President of Council Marjorie Harlow called Council to order on January 21, 2009, at 7:05 p.m.

The governmental body and those in attendance recited the pledge of allegiance. Mrs. McNear gave the invocation.

Mrs. McNear took roll call. Present were Council members Danbury, Diehl, Galster, Squires, Vanover, Wilson and Harlow.

The minutes of January 7, 2009 were approved with seven affirmative votes.

Mrs. Harlow welcomed Webelos Pack 199. They are earning a badge.

The Mayor stated that over the last few weeks we’ve received several calls from residents complaining about their energy lately so we contacted our Community Relations Representative, Marvin Blade, and invited him to tonight’s meeting. He sent Ken Toebbe as his replacement.

Mayor Webster stated we have had another outage this evening that lasted until about 6:30 p.m.

Ken Toebbe stated “in 2008, we did what we call a retrofit program. What that really means is we went out on the mainline circuit, and any of our devices that we have out there that take our voltage and reduce it down to house voltage level, we put a switch in front of that device so that if something happened to that piece of equipment instead of taking the entire circuit out it only took out that piece of equipment itself. It mitigated the damage or the extent of the outage instead of being 1,000 customers out to maybe 10-15 customers out.”

“We completed that work toward the end of the 3rd quarter in 2008, On our distribution system, and we’ve seen some benefits of that. I looked at the tree trimming analysis on the circuit, and it was trimmed in 2007. Circuit analysis shows that we are not having tree problems and it’s scheduled to be trimmed again in 2011. What we’re really experiencing right now is numerous outages on the transmission side of the system. That’s the high voltage lines that feed the substations that you see along the side of the roads. It takes it and distributes it out to the main thoroughfares and down all the side streets. We’ve experienced numerous cases of our conductors breaking at points along the poles there. We are doing a detailed analysis of that transmission circuit now. We went out looking at it and seeing the shape of the wire that’s been up there – is it deteriorating to the point that it’s not stable anymore. That analysis is starting now, and we’re going to go through and do a detailed analysis of the transmission system. We also had a switch that failed back toward the very end of 2008, and that is scheduled to be replaced tomorrow. That should help us with some of that as well. So we’ve had a couple components on our transmission system that have failed here recently. From the second half of 2008 all the way up until just recently and, in fact, tonight that is what happened. Over on Mulhauser Road, one of our wires that we call a static wire which is there to protect against lightening broke and failed where it connects to the pole. Crews responded to it, cut it in the clear, got it safe, and then restored the power. That’s happened about three times now. I’m asking the engineering department to go out, take the wire that’s failed, do an analysis of it. Is the steel core in the center of it deteriorated, does it need to be replaced? What are we going to do to make sure this does not occur anymore? I don’t have answers on all of what they’re finding yet because that analysis won’t start until some time in the next week or so, but they have been given the direction that they need to start looking at the transmission circuit and making some determinations as to why we’re seeing the failures in that transmission circuit. Those are the most recent ones. Probably the last four or five that you’ve seen have been because of that transmission circuit.”

Mr. Danbury: Thank you for coming. This is not a pleasant time right now. This is the third time we’ve been without power in three weeks. There are people in my area that are on respirators, they have newborn infants, and it’s more that just an inconvenience. We have businesses that are losing money. It seems that everything was ok until we had the windstorm. I don’t know if this had any kind of effect on it at all, but why is it right now that we’re starting to experience all these issues?

Mr. Toebbe: “And unfortunately until I get the wire that fell down here recently and have some analysis done I can’t tell you why all of a sudden other than the wire’s been up in the air for quite some time. It may just be to the point that it’s now finally starting to fatigue to the point that it’s starting to break at certain locations out there. Maybe more locations are exposed to wind than other areas, but I don’t know that answer until we get that wire, we send that in, do an analysis on it but we are doing a detailed analysis on that whole transmission circuit to make sure that we’ve identified all the problems on that transmission circuit.”

Mr. Danbury: Well, how high of a priority is this on Duke’s priority list?

Mr. Toebbe: “It’s a top priority. I’ve talked to the engineering group. I’m going to get the wire that came down tomorrow. I’ll be hand delivering it to them, and we are going to correct this situation and every effort that we can, every resource that we can, will be put to analyzing the problem finding what we need to do to correct them and having the resources come out to start making the corrections immediately.”

