REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING

MINUTES

TUESDAY

MAY 15, 2018

7:00 P.M.

The Regular Meeting of the Eastlake City Council was held at Eastlake City Hall, 35150 Lakeshore Boulevard.  The Meeting was called to order by Council President Mr. Meyers at approximately 7:05 p.m.

The Pledge of Allegiance was recited.

ATTENDEES

Members of Council in attendance were, Mr. Kasunick, Mr. Spotton, Mr. Evers, Mr. Zuren, and Council President Mr. Meyers.  Also in attendance was Council Clerk Mrs. Simons.  Mr. Hoefle and Mr. Overstreet were absent and excused.

 

Those attending from the Administration were Mayor Morley, Fire Chief Whittington, Police Chief Reik, CBO Menn, City Engineer Gwydir, Finance Director Schindel, and Law Director Klammer.  Service Director Rubertino was absent and excused.

 

APPROVAL OF AGENDA

Regular Council Meeting Agenda –May 15, 2018.

Mr. Meyers: This was moved forward to the next schedule Regular Council Meeting.

 

APPROVAL OF MINUTES

Regular Council Meeting Minutes- April 24, 2018.

MOTION:  Mr. Zuren moved to approve the Regular Council Meeting Minutes from April 24, 2018.  Mr. Evers second.

ROLL CALL: Yeas unanimous.

Motion carried.  Minutes approved.

PRESIDENT’S REPORT

Meetings Scheduled

Mr. Meyers: The next Council-as-a-Whole Committee Meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 22, 2018 at 7:00 p.m. The Regular Council meeting will be convened immediately following the adjournment of the Council-as-a-Whole Committee meeting.

There were no questions for Mr. Meyers.

COMMUNICATIONS & PETITIONS

Mr. Meyers: These were all moved to our next Council Meeting on May 22, 2018.

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Mr. Meyers: An Ordinance Committee Meeting was held since our last Regular Council Meeting.  Mr. Kasunick?

Mr. Kasunick: We had a proposed Zoning Variance and this was move to Council-As-A-Whole Committee Meeting Agenda so that we could review the legislation before voting on it at the Regular Council Meeting.  We had a proposal regarding 155 employees, so that the Mayor would receive the same benefits as the other employees.  Mainly compensation for unused vacation time and this was held in committee, so that we could see the draft legislation on it.  There was a proposal regarding Board and Commissions Compensation to modify the way that the members of the Boards and Commissions are compensated.  This was voted down and we decided to leave it as it is.  Under Miscellaneous we had a Collateral City Funds proposal that was moved forward, a General Fund Cash Reserve proposal that was held in Committee pending clarification, and to establish a Payroll Reserve Fund and that was moved forward.  That concludes my report for the Ordinance Committee.

There were no questions for Mr. Kasunick.

Mr. Meyers: Mr. Zuren I believe that you have a few items.

Mr. Zuren:  Thank you Mr. President.  On the last day of school…at Eastlake Middle School on May 23 the ECDC and Mayor Morley are going to present approximately 33 students the Academic Excellence Award.  These students received straight A’s for the full school year in all of their classes, so we want to recognize all of their hard work, determination, and a great example to all of the other students for their straight A’s.  With their award there were also some gifts that were donated from CP Coolers, Lake County Visitors Bureau, and a few other businesses that we have yet to pick-up the donations.  We will announce the businesses once we get the donations for the students.  I will also be sending a Proclamation to Council to recognize the student’s hard work and straight A’s for 2017 and 2018.  Additionally I want to announce the Trick-or-Treat Street on Vine Street and it will be held on June 16 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., with participating businesses and churches on Vine Street.  This is going to be held prior to the Lake County Captain’s baseball game, which starts at 7:00 p.m.  It is also themed for Halloween.  Children and families are requested to dress in costumes and it should be a lot of fun on that day.  We are also going to ask businesses that are participating to decorate their store fronts.  I am talking to a restaurant to provide a Halloween themed lunch on that day.  Finally we did announce the Second Annual Eastlake Food Truck/Music Festival and it is scheduled for Sunday, July 15 from 2:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.  It will be held at the same location, at the gazebo behind City Hall.  We are expecting seven to eight food trucks, three are confirmed.  We are trying to get a wide variety of food offered on that day.  We have also confirmed with Heroes’ United, they will have eight to ten super heroes there for pictures.  There are also some vendor’s from local businesses that will be there with tables, and there will also be non-profits, and we are also working on a fun family friendly music celebration to kick off the event; which we will announce shortly.  With that I am open for questions. 

