WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2010

REGULAR MEETING

8:24 P.M.

1. ROLL CALL. Mrs. Hammond called the meeting to order at 8:24 P.M., with roll call as follows: Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Barletta, and Mr. Blair were present. No members were absent. Others present were Commander Steve Annetts, Lynda Yartin, Lance Schultz, Chet Hopper, Don Ross, Greg Bachman, Brenda VanCleave, Britney Westbrook, Rachel Schofield, Patricia Kovacs, Daryl Baker, Richard Waugh, Mayor O’Brien, Mr. Wisniewski, Mrs. Sanders, Mr. Fix, and others.

2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF January 20, 2010, Regular Meeting. Mr. Blair moved to approve; Mr. Barletta seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mr. Blair, Mr. Barletta, and Mrs. Hammond voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 3-0.

3. COMMUNITY COMMENTS:

A. Patricia Kovacs. Ms Kovacs stated she is a resident of Gahanna, and a cyclist who often rides through Pickerington. She stated she has been reviewing ordinances from throughout Central Ohio and she would like to ask for some changes to the Pickerington bicycle ordinances. Ms Kovacs provided a written statement detailing the changes she would like to see Pickerington make to their bicycle ordinances (Attachment 1 to these minutes). Ms Kovacs stated she admired Pickerington City Council’s goal to add more bike trails within the City as that would be great for residents and visitors alike and would make the City more bicycle friendly.

Mrs. Hammond stated this discussion would be continued at future Safety Committee meetings.

B. Daryl Baker. Mr. Baker stated he had addressed the Committee a few months ago with regard to the speed on Diley Road. He stated he believed a speed survey had been done and he also distributed some information from the Ohio Department of Transportation regarding speed limits (Attachment 2 to these minutes). Mr. Baker stated lower speed limits do not slow people down and they can actually increase crashes. He stated with Diley Road where it drops from 45 MPH to 35 MPH, that can actually make people speed up and can cause more crashes. He stated he would ask that Council consider increasing the speed limit to 45 MPH, and he hoped the study reflected that as well.

4. POLICE:

A. Chief’s Report. Commander Annetts stated the Chief had provided a written report and he would answer any questions.

B. Review and request for motion to approve draft ordinance to accept a donation from Schottenstein, Zox, & Dunn to be used for the City’s K-9 Program. Mrs. Hammond stated in addition to this draft ordinance, the Committee had received another draft ordinance to accept a donation from the Pickerington Lions’ Club to be used for the K-9 Program. She stated each of these donations were in the amount of $500. Mr. Barletta moved to approve and forward to Council; Mr. Blair seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mr. Blair, Mrs. Hammond, and Mr. Barletta voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 3-0. Mrs. Yartin stated if there were no objections she would include these two ordinances on the Consent Agenda at the next Council meeting. All committee members concurred.

6. DEPARTMENT REPORTS:

A. Parks and Recreation:

(1) Director’s Report. Mr. Ross stated Mr. Carr had provided a written report and he would try to answer any questions.

B. Code Enforcement:

(1) Code Enforcement Officer’s Report. Mr. Schultz stated a written report had been provided and he would be happy to answer any questions.

a. Code Enforcement Technology Update. Mr. Schultz stated he had no update this evening.

b. Review and discussion of Long Term Code Complaint Report. Mrs. Hammond ascertained there were no questions on this report.

C. Building Regulations Department:

(1) Building Department Report. No report.

(2) Chief Building Official’s Report (Mr. Hopper) Mr. Hopper stated he had provided a written report and Mrs. Hammond stated the report in the narrative format was very helpful. Mr. Hopper stated he is making some changes in the building department that will improve the department and the process that our citizens go through. He stated one of the changes is they are working on having both the planning and zoning and building department approvals done simultaneously so that should cut down three to four weeks of review time for the developers. Mr. Hopper further stated he is working on some checklists and handouts to have available to the residents to help them through their home projects.

D. Service Department: No report.

E. Engineering Department. Mr. Bachman stated he would like to point out the S.R. 256 improvement concept plan that is posted on the wall in chambers. He stated he had given a presentation to Service Committee, however, he would like to have any feedback from the Safety Committee as well.

