04/15/2008 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 4/15/2008 that we conduct ourselves in a way that's beneficial to the entire community. He does not suggest that people should abandon their property rights. We have those, and we even have due process rights to contest a chazge in court that a law was violated. But he would suggest that these laws aze designed to protect everybody. And the city is not going inside people's homes. We are aresult-oriented program. We aze not looking to have hundreds of cases pending in Rocky River Municipal Court. We just want the problems fixed-whether it's grass, broken windows, falling down gutters, or paint flaking off the house. The number one phone call that City Council gets throughout the course of the yeaz is property maintenance. Council Member Dailey Jones commented to Mr. Smith that there absolutely is a correlation between properties being. maintained and the value of homes. Neighbors really shouldn't take this into their own hands. Most of the phone calls she receives are complaints about someone's property. Neighbors are very reluctant to give their names to the city, so she will then file that complaint on their behalf. We would not want to create a situation where we do leave it in the neighbors' hands and there becomes a lot of problems on a street or neighborhood if people feel the need to retaliate. She really does believe that these property maintenance initiatives that we have been doing for years and that we will continue to do aze a great thing for the City of North Olmsted. Dennis Lambert, 25057 Carey Lane, felt the Recreation Committee meeting was run well, and he appreciated it. He feels the Mayor has overextended his power with Council and tries to dominate what goes on. He does not feel the Mayor should tell Council what they can and cannot debate in committees. He previously agreed with the Law Director when he said the President of Council should be given more power, but he does not believe the President should have domicile over everybody on Council and be able to hold or withhold any topic from any committee. He believes there should be structure to what the President of Council does-appointing committees, etc. Council should be a dynamic force. He served on the Fairview Park Council for almost three terms, and everything and anything went on the table. He thanked Mr. Ryan for bringing up the topic and asking for more input from citizens of looking at a broader impact on the city with regard to the way the city finances things. Control of what is discussed and where will not benefit the community. Good government is open government. Debate is the method for getting the issues out to the people. Differing opinions expressed help people to form their opinions. Mayor O'Grady disagreed with Mr. Lambert's comments and said he was not talking about limiting discussion or about control. A principle of good government is to keep the discussion on a particular topic in a particulaz azea. If you have an issue that is in Recreation and you begin pulling parts out to different committees, you lose control. It creates confusion within government, therefore, it's bad government. At worse, it creates confusion within our populace and that's wrong. Councilman Ryan commented the emphasis should be on income tax and on the relationship with other taxing entities. It has to be the direction the city is taking and how it takes money from its citizens. It is a general discussion that properly belongs in the 11