The City Service Director provided an update on the road and sidewalk programs going on in the City. The sidewalks repair and replacement have taken place along Kent Road from Charring Cross to the Stow/Kent city limit line. The sidewalks in L’Ermitage area are being replaced/repaired now, and starting Monday crews will enter the Calls Farm neighborhood making repairs.
The updated signals have been installed at Fishcreek and Graham Road. The final repaving and new painting will take place overnight starting the week of August 14th and are expected to be complete prior to school starting. This change was done with a safety grant to make the intersection better for both drivers and pedestrians and included the removal of the islands at two of the corners. I look forward to seeing this project finalized.
The remainder of the asphalt paving and concrete road repair programs are just kicking off and expected to be fully underway by the end of August and expected to be finalized by October 2023. The City has not been able to find enough seasonal workers to complete a crack seal program using our own internal equipment and staff, but the administration is looking to put together a program to bid this out. I am hopeful we can get this program defined this year and out to bid. I also hope to see the road program get kicked off earlier in 2024 so it is not going so late into the fall to ensure all our roads are getting completed in the same year the bid is awarded.
The Mayor recognized our Stow Munroe Falls High School Speech and Debate team for their outstanding performance during their regular season this past year. In addition, several members of the Speech and Debate team qualified to move on to the National competition that took place in Arizona in June. The Speech and Debate team is mostly run by alumni from the high school, and they have been very successful in recruiting new members each year and continued success in the post season as well.
There will be 3 charter amendments on the November ballot, they will be on the following:
- The first is to create a new section of our Charter titled Transparency of Government which would require the streaming of Council, Committees, Boards, and Commissions of the City. While our City has made a lot of advancements in our technology, this would leverage that technology and ensure our residents have access to all of the City meetings in their entirety. While all these meetings will remain open to the public in person, this will also allow residents to re-watch meetings in their entirety. Currently the minutes from many meetings are just a written summary of the meeting, sometimes taking several weeks to be completed and available. The streaming of the meetings will allow for the full meeting to be accessible almost immediately.
- The second is for the Mayor to provide a formal state of the City address at City Council so it is in a formal meeting and on the official City record. The last several years the Mayor’s state of the City address has only occurred at a Chamber of Commerce meeting with a summary provided at Council. This does not prohibit for it to take place somewhere else such as the Chamber but does allow for a free option for citizens to be able to hear the State of the City address and will have it as part of a formal meeting so citizens would have a chance to review such after the one time presentation elsewhere.
- The third is for the Clerk of Council’s office to be in City Hall and near Council Chambers. This allows for our Clerk’s to be readily accessible to the residents and aligns the Council office requirements to that of the other elected officials which has all other elected officials’ offices already to remain in City Hall.
I voted yes and supported moving each of these amendments to the ballot. I believe all of them are good government practices and I support having the voters have their say on if this is the direction, they want our City to be moving in as it relates to openness with our residents.
Recently there has been an influx of concerns by City residents as it relates to the trimming of trees along our right aways and especially the tree lawn trees between the road and sidewalks. Currently there is a backlog of trees that need trimmed in our City. Council approved the Administration to go out for bid to hire a contractor for a 3-year tree trimming program. This program would be focused on specific streets but would also ensure that the contractor performing the work would handle trimming the trees to the specifications provide for by the administrative staff. The goal would be that this program would help catch up the backlog in the City. I think this is one of many ways that we as a City can leverage contractors to ensure that we are able to keep up with the workload across the City.
Council also discussed initial proposals to the noise ordinance in the City that came up from several live music situations that have occurred at City Center and at Roses Run. While this was the cause for the start of the conversation it led to further discussion that our City noise ordinance is rather old and could use some updating. There is still a lot of discussion to be had before this is modified but initial discussions ranged around whether decibel levels should be used for determining violations, the hours of the noise ordinance would be regulated during, and if there would be exceptions for City hosted events. I think there is still a lot of discussion around this needed to make sure there are clear standards for our citizens to read and right now it seems like it is a little too wordy to make it easy to understand and enforce. I look forward to this continued conversation and ensuring we create a good policy for the City.
Finally, Council approved the site plan with a few variances for the new 26,300 square foot field house to be built at the High School. The variances were related to the height and square footage of the building based on it being zoned residential, along with number of parking spaces and screening from adjacent residential properties. Based on the site plan and location of the building all these variances were minor and the elevation of the property in relation to other residential properties made this a non-issue for me. The plans are for construction to begin shortly and a planned spring opening for the new facility.
Council is officially on summer recess and will be back in session for our first fall meeting on September 14, 2023. I wish all of those with kiddos going back to school a great start to the school year and I can’t wait to see you all at Summer Sunset Blast over Labor Day weekend!