11/17/2008 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting Minutes 11-17-08 Page 2 One, not that Mayfield Village was the deciding vote, but Kudos go to Council for support of the school and library levies which to his recollection is probably one of the best margins it has had over the years, and considering where it was earlier this yeax, that's pretty solid. - We are trying to work out something with Highland Heights relative to Civic Hall. Mayor Rinker had two very interesting discussions with Mayor Coleman on Friday. The first was about trouble they discovered in their community room. Supporting beams are rotting. Effective immediately they have shut it down. They have a nuinber of engagements that have been left high and dry. They have been looking around at other communities. Mary Beth had some discussions with Judy from Highland Heights. We are going to give them a hand wherever we can. We axe sensitive to the fact that we regulate this place even more than the community room and we try not to look like we are playing favorites. We are trying to be judicious in this. Highland Heights charges a pretty penny for rental of its facility. It provides a few more services than we do as well. We are trying to hit a good point where we are competitive in terms of what they charge; somewhere in between we will find a number. We are asking for cooperation from rentals such as AA that has been using this place since time began. They are very possessive of their space. We are trying to be very diplomatic. They will have maybe a dozen people here on a Friday night, for example, when other people may want to use it. We will work through it. Mayor Rinker wanted everyone to be aware of this because you may be getting feedback. Mrs. Kalina advised that she got a call several months ago from residents of Highland Heights who play cards there who said it would be shut down for renovation, could they come to our facility and she said, yes, non-residents are always welcome. Mayor Rinker added that the Mayor of Highland Heights called him directly. It's hard to say no when they are in dire straights like that. We will try to work it out. Segueing from that, Mayor Rinlcer did have a chance to talk to Mayor Coleman who not surprisingly really did not have a whole lot of insight on Progressive. As reported the last time, we were working through RITA to try to get more input. We know that Progressive has been shifting the number of entities and has been consolidating in a variety of ways. The Mayor was not directly aware, but he did comment that maybe it is just through some attrition, maybe they are not rehiring. Regardless, Mayor Rinker said to Mayor Coleman that he would really like to have some line on it because this was a sudden drop-of£ It belied simply an attrition rate, something has spiked. Mayor Coleman said he would talk with Ron Marrotto. Mayor Rinker said Ron Marrotto made it a point of letting us know ahead of time last year, but Mayor Rinker thinks that was a PR damage control move as much as anything else. This sounds like it is creeping deflation. Stay tuned. We are covering both bases between RITA, whatever insight we can get from the data there and the Mayor has said he would at least follow up on it. Those are things we really can't control. It is just getti-ng more of a handle and understanding of it. The Finance Committee got a bit of a taste tonight on a number of discussions we have commented on previously and Mayor Rinker has conveyed to you and will continue to do so that with department heads, we are using this time for the balance of the year to really tighten up for