April 6, 2020 Council Minutes
Once approved, a link to the official council minutes will be at the bottom.
ST. CLAIRSVILLE CITY COUNCIL
April 6, 2020
[Teleconference format in compliance with temporary changes to Ohio’s Open Meetings Act]
Jim Velas, Council President Kathryn Thalman, Mayor
Perry Basile, Council, 1st Ward Open, Public Service/Safety Director
Mark Bukmir, Council, 3rd Ward Annette Williams, Finance Director
Terra Butler, Council, 4th Ward Elizabeth Glick, Law Director
Linda Jordan, Council-At-Large Don Smithberger, Super. of General Services
Beth Oprisch, Council-At-Large Tom Murphy, Planning & Zoning Administrator
Frank Sabatino, Council 2nd Ward
Mike Smith, Council-At-Large
Council President Jim Velas calls the meeting to order, thanks residents for joining in, and leads Council in the Pledge of Allegiance.
OPENING COMMENTS:
President Velas states that due to the teleconference from last week and the COVID-19 issues that we have had to deal with, and the fact that we had an extremely long meeting and a lot of minutes and only a short period of time, the minutes have not been totally completed from the last meeting. At this time, I think it would be beneficial to Council to not even attempt to approve any of the minutes this evening. Unless somebody has an objection, we are going to put the minutes off until the next meeting. OK. I hear nobody complaining, so I guess that worked fine for everybody.
President Velas There is no correspondence, there is no citizens hearing.
Councilwoman Oprisch Jim [Velas], I think we should take roll first.
President Velas asked the Clerk to call the roll.
ROLL CALL:
Basile Here Oprisch Here
Bukmir Here Sabatino Here
Butler Here Smith Here
Jordan Here
President Velas OK. The other comment that I wanted to make here. We’ve had a presentation by Aqua and a question and answer period for Council to address any informational questions. A lot of the residents were wondering about what other options the City would have other than selling the system. So, at the next Council meeting, which would be on April 20, Jeff Vaughn will be here at the Council meeting in order to present other additional options that the City could look into and as close to an approximate cost on some of those things as possible. And, at that meeting also Council members will have an opportunity to ask him questions. And, again, the public will not have any input on that. They will be able to listen, but they will not be able to participate. Shortly after that meeting there is in the works at this time a plan to institute a “town hall” meeting via teleconference in which the City residents will be able to listen in to the teleconference. The potential format will be questions by the public will be emailed to a neutral third party who will moderate the town hall meeting, and he will ask the questions to any of the members of Aqua that will be involved in the conference or to Jeff Vaughn. So, that is in the works. We don’t have an exact date and time, but for everyone out there there is a teleconference town hall meeting in the works on that particular issue.
President Velas At this time, there is no correspondence. We’ll go to the individual Council reports.
REPORTS:
Mayor, Kathryn Thalman Thank you, Jim. Thank you to everyone for accommodating this format. This past week we have continued to carefully monitor the COVID-19 epidemic numbers in Ohio and make sure we are compliant with Governor DeWine’s mandates for protocols and safety.
Therefore, during our conference call updates with City employees, we have asked that all city employees please do your best to stay out of the Municipal Building and work from home. This pandemic is expected to peak nationally this week, but not until May 6 according to the Governor’s projections for Ohio. So, please follow the guidelines.
Chief Arbenz and Donny Smithberger, thank you for securing N95 masks for the City employees; I strongly urge you to wear these even in the absence of symptoms in yourself or your family members. New data concerning the contagion of this virus suggests it can be viable in the air as droplets or on surfaces for longer than initially speculated. Again, continue to follow handwashing and sanitizing protocols, as well as wiping down and disinfecting any common surfaces that are shared with other employees such as squad cars or surfaces in any of our plants.
Thank you to Chief Arbenz for sharing with me the SITREP report which comes from the Belmont County Board of Health. It details and updates the County COVID information. As of April 3rd, there were 288 hospitalizations in Ohio, with 91 deaths, and an average median age of 54 — 48% are males, 51% are females, and 1% has not been reported. In March, there were 202 number of pending cases, and in April so far, and we are only to the 6th, there’s 38. The contagion is real, and the precautions we take need to be just as serious.
Consequently, most of the meetings we have had scheduled with OMEGA, Belomar [Regional Council] and other funding agencies have been cancelled due to COVID. We’ve got several rescheduled in teleconference format, and a couple of them have rescheduled for several months down the road until we think we will be clear.
