12/17/2019 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council Minutes of 12-17-2019 within a year. Giant Eagle today announced they are going to do theirs in five. I believe with this legislation we are creating a problem to solve a problem. We are expressing concern that there will be confusion that Cuyahoga County will have a standard and everyone else will have a different standard. Now there is a third standard in Brooklyn and a fourth standard in Independence and we are somewhere in between the two of them so whether you want to say we are the fourth or fifth standard, I don't know that we are helping matters here. As has been stated, I think the State and the County are going to end up settling this matter and not us. So to be going forward with this legislation what we are really achieving is branding the City as anti -environmental. We are a City that is going to be dependent on its success over the next decades on whether new families will be moving in here and I don't think this helps. Thank you. Councilwoman Hemann voted yes with comment. I would first of all thank Mr. Miller for attending this evening. Apparently Nan Baker is a little too busy as our representative to have come. Thank you for picking up her slack. My yes vote is just based on a few things. Not that it matters to anybody, but I do home canning, everything from scratch. I am actually environmentally friendly. I do care greatly about the environment, I do think however, that I don't have enough confidence in Cuyahoga County at this point to rely solely on them. Fifty thousand bags they are going to distribute is nothing. Nothing, Mr. Miller to solve what you are trying to solve. I don't think the County has the resources to do that. I don't think the County has the stamina to continue that. While we would like to be their partner in that, they did not communicate to us. Ms. Baker certainly should have contacted us. When we did have Mr. Greenspan, he was quite notably in our City pretty often. I don't quite get that part. Maybe the League of Women Voters will take note of that. But, to suggest that the County is going to take care of this for everyone is just not true. I do not believe that. I believe that it takes all of us to do that. I am not happy with our legislation as it stands. As the chairperson of the committee, my concern was in fact going forward on January 1 and the confusion that might cause. While that does not seem a good reason to all of you, it certainly is to me as I get a lot of phone calls. I am actually looking forward toward revamping our legislation and/or rescinding it when the County really proves this is their solution, they are going to stick with it and they are going to help every city that they are putting this ban in place and let's work together and do that. But for the moment, I have to rely on us. I am yes, for those reasons. Councilman Limpert voted yes with comment. As you can see in the audience we have a very broad breadth of reasons and I don't think any of us here are saying that we don't think banning plastic bags at some point isn't a good idea. But there are a lot of complex issues with this. With that I wanted to thank the very few city residents I corresponded with via e-mail and the several county residents that called me about this issue. I think the County is doing a great job of being a leader and trying to be a conduit to formalize some legislation around a very complex issue that is difficult to move forward. As people in the audience have stated this has been discussed for several years. I think only through initiating that conversation can we really gain momentum and have a detailed dialogue that needs to happen in order to have good legislation and good communication with residents. I want to thank the County for that. As we have noted there have been some bumps on the way, but from a macro perspective this is really a good thing. Given the largest municipality in the state has delayed opting in to this for six months and the county is still pending legislation on their own to delay, I am echoing what other people 10