02/18/2003 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Counci[ Minutes of 2/18/2003 Councilman Gateau, member of the BZD Committee, said he wanted to express his opinion consistent with Messrs. Nashar and McKay. The city has spent a long time working to get a quality development on that site. It has been a number of years, litigation has gone up to the Supreme Court and back down. We have hired experts and have done everything we could do to make sure that we get the best possible development on that site. No sooner do we get done putting the new zoning regulations in place, than a proposal comes in that essentially ignores all the zoning regulations we just put in place. So, from his poirrt of view, the developer has got a very, very long way to go before they make that project anything close to acceptable in his opinion. Councilwoman Kasler, chairperson of the Public Safety, Health & Welfare Committee: 1) The issue regarding the fire alarm ordinance was postponed from the last meeting of the Safety Committee due to pending information from the Law Department and the Safety Department. More information is needed and that issue will be rescheduled. 2) Canterbury Road speed limit and the possibility of reducing that speed limit back to 25 mph as opposed to the 35 was discussed. The city has two options: go to the county to obtain an agreement for the city to unilaterally change that speed limit back to 25; petition the State Department of Transportation to reduce the limit to 25 mph on the basis of the residential nature of the area and the potentially dangerous and obstructed curve on the road. Based on an inquiry from Mr. Dubelko to the county, for various reasons the county is unable to agree to agree to lowering the limit and having us do that unilaterally. So the only other option left by the recommendation of the Law Department is to petition the State Department of Transportation. This petition is best accompanied by a traffic study in the area. Therefore, on February 11 on behalf of the Safety Committee, she requested the Mayor and Safety Director answer these questions: whether the study can be done in-house and the cost and timeline for such a study. To date, she has received no response, but she will make a second request in that regard and make that request more urgent because we do not want to see this issue sit. In the meantime, however, target enforcement signs have been placed in strategic areas of the road to hopefully deter excessive speed. 3) Regarding some housekeeping issues: A resident has been coming to Council meetings far quite some time with a request to the Mayor that the city have access to the Avan Lake water line. She took it upon herself to talk with Mayor Berger in Avon bake, and he assures her that they have the ability and the capacity to supply North Olmsted with water at a lesser price than the City of Cleveland. However, very important information she gathered from that discussion is that we need to know who awns the water lines and whether or not the lines are in a loop in the city. If they are in a loop, then should we obtain the ability to take water from Avon Lake, would that water then be co-mingling with City of Cleveland water? This then becomes an EPA issue. Also, if we are permitted to purchase from Avon Lake, who owns the water lines? Would we have to rent or purchase those lines and would the cost of this investment offset the savings that we would have by connecting to Avon Lake? Those are all major issues that need to be discussed. As she prepared to consider looking further into this with the City of Cleveland, which would be the next step, Mr. Miller simultaneously took it to the next level and has proposed on first reading a resolution that authorizes and directs the Mayor 6