Mr. Wilson: Based on what you’ve said so far, it appears that you have just begun to become proactive with these challenges. My issue is “Why” first of all, and second of all electricity conducting is your business. Don’t you know how long wires are supposed to last and being proactive, not now, but years ago before this occurred, take care of it. Is there a reason why we’re all of a sudden proactive when we should have been proactive years ago in determining these challenges like wire deterioration and switches going bad. When you purchase these things, don’t they give you some kind of guarantee or warranty of how long these parts will last?

Mr. Toebbe: “No, we really don’t have any kind of guarantee or warranty on those types of products. We have historical trends on how long they should last. I don’t have them in front of me today. We concentrate on the distribution circuits first because more than likely they’re the ones that have the most problems. There is more exposure on the distribution circuits, more circuit miles out there, more risk associated with those. So that’s what we started in 2006 and have been working on for the past three years. We’ve been proactive on minimizing the risk exposure on the distribution circuit. Knowing that our transmission circuits have a lot of safeguards and much less risk exposure associated with them, we didn’t do a whole lot of proactive stuff other than we fly those circuits, we visually inspect them, we infrared them for hotspots to make sure that there is nothing that shows up as starting to fail; but if a conductor is made where it’s got a steel core in the center of it wrapped with aluminum conductors around the outside of it, you can’t always tell if that’s starting to fail until it breaks and you get a piece of that conductor, and you start looking at it and you see that. That’s what we’re going to look at now. That’s what we need to take a look at because it’s happened about three times now. We’re going to get that piece of conductor out, and we’re going to see what year it was installed, what kind of life span did it have, and is that truly what’s happening or is there something else up there. I don’t know those answers until we start doing all that analysis. That will be started next week.”
   
Mr. Wilson: Please understand as consumers, we can’t afford outages 3-4 times a year. Maybe the equipment needs to be changed so you can be more proactive in determining the length of service of a part, be it a wire or a switch or whatever. We suffer from it as much as you do. You lose revenue, but we lose service. Our residents on respirators can’t wait. Those respirators go out, we got a problem. The police come, firefighters come, and that’s an expense to the city. It’s costing us as consumer money and costing the city money. I would think you would take that into consideration when you purchase your parts, or when you do your due diligence, that you take into consideration what it costs the consumers.

Toebbe: “We do. The service and the issues that we’ve seen here in the Springdale area are not what we expect as a company for a service that we want to provide, and we are going to correct the situation.”

Mr. Squires: You mentioned installing these devices, whereby if this switch went out it would involve an outage for 15-20 homes. It’s quite a bit more than that. We are talking about all of Royal Oaks, Springdale Terrace, and businesses on Rt. 4 almost to Peach Street. You’re talking several hundred residences involved in something like that. Why is it that it’s almost at the same time every week? This is the third time this month. It was restored quicker this time than it has been in the previous two times, but this has also been the fifth time since Daylight savings time. Do you have any information as to why it’s about the same time? And you mentioned analysis, and might we expect more of these outages when you’re doing this analysis, or can you predict it?

Mr. Toebbe: “This first thing we’re going to do is look at the conductor that came down. If it’s showing signs of deterioration, then we will look at what we can do to take that out of service immediately. Current outages do not recur because of it.”

Mr. Squires: Is it going out at the same time every week?

Mr. Toebbe: “I haven’t seen anything that shows it goes out at the exact same time every week. I know it’s gone out three times since the first of January.”

Mr. Squires: It’s close between 5 and 6.

Mr. Toebbe: “I don’t know of anything that is causing it to happen exactly at the same time each time it’s going out. Previously, you talked about the devices I talked about either limiting the outages to 10, 15, or 3, that’s on the distribution system and that’s what we did in 2008 to try to mitigate some of the exposure risks on the distribution. Here, what recently has been occurring has been on the transmission system which serves several substations in the area and not just the Springdale substations. When that transmission circuit goes out, we actually lose a couple thousand customers because of that. It’s very important that we understand why it’s doing it and what’s causing it to do it. Until we get through the detail analysis, we’re going to look at what we can do to mitigate the risks associated with it until we get all of our information back. Can we feed the system a different way and take that section of line? If it’s contained to a certain area, can we de-energize that section of the line and feed in different directions? The transmission system is designed in a loop for the most part, and it may be that we can feed in two different directions and de-energize that section in the center if the damage is in this isolated area so that if it was to break again we wouldn’t have to incur an outage because of it. But I have to look at that with engineering as we go through that stuff and that’s one of the first things that will be on our plate for tomorrow.”

