
from Concord into Washington. So that's where the gap's wider than it's ever been. And
the service level currently is up, that is not separate.
itF'
Mayor Rozanski: Any other comments from citizens on items that are not on tonight's
agenda? We'll move on to the agenda. First, we have Third Reading of Ordinance No.
54-91 by title only.
Ordinance No. 54-91 - Ordinance Authorizing the City Manager to Enter into a Sewer
Line Extension Agreement with Davidson, Phillips, Inc. (This was tabled last meeting.)
Mayor Rozanski: Entertain a motion to remove this from the table.
Denise King: So moved.
A. C. Strip: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Discussions about removing this from the table? Hearing none.
Mrs. King: yes
Ms. Maurer: away from table
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Steve Smith: We are, at this time, would ask Council to approve the Ordinance. As of
4:30 this afternoon, the last draft of the extension agreement between the private sector and
the City of Dublin, came to pass, it's unexecuted obviously, because we've not passed the
Ordinance, that's a 12-14 page agreement, and if Council wishes to discuss it in any detail,
I'll be happy to; but I'd rather give you an overview and tell you that this is approximately
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a $600,000 project with the public sector paying $225 and the City paying $375 per the
instructions from Council, and it will extend the service area as noted in the maps, and in
fact, it will provide the City the opportunity to serve other areas far beyond the area owned
by the developer. It is crucial, if this agreement is to be made, that this be passed this
evening since the developer, while we have been negotiating and working out this
agreement, is now in their last extension, and they must close tomorrow to buy the
property. We feel comfortable with the agreement for two reasons. Number 1, it does
extend the service from the Ashland line under 270 to the property and provides it to the
oversizing so the rest of the area can be served; and 2, it is a public/private partnership in
the numbers that Council directed us to initiate some time ago in Executive Session. And
I think, basically, in it there is a payback agreement, obviously, and many, many terms in
this document; but it basically does everything now that Council has instructed us to initiate
with the private sector. '
Terry Foegler: Just by way of comment on an issue that was raised with a similar
inducement agreement that we addressed a week ago. It does have an absolute cap that the
City will provide for this project, and that is specified as a cap within the agreement.
A. C. Strip: The only question I had and I tried to look for it before the meeting and could
not find it, are these funds already encumbered, or budgeted, or, these are not new dollars,
are they?
Terry Foegler: They have not been yet appropriated, they won't be appropriated until an
agreement is signed and we're ready to pay. However, for the Capital Improvement
Revenues that were available, that Council was told about at the CIP meeting, these $375
were encumbered and subtracted from what you were told was available. They have yet
to be appropriated, they've been considered in all our capital budgeting.
A. C. Strip: In this amount?
Terry Foegler: Yes.
Charles Ruma, Developer: Thank you, Mayor, it's always a pleasure to be here in Dublin.
It's a lot more pleasurable on evenings like tonight when I think we've solved a problem
that's taken us probably three months of hard work, trying to figure out the format in which
to accomplish something very sensible, and this does make a lot of sense for us, and more
importantly, the City of Dublin. I saw the last draft, I've now read it twice, I believe it's
in correct form, and if it isn't, I'm sure the City Attorney will make changes as appropriate;
and we'll be glad to cooperate with that, but we really need to move ahead and I hate to see
things being put on a burden, but my date for go or no-go is October 8, assuming that this
was the last meeting that I could possibly get to, and I have to let Mr. Barney know whether
or not I'm going to buy his property. So I need this agreement tonight. And I thank all
of you for the cooperation we have received.
Mayor Rozanski: Thank you, Charlie, we're looking forward to your development coming
to Dublin. Any questions or comments from Council?
Barbara Maurer: The agreement I had in the mail, what we reviewed.
Steve Smith: The agreement you have is probably 3rd or 4th draft of it. The basis of the
agreement, that is $600,000, the $225 and the $375, does not change. The only thing that
is changed is the manner, the quickness of the payback, and designated some areas, how
they're going to be served, and things of that nature; but the agreement you have in theory
is exactly the same, but it's been revised about 8 times now.
Mayor Rozanski: Steve, we got these on Saturday, I believe.
Terry Foegler: Steve, this version is a later version. The only changes that aren't in here
are a couple minor --.
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Steve Smith: It's not the same one you have, Barbara, since Saturday, it's not the same one
you have. It was changed this afternoon at 4:30 - technical changes.
Terry Foegler: Yes, the changes have been very minor, typographical types of
improvements, this was second to the last version.
Barbara Maurer: I have one question, on page 5, everything else seems to have a time
limit, but the review by our Engineer after receiving the plan, does not have a time limit.
It says "it shall be expeditiously conducted and not unreasonably withheld", but I guess that
I wonder why that doesn't have a time limit.
Terry Foegler: Part of the rationale is, the Engineer must hold up his review until
Columbus and EPA Permit to Install have been done, so that there's a couple of reviews
there that are beyond our control that we can't specify a timeframe by which those
approvals will come. So we will do everything we can to expedite those, but we have no
legal control over those. .
Barbara Maurer: That was of special concern to me because some of the things that I have
heard about, slowness in response, and I just didn't want that to be holding this up.
Denise King: Let me make the point that we appreciate your comments on the cooperation
that you've received from Dublin in working out this agreement. I hope you'll share those
thoughts with your colleagues in the profession.
'l"<'
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 62-91 by title only.
Ordinance No. 62-91 - Ordinance Increasing the' Appropriations for the Capital
Improvement Fund for the Extension of the Public Sewer to Medex, Inc.
Terry Foegler: As Council will remember, last time you did approve the Modified
Inducement Agreement by emergency language, but it was determined there was no need
to approve the appropriation by emergency, so it's back before you for a Third Reading this
evemng.
Mayor Rozanski: Any questions or comments? Hearing none.
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 63-91 by title only, please.
Ordinance No. 63-91 - Ordinance Amending Ordinance No. 55-90 Regulating Street
Signage in the City of Dublin.
Mayor Rozanski: Anything new to add to this? You're all aware this was for Donegal
Cliffs because there was a technicality on what kind of subdivision or PUD there was. Any
discussion or comments? Hearing none.
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Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 65-91 by title only.
Ordinance No. 65-91 - Ordinance to Accept an Annexation of 111.5 +/- Acres in
Washington Township to the City of Dublin, Ohio.
Terry Foegler: We have submitted a brief memo to Council, hopefully a good graphic that
shows you exactly what the area is that is being annexed to the City. Several relevant issues
that we think are important here, in terms of looking to see if there were any unusual costs
that would be associated with this annexation in terms of services, major drainage problems,
environmental issues to overcome, particularly critical issues that we could identify at this
stage that might present undue burdens for exceptional cost of servicing. We reviewed
those and essentially found none. We believe the site i~ fully serviceable by City utilities,
although some offsite extensions are required. The zoning for this site has been initiated,
that will be back before Council at a future meeting for formal consideration. In terms of
the offsite utility extensions, the developer has proposed a payback agreement; that's still
being reviewed and will be brought back to Council for formal action again at a future
meeting, once that has been resolved with the legal and administrative staff. We feel that
in terms of its fiscal effects, based on all or our experience and identifying those special
costs with this project, it will clearly be a net fiscal benefit to the City when it is developed.
Obviously the level will depend upon how employment-intensive the ultimate development
turns out to be. Based on all those considerations, the staff is recommending that the
proposed annexation be approved.
Mayor Rozanski: Anybody have any questions or comments on it? I think it will be a
good addition to the community.
Denise King: I appreciate the reviews that the staff did relative to the criteria for
annexation that we had talked about. The memo references several studies done by other
communities and at some point, I would like to see copies of those, if they are available.
And I appreciate the work you've done on this. I think it's a good start, and it's in the right
direction. Particularly, the parts on page 2, numbers ~ and 6.
Mayor Rozanski: I think Council has to realize that not all annexations into the City of
Dublin will benefit the City such as this one in particular will, since this is no residential,
no burden to the school district, very little police activity, and City services; this is one of
those projects that truly is a dollar-plus situation for the City.
Any further comments or discussions? Hearing none.
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Mr. Shepherd, Allen, we would like to thank you very much for bringing
this acreage into Dublin. It will be a big benefit to all of us and to our tax base, and we
appreciate that. I'm sure the schools do, too. Next, we have Ordinance No. 69-91 by title
only, please.
Ordinance No. 69-91 - Ordinance Accepting the Lowest and Best Bid for Road Salt.
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Mayor Rozanski: Anything new to add to this? Any comments or discussions?
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next we have Resolution No. 15-91 by title only, please.
Resolution No. 15-91 - Resolution Designating Financial Institution(s) as Public
Depository(s).
Marsha Grigsby: The only thing on this, it does need to be passed as an emergency. Our
current depository expires November 1. If we wait 30 days, there will be a time lag. So
we do need to pass it as an emergency.
A. C. Strip: Do away with Three Time Reading - emergency.
Dan Sutphen: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Any discussion on the emergency nature? Hearing none.
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mayor Rozanski: And on the Resolution. Any further discussion or comments? Hearing
none.
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Second Reading of Ordinance No. 73-91 by title only,
please.
Ordinance No. 73-91- An Ordinance Providing Preliminary Legislation for Resurfacing
Project on SR-745.
Mayor Rozanski: Anything new to add on that one? Any comments or discussions? We'll
hold that over for a Third and Final Reading at our next regularly scheduled Council
Meeting.
David Amorose: I take it there's no emergency nature to this even though we're getting late
in the year?
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have First Reading of Ordinance No. 74-91 by title only,
please.
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Ordinance No. 74-91 - Ordinance for the Widening of 1-270, and declaring it an
emergency.
Mayor Rozanski: Could I have an introduction, please.
David Amorose: I'll introduce the ordinance.
Tim Hansley: This is a different ordinance than you have seen in the past. I think you
passed one, or did a First Reading, Myra may want to help me, I think you gave a First
Reading to one that was on this same topic, which allows for the widening basically between
Hilliard and Dublin. What has happened since the last time you looked at this, the price
has come down a little bit, they're cutting us a little different deal, and this ordinance just
allows that project to happen with a really very minor financial commitment from Dublin.
We got this late Thursday morning as packets were getting ready to go, that's why it's in
this additional format. I'd be glad to answer any other questions you have. They're asking
us to change it and they need it done, they need it back by October 10. So that's why we're
recommending the emergency on this.
Mayor Rozanski: Terry, would you want to explain to the public and to the press, what is
happening with this ordinance?
Terry Foegler: Yes, I think one thing to mention is that when the City Engineer received
this request from ODOT, it had a very small, I think, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, contribution
being requested by the City of Dublin to the project. A very minor portion of the overall
construction costs, that seemed out of line, inconsistent with previous practice. In effect,
what this new request does is provide the entire 1-270 improvement with no Dublin
contribution to it, as it should have originally been. This will allow that improvement to
take place with City authorization and no City funds required.
Mayor Rozanski: What that improvement is, is a 12-foot full depth concrete lane and a 10-
foot shoulder on 1-270 from the southern corporation limit to .18 miles north of Route 33.
What this is, part of the project of adding the third lane from Route 33 down to Cemetery-
Hilliard Road. And this ordinance just pertains to the section which lies within Dublin.
And so the whole project will be two additional lanes, one northbound, one southbound,
from Dublin down to Hilliard, where, at Cemetery-Hilliard Road, the outerbelt is three
lanes from there, south. So, hopefully, it will speed traffic along in the southern section
of Dublin.
Tim Hansley: Just to clarify that, Hilliard, also, was a,sked to pass similar legislation just
a few nights ago, in the same fast time frame.
David Amorose: I believe I read in the newspaper they did, and they made a 1 %
contribution to the total cost of the construction. And we were asked, what, to contribute
$7,500, but now this is saying that --.
Tim Hansley: We objected to ours, I don't know what Hilliard did.
David Amorose: Well, they passed theirs from what I read in the paper.
Denise King: Would imagine that there's going to be unanimity on this issue, it's very
important to all of us to expand 270 in both directions from Dublin. When do you think
we'll actually be driving on this new pavement?
Tim Hansley: I think there's a, I don't have the legislation in front of me right now, there
is a sale date in there October 27 or 29 so they're talking about selling it for construction
late next year, which means construction following, probably at least a year in construction
Denise King: So will we be driving on it in fall of '93?
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Tim Hansley: Probably late fall or early '94 would be my best guess. They're selling it
late so they will have into '93 to do the construction. They're selling it in '92 --.
A. C. Strip: No, this memorandum says the bid opening is October 22, 1991; that's this
month.
Tim Hansley: That's right, that's why they're asking us to take quick action.
A. C. Strip: So we could be riding on it the end of '92 perhaps?
Mayor Rozanski: The end of the construction season of '92.
Denise King: So about a year from now we could expect to see three lanes in each
direction between Dublin and Hilliard?
Mayor Rozanski: From Route 33 south, yes.
