City of St. Clairsville
City of St. Clairsville

May 21, 2018 Council Minutes

COUNCIL MINUTES

May 21, 2018 

St. Clairsville City Council met in Council Chambers on Monday, May 21, 2018 with the following present:

Tim Porter, Council President

Perry Basile, Council 1st Ward                          Terry Pugh, Mayor

Mark Bukmir, Council 3rd Ward                       Jim Zucal, Service Director

Linda Jordan, Council-At-Large                       Cindi Henry, Finance Director

Beth Oprisch, Council-At-Large                       Richard Myser, Law Director

Frank Sabatino, Council, 2nd Ward                  Tom Murphy, Planning & Zoning Administrator

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

Jim Velas, Council, 4th Ward

 

The meeting was called to order by President, Tim Porter

 

MINUTES:  Minutes of the May 7. 2018 meetings were distributed to Council.   A motion was made by Jim Velas and second by Mike Smith to approve the minutes of the May 7, 2018 meeting.

Roll Call Vote:

Basile                          Yes                              Oprisch                       Yes

Bukmir                        Yes                              Sabatino                      Yes

Jordan             Yes                              Smith                           Yes

                                                                        Velas                           Yes

Roll Call Vote:           Seven (7) Yes             Zero (0) No                 Motion Approved:

 

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

 

SERVICE DIRECTOR, JIM ZUCAL

I am excited about this Wednesday, at noon will be the bid opening for the street paving.  This year we will have twice the amount of paving as we did last year.

 

Over all we are working hard to keep up with the high grass.  Our crews are out every day patching.  We are doing some downtown work.  With some summer help I am excited about painting some hydrants this year, keeping that program going on the hydrants and doing some storm sewer work before the painting.  We have an aggressive schedule on overall cleanup and keeping the city looking fresh.  That is my goal for this year.  Beth Oprisch:  Have we hired summer help?  Jim Zucal:  We have one student help right now, Josh Robinson, he was here last year.  He does an exceptional job for the city.  He is Anita Robinson’s son.  The Mayor has a couple of local men who do some grass mowing for us.  One who is here tonight Greg Reline and also Ed Efaw.  So we are keeping up with the grass.  We advertised the grass cutting at Belmont College, O.U.E. Roberta basically advertised everywhere we could and we didn’t get much response.

 

I do have one other thing to share Beth, at the last meeting you asked and I wanted to inform Council about landlords.  We have approximately 210 landlords in the city, 628 open accounts.  Of our 2,750 accounts we have 628 open rental properties.  That is right around 25% but studies have been done when your city gets around 40% or 50% you have to be very cautious.

MAYOR, TERRY PUGH: 

The City Safety picnic is Thursday between 11:00 and 1:00 at the City Garage on Reservoir Road.  I know Cindi and Donnie have made the arrangements.  The crews will be cooking hamburgers, hot dogs and etc.  Everybody come and enjoy.

 

I just want to thank all the employees for all the hard work up on Main Street.  We did cleaning, we did weeding, and we did mulching and right now even without the baskets I think they did a wonderful job cleaning things up.  Now we will talk about the baskets.  I had a business and I was always planting something, flowers was not one of them.  With the help of Fred Holub where the plants are coming from, Mary Mowrer and her Master Gardner’s with Jim Zucal and other city employees that have been involved before we will have them up soon.  Wednesday we are going to start planting the baskets and have everything done by Friday.  We may not have the planting at Halloran Park and out by the entrance sign done by then.  The big thrust is getting the baskets up.  Our summer help actually did a lot of the watering last year so he will be involved with that again this year.

 

The other thing I wanted to mention is rain has caused many problems and issues with cutting grass.  In some places it has gotten out of hand and people are trying to catch up.  I would like to caution people from blowing grass in the streets.  There are three reasons for not putting grass in the street they are bicycle riders, motorcycle riders and the fact that the grass clogs the storm sewers.

 

One other thing it seems like this year is worse than usual with people not mowing their yards at all.  Tom Murphy and Richard Myser are doing a lot of work sending out letters but it seems like people are paying no attention to us at all.  If you see this out in your wards let my office know or Tom Murphy but most important is who owns that property.

 

Frank Sabatino:  I have been getting a lot of positive feedback on the new web site.  It is very professional and informative.

 

POLICE CHIEF, JEFF HENRY:

The only thing I have tonight is we lost our part time parking attendant and I asked our former parking attendant Cheryl Barnes if she would like to work part time again and she said absolutely so today is her first day back.

 

FINANCE DIRECTOR, CINDI HENRY:

The Audit team will be in here tomorrow to start on the City Audit.  They should be here for about three or four days.

