04/15/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 4/15/2003 ~,, issue again. Mayor Musial said the mall's general manager did discuss the use of security cameras. He indicated that the Law Department should be consulted as there may be liability issues associated with the use of cameras. Not for what they catch, but for what they do not catch. Law Director Dubelko: 1) He has spent time reseazching the comp time issue and the Council formal hearings legislation. With regard to the Council formal hearings ordinance, he will be reducing his recommendations to writing and submitting them to chairman Miller prior to the end of the week so that Council can renew its review of this legislation at next week's committee meetings. With respect to the comp time ordinance, he recommends that Council approach this legislative task in stages. He recommends that Council first consider addressing simply the issue of comp time for directors, the issue which has caused so much consternation in the government recently. The remainder of the non-bargaining unit employees should be addressed after June 30 when the new federal regulations regarding administrative and professional employees come into effect. This would also give the administration some additional time to provide Council with more information with what is out there with respect to comp time in the various departments of the city. The Personnel Director has been working on obtaining that information and has been forwarding it to the Law Departmem. Responses have been received from about half of the non bazgaining unit employees. The highest numbers were between 100 and 200 hours. 2) On April 3, the city received an opinion and an award from arbitrator Robert J. Vana in an arbitration relating to an issue of whether fire fighters should receive 12 hours of jury duty pay the day before their jury service begins if they aze sick on that day before jury duty and take sick leave instead. The arbitrator concluded that the better reading of the collective bazgaining agreement was that the employee would only have to take 12 hours of sick leave on the day prior and could, in fact, take the other 12 as jury duty pay. In this labor/management issue, the award went in favor of the union. 3) In the case of State of Ohio vs. Terrance Reagan, the city received notice from the Ohio Supreme Court that the court would not reconsider its decision to not take in Mr. Reagan's attempted discretionary appeal. 4) On April 7, the United States Supreme Court made a decision in the case of Virginia vs. Black, which may be popularly known as the cross burning case. The Supreme Court held in this case that the First Amendment did not protect the act of cross burning when it was performed with "intent to intimidate another person of groups of persons." The court in that case also invalidated a portion of the Virginia criminal statute which had made the act of cross burning prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate. In other words, the court said that the act of cross burning alone was not sufficient indication of intent to intimidate. So cross burning, per se, like flag burning, may still be protected by the First Amendment. However, if there is evidence that cross burning is done with an intent to intimidate a person or groups of persons, then it becomes like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or like "fighting words," or "criminal threats," it falls outside the protection of the First Amendment and may be criminalized. 5) We have received a claim from a property owner along Claque Road for property damage allegedly caused as a result of the widening of Claque Road. This claim has ~"'"° __