Tim Hansley: Another thing I might just point out to you, the obvious, at least obvious to
staff, is that any time there's major construction on 270, and when you get that good news,
we have to suffer through the bad news, of people avoiding that coming through town and
so forth and so on. Columbus area, once they're aware, will be people shifting their traffic
patterns while that construction's happening. We've been assured that traffic will be
maintained, but it won't be anything similar to what it's at right now,
Denise King: Then, as a follow-up question, do either of you have information on when
we can expect to see a similar resolution for the portion of 270 that really needs to be
expanded, which is that portion from Dublin to 1-71. .
Tim Hansley: That's the one that MORPC has not, the problem with that one is all the
bridges, I forget the numbers, 6 or 7 bridges between here and there, a much more costly
project, the funding has not been there, even though MORPC is trying very hard to get that
project put together. There have been a lot of studies done, Worthington finished one on
their own. That project is at least, I'd say, 2 to 3 to 4 years off of this project, at the
earliest, because it is much more costly, it's not just a simple widening job.
Denise King: I realize that, but to me, we can talk about this in Goal Setting, but that has
to be one of the top priorities for Council to do, whatever it takes to cooperate with
whomever we need to cooperate with, to get that built as soon as possible, and to get the
bottleneck that appears to be enhancing the problem, resolved, and that bottleneck is Route
23. People can't get off.
Tim Hansley: That's obviously the advantage to the City of Worthington, and that's why
they paid for the study themselves, just by a new interchange at that location. MORPC
supports that, the suburban governments in the area support that, we've attended a variety
of meetings on that very issue. In the meantime, some of the things that Barbara has
worked on on the MORPC Board, been working on th~ suburban mobility studies, and in
the meantime, at least, tried to look at things like staggered work hours, and ways to shave
that peak a little bit. It's a stopgap measure, it's just trying to shift starting times and
leaving times to local businesses; and both the Worthington and Dublin Chamber have been
active in that process. But I'd say as far as having money available and have that project
with a sell date, it's a couple years away. It's a very tough process because of the dollar
amount. But we have been active, and we continue to work with Worthington, especially,
to try to get that resolved.
A. C. Strip: I don't want to sound cynical, Denise, but tacking on to your statement, I
envision that this addition is going to be of no help, whatever, to eastbound traffic. When
you get on the freeway and you want to head towards the airport during rush hour, this is
not going to help you one iota, and in fact, I can envision a slight drawback when you have
three lanes having to merge into two lanes that are already stopped.
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Joel Campbell: The other thing we probably ought to do is to publish this like Hilliard did
and make it sound like we really went to bat and squeezed this out of the State for them to
do this, because the implication in the article was that they came out and did some
wonderful efforts to expand 270 and, in fact, I don't think they had a whole lot to do in
squeezing, I think it was a kind of pennies from heaven type thing.
Mayor Rozanski: I think if anybody had any real input into getting this done, it was
probably Pete Edwards and his Tuttle Crossing Interchange, because that lead to the studies,
to the work, and when he built his interchange, he built wide enough for this extra lane and
did the grading and that, so that section's already in. So if anybody probably had a real
driving gear into this, it was Pete Edwards and his interchange at Tuttle Crossing.
Tim Hansley: In fact, what it did, it lowered that to a reasonable figure, because the bridge
which is one of the costs or segments, was already taken care of by the private sector. So
that probably did have a lot to do with this one. One other thing I should point out, it ties
into Joel's comment, and that's that, for Council's information, Hilliard, the release they
had a few days ago in the Dispatch, they are competing for Issue 2 funds, which is the same
source of funding that we're looking for for the Tuller Road project. They're looking at
upgrading Davidson Road in three phases. And when they talk about this pot of money that
they've applied for, they reference the House Bill that adopted it, it's really Issue 2 funds,
which is the same local funding that we're looking for, it's a Local/Regional Task Force
that we go before. But Hilliard, I think, is just playing the game slightly better than we
play it, in that they're going to the paper saying, "Gee, look at this great project". We will
study to see if that's one of the rules of the game, if that enhances their chances, then we
may do the same. There's is a good project, ours is a good project, and so is theirs. But
there are limited funds available, and the Task Force will have a hard time deciding between
the various projects in the region.
A. C. Strip: I would move the waiving of the Three Time Reading Rule and treat it as
emergency legislation.
Ms. Maurer: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Any comments or discussion on the emergency nature? Hearing none.
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mayor Rozanski: And on the ordinance? Any further discussion or comments? Hearing
none.
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 75-91 by title only, please.
Ordinance No. 75-91 - Ordinance for a Change of Zoning on an 80.9 Acre Tract
Located to the Northeast of Summitview Road and Riyerside Drive, Including a Portion
of the O'Shaughnessy Hills Subdivision.
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Mayor Rozanski: May I have an introduction, please?
David Amorose: I'll introduce the ordinance.
Mayor Rozanski: Could I have a motion to send it to P&Z?
David Amorose: So moved.
Mayor Rozanski: Any discussion on the motion? Hearing none.
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
David Amorose: Will that be on the agenda Thursday, Pat?
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 76-91 by title only, please.
Ordinance No. 76-91 - Ordinance Amending the Codified Ordinances, Part Eleven -
Planning and Zoning Code to Establish TCD, Tuttle Crossing District as a New
District.
Mayor Rozanski: Could I have an introduction.
Mr. Sutphen: I'll introduce it.
Pat Bowman: We have worked for a number of months, well over a year, with the
residents of, we call it the Tuttle Crossing residential area. This is approximately 20 homes
west of the interchange along Tuttle Crossing Boulevard, that are for the most part,
residential homes now. Due to the fact that Tuttle Crossing will be an arterial someday,
extended to Avery, we have commercial development on both sides of this residential area,
multi-family to the rear, that we've definitely felt that this area was subject to change in the
future. We worked with the residents for some time, trying to merge their goals, what that
might be, in the sale of the property, and what that might constitute; working with what
Dublin's goals will be in the way of curb cuts, architecture, other development standards,
in trying to merge the two and come up with a document that would be very similar to a
zoning text, that you can obviously see by looking through it. Trying to come up with some
standards that would permit a reasonable transition from the residential use to the office use.
We feel we've done that, we've had one meeting with the Planning Commission, the
minutes were attached to the Ordinance. We believe' now that we have a package that
should allow for this transition, have the development control that Dublin needs in the area,
and also benefit the residents who, if you can imagine in a case like this, one of the biggest
problems is not spreading the information, not knowing what your neighbor's going to do.
In this case, we decided to grab the bull by the horns, meet with every resident that wanted
to meet with us, develop the package, and then sponsor a rezoning for those that would
apply and want to be a part of the district. To date, we have, another signed up today, so
we have 12 property owners who have signed up for the rezoning. That's 12 of about 15
or 16, that we fully expected to be part. Three clearly want to stay residential, another
party had some mixed emotions about the timing, wanting to see the package prior to
actually signing up for the application. But the response has been very good, and we hope
that we can take the package forward and get the Tuttle Crossing District codified into the
Dublin Zoning Ordinance, and then follow up with the rezonings of these properties to the
Tuttle Crossing District applications.
Barbara Maurer: There is a general law that prohibits passing a law that benefits only one
person or entity, and I just wondered if this falls under that, or whether having a zoning for
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a particular area is something that doesn't even fall under that.
Steve Smith: No, it does not. It qualifies as a zoning problem under a zoning district, and
we've created many special districts, many times, been upheld by many courts that you can
do this in order to properly zone a district.
~,
Pat Bowman: We batted that around a long time. What we did on Sawmill Road was
create an overlay district.
Mayor Rozanski: How many property owners, several property owners, are we talking
about?
Pat Bowman: 20.
Dan Sutphen: I've been called by a few of the people that live down there. And I drove
by on Tuttle Road today and I notice that part of our resurfacing effort, at least we did get
the road reinforced where it was giving away on the north side of Tuttle Road, on the two-
lane side there. And the phone calls I received, people were wondering long term about,
when is that going to run to Avery Road, and how can a section that is going to be built
from Wilcox to Avery be required to be built in four-lane by a developer, or whatever, at
this point, and then the City, or developer, not be required to put four lanes where two
lanes already are, because they're going to have to driye through there also. And I said,
"Typically, when the developer takes the property and approves it, then we require them
to do that". I'm asking on behalf of them, realizing money is a big issue, but is there a lot
of plans, from Wilcox, that are in front of us right now, that Council might not be aware
of, between Wilcox and Avery, to four-lane this, for instance, in the next year?
Pat Bowman: No. What we have, we've got the residential section, then we have Mr.
Shepherd's project, we call it the Windmiller property, which we've zoned. Then the only
avenue out is a long, narrow piece of property that lines up between Avery Road and the
extension of Tuttle in that area. I think it's under the control of, I'm not even sure, it's
somehow within the Edwards family, we've not done those discussions. That's part and
parcel of the Capital Improvement Project. Probably the cash portion, if possible. Our
objective would be, and one of the biggest objections of the whole area, is to get Tuttle
Crossing three lanes from the interchange portion to Avery Road as fast as we can. We
think that should be sufficient for some time. So if we can accomplish that, as cheaply as
we can, to get that happen, we're going to pursue that as hard as we can.
Mayor Rozanski: On the Windmiller property, will that be required to be four lanes or
three lanes?
Pat Bowman: Three lanes.
Mayor Rozanski: Three lanes built, right-of-way for four?
Pat Bowman: Yes. Well, right-of-way for five, construction for three.
Dan Sutphen: With that in the back of your mind, will that street have curb and gutter on
it?
Pat Bowman: No. And we did that knowing that we had, because of this residential area,
we felt that we could immediately widen that to three, within the existing right-of-way. So,
just for continuity purposes, we thought, at least let's go for the short run, giving our own
Capital Improvement budget, let's squeeze the three lanes and get the traffic on it as soon
as we can. And we think that will be sufficient for some time. Just to sum up, for both
of these ordinances, we would like both of them referred to the Planning Commission for
their review.
Mayor Rozanski: I'd entertain a motion to refer this to Planning and Zoning.
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David Amorose: So moved.
Dan Sutphen: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: Any discussion of the motion? Hearing none.
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 77-91 by title only.
Ordinance No. 77-91 - Ordinance for a Change of Zoning on 10 Properties on Tuttle
Crossing Boulevard and the East Side of Wilcox Road.
Mayor Rozanski: Could I have an introduction?
I'd entertain a motion to refer to Planning and Zoning.
David Amorose: So moved.
Mayor Rozanski: Any discussion on the referral? Hearing none.
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Next, we have Ordinance No. 78-91 by title only.
Ordinance No. 78-91 - Ordinance Accepting the Lowest and Best Bid for the Painting
of the Roof and Exterior Trim of the Dublin Municipal Building.
Mayor Rozanski: Could I have an introduction.
Dan Sutphen: I'll introduce it.
Dan Sutphen: I have a question. Janet, I'm not pointing this at you, so don't take it this
way. Speaking of roofs, I spoke with Janet last August and we talked about a barn roof at
the time, out on Brand Road, our Parks Department roof, and I was under the impression
that this was all going to be put together as one big deal, and I even found a vendor that
would bid on the job last year to repair the roof, or paint it, or whatever we wanted out on
Brand Road. In light of the fact that these people don't think that they need to be timely
to show up at bid opening, I'm here to tell you right now, if you want to call that a minor
infraction, I'm going to tell you, it's illegal. And if it was me, I'm going to tell you that
you shouldn't even open their bid. Because I do it everyday. I don't care, he's paid to give
us advice, and I'm telling you, that's wrong, that's wrong advice. That's my opinion. So,
with that, I can't vote for it, I think it's a minor issue, and we should paint the building,
but we should have done this three months ago, and at the same time we should have gone
out to bid and done a roof on a barn that's ready to fall down. And next thing, they're
going to come in and say, "I want a demolition permit because the barn's falling down".
And I'm upset about that, and I asked Janet two months ago, and she said "We're working
on it, we've got an Amish fellow", didn't you, Janet, that was going to give us a bid, or
repair it, or whatever, and I'm thinking, okay, everything's going to happen, no more
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problem. That's a loo-year-old barn out there. How many more winters can we go
through?
Tim Hansley: The barn roof is under contract for repair and will be completed before the
end of this year. Janet will probably give you more update at Roundtable of that particular
issue. Again, understand the bid opening was at 10:00, the bids were to be received by
9:30, so neither bid ---
Dan Sutphen: Was it a legal advertisement, was it put in the Dispatch that way?
Tim Hansley: That's correct. That the bids were to be received by 9:30, opened at 10:00.
Dan Sutphen: That's correct then. It's no different than somebody saying "I want a bid
on the first of October, and it will be opened on the second of October at 12:00 noon. I've
seen people, Tim, walk in bids on the next day, say "This is when the bid opening is", and
you'd say, "Yes, but you were supposed to turn it in t~e day before, Sir".