(1) Diley Road speed limit survey – Update. Mr. Bachman stated he has completed the Diley Road speed study following ODOT procedure, and it came back at a 45 MPH rather than the existing 35 MPH. Mr. Bachman stated this took into account the number of driveways, etc. Mr. Bachman stated he would recommend increasing the speed limit to 45 MPH. Mr. Blair and Mr. Barletta both stated they were in agreement with Mr. Bachman’s recommendation. Mr. Blair moved to recommend Council increase the speed limit on Diley Road to 45 MPH; Mr. Barletta seconded the motion. Roll call was taken with Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Barletta, and Mr. Blair voting “Yea.” Motion passed, 3-0.

(2) Review and discussion regarding abandoned gas well on Avalon Drive. Mr. Bachman stated there is a pipe coming out of the well and it is discharging natural gas. Mr. Bachman stated this well is in the public right-of-way on Avalon Drive in the Sheffield subdivision and it should be properly capped by taking out the vent pipe and filling it with concrete. He further stated it is under the jurisdiction of ODNR to cap that well, and the cost for doing this is $30,000. Mr. Bachman stated ODNR has been contacted and the problem is that their list of closures of gas wells around the state is many years long compared with the amount of money they have to do that. He stated, however, ODNR did say that if the City was willing to share the $30,000 cost it could be moved up into the emergency list and they should get to it sometime in the next year. He stated they would request $15,000 from the City to do that. Mr. Blair inquired how long the well has been like that, and Mr. Bachman stated he was not sure. Mrs. Hammond clarified that a home was being built in the subdivision and when the gas company came in to install the service line they came across this well. Ms VanCleave stated there is a 12-inch pipe sticking out of the ground and it goes approximately 3,000 feet deep and it is from an old natural gas collection well. Mr. Fix clarified that this well did not preclude the home from being built. Ms VanCleave stated there are some concerns from ODNR about the gas leaking up and getting into the ground water aquifer in that area, mixing in and contaminating. She stated she did not know how much of a concern that was. Mr. Sauer stated if there was an inherent danger then ODNR would move it up pretty quickly to get it resolved, and he questioned how this fell into their status of extremely dangerous versus not extremely dangerous. Mr. Bachman stated he could not answer that, he would have to get someone from ODNR to answer that. Mrs. Hammond requested Ms VanCleave and Mr. Bachman talk with ODNR and get more information from them and she would continue this on the agenda for the next meeting.

