06/18/2002 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 6/18/2002 city have-what is authorized under state law or prohibited under state law; whether not r~~ there are any state laws in existence which regulate the hours of part-time employees. ~'~""° Hopefully, all these issues will be resolved before Council's next regular meeting in August. 6) As a legislative report at the halfway mark this year, he believes that for the first half of this year almost all of the legislative requests made by the administration and members of Council have been completed. A few, like the new contractor registration ordinance and the Landmarks Commission minor change ordinance, are still in the Law Department. These are being jointly reviewed between members of the Law Department and members of the Building Department and hopefully will be completed by the first meeting in August. Another, the public indecency ordinance update is on hold pending changes in a related state law. There are two others that have been submitted within recent ..days for introduction at the first meeting in August. That brings to five the total of legislative,requests that are pending in the Law Department. In the first half of 2002, 106 ordinances will have been introduced before Council, which is a large number as compared to 81 in 2001, 78 in 2000 and 83 in 1999. 7) He has received an alert from the law firm of Walter & Haverfield concerning the imminent bankruptcy of Adelphia. The Law Departrneirt will be watching this closely to be sure the city's. interests are protected as this could mean the franchise might be sold to another entity or there is the potential for a diminution in service. President O'Grady noted that one of the issues that affects the cable providers is the question of franchise fees. He is a member of the Information Technology and Communication Committee of the National League of Cities, and that committee has been and continues to be very aggressively pursuing some type of resolution favorable to communities. Councilman Nashar expressed his concern that the city endeavor to maintain the current cable rate structure should another company take aver from Adelphia. He noted that rates escalated when WideOpenWest took over from Ameritech. Finance Director Copfer: 1) Continuing with the topic of Adelphia, one of the things she was concerned with was the payment of the franchise fee, which is about $56,000 a quarter for our General Fund. We did receive the first quarter's payment yesterday. So, if they do go bankrupt, the city would just be classified as a creditor. If our franchise agreement has a performance bond, we possibly would be able to draw on that if indeed they went bankrupt. There is some question as to whether we can get the franchise fees that aze due and owing by that bond, so she and the Law Department are looking into that. This fee is a significant contribution to the revenue and operations of the General Fund. 2) She has asked the Regional Income Tax Agency to take an inventory of all the businesses that we have in our city-Lorain Road, the mall, the strip plazas, Brookpark extension, anywhere where there's. a .commercial area. They started that last week by simply taking down names of companies and addresses. They then go back and compare that information to the records, and there is a follow-up. Oftentimes, they might have a name on the business, but they are actually doing business as something else. So there is