Tim Hansley: I think what the Attorney is looking at is, who would suffer, and his worst
ruling is the public. So you throw out both bids, Council can do that tonight. That is
exactly why Dave was asked to give you all the detail, Council can decide legislatively to
reject them both. The building will not be painted obviously this year, we'll do it in the
spring. And that's fine. But we think since they were both late, that we have a right to
look at those and waive that time frame and do that.
Dan Sutphen: I'm just telling you, it's wrong, that's all, in my opinion; that's my business,
I bid on jobs all week long, all day long, and I look at them myself, I don't have a legal
staff of 100 people to tell me that it has to be on time. If I'm not on time, I lose the job.
Tim Hansley: I think it would have been a different opinion, if one was late and one was
not. They were both late; the opinion of the Attorney, we can look at them both on the
merits of the bid, accept one over the other. Council has a right tonight, to not award
either one. It's you're voting.
Dan Sutphen: I'm just telling you the way I feel about it.
Tim Hansley: I hear what you're saying, philosophically, I think from a strict legal point
of view, the Attorney is right. We have the right to waive that technicality.
Dan Sutphen: If the weather gets bad, then it gets bad. I don't think this building's going
to fall down, and we've got a lot of other buildings in town that need repair.
Tim Hansley: Our boiler point language says the City reserves the right to WaIve
technicalities ----.
:pr
Barbara Maurer: I would propose that we waive the requirement since it appears its three
and nine minutes and I have a stepbrother who is in this business, and I know how difficult
it often is to get all the information together and the prices together and the scrambling at
the last minute, and I think if we care about this building, that we would just go ahead and
accept the lower bid.
Mayor Rozanski: Any other comments? I'll just make one, I share many of the same
concerns Danny shares, in it's being late. What does concern me is, if they can't get the
bid in on time, will they get the project done on time? That does concern me. We have
a great, long history of not getting projects done on time in this community. And if you
can't get the bid in on time, I wonder if you can get the project in on time. I will vote on
passage of this tonight, since both of them were late, and there seems to be some equity in
that, but I do want my concerns noted that if they can't get the bid in on time, I sure hope
they can get the project, and I hope that we mandate that they get the project done on time,
and not drag it out for months and months. --- And what is the completion date of this
project?
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Dan Sutphen: And is he going to paint a steel roof, or a metal roof, in November, and
warranty it? For one year. That's what we've got up there right now, and we're doing it
two years later. And it was done in cold weather.
Barbara Maurer: There's a caveat in this, if cold temperatures become a factor, the project
can be completed within 30 days with acceptable weather, in spring of 1992, which I think
is a reasonable thing. I guess my concern is that we not hang it up on something, I don't
know weather is a guide, in the bidding department, has any affect on, or influence, is
different than the guys that are doing the construction. I think they're quite differently
probably. But I guess I would vote that, we need an emergency, don't we, on this?
A. C. Strip: Let me ask just another question, yes, we do need an emergency, but another
question. Is a one-year warranty customary in the painting trade? Seems kind of on the
low side to me, when I see paints advertised that last a very long time.
Denise King: My experience is that you don't find your contractor after a year.
Mayor Rozanski: So we're looking at approving a bid tonight for Martin Painting and
Coating Company, of $31,849? If we pass it as an emergency tonight, and award the
contract, is there a chance that he would start sooner? Then I would recommend that we
pass this as emergency nature and waive the three time reading rule to get him started when
weather is better for painting now than it is in November.
Barbara Maurer: I move to pass it, waive the three time reading rule, and pass it as an
emergency.
David Amorose: I'll second the motion.
Mayor Rozanski: Any discussion on the emergency nature?
Denise King: While I was venting a certain amount of frustration, my comment a minute
ago about the one-year guarantee, that is certainly not an area of my expertise and I guess
I'm looking for advice from staff as to whether or not that is an acceptable and normal
standard?
Tim Hansley: Might add, however, that we did check out the low bidder with a couple
other institutional users, who've used them over a period of time, used them for more than
one project, for example, Otterbein College, was on the list of references for Martin, and
they gave them very high marks, and used them back after they painted, two or three years
later they brought them back in to do additional painting. So, we believe they use a quality
product and apply in a professional manner and that's about all you can look for anyway.
Joel Campbell: I've been amazed, Danny was talking a little bit about the barn, and this
roof, too, the roofing industry and the painting industry must be a full employment industry.
I've been amazed at how tough it's been to get people to bid on either of these two jobs.
As I understand it, the barn took, what, three rounds of attempted bids, and nobody bid at
all to do the roof. It is amazing to me that there's that much trouble finding somebody in
the roofing industry to do these things. Must be nice to be in an industry where there's
very little competition for the jobs.
Tim Hansley: One reason, obviously, is that we require, prevailing wage, and a lot of those
are non-union companies. I'm making that assumption, that a roofer and a painter tend to
be kind of a family-type business, and they're not union. So that hurts us with a small job.
Mayor Rozanski: Any discussion or comments on the emergency nature? Hearing none.
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
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Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Sutphen: no
Mr. Strip: yes
Mayor Rozanski: And on the ordinance itself.
Mr. Strip: yes
Mr. Sutphen: no
Mrs. King: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Reports from Council Committees
Mayor Rozanski: That concludes tonight's formal agenda. Next, are there any Reports
from Council Committees?
A. C. Strip: We need a Finance Committee meeting, and I'm recommending 7:00 prior to
the next Council meeting. We'll still try to resolve some unhappiness with our City Income
Tax Ordinance, that requires 100% payment. Any Council people have any input, please
give us a call.
David Amorose: Ace, will you be getting an agenda out, is there anything else on that,
other than?
A. C. Strip: No requests for Bed Taxes at this time. And that topic may well take the 30
minutes that we're allocating for. We'll ask Steve Hoffman or Marsha to be present.
Denise King: Like to call a meeting of the Public Safety Committee for 8:00 A.M. on
Monday, the 28th of October, for the purpose of receiving Dana McDaniel's report. In
order to discuss the outcome of your report on the financing and the service levels in the
various township fire districts and how that might impact on the City, so that we can make
a recommendation back to the rest of Council. There may be other issues that will be added
to the agenda before that time. Thank you.
Dan Sutphen: Denise, do you have any idea when that committee might end up being
finished? By 9:00? Would you like to have a Service Committee on that day, Service
Committee meeting, Mark Jones, are you here this evening? I had a meeting with Mark
earlier this week, and the specifics of this meeting is to review the Old Dublin proposal that
might be coming towards Council with our committee, and by walking the Old Dublin area,
we might better have a better understanding rather than having the meeting in the building.
We'll meet here and then drive down, 9:00. So, that will be Service Committee meeting
at 9:00 A.M. on Monday, the 28th.
Comments From Staff
David Amorose: We'll go to Comments From Staff.
Tim Hansley: First of all, I'd like to report to Council that staff has met with the Board
of Directors of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce in reference to their preliminary proposal
to assist in some fashion with the construction of, planning for a Community Recreation
Center. Myself, Terry Foegler and Janet Jordan met with them about a week ago. Their
goal is to establish a task force involving the private seGtor, members of the Chamber, and
key public officials, City staff, school staff, and so forth. So we just want to make Council
aware that, unless Council has some objection, we will provide at least one, if not more
than one, staff member to attend those meetings as they are scheduled. I know Janet's had
one very preliminary meeting following the Board of Director's meeting and is optimistic
and will continue to report to Council on where that process is heading. Marsha and her
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staff are to be commended on getting together the first draft of our 1992 Operating Budget.
They worked very hard last week to get that put together . We have completed the
administrative budget hearings, the first round. The budget is in balance, but there are still
some administrative issues that have to be resolved, and the final draft, before presentation
to City Council. We hope to do that very late this month or no later than the first meeting
in November of City Council, which will be the earliest, at least the last 5 or 6 years, with
this detailed budget. The other issue that has to be resolved is how Goal Setting impacts
on this, we gave you a report at the meeting two times ago. Terry, and I met with Mike
Forres and I think he's going to come back to Council, or the three of us, will come back
to Council, with kind of a unique recommendation, and that's that the Goal Setting be
handled slightly different, in fact, somewhat differently, than anything we've done in the
past. With that said, within a few days I'll be faxing fl report to from the three member
staff and just as a reminder, we have yet to adopt '92 goals, primarily because the focus
was to finish up most of '90 and '91 goals, so we're still struggling with having to
incorporate any new goals with the '92 budget, and we hope to address that in a memo
which you'll get in a matter of days. Joel, I have one question, you as an individual
member, raised an issue about standardization of entry features. Are you expecting staff
to report on various options that you might want to look at?
Joel Campbell: I just would like, from our conversations at the meeting last week, I guess
I was just, I know there are several different avenues being approached along this line, the
entry features, and I guess I think for a City of our size and budget and standards, we ought
to try to bring some closure to that. And if we're being hung up because we're looking at
major league type entry features, maybe what we should do is, scale it back so that it's,
even something that's nice like our park entries or something like that, something that every
entrance when you come into the City, you know you're in Dublin. Because part of the
problem is, you can't tell whether you're here or not, in a lot of different places when you
come into town. And all I'm asking is that we try to bring some closure to some of these
things, and if it's because we can't afford the build the horrendously large projects maybe
we'd like to see, then maybe we need to scale them back and do some that we can finish
or something like that. No, I'm not asking for any kin,d of special report or anything.
Tim Hansley: Tell me what happens next, I guess I'm just a little confused.
Joel Campbell: What I would like to see is, to get the job done. We've been kicking this
ball around for, ever since I've been on this job, two years now, and everybody says we've
got something working over here, and something working over here, and let's just finish.
If that means getting a standard sign or something so that we can tell when you come into
town from the outside, you're in the City; and then when you're in the City, take down
some of those that say that you're entering the City when you're already in here. So that
we have one standard approach throughout our entire town coming into town, and while
we're in the town,
Tim Hansley: I think we still need then, either Service Committee or Council of the
whole, or through the budget process or somewhere, to have some input, because as I recall
from a couple years ago at least, the staff who is taking the lead role, Mary Newcomb and
Sarah and people like that, my remembrance of all that is, they were kind of taking the
approach that they wanted to do it somewhat differently than the Arlington or Worthington,
like you said, they wanted to say "By our presence alone, you will know you were here".
In other words, by having the understated gateway or changing color sign or quality of grass
mowing or whatever, I guess they were hopeful as staff, that without putting the "You are
now entering Dublin and thanks for being here" sign up, that the ambiance or the feeling
would achieve that.
Joel Campbell: If that is what everybody wants, fine, but I guess maybe we need to revisit
and come to some conclusion as a group, staff, Council, everybody. This is something that
we worry so much about the appearance of the different things around or town, we spend
six figure numbers building art work in the City, and yet a lot of times, if you came in from
certain directions, you wouldn't know you're in our town. And it just seems to me that we
need to try to make some standard, nice entrance to the City, all around the City. We've
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got some that are beautiful, and some that have no signage on them at all. I keep referring
to the Boy Scout Park there, it looks like a beautiful job that the labs did, can't even tell
Dublin had anything to do with that. And yet, there was a lot of money put in there. And
some people tell me, they grumble about the appearance of the one on, and I know no one
is ever 100% satisfied with everything in this town. Muirfield Boulevard's a good example
of that, but the bottom line is, I guess maybe we do need to have a little discussion, either
at Goal Setting or whatever, as to what we all, when I say "we", I mean staff, and Council,
and Parks and Rec. Department, all the different parts that would have something to do with
this. Maybe we should have a discussion of what our expectations are, come to some
understanding between everybody, and go forward to try and wrap up some of these things,
because it just kind of gives the feeling of an unfinished effect. And we are far enough
along in the development of our City, to go out and try to bring some closure to some of
these things as best we can, within the budgetary control constrictions we've got.
Tim Hansley: Using that as a starting point, are you willing to maybe finalize that
discussion through the budget hearings that we plan to have in November.
Joel Campbell: I'm not saying it has to be done yesterday, I just think we need to try and
move the process along, as part of the budget might be a good way to do it.
Tim Hansley: I think you're waiting for something that staff is probably, we think we're
almost done, you think we haven't even started yet, so I think that's --
Joel Campbell: As the budget process goes along, that would be a fine way to do it.
David Amorose: Joel, you're correct, we met more than two years ago, and we were going
to identify a logo, or some type of an architectural element that might, with some education,
be recognized as Dublin. We didn't know whether to do it with a stone wall or some other
type of feature. However, that has been in limbo for a number of years, to bring it up, and
discuss it further, and then let's bring closure on that decision.
