Miscellaneous Updates

Dec 12

Where have I been? At meetings, working, whipping my house into shape as I get ready for a busy holiday. So, get your drink of choice, go sit outside and bask in the unseasonable weather and let's get back to business.

Still waiting for the Service Department to come out because you had flooding issues in June? Apparently there was a misunderstanding. As summarized in the meeting minutes: “Director Thomas stated that they have responded to every house that has asked them to do it. Not everybody wanted the department to respond; they just wanted to provide information to the department. Those are actually recorded in their Work Management System. They have responded to all that asked for a response.” In other words, if you did not specifically request the service department to come out, they did not. If you thought by calling to report flooding you would get a visit, they thought you were calling just to let them know.

“Mr. Koomar stated that the expectation when that came out was that there was an understanding the Service Department was going to respond to all of them. There might be a miss in communication, but people are reporting that the Service Department hasn’t called them and the City said they were going to come out and look at all the houses. Mr. Tadych stated he gets the same reports. Mr. Thomas stated that they had actually responded to the majority, but will make sure they respond to the rest.”

Deer culling dates in Walker Road Park – nothing has been finalized. I know many that attended the meeting held by Tom Henderson on Dec 7th. They felt that Henderson and Chief Spaetzle were able to put minds at ease over the culling procedure. The process that will take place was thoroughly explained. If you live near the park and haven’t heard about this please contact your Council Tom Henderson. To quell recent questions, no, the City is not permitting the shooting of deer in anyone’s back yard.

Planning, Zoning, Public Grounds And Buildings Committee members are Councilwoman Karen Lieske who serves as Chairman, Councilman Steve Lee and Councilman Paul Vincent. Do not confuse this group with the Planning Commission. While both groups have had meetings recently to discuss 1158, and I could wax on with the details, the end result is, this coming Monday an ordinance to extend the moratorium on 1158 will be on first read. This will make for an interesting new year in terms of 1158. In 2016, the Committee members will change. Also, Steve Lee will leave his Council seat and Marty Mace will join as Council at Large.

Results from the Master Plan Survey sent in November should be available in January. Many feel the survey was inadequate. Questions like “Would you like to see a new green space constructed next to City Hall?” were, well, weird. And as someone here pointed out, “I am not sure a "survey" of the opinions of the citizenry is the right way to go. We're often wrong. Surveys are often limited in the information they can convey, and thus the citizen opinion they can solicit.” And yes, responses are only going to be as good as the questions, so while these things are true, isn’t this survey better than nothing in terms of input? This too will be interesting to follow in the new year.

Bob Greytak, Consulting Engineer along with Scott Thomas Director of Public Safety/Service presented a Five Year Plan for the City of Bay Village Sewer System. Short version: to create a calibrated model for both the sanitary sewer and for the drainage areas within the City. Cities have been fixing sewer problems where they pop up without any knowledge of how the systems work and how the fix affects the pipes further down the road. Among other things, a citywide model can help assure that a fix in one location will not create another problem in the pipe at another location. It will take a lot of time and money to create the models: time and money that does not include the actual work. It was a lengthy presentation and I dare not try and summarize. 6 pages of this discussion are in meeting minutes:
http://www.cityofbayvillage.com/media/285450/2015_committee_agenda_and_packet_12-14.pdf