01/02/2007 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 1/2/2007 ~~ to be supported by probable cause, one was not. Two remain in pending investigation. He noted the contributions that Councilwoman Dailey Jones has made to the city's Fair Housing Review Board. She has been an excellent representative of City Council to the board. • The department collected approximately $11,000 in 2006 in funds owed to the city from various sources. • Other matters deemed to promote good government and welfare for the City of North Olmsted. From time to time he does make recommendations to Council regarding issues he believes are good government matters in North Olmsted. Although the Director of Law is a legal advisor and not a policy maker, he does sit in a position in city government that gives him a sometimes unique vantage point on important issues in the city government. This year, he has four primary recommendations to City Council, and to the administration as well. First, regionalism. He truly believe the city is missing opportunities and is falling behind other cities in northeast Ohio in moving down the road to regionalism of services and expenditures where regionalism makes sense-that is, where it saves taxpayer dollars and where the qualify of city services do not suffer as a result of it. He encourages the Mayor and Council in 2007 to take a step back, look how business was conducted in 2006 and see whether, without sacrificing principle that people honestly feel, positions can be compromised and the city can move forward on promising regional initiatives. Second, Sunshine Law policies and practices. House Bill 9 was just signed by Gov Taft, and it requires that all public offices establish public record policies. This is a good opportunity for City Council as well as the administration to take a look at Sunshine Law issues. One issue to be revisited is the establishment of a better, more practicable method of taking the minutes of committee meetings. Tape recording the meetings meets legal minimum, but he thinks a better method would be a summarized written version of the committee meetings. On the issue of records retention policy, he would recommend that City Council authorize the Clerk of Council to work with the Law Dept. and Records Commission and prepare and submit to the Records Commission a proposed records retention schedule for all City Council records. This is something that also goes to the administration as there are a few departments and divisions which have records retention schedules in place. We need to get the entire city in place. Third, the city's ethics laws. He believes local government should attempt to deal effectively with local ethics issues. The Ohio Ethics Commission is under staffed and under budgeted. If an ethics issue goes down to Columbus, it's likely to sit there for a very long time. He recommends the administration and Council revisit the city's ethics code and see whether or not reform can be made in 2007 and look seriously at establishing a new Ethics Commission with some citizen participation. Fourth, the upcoming second floor rehabilitation project. This will be a larger ticket item than the front entrance project, but several city departments (Finance, Human Resources and Law) need more space. It is the fiscally responsible thing to do to rehabilitate what the city has here and provide sufficient space so that in particular Law, Finance and Human Resources can perform their functions well. 3