Tim Hansley: I think another thing that's going to happen over a longer period of time, and
that's the shift to either distinctive signage or to the brown signage. It's been slow because
of getting the sign shop set up, but when the forces are on line eventually in three or four
years maximum, at least you'll be able to say you're in a Dublin neighborhood, because you
have either Muirfield type signage, or Donegal Cliffs type signage, or you have the standard
brown signage. So, we'll begin to look different than our surrounding neighborhoods,
which is blue if you're in Hilliard, green if you're in Columbus. I think I tend to agree
with you more philosophically, you ought to know when you cross the line. One point that
Terry just reminded me to make is that it's an ever changing process, too, in other words,
you get a real anchor gateway, and then you do an annexation, --.
Joel Campbell: I'm talking about those areas where we pretty much abut an area like a city.
Barbara Maurer: I wasn't sure whether you were talking about our entryway features with
the stone, etc., and I thought, "Gee, we just annexed a whole area that changed the borders
of Dublin", and if we'd put an entryway feature where that began, it would be outmoded
and obsolete now, and we'd have to do some. If you're talking about some logo, a sign you
stick in the ground that you can easily move that says, "Here's the entryway to Dublin",
that seems to me to make sense in these areas where we're annexing. We're going to be
changing rapidly out in the southwest area and in the northwest area, maybe. What I would
like to see is, I agree with you, something that identifies those expensive entryways that we
have done, as a Dublin feature, and a meaningful entry way , because I have to point those
out to people, "You see those flowers over there? We did that with the Bed Tax". It feels
stupid to have to explain that, so I agree with that. But I don't think we can invest, we put
$30,000 or so into some of those.
Tim Hansley: Council, at the last meeting, I think Staff Report, or Council raised it, I'm
not sure which, about the Gockenbach property. It's still the position of staff that we would
like Council to give strong consideration to allowing that to be used as a park and to have
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an office for the horticulturists and staff to that park. There's a memo before you tonight
and, at least it's my feeling, I have asked Bobbie to play devil's advocate to talk to you in
the context of, is it legal in the township, would it be legal in the City? In fact, I asked her
to give the report to me and not beg the issue either way, and I think she did a good job of
that. The issue I'm going back to Council to consider, in the abstract is, checking with
Larry Eberhart to propose a question to him as, not only a trustee, but as a nearby
neighbor, if the City established that as a park, in the township, not to annex it, but as a
ctiy owned park within the township would that assessment use be ok, as a neighbor and as
a trustee, not to paraphrase that too much, Larry felt that was appropriate. Very similar
to the fact that they have a township park which is not in the city limits which they also
have a township, trustee's meeting within that park similar to what we maintain
maintenance offices within Avery Park, same as having this office within Coffman Park.
I think Bobbie's memo to me that I provided you a copy, says fairly Council ought to look
at that and weigh that as to what you require out of the budget. We are certainly trying to
hold us to exactly the same standard. On the other hand I would like to have Bobbie
expand on her comments to you and talk to you about that. We will have a critical need this
coming spring to house that maintenance function, we have no place else to put that, and
it doesn't make much sense to rent out a facility on one hand, and go out and re-rent a
facility at much higher cost, and it's very hard to come by any type of industrial-type rental
property within the City of Dublin, it's vertually impossible to rent any other existing rental
within the city.
Dan Sutphen: Could we just talk about this, is it that pressing, could we just talk about this
in Service Committee meeting?
Tim Hansley: I think that's appropriate. I think what Janet would tell you, what she's
trying to do is finalize her '92 budget, and she needs to know whether she has to find a
place to rent for these folks to continue to provide a growing staff in the water tower, which
has one restroom, that's a critical problem that they have, they have one unisex restroom,
for about ten to twelve people out in that facility.
Dan Sutphen: My other question is, what if we just rent it out, the house out for rent.
Tim Hansley: That's the point, Danny, I guess I would have a hard time as your Manager
saying, "Let's rent that out, get $600 a month, and in turn, have Janet go out and rent
something, if it's available, for $1,000 a month, to house her maintenance operation.
Dan Sutphen: I realize what you're saying but we need to talk about it in committee
because we have this building back here you brought up; and that building you talked about.
Barbara Maurer: Exactly what offices did you contemplate being in that building, is it
horticulture and what else?
Janet Jordan: Maintenance.
Barbara Maurer: And what would be the park maintenance storage, I was concerned about
bid trucks going in and out and bothering the neighbors, but if you have three employees.
So we're not talking about big trucks, we're talking about those 3 employees coming to the
offices and leaving from time to time during the day and coming back. So it's not a lot of
big truck traffic.
Bobbie Clarke: I'm the monkey wrench, again. The City bought a piece of residential
property and I was asked to look at this in terms of, what are the permissible uses?
Whether Dublin annexes it or not, it will be governed by Washington Township zoning
ordinance. As I mentioned in that memo, one of the permissible uses is a park, and then
any normal accessory uses that would go along with that park would be permissible on the
site. I have not been brought up-to-date as to what the proposal from the City is, I was
merely told to look at it, tell us what, in your opinion, we can get away with on the
property. We've got a piece of residential property and I think that a park is clearly a
permissible use. And then what we do with the property after that, in order to conform
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with its current zoning, in my opinion, has to be an accessory to that park. The City is
always in a position to annex the property to establish its own zoning on it, and the City
can, also, not abide by its own zoning, that is one of the things that is available to the
municipality. We don't have to obey our own zoning laws. We have generally said we're
going to hold ourselves to the same standards that we hold the private sector, and I think
Riverside Drive is a particularly, excuse me, Dublin Road, is particularly a problem when
you look at the strong commitment there has been on the part of the community to maintain
Dublin Road as a historic highway, not to have to widen it, to maintain R-l lots and usage;
I think that some of the most emotional battles I've ever seen, had to do with Dublin Road,
and I think this is probably an area where, in my view, the City needs to act in the most
constructive manner possible.
A. C. Strip: I don't think we want to debate this because it's going to go to committee, but
when committee convenes, may I give you my thoughts. And my thought is that I think we,
as a City, are being intellectually dishonest. We are not trying to put up a park and just
happen to have some offices, because there has been no conversation about a park tonight,
if you notice, that we're only talking about office. We're really trying to develop some
offices and justifying it by calling a piece of property in the backyard, a park. And let me
ask that committee to consider that if it wasn't City offices, but we had an application here
from a landscape architectural firm, and all they were going to house there was a
horticulturist, and a big tree specialist, and a small tree specialist, would we approve that
for offices? And I submit to you, we would not. As a City who is, after two or three years
of working construction, prepare to tear down a contractor's sign on about a dozen hours'
notice, has no business trying to fudge and take a backyard and call it a park.
Barbara Maurer: My thoughts are, that's always been used in a park-like manner, it's a
fishing place down there, everybody parks along the road, and they go down under the
overpass, and they fish, and there has, to me, always been that use of that property, not the
private property but the public property right next to it,. which is partly ours. And I guess
that if you look at it and see what other uses, park uses, could be used, I think that I would
like to consider that. I guess that I have some doubt in my mind that anybody would want
to rent a house that just had the swimming pool filled in and razed, and looks like garbage.
And all the fixtures were taken out by the previous owners, and it's not a terrific place to
move into. But I think we ought to look at its uses that would not interfere with the
neighbors next door, who, of course, have been extremely concerned about what happens
when the bridge goes in there, that we might look at it as a park use. And whatever use
those could be as park offices, I think we might consider.
Tim Hansley: Without overly arguing the issue in this forum, I think I agree the committee
forum is probably a better place to make some of the points, and Ace is right, we did not
lead with our best card because I thought the only concern Council had was, is it legal
under the zoning? That's why Bobbie addressed only that issue. We would not be having
a pretend office in a pretend park, along with that presentation would be actually providing
a fishing access, a parking place, whatever, to have official public access to the river at that
point, and we would be maintaining and mowing that with a park crew, it would be a City
park with a sign as a City park, as this is what Council would approve. I think the bottom
line, wearing my non-zoning, non-aesthetic hat, wearing my budget hat, what we have is
a $300,000 asset that should be put to some use. We ~an rent it for a few hundred bucks
a month, but Barbara is right, based on what the previous owner did to us, it was pretty
well gutted, it's going to require a major expenditure from us to put it back in rental
condition and meet our code. We spent probably $200,000 on the house in Old Dublin,
again not to make a profit, but just to provide that back into the main stream. So we either
you want to fix it up and rent it as a house, or if you want to go ahead and tear it down and
leave it as vacant land; the point of it is, we acquired it to do the ultimate public use, and
that's to build a bridge abutment right there, so I can't imagine that a low-scale office is
going to be a less desirable use than the ultimate public use, and that's the bridge; the point
being that if we could paint the exterior and fix it up and have two or three offices in there
for three or four years, five years, seven years, until the CIP allows the bridge to be built,
I think that's better than what the ultimate neighbors wanted to do. You ended up
disagreeing too strongly with Bobbie, I think her points were well taken. This is not the
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same character as the rest of Dublin Road, it's a piece of property right next to the existing
270 bridge, it is a transition zone at best, we have purchased it to tear the house down, and
so that residential use basically ultimately had been decided by this Council, we bought it
to tear down. So what we're saying is the interum stePl which is a park and acessory uses
therof. With that, I guess, clearly what you're going to hear during budget presentation,
you're going to be asked to find, out of public fund, someplace to house your growing Park
Maintenance function, or continue to, almost illegally, occupy the water tower, we don't
provide enough restroom space for code there for our growing staff.
The other thing I asked Peter Lenz to do was, tell me what state code, if it stays in the
township, or what city code, if it's in the City, we would have to meet to properly house
the staff. He has recommended that we hire a, to keep the thing completely above board,
that we hire a firm like Meacham & Apel to come in and do the assessments, and then do
whatever it takes. My guess is it will probably be, with architectural fees and construction
costs, it may be in the neighborhood of $10,000 to $15,000. It's still better than renting
space off of somebody else to meet this requirement.
Dan Sutphen: Along the same lines, if you're going to do all that research, what's wrong
with just putting some walls up out here in one of these bays of this green building that they
want to occupy temporarily, long term, short term, and just put the offices out here where
there's already phone service, or they can walk to City Hall, to Parks and Rec., or, you
know what I'm saying, we're already spread out, now we're going to spread out more,
we're going to put more fax machines, more copying machines, more telephones; it's just
not offices, it's cost of operating, and it's another big operating expense.
Tim Hansley: If we did not own this site, I would not recommend that we go out and buy
it. But since we own it, it's an asset, I would recommend before we tear it down --
Dan Sutphen: We also have an empty building back here, right?
Tim Hansley: No, if you haven't been back there lately, look at it, it's filled to the walls.
A. C. Strip: Why did we permit the house to be vacated without it being left in a habitable
condition?
Tim Hansley: Because we were going to tear it down.
A. C. Strip: It takes a $5,500 study to tell us how to meet our own code that our staff
people know inside and out?
Tim Hansley: What we're paying for, frankly, we're buying a neutral opinion, we're
buying the fact that we're not going to be jockeying our own code.
A. C. Strip: Well, why do we want to buy a neutral 'opinion, when we have the people
right here in the audience who have written the ordinances -- to enforce it, inspect them ---.
Tim Hansley: What we propose to spend $5,500 for is so Council would not say, "How
do we know Peter isn't being ordered by Tim to not meet the full extent of the code", so
we're buying a neutral opinion. If you aren't concerned by that, I am certainly not
concerned by that.
Mayor Rozanski: Tim, I guess I respect your integrity enough to know that you're not
going to influence right or wrong, I hope that the rest of Council feels the same way.
A. C. Strip: We have paid for those opinions when we hired competent people.
Tim Hansley: Write that down and the next time you question staff, pull that out and read
it to yourself.
A. C. Strip: Well, you're not always right, but you're competent.
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Tim Hansley: Frankly, we're just trying to be sensitive to Council, saying "How do we
know we can trust staff on this issue?"
Dan Sutphen: So I'm not going to vote to spend $5,500, I just think that's ridiculous.
Tim Hansley: I still think you should appoint this to committee.
Joel Campbell: We have to make the decision what we're going to do with it first.
Dan Sutphen: I'm going to make a motion to send it to the Land Use Committee and let
them decide and bring it back to Council so then we can fight about it again.
Joel Campbell: When do you want to have the meeting, Barbara? I'll second the motion.
Mayor Rozanski: We have a motion to refer to the Land Use Committee and it's seconded.
Any further comments or discussion on the Gockenbach property? Hearing none.
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mrs. King: yes
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mayor Rozanski: Mark, I really appreciate the speed which the project is moving. If
you're not real busy, would you consider taking over the Blazer Road lighting system to get
that moved along as fast? One of the interesting approaches the merchants had to the
disruption down there, and I really admire them, Oscar's Deli has gone out at lunch time
and supplied free pizza to the crew to get them to stop work during lunch when the people
are on the patio having lunch, and so it wouldn't disturb their customer base. I thought it
was very ingenious. And the workers enjoyed it. Any other staff people have reports?
