08/15/2006 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 8/15/2006 involving labor law. He is holding that as the administration has a separate proposal for ~, labor negotiator services and feels they should be done together. 5) Litigation: • Shelley v. North Olmsted, Assistant Law Director O'Malley attended a mediation proceeding last week which did not result in a settlement. The case is still currently set for trial on September 18. As cases approach trial date, everybody on each side has better vision with respect to the strengths or weaknesses of their own case, so there is always a possibility of the case settling before trial. If there is a settlement that he is comfortable with, he will bring it to Council. When there are claims presented against the city, usually after he has done his job, he comes to City Council when settlement authority is needed to resolve a case. Otherwise, he defends them. • Kovacic v. City of North Olmsted and others, was set for status conference on August 24, but it has been continued to October 17. • He may be bringing to Council possibly at the next Council meeting the issue of recovering damages for the destroyed police cruiser during a March 27 incident involving a city police officer. That is close to settlement. He has authority to settle a claim against a party up to $5,000, but this would be more than $5,000. 6) Suburban Auto matter, which has been a difficult situation involving the city administration, City Council and residents for several months. Everyone thought, as of the second Council meeting in 3une, the matter was going to be resolved by action being taken by the property owner. That may not have been the case. Within the last couple of weeks, the Building Dept. is receiving more complaints of continued odor emblems back in the neighborhoods. This issue did come up at the Council committee meetings last week. Following that, he requested Assistant Law Director O'Malley, who works on most of the Building Code and Zoning Code issues with the Building Dept., to sit down with the Building official and find out exactly where we are so we are on the same page with respect to insuring our codes are being enforced and that complaints that are being brought forward are documented. Assistant Law Director O'Malley has spoken with Building Commissioner Conway, and Mr. Conway has asked his assistant to put together a report. As soon as that is completed, the Law Dept. will find out exactly where the Building Dept. is with respect to its investigation of the complaints. Then the Law Dept. will be able to provide advice to Building as to whether or not the complaint, if found to be credible by Building, can be enforced. If are code is not sufficient, that will be addressed with City Council. There is one piece of pending legislation sponsored by Councilman Gareau which attempts to approach the problem from a business regulation perspective. It's fairly easy to address problems in that fashion (business regulations), so Long as we can demonstrate that we believe an activity generated by a business is causing what people believe is a nuisance condition. It is somewhat more of a challenge to amend zoning codes because of the length of time it takes and grandfathering rights. Councilman Gareau has submitted a legislative request to look at this issue from a perspective of regulating odors, which is a difficult subject to regulate. The Law Dept. wants to provide as good as legal advice as possible to administrative departments and also be responsive to Council who wants to be able to address the matter with legislation if needed. This is a priority for the Law Dept. and will be until it is resolved. Councilman Gareau asked the Law Director for clarification on the awarding of specific law firms to be designated for a particular area of the law. Law Director Dubelko 5