MYSTERY SOLVED
Work kept me from attending last week’s Council meeting, but the agenda identified who the prior week’s “employee compensation” executive session pertained to--- miscellaneous high level city employees.
This list includes:
Recreation Director Dave Ianiro, Law Director Tim Paluf, and City Prosecutor Dan Taylor among others.
One interesting note...
Although Brian Mader was included on that list---and referred to as "City Engineer Brian Mader"--- that title appears to be a legal fiction.
By law, the city uses its Charter and Ordinances to create and define its structure and organization.
Unlike the other positions listed on the agenda, the city Charter and Ordinances do not formally create a "City Engineer" position, nor designate it as a city job.
There is one reference, in Ordinance 129.05, to an "Architect-Engineer-Plan Examiner" but...
that position is explicitly limited to a "qualified professional architect" (129.05(c)) and it involves, not road and similar public works projects that Mader oversees, but reviewing "architectural and structural drawings and specification on all structures and buildings to be constructed in the Municipality ...." (129.05(b)(1)
Which may explain this.
Work kept me from attending last week’s Council meeting, but the agenda identified who the prior week’s “employee compensation” executive session pertained to--- miscellaneous high level city employees.
This list includes:
Recreation Director Dave Ianiro, Law Director Tim Paluf, and City Prosecutor Dan Taylor among others.
One interesting note...
Although Brian Mader was included on that list---and referred to as "City Engineer Brian Mader"--- that title appears to be a legal fiction.
By law, the city uses its Charter and Ordinances to create and define its structure and organization.
Unlike the other positions listed on the agenda, the city Charter and Ordinances do not formally create a "City Engineer" position, nor designate it as a city job.
There is one reference, in Ordinance 129.05, to an "Architect-Engineer-Plan Examiner" but...
that position is explicitly limited to a "qualified professional architect" (129.05(c)) and it involves, not road and similar public works projects that Mader oversees, but reviewing "architectural and structural drawings and specification on all structures and buildings to be constructed in the Municipality ...." (129.05(b)(1)
Which may explain this.
In the past few years, the city has contracted with Mader's firm (Steven Hovanscek & Associates) to provide engineering services to the city, with Mader being identified as the individual who works with the city on the firm's behalf.
This would indicate that despite his apparent city-employee title, "City Engineer" Brian Mader is, in fact, a contract employee/independent contractor, not a true city employee.
That legal distinction is quite important.
City employees receive taxpayer paid-for benefits, such as sick and injury leave, pension and healthcare benefits.
Those benefits are an increasingly expensive piece of public employment-related costs and an ever expanding piece of the city's budgetary pie.
As good a job as Mader does---and he appears to do a very good job for the city---the city should offer those benefits only to true city employees.
This would indicate that despite his apparent city-employee title, "City Engineer" Brian Mader is, in fact, a contract employee/independent contractor, not a true city employee.
That legal distinction is quite important.
City employees receive taxpayer paid-for benefits, such as sick and injury leave, pension and healthcare benefits.
Those benefits are an increasingly expensive piece of public employment-related costs and an ever expanding piece of the city's budgetary pie.
As good a job as Mader does---and he appears to do a very good job for the city---the city should offer those benefits only to true city employees.
NOT to CEINO---City Employees In Name Only
ELECTRONIC SIGN MORATORIUM
I previously reported about Council’s hurried adoption of an
180 day (6 month) electronic sign moratorium in December, after a local business
owner appeared before the Planning & Zoning Commission (P&Z), seeking permission
to install an electronic sign on his property.
Ordinance 35-2013 explains that the moratorium was adopted
because:
“….Council desires to study the appropriateness of adopting one or more ordinances that reasonably regulate the location, size, architectural features, lighting and negative secondary effects on the community that may be found to result from the operation of one or more of this type of sign or message board in the city…”
The moratorium applies to:
“…any sign or changing display, copy or message board composed of a series of lights, including but not exclusively LED, that may be changed automatically and/or remotely through electronic means, whether or not such display has a business purpose or is otherwise of any nature whatsoever…”
Property owners are advised that for 180 days,
“..the city shall not accept or process any application for zoning and or permit approvals for electronic message board signs.”
Fitworks is supposedly scheduled to move into the renovated
Catalano’s space in April…while the moratorium is in place.
Which raises this question:
What about Section 1(c)(i) of the Economic Development Agreement (EDA) that the city oh-so-hurriedly entered into with developer Lance Osborne?
That section states that the over-size, partially electronic monument signs that
developer Lance Osborne planned to erect in connection with his earlier voter-rejected mega
Get-Go gas station project would be:
“permitted upon approval thereof by the City Planning & Zoning Commission.”
At the time the EDA was adopted, Law Director Tim Paluf opined that because
P&Z approval was required, Section 1(c)(1) didn’t necessarily mean that
Osborne would be able to install non-conforming signs on the Catalano’s
property.
But the reality is that the ambiguous language that Council rushed to approve doesn’t require Osborne's signs to strictly comply with city laws.... and the referenced drawing displays an immense, non-conforming monument sign.
If I was a betting person, I’d put my money on Osborne using the EDA to get
around Ordinance 35-2013, the electronic sign moratorium.
Which is just another illustration of why Council’s decision to cut residents out of the discussion and rush-approve the EDA was such a disservice to residents---and a terrible, terrible idea to boot.
GRANT FOR PARK-ADJACENT PROPERTY IN THE WORKS
A series of would-be developers have approached the city in the last several years hoping to develop a 2-owner, 12 acre parcel on the east side of Bishop Road, south of Hawthorne Drive.
City-owned parkland surrounds the property to the east and south.
A series of would-be developers have approached the city in the last several years hoping to develop a 2-owner, 12 acre parcel on the east side of Bishop Road, south of Hawthorne Drive.
City-owned parkland surrounds the property to the east and south.
As the would-be developers have discovered, the property isn’t fully buildable because it contains significant streams and several environmentally sensitive wetlands.
With the city’s approval, working in conjunction with the non-profit West Creek
Conservancy group, Claire Posius of the Cuyahoga County Soil and Water
Conservation District has applied for a grant to purchase the property.
If successful, the property would become a protected green space that would remain available to residents for low-impact recreational use.
Residents should hear more about the grant in April.
If successful, the property would become a protected green space that would remain available to residents for low-impact recreational use.
Residents should hear more about the grant in April.
This isn’t the first grant that Posius has applied for.
Last year she successfully won grant money to buy another environmentally sensitive piece of property in Richmond Heights.
Unfortunately that grant didn’t totally cover the purchase price.
Friends of Euclid Creek, a local nonprofit group that counts, as members, residents from Highland Heights and surrounding communities, is attempting to make up the shortfall.
Last year she successfully won grant money to buy another environmentally sensitive piece of property in Richmond Heights.
Unfortunately that grant didn’t totally cover the purchase price.
Friends of Euclid Creek, a local nonprofit group that counts, as members, residents from Highland Heights and surrounding communities, is attempting to make up the shortfall.
Keeping that in mind I wonder:
If this year’s grant money falls short, will the same Council that rushed to give developer Lance Osborne an $800,000 economic development package (including a $600,000 outright grant) be willing to pony up a much smaller sum to help purchase this property?
The question really is:
Are Mayor Scott Coleman and Council just as willing to invest in non-economic "quality of life" opportunities as they are in local business ones---especially if a non-economic investment will end up enhancing the city's quality of life and environmental resources for generations to come?
I guess if we're lucky we won’t have to find out the answer to
that question…
Go Claire Posius!