Next, we're going to move on to a report from our Personnel Board of Review.
Discussion - moved on to Roundtable.
Roundtable
Joel Campbell: A couple things, number one, I think probably most of you got the same
publication I did, but I think it's worth noticing, actually two publications. One of them
was the one from the BIA Builder Update from October '91, one of the things I think is
kind of interesting to note is how we're faring compared to some of the other communities
in Central Ohio in terms of construction. This basically talks, I assume, about single and
multi-family homes, but I think a lot of press emphasis seems to be on how New Albany's
going like gangbusters and all the development seems to be supposedly shifting over that
way. I noticed that New Albany for 1991 in August had no single or multi-family building
permits issued, and they had 25 for 1991 single-family for the entire year so far, no multi-
family; whereas we've had 30 in the month of August single-family, and 210 single-family
for the year to date. So if New Albany is, in fact, taking away all our development, it
doesn't show up in the building permits being issued. Second thing, I think we all probably
want to take a good look at the, for later in the year, talking about the budget process, the
Ohio Municipal League publication that just came out this week, talked about city salary
expenses. Might be worth hanging on to that when we get around to doing those
discussions later in the year.
Mayor Rozanski: On the building permits, what that doesn't tell you, though, is that of all
the permits in City of Columbus, how many of those are built in the Dublin School District
versus Columbus School District, or other suburban school districts? I think that statistic,
you would find it to be quite startling, that a large percentage of Columbus building permits
are located in Dublin School District.
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Joel Campbell: I was talking about New Albany and Dublin, but you're right, Columbus
does have quite a bit in Dublin. And the other thing is that Dublin was one of the few, of
course, I think partly due to our ban last year, we were one of the few that increased any
kind of a significant growth increase from last year to this year; most everybody else is
dropping off, probably due to the economy, etc. Another point, last week when I was
talking about the cemetery situation, I got a call after the meeting, a day or so later, from
a woman named Carolyn Donahey, from the Dublin Women's Club, and she said that they
had $5,000 that they earmarked for improvements at the cemetery, either right in front of
the cemetery, in front of the wall, or right behind the wall, and she said they had been
working with the staff for some length of time because there's been some problem with
trying to decide whether the road's going to get widened there or not, and if so, how much;
but they would like to bring some closure to that as well. They have money they're willing
to spend as long as somebody from the staff will communicate with them to try and wrap
that up and make a decision on what they can do with their money. So I'll pass that along
and I'll send a memo in with the phone number and all that, maybe somebody can get back
in touch with her to make that contact.
Also, along the line of memos going back and forth, I'd like to thank Myra and Tim's
office, I did send some memos in this month on a couple of issues that I did get some
responses back, and I've contacted the families back and I gather from what the memo said,
you might do the same. So I just want to thank you for making a response. As I alluded
to a little bit earlier, it's amazing to me how, sometimes you have to hunt for the negative
things in things we do, the Muirfield Drive situation, I thought, was something that for
several years, and certainly the last two years I've been on this job, matter of fact, I think
at one of the dinners we had at the National League of Cities meeting, Denise asked me
right at the beginning, what would be one of the things that we would like to see get done
the most, and I said "Let's get Muirfield Drive going; and patch up the difficulties with
Columbus", were the two things I felt. And I think, in general, everybody felt getting
Muirfield Drive done was a big issue that we had to do to try and improve the traffic
around the City, and obviously a lot of time and effort and money has gone into getting that
project done, and I really do think it's a good thing for the City. And yet somehow, we
had a nice celebration to open the road up, and if there was a lot of publicity or notice about
it in response, I missed it. What I read as follow-ups, was more of the man bites dog type
response where we found headlines about people being upset about the traffic intersection,
or some of the difficulties with it. Sure, every job we do, there are some problems, but,
golly, when we do something good, seems to me we ought to take a little pride in doing it,
and there ought to get some strokes for it. It's one of those few things that, you almost had
to hunt for the negative things in this thing to publicize them, and it really kind of concerns
me that the population, as a whole, and all the other different entities that deal with
communication in our City, didn't pick up on the fact that this is a good thing for our town.
And I'm concerned that the negative comments get more recognition than the positive aspect
of this. This is something, quite bluntly, that this town has needed and wanted, the vast
majority of the population, and we ought to recognize that. That's the one big thing, I
think, I want to make a point on. And lastly, speaking of hearing negative things, I have
not heard from anybody directly from Donato's, but I know it's open, it's a new pizza shop
in the center of town for those of you who haven't b'een there. But I've heard several
different sources, unrelated to each other, that apparently had talked to the people from
Donato's. And they must have had one heck of a struggle getting whatever they had to get
done, because I've heard from several different places, they had a heck of a time. So I
would ask, maybe, for somebody from the City to call them up and see what we can do to
try and patch up whatever the problems are, because I heard from three amazingly total
unrelated sources that they had some troubles, and it must have been weighing pretty
heavily on them. I don't know if any of you got any calls, I didn't get them from Donato's,
but I got them from other people, on behalf of Donato's. And maybe somebody ought to
call them up, because I think they are going to be a positive effect, one of the things we're
trying to do in Old Dublin, is to get some entities in there that are going to be a draw, that
are going to make a nice, positive effect, and they spent, apparently, a bunch of money in
that building to try and get it done right, and use the municipal parking lot, use the street
lights that we're talking about and get that downtown looking good. And those kind of
things we really need to encourage to get that off the ground, and I just hope we didn't
leave a bad taste in somebody's mouth, no pun intended on the pizza, to get this thing
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going. So, hopefully, maybe somebody can call them up, try to do some positive strokes
to get the thing worked out.
Tim Hansley: Terry and I did have a meeting with their agent about a week ago, and tried
to address some of those issues. One of them was the fact they were trying to rehab a
historical structure, and they had some unique problems with it. But, there were some
issues that we could have done a better job on and we addressed that with their
representative.
Personnel Board of Review
My name is Joe Holub and I live in Dublin, and I was appointed to the Personnel Board of
Review. Marilee Zoercher is also a member, and Wayne Williams. Our assignment, first
assignment was to take a look at the compensation plan. We decided to take a look at it
from 1986, to the current situation. Our purpose tonight here is really to present excerpts
and impressions from the report that we're developing; and we're going to do that through
a process of viewgraphs and comments from our board, any comments that may come from
Council. And we're hoping the payoff is to provide additional information and an
opportunity to discuss the aspects that we're going to cover; and hopefully, we'll have a
firsthand exchange of what we're trying to do. It would be inappropriate if I didn't begin
by thanking David Harding, because David personally provided at least two pounds of paper
for each one of us, and all kinds of documentation in a timely manner, and I knew it was
pressure on him, but kudos to him and kudos to Pat Bowman, as well, who provided us
with some additional information that permitted us to come up with these view graphs and
information. The information that you're seeing is really probably the same type of
information that you've seen before, and maybe you're fully aware of it, and it's presented
in a little different way to indicate some of the things that we see happening. Another
reason that I wanted to do it this way, it would have been very easy just to turn the report
over, but I wanted to protect from pre-judgment, because a lot of times, I carry 34 years
of baggage, I was with AT&T Company, Personnel Manager, and I had about 40 years in
business, and I found out that when reports were published, people either wanted to attack,
or pounce on it, or control the interpretation, or take it personal. And that's not the case.
If you find anything in there that is focused on someone or some organization, that's
inaccurate, or it's your judgment, not ours. Another group of persons that I've been
exposed to is somebody that says "What's in it for me?", and they take a look at it, and if
they can't have a direct relationship regarding what's being presented and themselves, they
dismiss the information as just an academic process. Others focus on relationships, and they
want to know who we're talking about, are we talking about my friends or my enemies, and
so on, and so forth. And that would be unfair, too, because it distorts the value of the
report. What we're hoping is that you can see the overall presentation. And finally, the
detail people, and those are the ones who focus on the technical aspect; and if the report is
not systematic to their liking, they dismiss it as valueless, or really not appropriate. So I'm
hoping that those four factors, now that I speak about them, will not be a part of the report
when it's finally put together and reviewed. We decided to focus on an inward look at
Dublin, and we used an accumulative approach, rather than just a year-to-year comparison
look, and what others are doing, which probably got us to where we are right now. If
you'll permit me one short explanation on comparisons, I mentioned to Mayor Rozanski that
General Motors looks at Ford, and Ford looks at Chrysler, and Chrysler looks at both of
them, but they're all in keeping, and their expenses are all the same, but they're all in
trouble. I'm not saying that Dublin's in trouble, I'm just saying that comparison is not
always the best way, because what's happening outside of Dublin may not necessarily be
the best thing for Dublin. So we tried to drive a stake in the ground and see how far we've
come from 1986, and where we are now, and some of the things that we're doing. The
way we're going to do that is, we're going to throw some view graphs up, they will not be
in sequence because we're not sure how they're going to end up in the report. But they will
permit you to see the story that we're trying to present. So without further delay, we'll
start with this first view graph.
Wayne Williams: Good evening, as you can see from this particular graph, Dublin, in the
last five years, has grown significantly, something I'm sure everybody in this room is aware
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of. The purpose of this graph, mainly, is to give some comparison between 1986 and 1991,
where we started (refers to graph) over 66% in five years. This graph displays total City
expense increase, again over the base years of 1986 to 1991. You can see that it has grown
804% in five years. We did not, as a group, attempt to analyze the 804% growth, because
we realize that there's a lot of improvement the City has had to make because it is growing
to get to where it is now. But nonetheless, it does kind of stand out that it has shot up
significantly in five years. Are there any questions over those two graphs?
We tried to start out with base year "0". I think everything is relevant there, where we
started in '86 and where we are now in '91.
Marilee Zoercher: The graph that you have up now we'll refer to as Graph 1, and it is
salary and wage increases from 1986 to 1990. You'll see that this is individual years, this
graph is not accumulative. This is the type of information that, from what we could gather,
that was presented to us from the staff, was what City Council typically got every year
when they were looking at salary and wage increases, and probably mayor may not have
seemed like an unreasonable amount to increase salary and wage. But on the next graph,
you will see that when you look at it from an accumulative standpoint, which of course,
your costs do not ever go away once you have approved any particular salary schedule, that
you see that from the base year to 1990, the salary and wage increase advanced 232 %, over
the 1986 base year.
Barbara Maurer: That's the total salaries, what you're talking about?
Marilee Zoercher: Yes.
Barbara Maurer: So, it doesn't take into account the number of employees?
\};,
Marilee Zoercher: Yes, it does. We'll have that graph later on, where we'll show where
the increase, the numbers of staff increased over that period of time. You'll see by that
graph, which I could go ahead and go to that graph now if you want. The actual salary and
expense, which again is in the left corner, went from 1.2 million in '86 to 3.98 million in
1990. So those are your actual salary costs during that time period.
Wayne Williams: Graph 3 represents benefit increase percentages for '86 through '90. I
think before I had mentioned '91, but it's five years, '86 through '90. The column on the
left is the actual dollar amounts, the columns on the right are each individual year over the
previous year. Actual benefit expense in 1986 was $278,000; in 1987 it was $357,000; '88
was $552,000; '89 was $798,000; and $1,054,000 in 1990. Any questions on this graph
and what the percentage is on the right represents?
Denise King: Is this in step with trends nationally, in terms of, especially when you talk
about benefit increases, everyone thinks of health care, and we all know what has happened
with that. I don't want to take you off your outline but, naturally all of us are trying to
absorb this very quickly and also trying to interpret it. And I have a feeling you've already
done that work, at least in terms of being able to tell us whether this is in keeping with
national trends.
!flI!O' -.~
'k
Joe Holub: Well, Denise, not so. The point is that, again, we try to keep an inward look,
it would be very easy and you could say, "Well, what is Arlington doing? What is Hilliard
doing?", you mean like that?
Denise King: No, I'm very glad that you did not take that kind of a look, and I think that
criteria was an important part of your decision-making process; I am very glad that you did
not say, "What is Arlington doing? What is Worthington doing?", but rather what is in the
best interest of Dublin. That's exactly what we wanted you to do. But in order to interpret
this data, or more importantly, in order to not have it misinterpreted, don't we also need
to know what was happening, generally, in the marketplace, not in Arlington, Westerville,
but nationally, relative to issues like the cost of benefits.
Joe Holub: Well, the assumption was that Council would probably have that information
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or the administration would and they would make the evaluation process on whether or not
they should move to another explanation of benefits and so on. If that is our charge for
another assignment or additional assignment that is fine, but for right now what we're trying
to do is explain the situation as it is exists now and how it developed from 1986. There are
some assumptions in there that maybe we shouldn't have made.
Denise King: Our problem was, that we were always given the information about what
Worthington and Arlington did, and our question was your question, what is best for
Dublin?
