08/05/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 8/5/03 this issue. Perhaps there is debris in the lines. Councilman Gazeau suggested that, since Mr. Pangrac and Council have been talking about Cleveland water for a year and a half, a representative should be asked to come out to North Olmsted and hear our concerns about water pressure and water rates. President O'Grady agreed to write a letter and invite someone from the Cleveland Water Department to do so. Councilwoman Kasler said the City of Cleveland water issue was brought up quite a while ago. She was always in favor of addressing this issue through Council, but she was encouraged to leave administrative duties to administration. Council did recommend to the administration verbally and through legislation that Cleveland be contacted. Legislation was passed asking the Mayor to address this water issue. Mayor Musial noted that the ordinance directing the Mayor to perform certain functions was in regards to ascertaining whether or not we could secure cheaper water rates from a community in Lorain Couirty. He has asked City Engineer Durbin to look into that. Mr. Durbin was invited to come forward. He said the Mayor asked him to chair a water task force to investigate the matter of connecting to either Avon Lake or Lorain County. The other two members of the task force are Tom Szabo and Bud Crock. They met last night to identify some of the problems of making the connection to either one of those water systems or both. There are a lot of problems. He noted that North Ridgeville does get its water from Lorain Coumy, and it has its own water department which takes care of their own mains. We do not. Also, Cleveland has several main transmission lines through North Olmsted. We would have to disconnect from all those. We would have to buy every meter in the city or replace it. There are a lot of things they are trying to identify, pros and cons, to give Council some idea of what the cost might be and how it could be recouped. The task force will meet again in two weeks. There are a lot of problems that are not evident, such as setting up a whole new department to do billing. Mrs. Kasler said she hopes the task force moves along. She understands that there aze always pros and cons to every issue. The reason Council wanted this addressed is because they don't know what those pros and cons are, and they need to know that. She would like to be updated on reports from task the force. Has the city of Cleveland been called by the administration to discuss this issue? Mr. Durbin said he contacted Cleveland but has not had a return call. Councilman Miller said he hoped the point brought up by Mr. Pangrac a number of years ago would not be missed, and that is the matter of rates. He would hope that the city would be able to negotiate better rates if it is not practical to purchase water from Lorain County. ^ Does not agree with Ordinance 2003-33 and believes Council will have to approve every mayoral appointment to a director's position. Law Director Dubelko said it applied only to appointed directors. Basically, Council will review appointments by the Mayor for appointed directors and can reject them but only by atwo-thirds vote. Mr. Pangrac thinks the Mayor should have the right to appoint anybody to a position. If Council is going to be put in a position that they are going to have to approve those by two-thirds vote, they can basically handicap the administration of the city. Law Director Dubelko explained it is not two-thirds approval, it would take two-thirds to reject. He doesn't think it would handicap the administration any more so than what we have right now. Councilman Dailey noted that Council is ultimately responsible to the voters of the city as much as the mayor is. If it turns out that Council is trying to I1