Despite the COVID, we were able to begin negotiations with the FOP [Fraternal Order of Police], these will be continued in late April via teleconference. We want to get these completed as it was to be negotiated in October.
We had conference calls with David Astrove, Rob Stein and the TIF funding group to unlock funds which will be used to provide some landscaping in the Commons. We also had a conference call with Jeannette Wierzbicki with OMEGA to discuss additional funding.
Jeff Vaughn, as President Velas has indicated, will present his completed report on April 20th.
And this meeting will also be in listen mode only I do believe, Mr. Velas. And, we are working on getting the “town hall” together.
Property and casualty insurance have been renewed. Health insurance did go up 4.34% and that will become effective May 1st, but it is in place. Chief Arbenz is working now with Chief Tim Hall of the Fire Department for Cumberland Trail to have a quarantine protocol in place for emergency responders. Chief Hall is very appreciative of the cooperation with the City. And the City, thank you Donny, is also backing up the Fire Department during a period when the County is going to be painting all of their tanks and they will be inoperative. If needed for fire, the water will be coming from the City from the water plant hydrant.
In an innovative move, which has been shared with several other municipalities, our Rec Center employees are putting programs online. They will be doing scavenger hunts, reading, exercising, etc. to keep adults and children interactively engaged. These will be available on our web page, and will provide a welcome service while children are out of school and adults are isolated and we are all socially distancing. It also will direct traffic to our web site. Thank you, Sean, Debbie and Roberta for putting this together.
Also, if any Council people or Committee heads know of any paving areas that need to be done, please send this information to Donny. It’s that time of the year. There, I think it was blissfully short.
President Velas Thank you, Kathryn. We are going to follow the same format, going individually by Council members to ask if they have any questions on the Mayor’s report.
Councilman Sabatino Not on the report. The Mayor covered quite a bit. But I do have two or three questions for the Mayor for in the future, when we get through this. Usually at this time of the year, J.B. Green [Team] has initiated pickup. It has been conveyed to me that there are quite a few residents that accumulate trash from winter, fall, whatever. Do you have any communication from J.B. Green? Mayor Thalman I have not yet, but I can reach out to them. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.
Councilman Sabatino Looking ahead on status quo procedures, Mayor’s Court. You know, you’ve been through the training, are you gonna – once the coast is clear, so to speak – are you gonna hold Mayor’s Court? Or, what’s your plan? Mayor Thalman Probably not. My feelings on that are probably not. They will keep going to Western Division. Councilman Sabatino OK. All right. And, my last question, Mayor, uh, you know, since it has been almost six weeks since we’ve had a Service Director in place, OK, you know, how can we as a City justify paying with no Service Director and yet we are still paying a Service Director’s Secretary? How can you answer that? Mayor Thalman Because Roberta has been assigned other duties and she is working very hard. And we are in the process – and surely you understand, Frank, with this pandemic everything has been turned upside down – we are talking to people about Service Director but we think we have made sound investments and we are doing the right thing. So, thank you. Councilman Sabatino And, speaking of, one last item, speaking of Service Directors how soon or far do you expect to, you know, be naming a new Service Director? Mayor Thalman Well, God willing with this pandemic settling down, I’m hoping within the next six weeks. But again, it may depend on the social isolation and ability of people to move from different places. So, we are working on it. Thank you. Councilman Sabatino OK. And, that’s all I have. Thank you. Mayor Thalman Thank you.
Councilman Bukmir, Councilwoman Butler and Councilman Basile No questions.
Councilwoman Oprisch I just want to commend the creativity of the Rec Department. Mayor Thalman Thank you. Councilman Basile I second that. That’s really a good idea. That sounds good. Mayor Thalman They are all over it.
Councilman Smith No, sir.
Councilwoman Jordan I do. Well, I think it was Frank’s question about Mayor’s Court. Mayor Thalman Yes, ma’am.
Councilwoman Jordan So, you are giving up this, it generates $44,000 annually for the City? Mayor Thalman No, ma’am. It does not, it generates more like $20[,000]. Councilwoman Jordan Of, I have the average, I have the printout and the average is $44,000. Mayor Thalman Well, Linda, if you’d like to call me, we can talk about it. Councilwoman Jordan I have the report. I’m just asking why? I think the citizens deserve to know why. Mayor Thalman Surely, they do, absolutely. And, honestly, we have such a huge issue and job with what’s been left to us to try to fix the water. That is the full time focus right now, as well as COVID. So, the Mayor’s Court will be looked at down the road but right now these are the things that we have on our plate. Thank you. Councilwoman Jordan OK. All right. So as long as we keep that into consideration because that’s a revenue source that really should not be let go. Mayor Thalman Well, I understand that, and we’ve certainly tried to pare down other revenue expenditures that were taken by previous years. So, I think we are doing just fine and being good stewards of the City’s money. Thank you.