Marilee Zoercher: I think one thing that, in our final report that we will indicate, some of
the conclusions you will hear this evening, based on this kind of study that we did, but in
our final report, we are going to be making, not recommendations, but some suggestions
and some alternatives, that Council might look at in the future, rather than continuing to
approve salary and wage increases, sort of by themselves, that I think nationally what we
know is that the trend is to look at it as a package, that salary and benefits must be viewed
as a package; and I'm not sure that, at least based on the information that we received and
our interpretation of it, that it was viewed in a package sense in Dublin. So consequently
you've got your salaries increasing relatively steeply over the five-year period, but you'll
see that your benefits, also, did; which nationally, people began to say, "Wait a minute.
We need to look at it more as a package, and you have to give up something, to get
something else out of it". And we are right now in the process of giving, of finalizing some
of our alternatives that we found across the country that people are doing instead of the way
that Dublin has, taken a more traditional approach, at least, in the salary and benefit
package approval process.
"'*
Wayne Williams: As you can see from '86 to '90, the increase, accumulatively, was 279%.
The actual benefit expense went from $278,000 in '86, to $1,054,000 in 1990.
If you look at this Graph 5, it's the year to year increases from base year 1986, in other
words, there was a 20% increase in '87 over '86; there was a 36% increase in '88 over '87;
44% in '89 over '88; and a 14% increase in '90 over '89; the figures being, staff was at
48 in '86; 58 in '87; 79 in '88; 114 in '89; and, I believe, 130 in 1990. Now if we take
a look at that on an accumulative basis, see that '86 to '87, it grew 20%; '88 to '86, it grew
65%; '89 to '86, it grew to 138%; and in '90, it grew to 170% over '86. And that brings
us to a graph that we put together that demonstrates that staff growth projected to 170%
from '86 to '90; however, salary and wages increased 232% over that period; and benefits
increased 279% over that period. And what we try to do there is drive a stake in the
ground, like I said earlier, and kind of just see from '86 to '90 how many additional people
were put on role, salary situation and the benefit situation.
A. C. Strip: Will you be touching later, if you will, we'll wait, will you be touching later
on, in any way reducing these to present value in '86; in other words, taking into
consideration inflation at 5, 6, 7% a year?
Wayne Williams: No, we won't have that information for you in this report.
A. C. Strip: So somewhere at the end, you ought to comment, someone ought to comment,
that that's got to be a factor.
Wayne Williams: Right, the inflation factor should be factored in. However, there's an
interesting comment that you bring up, Mr. Strip, because if you take the staff percentage
and you subtract it from the salary percentage, and you take the staff percentage and
subtract it from the benefit percentage, and divide it by 5, you come up with an average of
12 % increase every year for, and much greater than that for the benefits, which is a
significant factor, or a good stick to measure something by.
Marilee Zoercher: One of the reoccurring themes that we heard from everyone, and that
we read in some of the materials, was that the FOP, of course, has great negotiating skills,
and consequently they were driving, or influencing at least, some of the decisions that were
made for the other City employees. You will see that from 1986 up through 1990, the
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accumulative salary increase for the police went from 29%, well base year "0", to 196%;
but the argument doesn't hold true if you compare it to other City employees, which is what
we had been hearing was, the reason that other City employees had to be raised as high as
they were was because the FOP had negotiated such great contracts for the police and safety
staff; whereas, the other City employees went from the base year of "0" to 242 % increase;
so you see that they were almost 50%, not 50%, at any rate, they were higher than the
police, even though the police had formalized, negotiating parties for their salary and
fringes. So that was a little bit of a misnomer that we found in some of the materials,
because the other City employees did advance further ahead than the police did.
If you remove the police and safety there on the left, and if you remove them, we have the
actual figures, the actual paid salaries, of both groups, separated out, and when you do that,
then you see what the accumulative increases were. The number on the left is the police,
and the number on the right is all other.
We cannot determine, based on the materials we had available, exactly which positions were
added what year, and all that. One thing, in reviewing the Mid-Ohio Administrators Survey
of 1991, the latest one, I believe it's 1991, the latest one that is out, we found that Dublin
was, if you looked at the high range, what they did was go from low range to a high range
in this report for every, not every position, but like positions in various cities within
Franklin County, and we found that Dublin was first, at the high range, 14 times, and for
14 staff positions, and second for 10 staff positions. Now, this may not seem too
remarkable, but it is remarkable if you consider that one of your goals was to retain staff
during this growth period of Dublin, in order to have more consistency with decisions, and
policies, and procedures that were happening in the City, which means that a vast majority
of your employees happened to be at the higher range within the range, so that your
salaries, you're not paying at the low, or even mid-range, for a large number of employees,
you're paying at this high range. Now whether or not you make decisions about when those
positions become vacant, how you manage that hiring process can impact ultimately your
expenditures, but at this point, if no one leaves, and if staff turnover continues to be as
remarkable as it is being next to nothing, you're expenses will continue to increase pretty
dramatically.
A. C. Strip: Do I understand, though, that those increases are total dollar increases, so for
example, police department increase 196% in total dollars spent. We're not talking about
whether we increase the staff by 2 or 10 or 14; likewise, all City employees went up 242 %
in dollars spent. We're not addressing how many people were hired to take that up?
Marilee Zoercher: That's correct. We can, however, show you--. We had earlier showed
you the graph of staff increase percents, which went from the actual numbers of 48 staff in
1986 to 130 staff in 1990 . Now that included police and safety. If you put the other graph
up that you just had up, the accumulative, in the police and, the police in 1986 spent
$464,000 for salaries; and all other employees were $763,000. Now in 1990, the police
spent $1,370,000; and all other employees were $2,610,000. In 1986, was $464,000 for
police, and $763,000 for all others. We looked at the total compensation against City
expenses, from 1986, 32.5% was spent on salaries and fringes; and this is a year-to-year,
this is looking at it, not accumulative, but from one year to the next. So from '86 to '87
was increased 30.5%; from '87 to '88, was 15.8; from '88 to '89, was 15%; and from '89
to '90, 12.7. Now when you look at this way, of course, it appears that you're decreasing
against your total City expense; but again, the total City expense has everything in it; and
this was the material that was presented to you, according to the information that we
received. So it may have Capital Improvements, which it was our belief and interpretation
that that was slightly a misrepresentation of the total City expense, because that can be a
one-time situation; you may have received a federal grant, put in the Muirfield Drive, or
whatever that you were working on, and so that goes away. And so we looked at it, if you
looked at it then against operating only expenses, you got, I think, a truer picture at least,
of what you were spending. In '86, you can see, it was 47% of the operating expense went
for salaries and fringes, 42% in '87, 48% in '88, 49% in '89, and 50% by 1990.
Joe Holub: Incidentally, 50%, many times, of the operating budget, I don't believe, is, it
could be interpreted as out of line or not out of line, I don't think it's out of line, but the
point is, you have to take into consideration, the total compensation plan and the total
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operating budget as well. Again, there's going to be distortion between the differences if
this keeps on growing, if the operating expenses continue to grow, it is going to kind of
make you feel warm and fuzzy, the point is, you have to take into consideration that you've
grown on a consistent basis here, even though your operating expenses have increased
significantly. Some of the things that we talked about; that we thought was important, is
that we felt that a City is much like a business operation, that it has two basic financial
elements. It has revenues or funding, and it has expenses. And that there's two kinds of
expenses; and one is necessary, and one might be interpreted as extravagant. And the
information shown in Graph 7 gives the appearance of some extravagance, and brings to the
surface and that again by the fact that staff increased by 107%. We looked very hard and
couldn't find, and it's courageous and difficult for me to say this, but I couldn't find any
hard copy or formal indication that anyone aggressively revisited, or challenged, or
considered changing or revising the compensation plan. So what I'm trying to say is, I
think the administration aggressively pursued Dublin's challenge or instructions to
adequately pay employees and to guard against rapid turnover in a growing environment.
So I think that it was appropriate for them to have that aggressiveness; however, what we've
got to look at is, what it's costing, and if we continue along those lines, what it may mean.
And we've come up with --
Denise King: Could I just interject there that you may not have found that, but we found
you. And we were looking for a fresh approach, a revisiting of these issues, and that is
why Council created this responsibility for the Personnel Board of Review, which had never
existed before, because we had a growing concern that perhaps we needed to get a, well,
we had a growing concern, to see whether or not the direction we were headed was the best
for the City of Dublin. And while I don't think any of us can fully interpret your
presentation at this point, you've given us preliminary data, you haven't given us a hard
copy yet, and I don't know exactly when you propose to do that. We really value what you
have, the work that you have done, and the experience and the perspective that you bring
to this. And that is exactly what we were seeking.
Joe Holub: Thank you, we all appreciate that. Incidentally, there was a collection of
approximately 173 hours of effort between the three of us to put this together to this stage;
and we are pleased to do that, and we will continue to help any way we can. We did come
to a couple of preliminary conclusions, and that is that we believe that the administration
will continue to aggressively move towards the identified goals and priorities of City
Council, as they should, and that's an opinion, using the current salary and fringe benefit
plan, and I must say, probably with the encouragement and support and urging of City
employee representatives, until otherwise directed. And two, that Dublin's salary and fringe
benefit expenses will continue to escalate in a high compounding manner. And the point
is, you know, the ninth wonder of the world, is compounding situations. I remember at
AT&T, we had to make a change because, what we were looking at was a situation where
we had a pay scale that was difficult to live with, and we had to take another look at what
we had to do to make it more workable from a standpoint of keeping expenses in line. The
bottom line being that those are our conclusions at this point in time, the report will be
forthcoming very soon, within the next week or ten days. We are available for questions
at any time, because we serve at your pleasure.
Joel Campbell: First of all, I'd like to thank you for your tremendous amount of effort.
I think all of us probably had a pretty gut feeling that what you said tonight was kind of
what we were going to hear, but it's nice to know that after research you did, that maybe
we weren't far off in our feelings anyway. As Denise indicated, historically the Personnel
Board of Review did not have this function, and we specifically drafted this ordinance this
spring to add that authority, because we kind of felt that there was some getting out of hand,
so to speak, along these lines, as a matter of fact oddly enough, that maybe I should give
you this survey that I talked about earlier from the Ohio Municipal League, which would
kind of go along with what you're talking about, maybe the next phase. And the one thing
that I kept hearing was, everybody kind of said, "Golly, those are gross numbers". I think
one thing that might help us would be, if you're able to do this on a per person basis, kind
of across the board, that may help eliminate the feeling that there's more staff, therefore the
numbers are bigger. My gut feeling is, again, that the per person numbers are going to be
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equally, matter of fact, that one graph you showed us, the farther apart those lines get, the
more likely it is that the per person numbers are going to end up being higher; in other
words, the greater the spread between the number of people and the total of the benefits and
the salary, obviously means the per person figures are greater and greater. But maybe in
your final package, you can consider that, because I kind of get the impression that some
of the folks think that maybe these numbers are distorted because of the increase in the
numbers themselves. But in any event, I want to thank you for your effort, I think it's
tremendous that you took all that time to do that, and it certainly will help us a lot, and the
timing is good because we are going to be coming into, we talked about it earlier, the
Operations and Capital Improvements Budgets in the next year, and of course, this goes
along with the Operations.
Wayne Williams: Well, you know, I had, my background, I had Jesuit training, I come
from John Carroll University, and they used to say that statistics are very accurate, but
they're difficult, and they can be treacherous. You know, if we had one foot on a pot-belly
stove and the other one on dry ice, theoretically we should be very comfortable, okay,
because the average says it, but we would be dancing, wouldn't we, so, you've got to take
that with a grain of salt, and that's the way we presented it.
Joe Holub: The administration is aggressive. I personally, and I think I speak for the
Board, is that, I'm very proud to live in Dublin; I'm tired of Dublin-bashing, so this is in
no way Dublin-bashing; this is just a presentation of information that, hopefully, will make
Council take a look at this so that we guard against being surprised. If I may, one last thing
is that, there is a thing called the parable of the frog, and what it is, you put a frog in nice,
comfortable water, it'll just sit there; if you put it in boiling hot water, it'll jump out right
away because its system is designed for major changes; but if you put that frog in calm
water and you just turn the heat up a little, by little, by little, it gets downright comfortable;
and sooner or later it boils itself and it doesn't realize it, because its little increments that
are happening that become so treacherous when they mushroom out in two, or three, or four
years. And that's probably what's happened to American industry in many cases, they
always find comfort.
