12/15/2009 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 12-15-2009 residents, remember that people that give to our community when you go out for a chicken sandwich you have many options, but you have a really, really good option in Chick-fil-A who gives back to the community. REPORTS Mayor O'Grady: 1) He asked Police Chief Wozniak, Tom Herbster and Terry Groden to come to the front as well as Ken and Kathy Ball. Mayor O'Grady recognized Ken and Kathy Ball for their generosity and their attendance at events at heir location to benefit the police officers and the firefighters. Mayor O'Grady read his Proclamation: Now therefore I, Thomas O'Grady, Mayor of the City of North Olmsted on behalf of the City Council and our entire community do hereby recognize and commend Ken and Kathy Ball and the Chick-fil-A corporation for their many charitable efforts and their ongoing generosity in support of our entire community. Ken Ball thanked everybody. He said when they went into business, it was going to be about taking caze of the community. It was going to be about just having awesome experiences and really taking care of people. They never made it about selling chicken. That is Chick-fil-A's philosophy. They are very blessed to have a community that's embraced them and they appreciate everything. 2) Mayor O'Grady offered his thanks to his Administrative Assisant Annie Kilbane for her outstanding work in ensuring that the recent Christmas tree lighting ceremony held at Springvale was an outstanding success. He thanked the members of Council and residents who attended. 3) He decided to forgo his traditional report to Council and the happenings within the city to instead reflect upon the state of the city government. He said he transmitted a copy of his traditional report to the Clerk, and he would like that included with the record of Council. Mayor O'Grady continued his remarks from a letter which has been incorporated into these minutes: I offer my sincere appreciation to the Departmental Directors that served in my Cabinet. Kim Wenger, Duane Lirnpert, John Dailey, Cheryl Farver, and Lisa Thomas were the reasons that we have been able to accomplish so many great things for our citizens. As I promised in 2005, we have reshaped and reorganized our government to provide superior service at a greatly reduced cost to our taxpayers. During our first four years in office and prior to the international fiscal crisis, we used intelligent reorganization to reduce our full-time staffing from over 300 employees to just over 200 employees, and we did so using normal attrition rather than layoffs. Our combined efforts at modernizing our government have led to a savings of about $3 million a year for every yeaz that we have been in office. As I promised in 2005, we have worked to rebuild our community. During this term we saw the completion of five major road projects, to include the last new major roadway that will ever be built in Cuyahoga County, and all of these projects were done primarily 2