09/06/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Council Minutes of 9/6/2005 10) Shelli Gettinger, 4434 Williamstown Drive, in Pine Ridge, said her basement has taken on sanitary sewer water every time it rains-three times since March. She calls the city every time and they tell her the same thing, that it's an unusual rain. Her neighbors also have sanitazy flooding. Talk about growth of North Olmsted, how can that happen if she can't sell house? Her house is depreciating-it is not worth what the tax bill says. No one is going to look at her house even though it is a nice house because she has to disclose every water event. She came to a meeting 10 years ago and was told it was going to be taken care of, and it was several years before it happened again. But now it happened three times in three totally different types of rain-from a hurricane to a rain after the snow. State Farm no longer covers her home for sanitary backup. She and her husband have to manually clean it. Even with precautions of boots and gloves, she ended up in the emergency room with a bacterial infection. Her husband has a job opportunity out of state which would be wonderful, but they cannot take it because they cannot sell their home. Only two homes in the neighborhood did not flood, and they put check valves in 10 years ago. Other residents tried to do the same, but the city said they could not because it only sends it to the neighbors. She hopes the city moves in the right direction to help homeowners who are flooding continually. Mayor O'Grady said it seems very clear it is either inflow or infiltration. As her property has been checked, the city will check to see if it's the drainage system in the streets. If not, then the city will start looking at neighbors. 11) Gerri Ramsak, 25137 Fawn Drive, in the Deerfield development, wanted to thank Councilman Barker. He's been a godsend. In 1989, her house flooded really bad. After that, they did waterproofing. The water was not as bad this time, but it blew a hole in the floor. It came up through the slab and threw black sand into the house. In the past, pumps have always been out on the street. This time they weren't. The road in front of her house gets so deep that cars actually stall. The insurance company will not cover the damage because it is a city problem and they said the sewer needs to be backed up. The Mayor did not mention her area for camera work. Will that happen? She does not know what to do. If it rains again, it's going to come right through the hole although they tried to patch it as best as they could. She wants to know what the city has planned. It's a problem that needed to be addressed years ago. Mayor O'Grady said the storm of August 20 caused flooding from one end of the city to the other. He knows there are regionalized trouble spots, and Deerfield is one of those. The good news is we are doing much more than talking about it. Things are better than before, but we know we still we have problems. They built too quickly and too erratically in those early days- didn't have controls we have today. We would not have the problem if we developed later like Westlake did. But we have to deal with it. We will continue to analyze data, continue to look to make sure the city infrastructure is functioning as it should function. If not, we'll fix it. If it is functioning as it should, we will turn our attention to residents. We will do what we can to help Mrs. Ramsak, but he is not going to pretend he has an answer. 12) Sheldon Myers, 23947 Ambour Drive, questioned the Mayor's comments that there was no warning of the storm. The weather conditions for this area were solid dark red indicating heavy storms. That meant the pumps should be out. They don't have any pumps on Ambour. Last week, he personally dropped off letters at City Hall for the Mayor, Law Director and Service 20