Barbara Maurer: I just want to say that, for me, this is a very interesting set of figures, and
I really appreciate all the time that everybody has put into them. But it raises a lot of
questions in my mind about interpretation. One of the big questions in my mind is, and I
kind of know the answer because I was here doing it, I've been here since 1980, is how
many of our high-salaried, top-level employees have been hired since 1986. The fact of the
matter is, in 1986, hired a professional City Manager, which we did in 1987, we only had,
I think, three departments that had employees, and since then we've added a Police Chief,
whom we hired because of his experience to carry through the police accreditation process,
and we searched the entire nation for somebody to do that, and hired him at a reasonably
high salary because he had that expertise. We've hired an Assistant City Manager to handle
the types of things that come up here tonight, Solid Waste Management, getting recycling
started in Dublin, and so on. We've hired a Chief Building Officer, who had the required
professional background for that position, which the previous one didn't have. Hired a
Development Director and a full time Engineer, not to mention the Ninja Turtles, that we
had to hire and get quickly and hire away from Columbus and other communities to do the
sewer thing. So I guess I see that talented growth, and what I say is "Gee, yes, we did that
for a reason", and you focus on that, we wanted to be sure that we had good employees
who could handle this growth in the community. And we didn't compare ourselves to
Upper Arlington, Worthington, because they're not growing, and they didn't have the issues
and the problems we have. So one of the questions that I have, I would want to look at that
chart, and then have some way of figuring out how many top-level employees we hired in
the last few years, as compared to early and before 1986. And take that into the equation,
or the non-equation.
Joe Holub: Well, you know, I think the administration has been doing an excellent job
from the standpoint that you have a workforce that is very competent, and is performing for
you, so point one, the measure of a plan is in its success, so you're succeeding. What
we're pointing out is what it's costing, and how it's costing you. So again, and maybe it's
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my weakness in that I almost interpret it that you're trying to, have a need to explain, or
like there's something meant there other than just factual information. An aggressiveness
in administration, as far as I'm concerned, is necessary. The point is that you have to
decide whether you want to pay for that service, and can you afford it, and will it get you
in trouble later on? I have to use an analogy, you know, and at AT&T Company, we spent
a thousand, millions of dollars on getting dial tone on a telephone, but what's the difference
whether you pick up the phone and you hear dial tone here, here, here, or here. What's
important is, you hear it when it's here. And what I'm saying is that sometime you may
have to look at that and say, "What is it costing me to get dial tone or get something here,
rather than up here, and should we expend that money that way, or is there a better way to
do it", or, usually a plan that is two years old and three years old is pretty old-fashioned,
you have to take another look at it.
Barbara Maurer: The reason I was asking about that information, about the high-paid
employees, is that I think we would need to look at that when we're figuring out at what
level, what percentage do we want to aim for in the future? If we, as a Council, want to
establish a policy about what percentage increase you would want to maintain in terms of
increase in salary and benefits, I think we'd have to revisit those '86 to '90, and look
beyond the total amount of salaries, and look at the individual types of salaries, and see
what it is we need to do in the future, as compared to the past. I doubt if we're going to
be hiring all those new, high-level positions in the future, we already have those.
Marilee Zoercher: I think that, though, we would suggest that it's immaterial whether you
hire them in the future, you've established a table of organization that you believe is
appropriate for operating the City. And it may have shown a balloon at some particular
point, but now you've established that as your level of expenditure, and the likelihood of
you decreasing, would be not impossible, but certainly would require a very hard look at
the efficiency and effectiveness of the current, whatever that current table of organization
is, which we didn't address at all because that wasn't really a part of our charge. But more
importantly, is that you've now established this level and we will suggest in our, alternative
ways of looking at benefits and salaries in our report, that it is not necessary, and many
companies now, because of the continued escalating cost of salaries and benefits, are no
longer giving percent increases automatically, or a range automatically based on evaluation
or merit, but instead are looking at, this is just an idea, that they look at a one-time reward
for something, so that it's not an ongoing cost to you, but you may say that if a person, you
have these goals for an individual, this is just an example, goals for an individual that go
above those goals, so that is worth to you, $500, and so you give them a one-time kind of
a merit. But you see, that doesn't continue for 1992, that's not an accumulative, and that
is, in our estimation, that is where the difficulty could come in, is the accumulative,
ongoing cost to the City. So it's really not, I think that while it may explain an increase
in the last five years because the table of organization increased and you added more
qualified people to perform the functions, that they are now ongoing costs to you, even if
those people leave, you are likely to say that position is essential to the operation of the
City.
Barbara Maurer: This reminds me of something that Joe said, not tonight, but when I was
standing in the rain outside your door when I was campaigning a couple weeks ago, and that
is that our annual cost of living, percentage increase is added on top of the previous cost
of living increases and merit increases; and what I hear you saying is, you don't, first
number one, don't assume you're always going to have a cost of living increase; and second
number 2, you certainly don't put that percentage, base it on both the previous cost of living
increase and merit increases. In other words, you would disregard a merit increase, it
would be a one time only, it would not be used as a base for the next year's cost of living
increase.
Marilee Zoercher: That's an option.
Joe Holub: Say your base would stay at $38,000 a year, and somebody performed well
and got a $1,200 reward. That doesn't mean that next year, they're making $38,000 plus
$1,200. It means that they're making $38,000 again, and it's paid for performance. It's
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not a new concept, and I don't know whether it's good or bad for a City environment; I'm
just saying those are some of the things that we were talking about.
Barbara Maurer: I'm aware of some cities, like Albuquerque, does that. And they have
other kinds of rewards. The other concept that I've heard of, and I would need it explained
to me in detail, is the menu concept, choosing from benefits, for those that you need. If
you need child care, rather than health insurance, because your spouse already has health
insurance, that's something you can choose out of a m~nu.
Joe Holub: The one thing that worries all of us is that the generosity that the employee has
experienced, might cause some morale problems if you don't handle any changes very
carefully; because their expectations, and rightly so, should be there, because over a period
of, at least from 1986 to now, it's been pretty solid that I can go do this, or I can do that,
because I'll probably be getting "X" amount of dollars, or I'll be getting 100% benefits on
everything from health to vision care. One of the reasons I left AT&T and retired is
because if I had stayed, I would have had to start paying money towards, or premiums,
toward my health plan. And the health plan was costing $6,800 a year for AT&T
Company, for employees. And I said, "Inflation rates are 3, 4, and 5% in general, but
they're 8, 9, and 12 in the health industry". And if you take the rule 72, I'm looking at
$12,000-$15,000, I might be spending down the road when I'm living off of benefits from
the company, and I didn't want to do that, so that's why I left. And I use that example just
to point out that industry is doing those types of things, and maybe it might be important
to consider; and usually employees find that their health plan has more meaning and more
consideration if they have to contribute something, as well, to the plan. And that kind of
information will be in the report, recommendations and suggestions.
I>
A. C. Strip: Let me make a couple comments, one to my own Council people here, and
one to, shall we say, the audience, the press, etc. These numbers are wonderful. And I
say that sincerely. In my guess, there's a significant amount of your 173 hours was trying
to figure out how to even approach this thing. With that understanding, the task you took
on. I think you are presenting us, correct me if I'm misstating it in my own words, I think
you're presenting us with raw information saying "Here's what we have found, and here's
where you are", and Council, maybe only you know, why this has occurred. It's not our
job to tell you why it's occurred, but be aware, Council, and now let's see if, not justify
it, but see if it bears a relationship to what you're trying to do. These are terrific and
wonderful raw numbers. I think we have to be careful that we don't start up acting as
apologists or blameists, because there's a whole lot of stuff in here that has to be
interpreted, and what scares me, forgive me for being blunt, but particularly, the public
should read in the press some of these percentages without being totally understood, the
numbers actually could be devastating. Let me give you a simple example, and I don't want
to go into a speech here, but in anyone year, we just happened to get our pool ready in
October, so we hire one master lifeguard to get ready, and we had one lifeguard in 1990,
whatever year it was. In '91 now, we open the pool for the first time to have actual
swimmers, and that master lifeguard went out and hired 10; our lifeguard numbers
multiplied by a thousand percent, but it made a reasonable relationship. Like our police
may have gone up because we, as a Council, decided we wanted to improve our ratio
substantially, of cops to citizens, and we even want to'throw a couple extra cops into the
DARE Program and one with the dog, etc. So I think the raw numbers are wonderful for
us to have, but now it becomes up to us to see where they're justified and where they're not
justified as well. I don't think we have to sit there and try to justify them, I think we have
to find out just as well where they're not justified. And we're going to need you again, I
hope that you're available again. I will not read them now, but I made up a list of about
7 items, such as the theoretical lifeguard situation, where easily we could have increased
substantially by 1,000% if we chose to do so in anyone department. Part of it, of course,
is the level of service, perhaps. Has it changed from '86 to '90? Maybe it hasn't changed
one bit, but if it's changed 100% or 200%, the raw numbers are wonderful. I think,
however, I don't want to try and justify them tonight, I want to digest them more, I want
to be very careful we don't try and justify or apologize, but I want to also be very careful
that these numbers don't get misinterpreted by the public, if they don't have all the
information that goes with it. Any given number here or number there, out of context, is
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devastating.
Joe Holub: Let me give you one accurate figure, and then I'm finished. I live in Dublin,
I love it, it costs me about $4,800 a year in taxes. Now everybody's responsible for their
own mortgage, they can't blame that on anybody else, they did that. So if you take $4,800
a year and divide it by 12, that comes to $400 a month. Now anybody point to me where
you could live in a community like this with the services that we get for $400 a month.
You could say, "I have my mortgage", you decided to have a mortgage of $50,000,
$80,000, $90,000, or $100,000, but if you take, in my situation, $4,800 a year, that's $400
a month, there's no place that you could live in that's as safe and sound and as likeable and
as enjoyable as Dublin. And that tells you where I'm coming from. Once again, I'm trying
to point out because almost all the four factors that I talked about, kind of came up
indirectly here, that I said was going to come up, and that's not wrong; it's just that I don't
want those things to be fused into the situation. We're happy with this situation, but we just
wanted to provide some information, so thank you.
Barbara Maurer: I have a lot of respect for the press that covers Dublin, and has for the
last few years, because they're very much aware of all the issues we've had to deal with and
have covered them extremely well and in great detail, and I have great confidence they
understand. When they look at these figures and same things we do, having been through
the process of growth that we have, I don't have any problem with their understanding. I
know that they always can call City Hall if they have a question to get information, or one
of us. So I'm not really too worried about that.
Joe Holub: In about ten days, we'll get a copy ready for you, so you can reproduce it and
distribute it.
COUNCIL ROUNDTABLE
Denise King: Well, that just provides a good example, when people ask me why I'm
running for Dublin City Council instead of some higher office, I say it's because we have
great constituents. And I truly mean that. We have so much expertise in this community
to call on, and they give generously of their time on all the boards and commissions. We
also ask our staff to contribute their time generously, and they do. I think all of us would
value your professional reactions and appraisals of the information that we've received
tonight so that we have a very complete picture of the information. A couple other items,
I wanted to thank Joel and Robin for participating in this program in the "Don't Bag It"
lawn care program. I saw the sign up in your yard this evening as I came by. We
appreciate your participating in this program of the Solid Waste Authority and helping to
educate the citizens of Dublin on that solid waste reduction effort. And I'm sure that that
extra fertilizer that has been donated, it will continue to look great; and I wanted to thank
Robin while she was here, because I understand she's the one who actually mows it.
Back to the safety issue, when we meet in the Safety Committee at the end of the month,
another thing we might like an update on is the success of the Muirfield Drive project and,
just an update on how it's going with the public's education and acceptance of the new
signage at that point. We will be about a month into it at that juncture. And I think all of
us would appreciate some accurate estimate, some estimate of the approximate cost of
putting a fully installed traffic signal at both Sells M~lls and Muirfield, and also at the
corner of Brand and Muirfield. That question comes up so frequently from the public, and
I think that we all need to have some concept of what it would cost, because it's probably
a far higher figure than many people would guess. And I would just like to operate on
some more accurate information. And then, of course, if the 30-day study that we talked
about in our last Council meeting is ready by then, we would certainly like to have that.
I'm not sure that it can be.
Terry Foegler: I think what we indicated is, the appropriate time to do those counts would
be approximately 30 days, 4 or 5 weeks after it opened, to do the traffic counts, and from
the traffic counts, do the analysis. The patterns are changing, we've talked to the police
who were providing, for example, hand signal control at Post and Coffman, and those lines
and numbers of cars are reducing daily as people get increasingly acclimated to the new
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pattern. So I think after 30 days, it's felt that we should start to get some realistic traffic
counts to make those kinds of analysis.
Denise King: So we should have that report by Christmas.
Terry Foegler: I would hope before then. I would think that we should be able to take the
counts in early November and within a couple weeks, give you some feedback on it.
Denise King: One other point, Steve Smith, I'd like to ask the Legal Department or the
Finance Department, I'm not sure which is the appropriate, to make a determination prior
to Council's involvement in the budget as to whether or not Bed Tax Funds can be used for
maintenance of projects which were funded from the Bed Tax, such as the entryway features
or the improvements in Old Dublin, as examples. I think that's it. Peter Lenz, if I could
see you after the meeting, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.
