08/19/2025 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Council President Pro Tempore Scarl: Thank you, Mayor. Director of Law Gareau, do you have a report this evening? Law Law Director Gareau: Thank you, Mr. President, I do. • The Charter Amendment for Cooperative Purchasing that you recently adopted was submitted by Clerk Taylor to the Board of Elections after passage for review. I've been in communication with the Board staff, and after a little bit of negotiation, and if we can call it that, I'm proud to announce that they approved the language that you adopted for the ballot language, and so we've cleared that hurdle. It still needs approval by the Secretary of State's office, but I don't anticipate any problems with that. We should see that language appearing on ballots very soon, and hopefully it's successful. It would be a great help for the administration. • Earlier this summer, as Director Copfer knows, I had the occasion to prepare a position statement for the city auditors. In that statement, I had concluded, we do it annually, that in 2024, we were under no assessments, no claims, no threatened litigation, it was a relatively quiet year. There was only one Ohio Civil Rights Commission case, but I previously reported to you that we were successful with that and had it dismissed, and that's where we were up until August 13th. There were no actions pending on August 13th, and there was an appeal of a determination on a workers' comp claim was filed in the Court of Common Pleas. That's Dombeck vs. The City of North Olmsted appealing a disallowance of an on-the-job injury, fairly routine. That case will be handled by the law firm of Matty, Henrikson, and Greve, they've been handling workers' comp claims for our City for a number of years. • The Board of Education approved the sale of the Maple, Pine, and Chestnut properties to the City of North Olmsted. That just happened a couple... a week and a half ago. You approved it a while ago. So opposing counsel and I have been, or counsel for the Board, I should say, and I have been going back and forth on tightening up and finalizing some of the language in that agreement. We should have that to the Mayor for signature in the very near future. • Finally, Law Clerk Holly Lloyd has resigned her position with the Department of Law, has moved on to work at the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office. She's a third -year law student. We expect great things from her. She was a valued employee, she will be missed. The search is on for the next law clerk. But one of her final statements to the city, we posted already for a new law clerk, she saw the range of pay and she said with a smile, yeah, you got to pay more than you were paying me because you're not going to get anybody to work here. So with that, she left. And with that, we came to Council and asked for an additional pay range because when we posted for that position, she was correct, we received no replies. So I think $15 for being a graduate, being in graduate school, trying to be a lawyer is probably a little low, and she wasn't wrong. So with your blessing, we can increase that range and be able to find the next Holly and be able to continue to do the work that she did well. So thank you. That concludes my report. 08-19-25 Council Meeting Minutes - Page 4