03/20/2007 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 3/20/2007 President Kennedy; Service Director Limpert and Law Director Dubelko. Agenda items included the following: • Resolution 2007-22, a resolution authorizing the Director of Fublic Service to advertise for bids for crack sealing on various streets in the City of North Olmsted, as per specifications on file in his office, and authorizing the Mayor to enter into a contract for the same. The Service Director explained that in 2005 some crack sealing was contracted out, but it was more cost-effective for the City to do this in-house. This year the administration is going to go out for bid for the large areas of streets that need to be crack sealed, such as Brookpark and Lorain roads. By doing this, it will help to free up some of our Service Department workers to crack seal our residential neighborhoods and to do other street maintenance in those areas such as road preparation and street pavement marking. Council asked if the crack sealer that was purchased a few years ago was still going to be used, and the Service Director said the machine would be used on the residential streets that need to be sealed. Council also asked questions about who would inspect the work and how many companies do this type of work. The committee voted 3-0 to recommend approval of the legislation. • Ordinance 2007-27, an ordinance establishing new regulations relating to the removal and deposit of snow and ice on sidewalks, tree lawn areas, and driveway aprons in the City of North Olmsted; creating new section 765.02 of the Business Regulation Code; amending sections 521.06 and 521.11 of the General Offenses Code; and declaring an emergency. Mrs. Jones explained some of the history of how this ordinance came to be proposed. The Law Director said that there was an Ohio Supreme Court decision years ago which imposed the liability of someone falling on a sidewalk that was cleared to the property owner, and at the same time there have been local codes which said that there was an obligation of the property owner to remove the snow and ice accumulation from the sidewalks. A few years ago, this question was asked and the city took the position of not citing people in residential areas for failing to remove snow and ice because it created an unfair situation for those property owners. However, the city was still dealing with the issue of businesses clearing out parking lots and dumping the snow onto sidewalks which then made them impassable. What is being proposed in this ordinance is to eliminate the duty of enforcement of this issue of the city in residential areas and to create a new business regulation which would allow the city to enforce the regulation in commercial areas. At this time, the Service Department has been clearing the sidewalks on main roads. The Law Director does not believe that this new section of the code would bring hardship to business owners because businesses should have a heightened sense of responsibility to remove the snow and ice accumulation on their sidewalks in order for pedestrians to walk easily and not be forced to walk into the street. In addition, the Law Director said that businesses have insurance to cover incidents such as a fall, and the majority of homeowners do not have that type of insurance coverage. Questions were asked about how to enforce this regulation, how other cities regulate this issue, and how much time is spent by the Service Department in clearing out businesses' sidewalks after a snow event. The Chamber of 9 ,~ _