08/18/2014 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Monday, August 18, 2014 Page 15 Council President Buckholtz asked, any other comments? In a previous career, I had something to do with this as far as the County end of it. Steve and I had a chance to talk about it. It is worth looking into. I don't know how it was set up. I know these things get put into place and they go on and on and on. There's all kinds of assessments, grass cutting, tree trimming, sidewalks, streets, lighting. I know it's pretty common that it's a blanket across municipalities. Whether or not neighborhoods can be separated out is something we can find out. What I am totally in the dark about, no pun intended, is what determines a neighborhood not having lighting? Why don't they have lights? Mr. Metzung stated, one of the neighborhoods, Echo, apparently did not want it. They opted out of street lights. I don't know if at that time there was an opt-in, opt-out clause, I can't answer that. Mr. Saponaro asked, so if there are enough people on a street that don't have lighting that want the lighting, what do they need to do? Mr. Diemert replied, there's an assessment process. They can petition Council. You would go through the assessment process. You would get quotes and bids and spread it out among all of the individual homeowners. When each little association, group or development was built, the builders themselves made the decision whether to put lights in and coordinated that with Planning Commission here. Some did; soiree didn't. The cost of those lights always went into the cost of the home so the people who bought those homes were paying for those lights. The theory is that if Echo doesn't want lights and Meadowood does, when you drive from Meadowood to go through Echo, you use those lights. When you go down Wilson Mills, SOM Center, any streets that are lit, whether your street or not is lit, you are using lights in the other parts of the coirununity that you travel to and from. That's the theory behind everyone kicking in for lights and why some pay and some don't. If the majority of a community wants it, they can petition Council. We would pay 2% plus the cost of intersections of installation of those lights. First Energy sometimes will work out a program for promotions and things like that to get them in because they want theirs to go in. There's things like that going on all the time. That's kind of the theory behind the program. The Ohio Revised Code has provided this method for paying for street lights in order to spread it among everyone in the community whether you have them on your street or you don't. It's something we have been doing in Mayfield for 30-40 years. Mr. Saponaro asked, but if a street doesn't have it and they want it, who pays for those lights on that street? Mr. Dieinert replied, the people that live there. Mr. Saponaro asked, what do all of the residents pay for? Mr. Dieinert replied, let's say Echo now decides they want lights. They would. petition us to advertise for bids and put the lights in. They will pay for 98% of it. The rest of the community