The next meeting I will bring legislation for the creation of either one or two funds for the water tank.  It will be emergency language so the fund can be set up before we receive the money.

 

PLANNING AND ZONING ADMINISTRATOR, TOM MURPHY: 

In regard to the proposed Pizza Milano at 145 E. Main Street directly across from the Marathon Station.  They finished their first phase, you might have seen them removing the scaffolding today.  The masonry work is pretty much complete.  At the last meeting I mentioned it is going to be a long term project.  The business owner is applying for State Historic Tax Credits.  They won’t find out if they have those credits until December.  They plan on proceeding no matter what next year.  There was a story in Sunday’s paper about the business.  If you see the owner out there give him some encouragement they are taking an old structure in town and rehabbing it.  That is a positive for our Historic District.

 

This is permit time of year.  As the Mayor mentioned there are quite a few grass complaints.  I am researching the ownership on those and getting the information to the Law Director to send letters.

Mark Bukmir:  With the yard complaints I want to make sure that the city is doing what we can to keep our grass mowed as well.  We can’t expect our citizens to do it if we the city are not doing it.  Jim Zucal:  I agree completely, I have mentioned that many times.  We are waiting on our new tractor and what the Mayor and I did was we rented a tractor with a boom mower from South Eastern Equipment and we have our crews out hitting every property in the city that we can that belongs to us.  We feel like the new mower won’t be back until the 4th of July and we want to keep everything mowed.  Beth Oprisch:  Who is responsible for the grass at the new Senior Suites?  Tom Murphy:  There are some issues with Comcast and Columbia Gas and we are trying to work with them.  Jim Zucal:  I believe now that the property has been annexed I believe it is ours to maintain.  Tom, Terry and I have talked about that and Comcast and Columbia Gas both have open trenches and so much rock and they have not taken care of it yet.  Tom has been working on getting them in to finish that.  We need to start taking care of that too.  Jim Velas:  Do we know who owns the Graham property across from the Post Office?  Tom Murphy:  That is a good question, we are well aware of that property.  I have had quite a few calls about that.  It is still in the name of William Graham.  His daughter Shala has some responsibility, she has been up here.  She lives in the Carolina’s.  She has been up here and we have sent letters out to her, it is probably going to be hard to find someone responsible but we are going to research the estate and see if she is the one we should be talking to.

 

COUNCIL COMMITTEES:

Finance, Mike Smith:  No Report

Utilities, Frank Sabatino:

The Hydrant flushing is complete.  I saw they were using signs in the area they were flushing.

Police, Mark Bukmir: No Report

Street North Side, Jim Velas: No Report

Street South Side, Beth Oprisch:  No Report

Safety, Beth Oprisch:  No Report

Building and Grounds, Perry Basile:

I do have a question about that building that is on S. Sugar and the piece of slate.  What did you decide to do?  Mayor Pugh:  We had our Electric Department go down and remove the loose slate and almost all of the chimney was also falling down so they took all of those bricks down.  We are still checking with Historical Associations to see if they would be interested but these is no question it is a safety hazard.

Planning Commission, Mike Smith:  No Report

Fire District, Frank Sabatino:

The Sunday Times Leader had an article about the Cumberland Trail Fire District.  It was about the grant writing that is being done. Our next regular meeting is Wednesday, May 30th at 3:00 p.m. at the Main Station.  Greg Reline, President of the Board:  The do have some slick people when it comes to grant writing.

Recreation, Linda Jordan:

The Board was unable to meet today due to lack of quorum.  The Red Devil classic track meet will be held Saturday, June 9th at 9:00 a.m.

Park District, Linda Jordan:

Work is scheduled to begin on the new Frisbee Park on Friday.  The next meeting will be Tuesday, May 29th

 

ORDINANCES & RESOLUTIONS:

Law Director, Richard Myser

We have no legislation to be read tonight

We do need to go into a short Executive Session to consider personnel matters Section 121 (g)

(1).

 

NEW BUSINESS:  Mayor’s Report

The Mayor’s Collection for April 2018 is $3,278.20

A motion to accept the Mayor’s Report was made by Frank Sabatino and seconded by Jim Velss

Roll Call Vote:

Basile                          Yes                              Oprisch                       Yes

Bukmir                        Yes                              Sabatino                      Yes

Jordan             Yes                              Smith                           Yes

                                                                        Velas                           Yes

Roll Call Vote:           Seven (7) Yes             Zero (0) No                 Motion Approved:

 

NEXT MEETING:  Monday, June 4, 2018, at 7:30 p.m. in Council Chambers

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

May 21, 2018 Council Minutes