Councilman Smith Can I climb in on that? Mayor Thalman Yes. Councilman Smith Well, I don’t think specifically law enforcement fines, etc. are supposed to be a revenue-raising thing to deterring crime. I don’t think we should look at it as a revenue-raising issue. And, I know Jim Velas and Matt Arbenz would agree with that. That’s typically the reason for fines, tickets, etc. It is not to raise revenue, it is to deter future crime. Councilwoman Jordan Well, it’s not just that though, Mike. There are other sources from that. So, I’m just saying, Mayor’s Court is Mayor’s Court. It should be definitely kept in the City. That’s all I have to say. Councilwoman Oprisch Jim [Velas], this is Beth, can I weigh in on that? President Velas Sure, Beth. Go ahead. Councilwoman Oprisch So, regarding Mayor’s Court, whether or not that is something the Mayor chooses to do, this isn’t the time. We couldn’t even have a Mayor’s Court right now if there was a Mayor’s Court right now. We need to be all hands on deck on this pandemic. And, I just feel like there is a time and a place to have the conversation, you know. And, I just feel like this isn’t the time. Councilwoman Jordan That’s fine. It was just brought up so I wanted to bring up the fact that it does generate revenue. So, that’s all. President Velas OK. Thank you, Linda.
Chief, Matt Arbenz Jim, real quick, the only thing I have to report is that we did work with Tim Hall and getting him an impromptu second station for his EMS crews to operate out of. I’d like to thank Sean [Hanley] at the Rec Center, and Mayor Thalman for your quick response, as well as Mr. Kinsey with the Ruritan [Club] who offered up his building, and Sean for getting us the fairgrounds building and the Rec Center. President Velas OK. Thank you, Matt. I think that’s awesome and hopefully that will accommodate them and make things easier for them. Does anyone have any questions for Matt?
Councilman Sabatino and Councilman Bukmir No questions.
Councilwoman Butler No. I just think it’s a good time to say what a good job all of our departments are doing in the City to try to keep each other, like our Fire Department and our Police Department. I think they all are doing the best that they can. I think they are doing a really good job.
Councilman Basile No, sir.
Councilwoman Oprisch Yes. I do. I want to echo what Terra [Butler] was saying. Chief Arbenz, to you and the rest of the officers, I appreciate you guys being out there every day, the first responders. You are in harm’s way every day but particularly now. So, thank you so much, and please convey that to the rest of the guys.
Councilman Smith and Councilwoman Jordan No questions.
President Velas I think everyone on Council echoes the pat on the back for the Police, the Fire Department and also for all of the other City departments that are actually out there trying to do their job under these conditions.
Finance Director, Annette Williams I just have a few things to say. I just wanted to thank everybody. I haven’t gotten to talk to anyone live lately – and I had to leave the last meeting because of an emergency – but I wanted to thank everyone for my appointment. I really appreciate that. And, as for the Finance Office, the day to day operations are running smoothly. Lee Anne [Pytlak] and I are working on a lot of projects together, and I’ve been working with the Mayor and Jody on a daily basis. As far as the reports, the receipts and the expenditures, they are pretty much on target for the first quarter. And, I will keep an eye on them throughout this COVID thing that we are going through. I guess that’s it. Some time I would like to set up a Finance Committee meeting if we could do that by telephone. If anybody has any financial questions or they want reports or anything, they can email me or call me and I will get those to them as soon as possible. That’s all I have.
President Velas Thank you, Annette. Technically, the next scheduled Finance Committee meeting would be Monday, April 20th, so maybe something can be worked out between now and then in order to have a Finance Committee meeting before that date. President Velas asks members in turn if they have any questions for the Finance Director.
Councilman Sabatino, Councilman Bukmir, and Councilwoman Butler No questions.
Councilman Basile No. I do have a comment though. My schedule right now, I have my first day off today for the next week. I’m really flexible if anybody wants to do a Finance meeting during the afternoon, during the day, any time. Whoever is available, then we can get it out of the way before the 20th. Finance Director Williams That’s fine with me. President Velas Just keep in mind that if this teleconference is done for the Finance Committee that all committee meetings are also open to the public. So, whenever you have that teleconference, the public would have to be invited to listen in. Just a word of thought there. Councilman Basile Yes, sir. We’ll remember that.
