06/15/2009 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regular Council Meeting Minutes 6-15-09 Page 26 The last thing that Senator Niehaus version will do will increase the fee for mandatory pooling to $5,000.00 per mandatory pooling application and will limit the number of pools so that a driller could not mandatory pool more than five times a year in the. State of Ohio. This is a good step in the right direction. It's better than the current situation. But if you take the theory that mandatory pooling should be unconstitutional because it's the involuntary taking of your property, then why people can be unconstitutional five times a year versus 50 times a year is the step in the right direction is not just logical when you think about that. That's what Senatcr Niehaus is suggesting. What Senator Grendell's Bill does is restore local control over oil and gas wells in residential neighborhoods. There are two ways to approach this. One is to just give you back the control. The second is to have a local zoning ordinance that the legislature will approve with some parameters and then if you want to adopt that as your ordinance you can do it, but when you do that, you have to take authority over residential oil and gas drilling. That's step number 1, number 2 is we eliminate mandatory pooling in Senator Grendell's legislation completely. Senator Grendell still thinks it is unconstitutional. Third is we demand disclosure and accountability. You have to notify all the residents within 3,000 feet of a proposed well and you have to provide financial disclosure. We raised the requirement for the insurance from $5,000,000.00 to $10,000,000.00. The insured in Bainbridge had a$1,000,000.00 which is the current requirement. That won't come close to the problems in Bainbridge. The only good fortune for those people in Bainbridge is that insured had a$12,000,000.00 umbrella policy. Senator Grendell's gut tells him they are going to use every dime of that by the time they are done with the problems they have out there. So we are going to increase the insurance requirements from $5,000,000.00 to $10,000,000.00. Senator Grendell does not want to just give you more input. He wants to give you some control. You are the folks who end up getting the phone calls and you are the folks who get the complaints. You get all the grief. Senator Grendell thinks when it comes to residential drilling, you still need to have the final say. If you decide you want to do it, that's fine. If you decide you don't want to do it, that ought to be fine too. There may be some residential communities, some cities who want this. If they do, God bless them. Senator Grendell just does not like the idea that you don't get a say in the process. We axe going to fight this out over the next six months once we finish this budget mess that we are in. Senator Grendell looks forward to your input. We will be providing to the Mayor for Council a chart to show you the differences in the summaries of both Bills. If you want to weigh in with a Resolution in support, we would really appreciate it. As to fire safety, we got a nine-point plan from the Fire Chief of Gates Mills that we are going to incorporate into our Bill because he raised some excellent issues. They are supposed to be inspecting these things, but the gates are rusted and locked, so are not operable. If you need