03/15/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 3/15/24Q5 Calabrese did not think a study was necessary. Mr. Bouman believes there will be regrets later. He is very sorry we are losing the bus line as an asset. Don Pangrac, 23470 Sharon Drive. Publicly asked Mr. Calabrese (who was in the audience), in light of the amount of savings he says he is going to achieve, that he provide the City of North Olmsted, Mayor and Council, of a financial statement of what is now NOMBL on a quarterly basis comparing his actual expenditures to the projected savings that he says he's going to achieve. This will be used as a monitoring tool to support his contention that there is going to be the $1.8 million savings. At some point in the course of time, these numbers should be compared to audited numbers. Thomas Ryan, 26734 Sudbury Drive. Thanked everyone for their efforts in the NOMBL issue overall. Occurred to him that every good faith effort to continue the partnership between NOMBL and GCRTA has failed, and wondered if it is time to contemplate creating our own regional transit authority. According to ORC, Title III, Chapter 306, Section 32, states that "...any county, municipal corporation, township or any combination thereof, may create a regional transit authority by the adoption o£ .." Creation of this would allow North Olmsted to keep all of our jobs, bus services and the 1 % sales tax that is currently going to the county. Is this possible? Law Director Dubelko said there is a regional transit authority in Cuyahoga County. It's an interesting question, but he does not believe a second regional transit authority can be formed within the same jurisdiction of an existing regional transit authority. Even if you could, the present 1 % sales tax revenues are going to the existing authority, so you have to defund it. The voters would have to eliminate that tax or create a new one. It is an interesting legal question, but he thinks it would have a lot of legal hurdles. Mr. Ryan said he had done some research and feels that, if a new transit authority is created, the current transit authority sales tax would then be appropriated to the new transit authority under certain circumstances. Councilman Dailey asked what those circumstances might be. Mr. Ryan said there is a provision that no regional transit authority shall be organized, however, unless the current transit authority fails for its purposes, including the purpose for which such existing regional transit authority was originally created. North Olmsted could make a good faith argument that GCRTA fails in its original purposes to serve the community of North Olmsted. We could then argue that we should be able to leave the GCRTA and create our own transit authority. Dennis Lambert, 25057 Carey Lane, liked Mr. Ryan's idea and said he had previously raised that possibility. He believes this is not an issue of the bus service, but it is an issue of regional government. What everyone is discussing are symptoms. The real problem is regional government. Regional government entities such as RTA and the Regional Sewer District are "in the business of doing business." Everybody wants to dig into the citizens' pockets for the scam called regional government. He will be reminding everybody of what regional government can do without the voters authority to give it or take it away long after Mr. Calabrese is gone. He is happy for the bus drivers who will be kept employed. But he feels the need to continue to remind everyone that the issue is 14