 There were no questions for Mr. Zuren.

RECOGNITION OF THE PUBLIC:  1/2 hour, 3-minutes per person

Mr. Meyers recognized the public input at this time; he reminded the speakers that there is a 3-minute limit for their comments; all comments are to be directed to the Chair and not include any personalities or individuals.

There was no one wishing to speak.

LEGISLATION PROPOSED: First number will be 2018-041

Mr. Meyers: All Legislation Proposed has been moved to the next Council Meeting.

LEGISLATION PENDING:

There was no Legislation Pending.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

There was no Unfinished Business.

NEW BUSINESS

There was no New Business.

ADMINISTRATIVE REPORTS:

MAYOR/SAFETY DIRECTOR – Dennis Morley

Mayor Morley: Thank you Mr.  President and welcome everyone to this evenings meeting.  I guess that since we changed the meeting a few people didn’t see it, so we will have a meeting today and next Tuesday.  So I look forward seeing everyone in the crowd.  With that I will talk about the Boulevard of 500 Flags Committee will be putting up the remainder of the flags this Saturday at 9:00 a.m., hopefully people will be able to make that to help put the rest of the flags up.  The Boy Scouts of America will be here on May 22 to plant flowers and weed the front of City Hall.  If you have notice coming in one of our businesses Eco Lawn has donated four times to fertilize City Hall.  The grounds look a lot better, but the only problem is that since the rain it has been growing and every three or four days we have to cut the grass, but it looks good.  On May 28 we will have the services for Memorial Day at 11:00 a.m. at the gazebo in the back with the VFW and Legion.  Longfellow Elementary will be in here tomorrow, the fourth and fifth graders will be in the Police Department, Fire Department, and City Hall.  We will take them for a tour and it will be about 45 kids that will be coming in.  I had the privilege to do Career Day at Longfellow last week, and the second and third graders have some interesting questions.  I love going to the schools and I will continue that.  Over the last few days you’ve been seeing and the news media has been contacting us about Buckeye Relief and the medical marijuana, so we were on Channel 5, Fox 8.  People have been calling in because some of what was said on there for jobs you can either go to www.buckeyerelief.com or their HR person is Maggie@buckeyerelief.com.  I just want to let everyone know that we are not part of the hiring process.  We’ve been working with Mr. Rayburn and his group but we will have no over site on the hiring.  One of our summer help guys has started and we will have two more high school kids to keep up with the grass throughout the summer.  Mr. Rubertino and his department continue to work on the roads.  The asphalt plant has been tough, because of the rain so they have been doing a lot of inside work and a lot of the grounds work.  Our phones should be up and running in the next month or so.  We all miss our voicemail and we are looking forward to getting our voicemail back.  It has been a trying experience for little over nine months, going through the Law Director and Ms. Schindel…it has been a nightmare with our insurance company.  We’ve been sending them messages on how displeased we are that we are a municipality and we have to go through this about getting the phones up and running.  The Chief Reik can talk about hiring a couple of Police Officers and we have two retiring…Lt. Gonzalez and Sgt. Gutka will be moving on to retirement.  Chief Reik started some interviews today and that concludes my report and I am open for questions.

Mr. Meyers: Mr. Evers?

Mr. Evers: Mayor do you want to touch on the Hometown Heroes’ banner?

Mayor Morley: I’m sorry the Hometown Heroes’ Banner started and we have to have them in by May 18^th.  I think that right now we have about ten.  There are forms out in the Rotunda and the Hometown Heroes’ is for anyone who was in the service currently and/or veterans’.  We will put banners up on Route 91 with their pictures on them (if they have them) and the date of service along what branch of service.  We are looking forward to that starting up also.  Thank you Mr. Evers.

Mr. Meyers: Mayor is that May 18^th?

Mayor Morley: Yes the end of this week.