Dan Sutphen: Maybe this will get done pretty soon, so I won't have to ask any more
questions, but one of them, Terry, if you could, please update us on reflectors on 745, and
when they might be put in. We funded them earlier this year, and those reflectors the State
didn't put back in last year after they repaved the road, we paid $6,000 for, and they ripped
them up and didn't give them back to us, so I've been hunting for a year-and-a-half for
reflectors. And the last time I asked was early part of summer --.
..
Terry Foegler: I think the question came up again, in your behalf, at the last meeting, and
the purchase order had been issued and the contract had been let for the acquisition of those,
and I believe Paul's comment at the last meeting was, those were scheduled to go in that
week; so if they didn't go in, something slipped from Council's meeting two weeks ago,
because the purchase order was issued and the work was scheduled. But we'll give you an
update at your next meeting.
Dan Sutphen: Chief Ferrell, since you're here tonight, Tim, you received that letter from
the Chief about the Eiterman Road prospective Park and Drive, or whatever you want to
call that. My question is, now that we have that, that was Paul's big question mark on
surveillance, and so on, where do we go from here as far as, do you want to talk about that
at our meeting at the end of the month, or put it on the agenda, so to speak, or --?
Tim Hansley: My recommendation would be that you do what the Service Committee
handle it as an agnda item. Make a recommendation to do that, I think it's a minimal cost.
It's a matter of signage and striping. Again, the memo that he's referring to is Ron's ??
that we don't incur any additional liability over and above if somebody parked there
without use enviting them to be there.
Dan Sutphen: I just wanted to keep it moving. That's a cheap way to get good press on
it. There were 8 cars out there this morning.
Tim Hansley: I don't know what Council considers it a big deal, but if you would make
a motion to direct staff to undertake that program, maybe no more than $5,000, put a cap
on that, you could do it as simply as that. Or you could make a report back to the Service
Committee, depends on what you want to do. There's a dead-end road out close to Adria
Labs, there's a strip of road that's been abandoned.
Dan Sutphen: We'll do it in our group, and then we'll give a map showing what it is, and
so on. All the letters that have gone back and forth, have answered all the questions at this
point. I just wanted to ask because I'd like to keep it going.
Tim Hansley: I'd say it's a policy matter of Coucil.
Dan Sutphen: I think, Dave, along those lines, I almost think that, I know it's a small thing
right now, but if we start leasing all the lights, like Mark just said, 25, 30, 50 years, we're
looking at major expense. I'm wondering, myself, I don't really want to get into leasing
something that we ought to be buying right now. Realize that intersection needs to go in,
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and we'll do it today. Joel, and I, and Denise, when you guys were talking about land, I
was under the impression, I know it would be very hard to look it up, Myra, but I'd almost
guarantee you that Council adopted the light that you see out at Perimeter and Village
Center as our standard light for all the City of Dublin. And that was it, and that was a
long, drawn-out affair, Danny Johnson brought them in here and showed them to us, and
we got to pick them out, and so we picked this. And we were going to stock them in our
new Service Complex.
Tim Hansley: Understand one major point that Mark is addressing, and that's that, in those
subdivisions, or those industrial subdivisions like Perimeter Mall, or DVC, Dublin Village
Center, where we have a client that wants a light installed, and then paying at City expense,
is going to be assessed the cost or to put them in at development agreement, we will
probably still recommend that high-quality light. But where we have an intersection, where
the City is the client, and we don't have a Capital Improvement Fund that has excess money
to buy a half-million dollar system for safety and security, we have no other option but to
lease a Valley shoe box, that's going to drop off the list of the priority projects. Now we
will still put in or put in by assessment, we would see a return, we would probably still
recommend that option.
Dan Sutphen: Along that same line, I hate to drag in the dirt, but I think all of a sudden
Compari, they got the petition sign and they had street lights put in. Well, what are we
going to put in? What kind of street light are we going to put in? We need to give staff
direction here because I feel like they're going to do the natural thing, they want to make
people happy, but at the same time, lease some more lights. How many lights do we lease
a year before it becomes a big deal? I can see it going up real fast, and Columbus and
Southern is just going to say, "Come on". And we're tied to them that much more.
Tim Hansley: Understand too, there is a variation of the two types you are talking about,
that's where we're leasing the lights, Columbus and Southern, were we're buying the light
and just paying for the energy. So those are different options. And those that have rusted
or fallen apart, Columbus and Southern has replaced those; and all the City of Dublin is
paying for is the energy cost. They don't pay any maintenance or replacement on those.
Someday that may change.
Terry Foegler: Just to update Council, we are looking at the options in light of the Capital
Improvements Program, for providing lighting. One of the things that has been identified
as a critical need is that each key intersection, where it's an apparent safety problem if
nothing else, that we're looking at, that we look for a quick, safe, cost-effective way to
provide lighting as an interim step, use existing poles and cobra heads. We'll be bringing
plans to you regarding that, Mark just is pursuing this option. In terms of larger scale,
street-lighting projects, since they're not part of the long-term capital budget, we will look
at the options in terms of annual cash capital budget to see what can be done. We'll
certainly approach Council on these projects for direction.
Tim Hansley: The the operating costs, when you rent them from Columbus and Southern,
over a time, that becomes a very large outlay of operating dollars, as well.
Terry Foegler: The last update I had, is that the materials were still being shipped, there
are delays on the shipment of all the light fixtures that come with, and that's part of the
problem with spec'ing on specialized light fixtures, they're not things that are in stock. One
issue that did come up was, apparently the electric company was having difficulty in
obtaining an easement for a transformer from AT&T, they wanted some dollars for that.
Those negotiations are taking place, we have offered some staff assistance in that regard,
Mitch has been contacted. He's acquired additional easements from AT&T in the last year
to see what we could do to help them out. I believe they're going to be going simultaneous
with the finish of the lights. I believe the letter that I have, I will put it in your packet next
time, from the light installer, indicates that his installation on Blazer should be complete in
November. I think he'll be requesting additional time for the Dublin Village Center, but
I'll forward your copy of that letter if you like.
Based on the latest update I got, it's hopeful that will be up by the end of November.
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Again, we spec'd special-colored pole for that, to make that consistent with the standard
poles that we were using back in there, and that added, apparently, a bit to the delivery time
on that. But the last update I got on that was the end of November.
Barbara Maurer: To go back to the Goal Setting subject, I hope you're not planning on not
having a meeting. I hope that's not what the proposal is. I would be very upset, and I
think the rest of Council would be, because we have changed one huge thing since last
meeting; and that is, we voted for a $60,000,000 sewer. And I think we need a meeting
to review the '91 priorities, and you occasionally say, "Oh, well, this is just the annual goal
setting", but it's not annual goal setting, this is where we do the goal setting for the whole
community, and have done since 1986, for long-term things, such as what Jan mentioned,
and that is bringing salaries up to a reasonable level back then. So it really is, the goals
that we have set in these meetings, have gone much further than one year. And I think we
have to have a meeting to look at our priorities. Now my next question is, when are we
going to have this, because I have to set a retreat for my business, and I don't want to have
it conflict, and I would like to have a date set. And I thought Mike was going to pursue
that and get that done and get Council's calendars out to them a long time ago, and it was
mentioned that people's calendars are being filled up, and we don't want to wait and say
"Oh, gee, we have to have a budget done, we can't do that". This is where we influence
the budget and there's a great deal of work that we anticipated the minute we made that
$60,000,000 decision that we would have to do. And that is, look at some of our priorities,
look at some of the issues we talked about tonight. And I don't want to have a completed
budget come in here and then say, "Okay, you guys figure out where to knock the stuff'.
That's the last thing I want to do, I want us to have an environment in which to look at that
in the same way that we have in Goal Setting sessions in the past, because obviously, we
have a lot of changes to make. So I hope I'm not right, I hope you weren't thinking of not
having a meeting.
Tim Hansley: That is still a course of Council, I will have Myra call you tomorrow
morning and coordinate that meeting in late October or. early November.
A. C. Strip: Four items, I'll try to make them quickly. One, since the Community Center
has been, what I consider, a highly acclaimed priority of this Council, below, of course the
CIP items, I'll just throw out, Mr. Mayor, to you, if you would consider the possibility,
perhaps you ought to have somebody from Council act as a representative for meeting with
the Chamber of Commerce, not that I don't think that staff is capable, they are, but this is
a policy question; and for something of that nature, and it's a first for us, private and public
sector, something you might want to consider.
Tim Hansley: And I suggested to them, that the City would not make a commitment to
even participate, until they made the announcement, subject to Council wanting to appoint
one of the elected officials, or some other member of the community, to be their rep.
A. C. Strip: Second, the Scottish Corners party was neat, not without some flaws, but it
was the first of its type, and I just wonder if that shouldn't be considered as possibly an
annual event? Maybe you've already thought of that, but I think what I'm seeing is, Dublin
people want to come out and have a little fun. The bridge opening, which was not a Dublin
project per se, the Scottish Corners. Some of these things have all the makings of a do-
over. I wish we would have seen a little bit more publicity here and there, no reflection
on our staff, Ijust think that, for some reason, it didn'fseem to get a lot of TV, or media,
or whatever. But it was fun, and I thought it was worth doing. Would you, by the way,
at some point, somebody, Marsha, or the PIO, let us know what that cost. It would be fun
to know. I haven't the foggiest notion whether that was a $2,000 party or a $20,000 party.
Tim Hansley: We are, frankly, trying to give you, in your packet, if you'll notice, the cost
of overtime and bread cost of most special events, if not all. I think you have an update
on that, if you don't, you'll get it. We intend to address special events generically through
the budget process, you can get a look at what events you want to do annually and at what
expense. That one, we're probably looking at suggesting to Council to do some type of fall
festival, maybe center it around Halloween, but in lieu of trick or treating, or in addition
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to trick or treating, the community would sponsor a festival in one of the neighborhood
parks, maybe Scottish Corners, and do that apple thing, and all that.
A. C. Strip: Point number 3, I have, for several years, advocated, and I think it's about
to come before the Cemetery Commission, we're one of those few cities and suburbs that
have our own cemeteries. I think it's a very well-kept secret, Joel, you found out in
difficulty, but I think most residents, including myself, for a long time assumed that was
a Community Church cemetery. It's a municipal cemetery, of course, and I've advocated
for a long time that we do a tastefully prepared sign, visible from the road, Cemetery
Commission keeps kicking it around. So if any of you agree, will you kindly call that in.
I think it's something, until there's a sign that identifies it as a Dublin cemetery and not as
a church cemetery, I ain't going there. We've kind of passed it on, but I'm very serious
about that.
Tim Hansley: The Cemetery Commission, for whatever reason, has struggled with what
the sign ought to say, and what it ought to be made out of, and that's where it is.
,.... ....
A. C. Strip: To me, I happen to think it's a very serious issue, because people just don't
know it's a municipal cemetery, and because of some various religious beliefs, etc., if
somebody assumes it belongs to the Community Church, they will not consider using that
as a final resting place. In my situation, that's a very particular, troublesome point, because
people think it's a church location. I think it's an appropriate thing to be looked at. So if
you agree, hassle Danny or somebody on the Cemetery Commission. Lastly,
Muirfield/Brand, I don't want to overdo this thing, let me say that I see, not withstanding,
letters, some of the statements by the residents, I see people approaching that intersection
with greater trepidation and care than most other intersections. You'll always have the
speeder there as you will on any street in town, but by and large, my experience says people
are really approaching the intersection very carefully, which may be why we haven't had
any accidents. It's unusual and it's different after all these years of Brand being a
throughway. I'm not opposed to lights, but may I just say that we tread carefully in that
department; otherwise, we may find that we've just defeated the very purpose, you stick a
couple lights there, make people stop on the way through Muirfield, and pretty soon they're
just going to say, "Hey, I can go down Brandon/Coffman and avoid all those lights". It
may be necessary, maybe a flasher may be necessary, but right now, I am as much
concerned with safety as anybody, but I find people approaching that real carefully. Only
time will tell. I know there's an argument, "sure you're going to put a light in there after
somebody gets hurt badly". That's a valid argument at any single intersection. But so far,
it's a $50,000 per light investment, by the way, give or take, and with more exotic
signalization, you're talking about $75,000 per light. If you save a life, it's worth every
bit of it; but if it's not called for, it may just do the reverse, it may delay people, slow them
down, and then make them speed up away from the light. I think it bears a lot of watching,
and everybody's right, it may need a light, it may not need a light. I think it's a wonderful
improvement to the City, and now we'll go on to the next one.
Mayor Rozanski: With that, I'd entertain a motion to go into Executive Session.
A. C. Strip: So moved.
Ms. Maurer: Second.
Mayor Rozanski: yes
Mr. Amorose: yes
Ms. Maurer: yes
Mr. Sutphen: yes
Mr. Campbell: yes
Mr. Strip: yes
Mrs. King: yes
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Mayor Rozanski: We will not be reconvening.
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