Mr. Squires: Does your analysis show that it’s the same area all of the time or is that part of your data that you read?

Mr. Toebbe: “What I’ve looked at so far, the last three outages have been up on Mulhauser Road. Yes it’s been in the general same area.”

Mr. Squires: Might we expect more of these outages as you’re doing this analysis?

Mr. Toebbe: “No, I don’t expect us to see more of these. The first thing we’re going to do is look at what we can do to switch this circuit around, if that is truly an isolated area that’s having problems, eliminate that as a feed into the substation so that we don’t see anymore outages because of it.”


Mr. Squires: I think you’re getting the message. Be advised there are an awful lot of Springdalians that are very, very unhappy with this. We are depending upon your expertise and your professionalism to fix this.

Mr. Toebbe: “I understand. We are going to address it.”

Mr. Galster: I think you got the gist of the phone calls that we’ve been getting at least over the last couple weeks. I had an additional question. We’ve had a pole out here at Glensprings and Rt. 4. I know that Duke was made aware of it September 15, after the windstorm. It sits at a 30 degree angle right now. It looks like it’s about ready to fall over. I’m assuming when it goes, it will pull the lines. Since September 14, we keep hearing that it’s on the list of things to do, but if it’s taking that long to get those types of obvious things fixed, that’s my concern. The general public is telling you that this is a potential problem, and it’s still not getting fixed until there is an outage. That concerns me. It’s going to fall over and hit somebody, smash a car. It’s in need of replacement. It seems to me that in a span of 4 months, we should be able to get a pole that’s leaning that much taken care of.

Mr. Toebbe: “I’ll have the Field Supervisor for this area take a look at it and see what we need to do to address that problem.”

Mr. Vanover: What is the average voltage of the transmission lines?

Mr. Toebbe: “Most of them in our area around here are 138,000 volts.”

Mr. Vanover: The transmission sides are the big steel towers that are up there. Transmission is the incoming distribution, the transformers on the poles. My cul de sac has seven homes off of that one transformer. So the problem now, is the power supply coming in?

Mayor Webster: I hear what you’re saying, but the only thing I care about is when I hit that switch, I want to see the lights go on. I don’t care whether it’s transmission or what it is. I just want to see electricity, and I think our residents want to see electricity. They don’t care where it comes from or how it’s getting there. When you flip the switch, you want electricity. That’s what I pay for and pay dearly for every single month.

Mr. Vanover: I pay the same price, but unfortunately, I’ve yelled and complained about Duke for years, but unfortunately with some of the stuff, you don’t know it’s going, until it’s broke, especially on a transmission line. I give them credit for that. I’ve interacted and I’ve had a couple of derogatory adjectives that I’ve used for Duke in the past, but it’s tough and there are miles of cable out there. I know there are some in my neighborhood I wonder about because I can see the insulation hanging down, and they’ve been there roughly since they went in in the early 60’s. I’m sympathetic and you’ve heard the concerns. I’m not going to lessen those any, but understand right now the problem is on a different line than what it’s been, and I’ll give them a little slack from that point so I may be the only one and I haven’t been affected. If we can get some answers and get some solutions, as the Mayor said, they don’t care as long as they turn the switch and the power comes on. Unfortunately, we’ve become very accustomed to the power because everything now is driven by that.

Mr. Toebbe: “I understand. As I’ve said before, this is not the level of service that we want to provide by any means. It is top on our priority list to understand what’s causing the problems on the transmission line and get it corrected as quickly as we can.”

Mr. Diehl: As you know we’re in tough economic times throughout the country. The price of energy here in Cincinnati keeps going up and those folks directly behind you are losing revenue. Is there any type of compensation for our business community?

Mr. Toebbe: “I can’t answer that question. I’m not in the position in the company to make those kinds of answers. They have a risk department and a claims department that would handle that stuff. They need to call into those people in our call center and they can direct them to who they need to talk to. It depends on what’s causing the outage and as to whether or not they get compensated for the loss.”

Mr. Diehl: It’s certain that it’s some type of infrastructure that’s causing the outages. These guys are losing money, losing business. When they lose business, the city is directly affected. So can you tell us who we need to contact on behalf of our businesses?