Councilwoman Oprisch I do not.
Councilman Smith Yea. You kinda stole my thunder on that, Jim, but I want the Finance Committee to meet, but it will probably be hard to set committee meetings up at this time. And, the other thing, I wanted to ask Annette, I guess it remains to be seen what kind of a shortage in revenues the City is going to see due to this coronavirus. Do you agree with that? It will probably take a month or two to…Finance Director Williams Probably. I’m sure we will see some shortages, so I am going to keep an eye on the revenue month-to-month. The revenue pretty much is where it is supposed to be for now, it may be a little bit over, so I will definitely keep an eye on that and watch for trends. It is probably going to drop with the income tax and some water collections, so I definitely will watch that and keep the Finance Committee posted on those numbers. Councilman Smith OK. Thank you. That’s all I had.
Planning & Zoning Administrator, Tom Murphy Thank you, Jim. Just to update everyone, we are continuing to upgrade our GIS mapping system to ArcView. It appears that all relevant infrastructure layers have been moved into the new system. Our computers will need to be upgraded as was expected. We didn’t want to do that until we found how the new system would operate with our existing computers, many of ours are only 8GBs. It is recommended that we utilize 32GBs of RAM, so that’s something we will be talking about in the near future. We want to be able to operate the system efficiently but overall things are going very well with the upgrade.
In regard to the Census, I had three phone calls just today from people that needed assistance completing the questionnaire. And, I was able to complete the form with them over the phone. So, if anyone is aware of anyone that’s having trouble, feel free to give them my phone number and I will work with them on that. We want to make sure everyone is counted. I really don’t even care where in the County they even might be from because again the County’s population will affect our funding as well too. But, our current status regarding response rate: St. Clairsville still is at a high of 60.5% response rate as of Sunday; Richland Township is at 53.9%; the County is at 44.3%; the state is 49.1%; and the country is at 45.1%. So, we are well ahead of the curve which is a great thing, residents deserve to be commended, and we just have to keep up the good work. I encourage everyone to complete that form.
Finally, permits are still being processed, utilizing social distancing. If anyone has a question, feel free to contact me. That’s it.
Councilman Sabatino, Councilman Bukmir, and Councilwoman Butler No questions.
Councilman Basile I do have one question. How far back does GIS record? What is the earliest date? Are we pretty much up to date for the last four to five years? Or, is that still a lot of data that needs to be inputted? Administrator Murphy I think it depends on the department and the layer that you are talking about. For example, the EPA — as I think everybody on Council knows — wants us to update our water valve information. I was able to talk to Jeff Vaughn today. And, the good news is, in our old system and our new system, all of our water valves are identified. And, the size of that valve is identified. So, that’s the good news. But there is attribute data that hasn’t been completed that we will have to work over the next, I think the time line is at least six months, to add that newer data in. And, what that would mean, would be sitting down with the Water Department personnel that would be able to handle that, identify those valves and all the attribute data that should be filled in, and have to work with them on that in the future. Councilman Basile Terrific. Thank you. Administrator Murphy Yes. No problem.
Councilwoman Oprisch Yes. Tom, I just appreciate that Census number; it is helpful. Does it at all translate into raw numbers? So, we are at 60 some percent, but does it say how many people? Administrator Murphy It does not, unfortunately. I’d love it if it did. That would give us some real good information as far as relaying to the public, but it does not. Councilwoman Oprisch OK. And, remind me again when the deadline is. Administrator Murphy The deadline for your own response is roughly I think the end of, you know, you can do it all the way up to the end to respond yourself. When the original goal, they were going to have the enumerators out knocking on doors for anyone who hadn’t responded in May, June and July. Obviously, with the COVID crisis, all that’s changed. I had emailed our local rep recently to find out. Hey, do you have any new information, and they haven’t responded yet. So, I think they are kind of pulling their hair out now themselves, figuring out how are we going to do this. Are they going to wait until June and July to do the enumeration? I really don’t think they know, unfortunately. Councilwoman Oprisch OK. Fair enough, thanks, Tom. I appreciate what you are doing. Administrator Murphy No problem.
