09/18/2000 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting 9-18-00 Page 16 CLOSING COMMENTS Mr. Hovancsek said on March 15, 2001, O.D.O.T. will be opening bids for the deck replacement of the Highland Road bridge over I-271. Construction should start next summer. It will be down totally. Mr. Ilacqua asked when they let us know--that will impact the S.O.M. widening--we can't have no roundabout way of access. Mayor Rinker suggested Council pass legislation to the City of Highland Heights and O.D.O.T. indicating that we will oppose complete shutdown of the bridge. His understanding is that every time they do a bridge, they do one half and then the other. They did that over Cedar and Brainard. Mr. Hovancsek said it may be that they will do that; he will double-check with O.D.O.T. He set up a meeting with O.D.O.T. for Wednesday at 2 p.m. Mayor Rinker said we have consistently maintained that we oppose any widening of the bridge. We had been assured there is no widening; that this is just a change in grade--it has actually subsided 6" on the west side of the road. We are also opposed to mis-mangement of this if it means total shutdown. We went though a preview of this when we did Highland and S.O.M. This would be tantamount to the same kind of log jam with or without the work on S.O.M. Mr. Hovancsek said he will check in the morning. Mr. Buckholtz asked if there is ever a possibility or has anyone considered putting a sidewalk on-the south side of Parkview Drive. Mayor Rinker said the short answer is no we haven't considered it. Whether it makes sense to do it or not, he guesses we could look into it. We are trying to encourage people to cross on the south side when we do the tunneling. There will be a segment between Parkview Drive and the service drive to the pool--that would be the one gap not serviced with a sidewalk. Mr. Buckholtz asked the future of a westerly side bike path. Mayor Rinker said he thinks we should look very carefully at a north-south connecting road/pathway on the west side. As far as that one stretch, the thought would be to see what it looks like once we tunnel under there and see how that works as opposed to adding a sidewalk that will go to nowhere. Mr. Ilacqua said Mayor Rinker had mentioned at Caucus that Mayor Rinker had mentioned that discussion had been had... Mayor Rinker said there has been no discussion with Progressive. This is another of these issues that from the point it was brought to our attention we have opposed the fact that the lighting on North Commons Boulevard is too bright. We relied upon the expertise of the contractor who told us this is what we needed; this is conventional. We were very much concerned about having lighting