Mr. Toebbe: “Marvin Blade is our business contact for this area. You can talk with Marvin, he wasn’t able to make it here tonight. Any of the customers, can contact our call center at 421-9500 and ask to speak with someone in the claims department. They will be able to talk with you about loss of revenue.”

Mr. Danbury: I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Vanover, but they are licensed from Public Utilities from Ohio. We have a contract with Mr. Schneider’s office to be professional and do due diligence and represent the City in a proper way, the same way with CDS. I have to say that you are under a lot of stress from the wind storms and we got hammered here and I’ve said it before, but my area was without power for eight days. What Mr. Squires was saying before, all those houses on this side of Rt. 4, the entire neighborhood, I just drove around before the meeting, and they are without power. All the houses on this side were without power. I drove down Rt. 4, I saw some of our businesses, some of them had generators and I think it’s a coincidence that it happened and it’s the same thing that happened two Sunday’s ago and three Sundays ago because I drove around just to see what the status was up by Showcase Cinemas – they had no lights. I would like to have some kind of resolution.

Mr. Squires: Essentially, you’re saying you’ve got these problems, I can relate to you that problems are nothing more than opportunities. This community, this city, and this council, expect you to fix it. It’s just that simple. You have the professionalism on your side, get it fixed. That’s what we want done.

Mr. Galster: Since you brought up the call center, it peaked another bone with me. By the time you call in and hit all of the different numbers you have to hit, I’m 15 minutes into the call and still getting into the queue to wait again. That’s the frustrating part, is that when you have no other options on where you can go to get something and then when you’re told you have to continue to wait to get simple questions answered, it does get very frustrating.

Mayor Webster: I would like to suggest that we hear from some of the business community and residents that have come to specifically hear from the Duke representative.

Ken Riley: Riley’s Restaurant. I was on vacation on a Monday night it went out – Monday, Sunday and tonight. The customers are going to go somewhere else. It’s lost opportunity for Springdale – they’re going somewhere else where the electricity is on. I don’t have just a loss of business for that night, I have the lost opportunity that the customer may not come back. I do want to look into if there is money that Duke would pay. This is outrageous - three times. I haven’t heard anything where he told me he’s going to guarantee there’s not going to be a problem. I think no matter what it costs, he ought to be able to tell us that they’re going to solve this problem. It’s not going to happen again. If they have to replace all the lines before they do tests on it. It’s obviously going to cost them more or they would do it, than it is for us complaining. Communication – we’ve called the call center. We call when it goes out, and we don’t get anything. We call when it’s on and talk to someone and their answer is to have the engineer get back with you within 14 days. Fourteen days to get an answer as to why my electricity is off. I am outraged. I can’t believe in this business climate we have to fight our utilities. It’s ridiculous. To me, none of the answers are satisfactory. They need to come up with a solution, they need to solve it.

Mrs. Harlow: It went out January 5, 11 and 21.

Julie Matheny resident 669 Park Avenue. It absolutely slays me that this is the third time this has happened and my guarantee is if you had not received a call from the city on Monday, January 12, after the second time, Marvin wouldn’t have been looking into it to begin with. I understand that you’re sent here tonight as a substitute. This is absolutely ridiculous. I’m going to tell you something else, even though I should not have to do Duke Energy’s job, the same time that this power has gone out, the last three times, Time Warner Cable’s phones and internet has gone out at Krazy City in Tri-County mall. Don’t you find this a little more than coincidental. Is it possible there are some wires crossed between Time Warner and Duke.

Mr. Toebbe: “That goes back to how Time Warner was fed. We supply Time Warner to provide their services. If they lose their power also, their cable is going to go out.”

Mrs. Matheny: It’s not all of Park Avenue. I live on one side of the street, the other side always has power, and the other side backs into Glensprings which I’m assuming by your comments, Mr. Wilson, you have been out and Mr. Galster, I’m assuming, you have been out. The whole way these wires are connected and generators and transmitters is an absolute farce. I’m sorry, but the only reason you can get by with this, is because you have a monopoly. I’m not going to call this number. I want someone, you tell me who I can call, to get three days power deducted off my January bill. Don’t bill me for those days, I won’t pay for those days. You will not disconnect my power. I will see you in court. I appreciate your coming tonight.