Councilman Smith Yes. Tom, when originally did they leak that information, first of all? Or, typically, what would have been the due date? I know probably because of this whole thing they’ve pushed it back. What would we know before we find out? Administrator Murphy Well, as far as we find out what our population is, my understanding is that on December 31st, I think, of this year is when they have to have the information put on the President’s desk in regard to the nationwide Census, so at some point in time after that. Exactly when, I don’t know. Councilman Smith OK. And, Jim [Velas], I believe you may have skipped Linda on that last go around. President Velas I caught that a little too late, I will get back with her. Councilman Smith OK. I just wanted to make sure. Thanks.
President Velas OK. Linda, we’ll let you go with two here. Do you have any questions for Annette on finance?
Councilwoman Jordan No.
President Velas And, I apologize for skipping you. I didn’t mean to do that.
Councilwoman Jordan That’s OK. And, thanks, Mike. No, I don’t have questions for either.
COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Finance, Chair Mike Smith No, not really, beyond what I asked earlier.
Utilities, Chair Beth Oprisch I do. Thank you. Anita, are you on the line? Anita [Robinson] Yes. I am. Chair Oprisch So, whatever I mess up, you’ll clean up for me? Anita I’m sure you will do fine. Chair Oprisch The first thing I want to do is again compliment Anita. The way she runs the Utilities Office, just staying on top of these bills, the billing, and the issues in general, but also with the pandemic, and the customer response and the customer questions, and just dealing with the public. So, my first thing, is to thank Anita. Anita Thank you. Chair Oprisch You’re welcome.
Second, for the third time tonight, I’ll remind everybody about Jeff Vaughn’s report. The Vaughn report is due on the 20th. He will give a presentation and go over the findings of his report at the next Council meeting.
I consulted with the President of Council, and we feel like it was best at this time not to have a Utility [Committee] meeting. I did meet with Anita, and she brought some issues to my attention. I did communicate individually with the other Committee members. And, most of the stuff is just stuff that people would come to the Utilities meeting about individual concerns of their residence that we would take care of in Committee. So, in consultation with Jim, we said to Anita to the degree that we can, we should work with people. If there is an issue, we do want to look at the policies and procedures and current ordinances on the book in light of a new administration, but, this isn’t the time to really dive deep into any of those. So, to the degree that we can work with people, that’s what we are going to do in this period of time. Anita, I think on the billing that just went out in April, we were going to put something on the bill that asked customers if there was a concern they had, if there is a financial concern based on the events that we’re in, that they should contact the Utilities Office. And, then, we also wanted to put something out that we want to explain to people why there was a disconnect notice on the last bill. And, that was solely because if people can recoup money, then we wanted to give them the language that might allow them to do that. So, we wanted to explain that to the public so they weren’t upset with us because there is no intention to turn off anybody’s utilities during this time. We have a letter from the Public Utilities Commission recommending against that, the Governor has recommended against that, the President has recommended against that, and it certainly isn’t the intent of the administration to cut off people’s utilities during this time. So, I don’t know, Anita, what I missed. Please feel free to correct anything I might have misspoke onto. Anita No. That is correct. Everything is in our little message on the bills and we encourage customers to call if they are having some type of hardship so we can address it later when we get back to some type of normalcy. Chair Oprisch That’s it, Mr. President.
Councilman Sabatino No questions.
Superintendent of General Services, Don Smithberger Mr. President, This is Donny. Just a couple things real quick. We are going to flush hydrants the week of April 13th; I believe it is going to be in the paper, it is on the internet. You will also see some mailings from AEP about the transmission upgrades over the next five years which effects our system as well. There are [unintelligible] and things to look at on the mailing. Please feel free for all the public to answer them. And, finally, we are working with AEP on the delivery point issue that we have at the Hess Station. Other than that, that’s all we have. Thank you.
President Velas OK, Donny. President Velas asks members if they have questions for Donny [Superintendent Smithberger]. No questions. President Velas returns to asking members if they have questions for Chair Oprisch.
Councilman Bukmir and Councilwoman Butler No questions.
Councilman Basile No. I just need to speak with Donny tomorrow if he is going to be around about some stuff going on in my Ward. Donny, if you are available tomorrow, I’ll reach out to you and we’ll talk for a little bit. OK. Thanks. Superintendent Smithberger That’s fine. Thank you. Councilman Basile Thank you, Donny.
Councilwoman Oprisch I have no questions for myself. [Members joke around.]
Councilman Smith and Councilwoman Jordan No questions.
Police, Chair Mark Bukmir No report.
