City of St. Clairsville

January 16th, 2018 Council Minutes

Posted on January 16th, 2018 by

Once approved, a link to the official council minutes will be at the bottom.

COUNCIL MINUTES

January 16, 2018

St. Clairsville City Council met in Council Chambers on Tuesday, January 16, 2017 with the following present:

Tim Porter, Council President Terry Pugh, Mayor

Mark Bukmir, Council 3rd Ward Cindi Henry, Finance Director

Linda Jordan, Council-At-Large Richard Myser, Law Director

Frank Sabatino, Council 2nd Ward Jim Zucal, Service Director

Mike Smith, Council-At-Large Jeff Henry, Police Chief

Jim Velas, Council 4th Ward Tom Murphy, Planning & Zoning Administrator

The meeting was called to order by Council President Tim Porter. I want to thank all the employees that work for the city because obviously they have had a pretty tough path these last two weeks again. Hopefully things will get straightened up soon.

CITIZENS HEARING: There were no Citizens present who wished to address Council.

SERVICE DIRECTOR, JIM ZUCAL: I can assure you we are doing our best with the snow and ice issues we continually seem to have. We are being very productive. Again I want to thank Don Smithberger as a Supervisor he was basically on the job all weekend long. He has done a fantastic leadership job. If you have any individual concerns please contact me and we will help if we can.

I want to inform Council that part of my duties on the TID Board will be working with Richard Myser to annex the portion of the Commons Mall Crossing and U.S. 40 to bring that into City ownership. Also the goal is there will ultimately be a traffic light there. I will continue to keep you informed on that. I appreciate Richard’s help, Tom Murphy and the Mayor have been working on that. We continue to work on the utilities in the roadway area. Tom and I have been involved, we are talking with folks but we will not sign off nor will there be Planning Commission approval until all the utilities have met our satisfaction. We still have some lift station issues, some water and sewer line issues. We are continually having the contractor fixing those. When all of that meets our satisfaction we will bring that before Council.

Another issue that has to be dealt with is the rate increase through AMP. The average bill not too many months ago averaged $36,000 per month it is now $116,000. We are going to have to look to some legislation to increase the charge per kilowatt that goes out to our customers. That is the only way we can function. We are losing money every day. Unfortunately we have to pass that on.

MAYOR, TERRY PUGH: I just want to echo what Tim & Jim said about the employees and how many hours they put in especially this past weekend. With the snow, the water leaks, the furnace going out in the Municipal Building everybody put their best foot forward and worked together as a team.

We have a vacancy on the RITA Board of Tax Review. It is a three member team. The other two members are Doug Longenette and Mike Kasper. I would like to ask for your approval is someone from the public who attends Council Meetings regularly, his name is Jason Garczyk. A motion was made by Linda Jordan and seconded by Mike Smith to approve the Mayor’s appointment of Jason Garczyk to the RITA Board of Tax Review.

Roll Call Vote:

Bukmir Yes Smith Yes

Jordan Yes Velas Yes

Sabatino Yes

Roll Call Vote: Five (5) Yes Zero (0) No Motion Approved

I would like to touch on the power increase. This is because of the Federal approval for anyone involved in the transmission of power, there has been a three cents per kilowatt sur charge put on it. That means we are receiving this sur charge and it doesn’t matter who we are buying power from. Other things that affect it are how power is being produced now. Because of so much natural gas being used now instead of coal and hydro because of the cost involved in the plants is costing us more. I will continue to say all our utility costs are cheaper than the larger power companies.

Frank Sabatino: I want to thank Mayor Pugh, Saturday I received a couple of phone calls from some residents in my Ward about an issue on snow plowing, the Mayor went out and checked it and had it taken care of.

POLICE CHIEF, JEFF HENRY: No Report

FINANCE DIRECTOR, CINDI HENRY: The only thing I was going to tell Council was Finance is closed up for 2017 books as of last Thursday. The final chapter of closing out is the payoffs of all the different leaves that were not used and carried over. Once that is done in the incoming pay we are done with 2027.

PLANNING AND ZONING ADMINISTRATOR, TOM MURPHY: To give you an update Jim, Terry & I are working on an approximately 32 acre parcel that was formerly known as the Newlin Property. It was owned by the Newlin Family. It is North and East of Memorial Park. It never has been annexed into the City so we are starting that process. We are having it surveyed. Many of you will remember that we have been working with Gulfport on a trail on that property. We have met with them more recently and we are getting closer to initiating that construction. By spring time that can be moving forward and we are just waiting to finalize a few things on that.

Jim and I have been working on updating our mapping system and the parcel data in the mapping system and also the aerial mapping. We are gathering existing aerials as recently as 2017 and bringing them into our system.

COUNCIL COMMITTEES:

Finance, Mike Smith: No Report

Utilities, Frank Sabatino: No Report

Police, Mark Bukmir: No Report

Street North Side, Jim Velas: No Report

Street South Side, Beth Oprisch: Not Present

Safety, Beth Oprisch: Not Present

Building and Grounds, Perry Basile: Not Present

Planning Commission, Mike Smith: No Report

Fire District, Frank Sabatino: At the Fire Board reorganization meeting we reappointed Greg Reline, Township Trustee, Chairman, I represent the City and our public board members are Perry Jones and Todd Witchey. We also reappointed John Slavik as Chief and Tim Hall as Assistant Chief. We also talked about personnel and litigation. Our next regular meeting will be February 21st at the Main Station.

Recreation, Linda Jordan: No Report

Park District, Linda Jordan: No Report

ORDINANCES & RESOLUTIONS:

Law Director, Richard Myser

For the first time since I have been the Law Director we do not have any Legislation to consider tonight. As far as I know we are not going into Executive Session so I have No Report.

NEW BUSINESS:

The Clerk reported that the three new members were given information on attending the Ohio Municipal League seminar for newly elected council members.

NEXT MEETING: Monday, February 5, 2018, 7:30 p.m. in Council Chambers

There being no further business to come before Council, a motion to adjourn was made by Mike Smith and seconded by Jim Velas.

January 16th, 2018 Council Minutes