Council 2/28

I attended Council on Feb 28 and here's what I saw.

Denise McCarthy. She's going to be a great addition to Council. Her perspective as a renter plus her tenure in the Historic district will be helpful as we try and "right the ship" there.

Town Meeting Rules. Code of Ordinances defers to Ohio Revised Code, which states we have a 30 day window for COUNCIL to re-appoint. (ORC says Council explicitly - not an issue per se, just a clarification). I reviewed the language today. Town Meeting requires a caucus within **2 weeks** to fill the position. So in this case, TM is the more restrictive requirement. Todd Keyes confirmed this for me today. Todd held a Caucus on Saturday and had 8 attendees, a sufficent quorum. Denise M was unanimously endorsed. Todd confirmed this for me today. Net net, I'm satisfied that we're not unnecessarily rushing into things. And I also continue to hear good things about Denise, mainly that she's passionate about the Historic District. And energy there is in short supply....

Tree Species. I think we should plant right out of John Nolen's Bill of Materials from the 1920s. We should plant less of these ornamentals which seem to cause problems. And let's over plant. We are at risk with too little investment, as I have said previously.

Fire Dpt Overtime. This is a problem, and while you can't eliminate it completely, it's going to unravel the difficult decisions made last year to live within our means financially. I would like to see the Fire Dpt tap into this growing list of Part Timers to reduce our reliance on OT.

Traffic Calming. LOVE the databased points system Dennis is working on. This is the right way to approach this, leaving emotion out of it. I would like an override option though, if a majority on the street say "no thanks". I wouldn't put something in place if a majority were against it.

I voted in the affirmative on all votes. Street approval seemed reasonable. I would like us to dig deeper into the Hafner contract and see if it's truly the value that some claim it to be. On the surface it's not a bad thing, so with what I know, a yes vote was appropriate.

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Cortney