Our meeting on Thursday had many items that were discussed, however, the largest discussion involved legislation proposed by Councilwoman Shaw which would declare racism as a public health crisis, supported a commission on the topic, and had several actionable items for our City to ensure we are promoting racial equality. While this is an important topic to come before us, I proposed a Version 2 (click the link to read the full text) of this legislation for several reasons:
- The declaration of a public health crisis is outside the scope of what we have authority to do as a City Council.
- There is a group already meeting that is a broader community group that I feel we can add value to and can better work to make change across the community with a broader involvement than just a governmental group. This group will help provide a picture of what the City can provide and also what we can take away from it to improve our own internal operations as well.
- Change in our community is not something that will be driven simply by legislation, it will be changed with cooperative involvement with our schools, our leadership, and our local community groups working together to better educate and interact with all those in our community.
- Legislation is to control and direct the operations of Council and the City, we need to put at the forefront of this legislation items to hold City Council, City Leadership, and the employees of our city accountable to ensure we are acting equitably.
- The Version 2 is a first step into continued action by City Council and the Administration to promote racial equality through our City operations.
- This is an extremely important issue and I felt if there was not another version proposed for consideration that it would take many meetings of discussions to flush out the amendments wanted by every person. That does not do justice to an important issue such as this by dragging it out over weeks of back and forth. We need to make a firm stand and commitment to doing better on City Council and throughout the City Administration and Operations.
My proposed Version 2 was sent to all of Council prior to the meeting yesterday and was passed unanimously passed by Council.
We also had multiple comments from local builders and residents supporting our building department and to support the hiring of a Building Plans Examiner in that department. This is an item that Council has reviewed over the past several months and an alternative to handling building department operations was proposed by Councilman McIntire. I do appreciate the efforts of Mr. McIntire in suggesting an alternative to the operations of the department, as even in statements made by the administration, experts in this area are greatly dwindling and in the future it is likely the department will have to be managed using such alternative method. At the end of the day, the operation of our building department is important to our City and its residents and Council voted to approved of hiring of Mr. Richard Hickman as the Building Plans Examiner by a 6-1 vote, Mr. McIntire voted no. Mr. Hickman has experience working in the past with our engineering and building departments and Mr. McCleary and Mr. Catalano had many good things to say about Mr. Hickman and I know they are looking forward to him getting started.
We also approved the hiring of a Project Manager in our Information Services department that will help fill the duties of our Information Services Manager who retired earlier in the year by a unanimous vote. This is an important role to keeping our City departments up and running. Mr. Eclain who will be filling this role has worked within our city as an Intern within this department so he will be able to get up and running rather quickly and we welcome him to the City.
Planning Committee had several items yesterday that did end up going on to Council and they were all approved. Here is a summary:
- Revision of our Zoning Code as it relates to accessory structures and provided additional limitations of the accessory structure size on smaller lots. This was an item that came up in discussion last year that some accessory structures on smaller lots often look out of place and disrupt the nature of the neighborhood feel. This was reviewed by Planning Commission, code recommendations were made by them and then it was reviewed by Council and through a public hearing. I think this is a good step in improving our code and that much more discussion on zoning code items are also necessary and likely in the next year.
- Approval of a new retail building on Kent Road just west of Stow Cone which will include 4 smaller office suites, there is no current residents lined up but I look forward to seeing this revitalization of new buildings and improvements in this area.
- Approval of a new accessory building a C-Nail & Spa on Route 91. Last year this business moved their operations to the prior garage on the property behind their residence and now asked to build a smaller garage for their residence. This accessory structure complies with the zoning code and would still even fit in the new accessory building structure passed on the same evening.
- Approval of a lot split on the corner of Commerce and Hudson Drive which separated out a commercial building from a self storage operation and an open lot. This was a request by several family owned businesses to separate out the space based on their business operations and really did not have any affect on the operations or use of the properties involved.
Council also head about the discussions with City Administration with the County and other local entities about the collaborative discussions regarding the creation of a Regional Dispatch Center to cover the operations of the County and many other local entities in Summit County. This was just an initial update of ideals, the parties involved, and potential location. Last year Stow residents passed a charter amendment which would require that any removal of the dispatch center outside the City of Stow would require that the voters approve such movement. Our Safety Services, including the dispatch services, are a very important service used by our residents and I do think they deserve a say if we are going to change how they operate. There will be additional discussion and questions about this to see if this is an item that will go to the voters in the future.
Our next Committee and Council Meetings will take place on Thursday July 9, 2020 with Committee times to be determined closer to the date and Council will follow Committee meetings.
In the mean time, I wish you all a wonderful and safe July 4th holiday and recommend you check out Fun in Stow’s Facebook page for events happening throughout the City to celebrate.