6. CHAIRMAN: Mrs. Hammond stated she would come back to this agenda item after discussion on the next issue.

7. OTHER BUSINESS:

A. Review and discussion regarding prohibiting texting while driving. Mrs. Hammond stated she would ask the committee members their opinions on this topic before opening discussion. Mr. Blair stated his point was if the State was going to take this up we should wait to see what they do and it is his understanding it is in committee right now. He stated Bexley does have an ordinance, but they have not given out a ticket for it yet. Mr. Barletta stated he would prefer to see the State do something on it, however, he did not have confidence that they would act on it. He stated he feels texting while driving is certainly dangerous and part of Council’s job is to make it a safe community, so this is something they should look at. Mrs. Hammond clarified that we do currently have something that would cover this in our offenses. Commander Annetts stated that was correct, we do have an ordinance on weaving, full time inattention, that basically states no person shall operate a vehicle or a motorcycle without giving his or her full time and attention to the operation of such vehicle. Commander Annetts stated that is a secondary offense and is usually the result of a traffic accident. Mrs. Sanders stated this is a problem and she would like to wait and see if the State does come up with something in the next few months. She stated, unfortunately, she agreed with Mr. Barletta and she has lost some faith in how fast the process can move along, but if the State does not come up with an answer it is something that Council definitely should address. She stated further it is definitely a topic that needs to be brought to the attention of the public, even if just through news articles. Mr. Wisniewski stated he agreed with the comments that had been made, but he felt if we were going to do something we should generalize it more and make what we have on the books a primary offense versus a secondary. He stated there are a lot of other issues out there regarding distracted driving, not just texting, and you cannot legislate common sense. Mr. Fix stated he has been contacted by several people who are advocates both for and against this, mostly for the ban of texting while driving. He stated given that it did not appear anything would be coming out of the State this year, he did not see a need to wait on State government. He stated he felt it would be wise of the City to have our Chief of Police and the law director talk to council about what our law would look like, how it would be enforced, and what impact it would have on the safety of our citizens. He stated further he felt it would be wise to have other experts outside of our own community come in a talk to Council about what this really means. Mr. Fix stated one of the first things that he learned was that people who were texting while driving are six times more likely in some studies to cause an accident than someone who is legally drunk. Mr. Fix stated if there is anything we can do to improve the safety of our drivers, especially the generation behind ours that texts all the time and is just starting to drive, even if just by educating them by putting this law out there, then he felt that was the wise thing to do. Mr. Fix stated he would ask the Safety Committee to ask the Chief of Police to talk to them about how we would enforce such a law and ask the law director to put together a proposal on what this law would look like. Mrs. Hammond stated she tended to agree with the rest of Council and she did not feel at this time she was ready to move forward with anything this major. She stated she felt things of this magnitude are better left to the State level if possible. She stated she did not know how individual cities would deal with this issue and that would make it very difficult to enforce. She stated while this is an issue we may need to address in the future if the State does not do it, she was in favor of waiting to see what happened on the State level. Mr. Blair stated he agreed and while this is a feel good thing and popular to talk about right now, he did not feel we could give it the justice the State can give it. He stated we couldn’t get the same experts the State can or come up with a law that makes sense. He stated if we want to put something together to send to the State that the City of Pickerington would like them to take up this issue that would be a step forward. Mr. Fix stated what he was advocating was to learn as much as we can about this and he felt to not take the time or make the effort to understand how this might impact the community; he did not understand why we wouldn’t do that. He stated he was not advocating that we do anything other than learn about this issue and he did not understand why we would want to wait possibly a year for the State to “maybe” do something when we have the ability to make an impact on our community right now. Mrs. Sanders stated she would agree with Mr. Fix on getting information and she has contacted some driver’s education instructors and the way they are educating our new drivers is new. She stated she felt that as a community, as a Council, as parents, and as adults we need to start being role models because it is not just the kids out there texting, it is adults as well. Mr. Sauer stated he liked Mr. Blair’s idea of sending an endorsement to the State that the City of Pickerington endorses something being done at the State level to address this particular issue. He stated he felt that would be a positive step and that followed Mrs. Sanders’ statement of being role models as well as parents. Mr. Barletta stated he also liked the idea of sending a letter of endorsement and put our State legislators on notice that we are interested in this issue and we want something done. He stated he also felt it would behoove us to investigate as if we were thinking of an ordinance so that if nothing happened we would be ready to take action. Mrs. Hammond clarified that the majority of Council seemed to be in favor of sending a letter of endorsement to the State and she would look into what the best way of doing this would be. Mayor O’Brien stated with an issue such as this he felt the most important thing would be to hear from the residents and how they felt about it. He stated he would encourage all of our residents that have an opinion on this to let Council know what their stance is. He stated before expending a lot of time by our law director or staff he would like to hear more from the residents. Mrs. Hammond stated she agreed and if nothing came from the State in a timely fashion we could look at the ordinance we currently have and see if we can tweak it and improve it so it would be enforced more easily. Mrs. Hammond stated one way to hear from the residents is if they come to the next Safety Committee meeting, and Mayor O’Brien stated even if we put a brief summary of our intent with a “yes” or “no” response and put it in the next water bill that might be an option. Mr. Fix stated with the publicity this issue has generated he could guarantee that there would be a lot of people attending the March Safety Committee meeting to give their opinion.

Mrs. Hammond stated in going back to “Other Business” the stacking of the meetings is not working very well. She stated this meeting was to start at 7:30 P.M. and people arrived to speak at 7:30 P.M., but the meeting did not get started until after 8:20 P.M. She stated she knew some members liked to go to all the meetings and that is great, but she asked that everyone think about a better way of doing this and she would ask this to be on the agenda for the next meeting for discussion.

8. ADJOURNMENT. There being nothing further, Mrs. Hammond moved to adjourn; Mr. Blair seconded the motion. Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Barletta, and Mr. Blair voted "Aye." Motion carried, 3-0. The Safety Committee adjourned at 9:05 P.M., February 17, 2010.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:

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Lynda D. Yartin, Municipal Clerk