11/15/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 11/15/2005 people are waiting for return rides to North Olmsted. That is being addressed and has been addressed, and there has been improvement. There is an agreement in the contract that permits the City of North Olmsted to call and organize a public hearing if necessary. It's our intent to go forward with that depending upon the level of interest we get from our citizens. The idea would be to bring the leadership of RTA to North Olmsted for a public hearing so that concerned residents can have an opportunity to hear a presentation and then ask questions. Hopefully, that public hearing will be held in December. Regarding Mr. Ryan's comment about the court case involving the bus line, Law Director Dubelko said he had a slightly different recollection. The Common Pleas Court decision of Judge Matia, which was upheld by the Court of Appeals, essentially indicated that RTA was held to be under an obligation to run acounty-wide service to provide bus service throughout the county and the City of North Olmsted was held to be able to run a competing line if it wished to. Realistically, the City of North Olmsted cannot run a competing line with RTA. Councilman Ryan asked the Law Director to review the decision, especially No. 16. Law Director Dubelko said he would be happy to take a look at the decision. Dennis Lambert, 25057 Carey Lane, adding to the discussion of the bus service said, as he walking on Butternut Ridge one day, an RTA bus driver pulled up to the light and asked him if the street was Butternut Ridge. He congratulates all the people that ran in the election, especially those who won, and to his Councilman Larry Orlowski who ran a very good race. He feels confident that both of them ran a very good race and got their positions out there very well. Only 31.9% of the eligible voters actually voted and there were 232 voters in Ward 4 who did not vote for the ward race. He is interested in looking at the various statistics of the various races and determining how many dollars were spent per vote. Those are statistics that really need to be looked at because they give some mandates to the way the city runs. Those figures are telling of the people that have voted and anticipating that your job is to decide how these things go forward. There is a fundamental concept of voting which says, when people vote, they vote their consequences. If you people succeed in doing what you're supposed to do, we're going to prosper. If you fail to do what you promised you're going to do, everybody is going to pay for it. It's those fundamental principles of consequences that makes the responsibility of voting such a serious issue. On another matter, about a year ago he came to Council after a trip to Alaska and commented about the gravel and epoxy roads. Last week the Plain Dealer reported that ODOT is now using that on ramps to test it. It looks like it's going to be a wonderful winter surface. It appears to be very rugged. It's also going to save dollars in salting and gravel. It just has to be plowed, and it is almost resistant to skidding and slipping. It's something that was on the cutting edge, and he brought it to Council to take a look at. It is certainly something to be considered in the future for saving money because concrete is very expensive to maintain and very hard to work with. In the end, the epoxy and gravel may be the best all-weather solution to the way we do our roads. Joe Bouman, 23950 Gessner Road, is very interested in the Mayor's desire to pursue the ® RTA issue. He attended the RTA meeting this morning and brought up the point there 11