Chief Laage: Chief Laage 35 year resident. I want to speak on behalf of the Police Department as an employee and as a resident. I can tell you this has been going on about five or six times. It is costing the city money. In the last two weeks, I have alerted the city administrator about three weeks ago reference to probable complaints that I thought we would be getting regarding these power outages. We stand alone and above 99% of the other communities regarding generators and our traffic lights. If you remember back in the wind storm, we were about the only community that had some of our lights up based upon our generators. We’re not satisfied now with the large number of generators we have, based upon the number of power outages. I’ve sought to purchase more generators in regards to these outages I expect we will see. I think it’s fair to say that Duke is not CG&E. In the 35 years I’ve been here, I’ve never experienced anything like this. If something does go out it usually comes back on. I’m accustomed now to building fires more and more as soon as the power goes off, because I know it’s going to stay off for an hour to an hour and half. This is unacceptable. In regards to the customer service issues, I can tell you, whether it’s a citizen at home or the Police Department, we can hardly ever reach any one at Duke. The line is always busy. Regarding other service issues, I have delegated an officer on third shift to give me a street light report every month. Every street light is looked at every month in regards to outages. I get a report stating which street lights are out. Duke is notified at the end of the month to fix those lights. We have street lights that are out 6-8 months at a time. I have conferred with our city administrator, our assistant city administrator referencing this problem. They have conferred with Marvin at times regarding this problem. The pole at Glensprings and Rt. 4 has been referred several times. It is unsafe and unsightly. It is an embarrassment. To get it fixed is another issue. We were promised 3-4 weeks ago that all the street lights would be looked at in 3 consecutive days. We were also promised that the pole would be fixed very soon, but I think we’re going on about 3 weeks now. It is unacceptable. I would agree with Council that this is something that needs to be done. There are patterns in regards to the time out, about 1 ½. This time tonight was about an hour, in the evening. I think there are definite patterns that are occurring. This is a large area, includes Forest Park and Greenhills, it is somewhat segmented.

Mr. Galster: I want to let Mrs. Matheny and Mr. Toebbe know that I have the same occurrence at my house. I did not lose power the last three times, but I’ve lost internet and internet phone at the same time that everyone else is without power. There is a connection between the two services somehow.

Mrs. McNear: I did have power this evening. I have flashlights in every room in my house out of necessity because the power goes out so often. I did know that the power was out in the building this evening so I just picked up one of those flashlights and threw it in the car figuring I might need it. Also, I drove 125 miles to get here for this meeting tonight, and I cannot tell you how aggravated I would’ve been had this meeting been canceled for lack of power yet again. I implore you to please figure out what is wrong with the power in the city.

Mr. Rick Gilhart, Princeton Plaza Shopping Center and Princeton Bowl. I wanted to go on record that Sunday a week ago we lost power in half of the shopping center, as well as Princeton Bowl. A large concern that we have is that we have stores going out of the Tri-County area right now. One of our bright spots is Princeton Bowl. We have a huge state tournament going on right now. Fortunately the power went out at 5:00 p.m. and not 2:00 p.m. We would have lost a huge amount of revenue had it gone out when the state tournament was going on. What’s to assure us that we can avoid this again next weekend because this goes on for ten more weeks. I want to go on record that our shopping center, we’re across from Tri-County mall, at Kemper and 747, that’s the Princeton Plaza shopping center. Half of our shopping center was out a week ago.

Mr. Danbury: Since there is a communication problem as far as getting through. Can we have a website that our residents and businesses can contact them and someone can get back with them in a timely manner. If we can have a website and if anyone were to complain they can email you and then someone from customer service from Duke can get back to them in a timely manner.

Mr. Toebbe: “I will have to talk with the people in the call center that takes care of that and see what opportunities we can create for that.”

Mr. Danbury: If you can notify the city as to whom we need to contact.

Mrs. Harlow: Mr. Toebbe, I wanted to make a comment that something that Mrs. Matheny talked about the cable going out. I’ve recently discontinued my service with Time Warner because since October of this past year, my cable, my internet access and my phone service, have been intermittent. I finally got to the point where we discontinued service because we never knew if we were going to have a phone….I’m kind of questioning now, it maybe my problem isn’t elsewhere besides the cable company. I never lost the power other than the three times we’re talking about here, but phone, internet and cable would be gone. I’m not quite sure, but I think there is something to that.