There were no questions for Mayor Morley

FIRE CHIEF – Ted Whittington

Chief Whittington: Thank you Mr. President.  A couple of things…we are in our public education season so we did the mock crash at North High School this year, with the help from Chief Reik.  What we do is we simulate…for a long time it was simulating drinking and driving and we put some students in the car and we would go through what we would do on a scene.  It is quite detailed, because the students that are involved don’t go back to school for the day, so the student’s almost feel like they aren’t there.  One of the student’s is a d/o/a and they agreed to be put in a hurse and taken away.  The only reason why I bring it up is because if you got some feedback from kids in the schools, but this year we had to do a distracting driving scenario.  Because we’ve shifted a little bit from the drinking and driving to using your text messaging type of thing.  I just wanted to let you know that we did that.  We are also in the schools with our safety trailer, so we will be going through there for that.  We did have a couple of house fires over the last week in a half.  Thank goodness there were no injuries.  The families did lose some of their home and some of their homes were heavily damaged in both cases.  In both cases the detectors were a big deal.  The one family it was in the middle of the night and they had their grandkids there.  They were awakening by their smoke detectors to find their house full of smoke and there was a lot of fire in the back of the house.  The smoke detectors obviously worked in that case.  The other day it was a lightning strike…if I read in the news paper.  They were having some renovations done where someone was distracted thinking that one of the contractors did something.  They heard the smoke detectors and a lot of black smoke and fire in the back of their house, so I am always taking advantage of letting people know the importance of smoke detectors.  If you know anybody in the community that doesn’t have them and may need some they can come up to the Fire Station.  We still have our smoke detector programs and it is pretty active.  With that I am open for questions.

There were no questions for Chief Whittington.

POLICE CHIEF – Larry Reik

Chief Reik:  As the Mayor said we are in the process of hiring.  We started the interviews today and the processing goes through a psychological and hopefully by the end of the week we will be making an offer.  Then they will have to go through medical.  We are probably still a couple of weeks away.  We have the same problems as the Fire Departments have as well as other Police Departments as far as getting a ton of candidates out there.  With the group that we interviewed today we have a good group to select from.  Lieutenant Gonzalez and Sgt. Gutka…Sgt. Gutka is almost off of the books and Lt. Gonzalez has pretty much through the summer.  We will be doing our promotional in June to promote two current officers to sergeant and one to lieutenant.  A week from Friday on May 25 will be a luncheon for all of city personnel for their departure.  We have our annual Safety Town will be on June 4 to June 8.  We put the stuff out to the libraries and we’ve been to the pre-schools.  The more that it is out there and shared…we just want as big of a turn out as we can.  We are still looking for a few more volunteers, but usually everything fills itself in.  Finally I’m not sure if we touched on it before but we did have that fatal crash a couple of weeks ago.  It’s going to be going out to the County for indictment and hopefully for the families involved it will go as quickly as possible.  It is always good work with the Fire Department and things just kind of happen by their confidence and it really helps assist us when we a lot of other things going on.  That concludes my report and I am open for questions.

There were no questions for Chief Reik.

CHIEF BUILDING OFFICIAL – David Menn

Mr. Menn: Thank you.  Just real quick the hotel…we are hoping to get two of the floors that were renovated open by tomorrow, which would be the fourth and fifth floor.  They look very nice so we are hoping to give them occupants to open up the two new floors.  You may be getting complaints about grass notices or high grass, just send them to us.  We are out there every day now…obviously with the weather.  When you have a majority of the city cutting their grass it’s rough to see the ones that are getting very high.  If you have any complaints just let us know.  That concludes my report.

There were no questions for Mr. Menn.

SERVICE DIRECTOR – Nick Rubertino

Mr. Rubertino was absent and excused.

There were no questions for Mr. Rubertino.

CITY ENGINEER – Tom Gwydir

 Mr. Gwydir had nothing to report at this evenings meeting.

There were no questions for Mr. Gwydir.

FINANCE DIRECTOR – Carol-Ann Schindel

Ms. Schindel had nothing to report at this evenings meeting.

There were no questions for Ms. Schindel.

LAW DIRECTOR – Randy Klammer

Mr. Klammer had nothing to report at this evenings meeting.

There were no questions for Mr. Klammer.

ADJOURNMENT

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 7:22 p.m.

 

 

 

 

 

___________________________________

JOHN MEYERS, COUNCIL PRESIDENT

 

 

 

APPROVED: ______________________

 

 

 

ATTEST: _____________________________________

TRACY M. SIMONS, CLERK OF COUNCIL