11/15/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 11/15/2005 and economic pain that is afoot in the land. It's called priorities, giving out what is more important and what is less important. Look at some of the recent absurdities on which Council and/or its committees have spent a substantial amount of their limited time. Number one, the color, size and shape of advertising boxes. I fully understand that the more time that is spent on such trivial matters, the less time there will be to deal with tough and potentially controversial issues. Two, last night's almost endless agonizing over what the finials on a fence post should look like and be constructed from. Do you people realize how foolish spending so much time on such a trivial priority makes you look? Three, blocking the implementation of a flagpole-style cell tower that is critically needed as additional communications redundancy. This flagpole would benefit the reliable reporting of any reportable emergency. No matter that this flagpole would provide needed revenue for the Recreation Dept. as well. A friend of mine who is critically incapacitated with multiple sclerosis depends on her cell phone to summon help and needs that flagpole to fill a coverage hole that could save her life. The idea of letting that flagpole add revenue and provide additional communications redundancy was apparently beyond the comprehension of the one Councilman who announced in committee that he would oppose this practical and humanitarian item. There are six other votes on Council. Can't this sort of thing be overridden? Once again, isn't this one more example of a serious priorities issue." This is not intended to be a scathing or blistering criticism. It's a statement that we really have serious issues in this town, and it's important that we all think and work together on them. Don Pangrac, 23470 Sharon Drive, following up on the Mayor's comments regarding the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, he has had two occasions to deal with that body- both of which were negative. From his perspective, the PUCO is very pro-utility and anti-user. On another issue, recently in the Plain Dealer there was a letter regarding the services of RTA in our community. Many of the former NOMBL drivers who were familiar with the routes have taken other positions. Some of the new drivers are missing their turns and buses are late and the service has deteriorated. There is also a safety issue involved as a bus driver was seen to make a U-turn to get back on the correct route. He would encourage the Mayor to write a letter to the director of the RTA regarding the shortfall of service since they took over and asking what he intends to do about it. Councilman Ryan commented that the former NOMBL drivers were only protected for six months, and then the routes became bid positions. The union drivers are permitted to bid for the routes. Because our routes in North Olmsted are either more lucrative or more desirable, they were bid out to other drivers. So we lost our former drivers. There was a case about 25 years ago in front of Judge David Matia where the city was guaranteed by the Common Pleas Court that North Olmsted would always receive the same amount of service or better, basically into infinity. He knows there have been complaints about the cleanliness of buses and the bus stops. He has discussed this with the Mayor, and the Mayor indicated he would do everything possible to get this worked out with RTA. Mayor O'Grady said he has been in regular contact with Joe Calabrese of RTA, and he has been responsive. There have been issues, there have been problems, there have been new drivers on new routes that miss turns and routinely failed to go to the stops where the 10