Mr. Toebbe: “I would have no idea without looking at the time that it went out and see if it ties back to outages that we may have had on our system at that time. We provide power to their power supply box which as long as their power supply box has power, the cable service to your house will work. If they lose service to a power supply box, you’ll lose their service because of that. Their circuits don’t run exactly the same as our circuits.”

Mrs. Harlow: Every time I would call them, and it was numerous times, it was always that we’re not having a problem in your area. We don’t see why you’re not getting your internet or your cable. By the time the repair person would come out, I had service. I wonder if I fired the cable company too quick

Mr. Toebbe: “If they were having problems with our system, they would have told you that their power supply was out.”


Mrs. McNear: Mr. Toebbe, when can we expect either you or Mr. Blade to return to Council to give us a detailed list of the solutions you are going to present to us after you have corrected all of these issues we have brought to your attention. We do meet the first and third Wednesday of each month.

Mr. Toebbe: “I would like to talk with Marvin on that, but I would say one of the two of us will be able to get back with you about it by the third Wednesday of the next month.”

Mrs. Harlow: That would be the 18th.

Mr. Wilson: I want to emphasize, you’re dealing with two kinds of people – businesses and residents, some of whom are on life support. You’re talking about 30 days. Personally, I don’t feel that is acceptable. I’m not willing to take a chance on possibly losing one of our residents because of a power outage. Or incurring increased costs by our Police and our Firefighters trying to save a life of a resident because of a power outage. Power outages that cause street lights to go out cause accidents. Our bill comes every month. It doesn’t care if I’ve lost customers because of whatever reason. They don’t care if my cable goes out for three hours. They want their money on time each month otherwise I incur a late fee. I’m in the service business myself. I sell insurance. If I don’t service my clients, they leave me, they have a choice. We as residents here with utility, we don’t have a choice. If we don’t pay the bill, we get a late fee. You choose to raise your rates, we have no choice. We pay it or we don’t have electricity. Understand the seriousness of this. Personally, I feel waiting a month to get a response is unacceptable. Our next meeting is February 4. I want a representative here to answer some of these questions. This is what we’ve done to date and this is what we project to do. That’s the seriousness of this issue. I would like to see a representative at our next meeting to let us know what has transpired, what you’ve done to date and what you plan to do in the future. So we can tell our businesses and our residents, you don’t have to wait a month for an answer and God knows how long for a resolution.

Mr. Danbury: You have to realize that around 25-35% of our residents are senior citizens. Some people don’t have cell phones. If their power goes out something happens, they have no way of contacting anyone. You have to realize people are fuming. Businesses have to lock their doors when the power goes out. We want some kind of resolution.

Mr. Vanover: One correction. Phone lines if they’re on Cincinnati Bell are powered by completely different system so you will have phones. They are an internal system. If you have cable phones, they are powered off your house phone. They will go down. Your internet will go down also. If you are on a Cincinnati Bell land line, you’re power system is completely different.

Mayor Webster: Mr. Toebbe thank you very much for coming out tonight. I don’t think that Mr. Wilson was being unreasonable to ask that we have some kind of feedback by February 4.

Mrs. Harlow asked Council’s permission to move Resolution R4-2009 forward on the agenda.

Mrs. McNear noted that there is an error at the bottom. It goes from Section 1 to Section 3.

RESOLUTION R4-2009 “COMMENDING OFFICER MARSHA S. BEMMES FOR HER DISTINGUISHED AND DEDICATED SERVICE TO THE CITIZENS OF THE CITY OF SPRINGDALE”

Mr. Squires made a motion to adopt and Mr. Diehl seconded.

The Council congratulated Officer Bemmes.

Officer Bemmes thanked council and stated that it is a collective effort.

RESOLUTION R4-2009 passed with seven affirmative votes.

COMMITTEE AND OFFICIAL REPORTS

    Civil Service Commission                 -     no report
    Rules and Laws                     -     no report
Finance Committee                     -     no report

Planning Commission – Mr. Galster said the Commission met on January 13 where elections of officers were held. Mr. Butram was appointed President, Mr. Okum vice president, Mr. Hawkins secretary. There was one item on the agenda which was Thompson Thrift requesting development plan review for the 6200 sf. retail building at 11580 Princeton Pike (the old BP and Tiffany Glass site). Originally they wanted a strictly retail development. However, this application included a restaurant, which threw off the parking numbers. It was tabled by a 7-0 vote. There will be a special planning commission meeting on the 29th at 7 p.m. where they will make a new presentation.