Streets—North, Chair Terra Butler No report.
Streets—South, Chair Beth Oprisch No report.
Safety, Chair Terra Butler No report. President Velas I’m sure probably all the safety meetings have been cancelled during all of this so I don’t know when they’ll start back up. Chair Butler I haven’t seen or heard anything, so I was assuming the same thing until I’m told differently. President Velas I’m assuming Donny will get with you on that as soon as these regulations are released. Chair Butler OK.
President Velas ask members if they have any questions on Safety? Councilwoman Oprisch, Councilman Smith, Councilwoman Jordan and Councilman Basile No questions. [Councilman Sabatino and Councilman Bukmir were skipped.]
Building and Grounds, Chair Perry Basile Nothing really going on except that the buildings are being sanitized and cleaned if need be. And, I’m really glad to hear that there is something worked out with the Fire Department for accessibility, some extra buildings. That really worked out nice. That’s all I have.
President Velas ask members if they have any questions for Perry? Councilwoman Jordan I have a comment. Perry, Eric did call me the day after we had our meeting. And, that had already been taken care of down on the walking trail. So, you don’t have to check that out now. The tree has been taken care of. Chair Basile OK. I went over there and I didn’t see it. So, I’m glad you told me or I would still be looking. Terrific.
Planning Commission, Chair Frank Sabatino I don’t have nothing to add to what Tom [Murphy] has said.
Fire District, Chair Frank Sabatino Just a couple of things, I was talking to Chief Hall periodically keeping us informed on some press releases so the Fire District knows what’s operating, what’s going on within the Fire District. And, knock on wood, thank God, our guys our first responders are still there to help. We are going to try to schedule a meeting. We have one tentatively set for April 15. That, in talking with Chief Hall under the circumstances, that doesn’t look like it is going to occur so we are trying to figure out something perhaps a teleconference, you know, so we can have a meeting sometime in April even if we have to move it, which we probably will, until the end of April. That’s all I have.
President Velas asks members if they have any questions for Frank on the Fire District?
Councilman Bukmir, Councilwoman Butler, Councilman Basile, Councilwoman Oprisch, Councilman Smith, and Councilwoman Jordan No questions.
Recreation, Chair Linda Jordan No, nothing. Kathryn [Thalman] pretty much covered all of it.
Park District, Chair Linda Jordan As far as the Park is concerned, it’s just what I needed to say to Perry [Basile] about the tree having been cleaned up.
President Velas asks members if they have any questions for Linda?
Councilman Sabatino, Councilman Bukmir, Councilwoman Butler, Councilman Basile, Councilwoman Oprisch and Councilman Smith No questions.
ORDINANCES & RESOLUTIONS:
Law Director Elizabeth Glick There is no legislation pending before Council tonight.
President Velas asks members if they have any questions for Elizabeth?
Councilman Sabatino, Councilman Bukmir, Councilwoman Butler, Councilman Basile, Councilwoman Oprisch, Councilman Smith, and Councilwoman Jordan No questions.
President Velas That pretty much concludes the agenda for this evening. The next meeting will be Monday, April 20. And, I will again remind everybody that Mr. Vaughn will be here on the 20th to answer questions on options other than selling the water and sewage systems. So if Council has any questions ahead of time that they may wish to ask, you can put them aside and write them down and be a little more opportunity to think about it before he puts on his presentation at the next meeting. So, we have no other new business? At this time, we will entertain a motion to adjourn the meeting.
Councilwoman Oprisch Jim, I have one other comment. President Velas OK. Sure. Go ahead. Councilwoman Oprisch This is Beth. I just want to publicly thank Roberta for her work as the Clerk of Council over the past couple months. I very much appreciate all of her efforts, and I wanted to publicly state that. Clerk Thank you, Beth. President Velas Thank you very much.
Councilwoman Oprisch I also wanted to applaud Governor DeWine for his progressive stance on the coronavirus as well as Mayor Thalman for taking this very seriously and trying to keep our City safe. So, I wanted to thank those two also. Mayor Thalman Thank you, Beth. Councilman Basile Yea. Excellent work. Mayor Thalman We all are. We’ve got a good crew. We want to keep them all healthy.
ADJOURNMENT:
President Velas That’s a fact. OK. Again, I will entertain a motion to adjourn. Councilman Basile I’ll make a motion to adjourn. Councilwoman Butler I’ll second it.
President Velas It’s been moved and seconded. Meeting is adjourned.