01/02/2007 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 1/2/2007 10) Bids are due this Friday at Noon for the Great Northern Blvd. project. 11) The Service Dept. storm crew has partially opened a clogged culvert crossing under the Delmere Arms Apartment property and Delmere Drive. As time and weather permit, the storm crew will finalize this work. 12) The sound walls along I-480 are down with the exception of about 200 feet on the south side just east of Stearns Road. We await the reconstruction of these sound barrier walls as soon as possible. 13) The roofs are up and the last of the masonry work continues at Fire Station No. 2. 14) Ordinance No. 2006-202 regarding professional economic development consulting services was reviewed in committee last week and held in committee. He would remind Council that a great deal of effort over many months by the administration has gone into this legislation. He asks that Council move expeditiously in approving this position and this legislation. Law Director Dubelko: 1) He has submitted and distributed his 2007 annual report, which can also be found on the city website. Highlights of the report are as follows: • The Law Dept. has maintained a flat budget over the last three years. Anew cost center approach taken to department/division budgets resulted in items (health care costs, workers' comp costs, copier costs, phone expenses, etc.) which were formerly placed under General Administration being redistributed among all the departments and divisions. That resulted in approximately a 20% increase in the Law Department numbers even though expenditures were not increased. This past year, the Fair Housing budget was included in the Law Dept. Fair Housing expenditures are all being covered by the HUD Capacity Building Grant, so that is not an increase out of the General Fund. • Quality of the Law Dept. staff. He is very fortunate to have an extremely able staff in place. In particular, he wants to single out Assistant Law Director O'Malley who is a tireless worker. Prosecutor Gordillo has in a very short period of time developed into an extremely fine local city prosecutor. Also, he would like to commend Assistant Law Director Heyward who has worked for the city about six months and has akeady taken great strides forward in building the city's fair housing program and has brought much enthusiasm and new ideas to the Law Dept. to protect and improve the quality of the city's housing stock. • Number of pending civil cases is down to just six at the end of 2006. One of his goals as Law Director is to keep the litigation down. • Rocky River Court statistics. There is a drop in the traffic cases from 2005 to 2006, and correspondently adrop in traffic case revenues. • Real Property Maintenance Code enforcement. Assistant Law Director Heyward spent about a half a year starting to learn real property maintenance enforcement in the city and putting more time and effort into it. It has reflected in the numbers. Demand letters are up by approximately 33% over 2005, and the number of complaints filed in Rocky River Court are up by almost 50%. • Fair Housing Code enforcement. Ms. Heyward spent half of her time on fair housing items. Once the outreach program into the community was begun, four complaints of fair housing violations were received. One of those has been found 2