Board of Zoning Appeals – Mr. Danbury stated the meeting was held last night. Officials were elected. Mr. Okum was re-elected Chair, Bob Whitich was elected Vice Chair, and Jane Huber was retained as Secretary. The one item of business was an applicant at 1037 E. Crescentville Road. The gentleman tore down a dilapidated fence and wanted a permit for a chain link fence. Upon investigation, we found the fence was placed on the outside of the post instead of the inside, but it was 12 inches within his own yard. We granted the variance with seven affirmative votes.

Board of Health – Mr. Squires stated they held their meeting on January 8. Item The food sampling program has been revised. Food service operations and retail establishments which have more than one elevated result for either the standard plate count or choloform count were placed on the list to continue sampling. There are approximately 25 of those. All other operations will be randomly sampled. Due to laboratory constraints no more than 8 samples a day will be submitted for testing. The softserv program will be continued. The sampling of spas and ice machines will be discontinued. They will continue to sample the pools.

Veteran’s Memorial Committee – Mr. Wilson stated that he, the Mayor, and Mr. Galster met with representatives from the Military Order of the Purple Heart Committee to look at the design of the design of the story stone. It was approved with one modification.

We have also viewed the clay model of the statue of the sailor and were very impressed. In a few weeks we expect an invitation to view the soldier in the casting portion of the statue.

Dedication is planned for Memorial Day weekend.

O-K-I – Mrs. McNear stated the meeting was held on January 8. They are working on their wish list for the economic stimulus program.

Jeff Tulloch stated that our top priority is Northland Boulevard and that has been submitted. There are four other projects including Ross Park, south bound Rt. 4, Glensprings ditch, and one more that will be submitted by the February deadline.

Mayor’s Report – Mayor Webster read the thank you letter he received from CinCom regarding the Christmas raffle. We donated a membership to the Community Center.

Clerk of Council/Finance Director – Mrs. McNear stated that the annual request for financial disclosures was placed in the mailboxes. If they are not submitted by April 15, with the $25 fee, you will be fined.
   
Administrator’s Report        -     no report
Law Director’s Report         -     no report
   
Engineer’s Report – Mr. Shvegzda said ODOT has scheduled the preconstruction meeting for January 28, on the Crescentville Road improvements. On the ODOT Urban Paving Project, the file legislation is before Council tonight and that dictates the local share of the construction cost for that project. The SR747 ODOT paving project, the preliminary legislation is before council tonight. The Police Department pedestrian bridge repair is complete. When the weather permits, the contractor is going to add additional grit to the surface of the bridge to offer more slip resistance.

    COMMUNICATIONS

    Mrs. Harlow read the letter from Time Warner addressed to Mayor Webster regarding digital television transition.

    Mayor Webster read an email he received from a resident regarding the proposed increase in fees for the use of the City trucks.

    COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE -   

    Mr. Steve Gilhart introduced, Charles Clark Gilhart IV. Clark has returned to the area to help run Princeton Plaza and Princeton Bowl.

    ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS

ORDINANCE NO. 3-2009 “CONTRACT WITH DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION FOR URBAN PAVING PROJECT ON 747 FROM KEMPER ROAD TO I-275”

Mr. Vanover made a motion to adopt and Mr. Galster seconded.

Ordinance 3-2009 passed with seven affirmative votes.

RESOLUTION R3-2009 “STATE ROUTE 4 SOUTH URBAN PAVING”

Mr. Vanover made a motion to adopt and Mr. Wilson seconded.

Resolution R3-2009 passed with seven affirmative votes.

OLD BUSINESS                     -     none

    NEW BUSINESS                        

Mr. Vanover stated that on W I-275 between Rt. 4 and the Winton Road exit a few sizeable potholes have developed.

Mr. Shvegzda stated that we will notify ODOT. The project is not complete so the contractor is responsible for fixing this.

    MEETINGS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

    Board of Health                     -     February 12
    Planning Commission                         January 29

COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE    -     none

UPDATE ON LEGISLATION STILL IN DEVELOPMENT-    none

RECAP OF LEGISLATIVE ITEMS REQUESTED    -    none

Council adjourned at 8:47 p.m.

                        Respectfully submitted,




                        Kathy McNear
                        Clerk of Council/Finance Director

Minutes Approved:
Marjorie Harlow, President of Council



__________________________, 2009