What happened at Thursday's City Council meeting

We had an eventful Thursday meeting. My notes are below…

Before the council meeting began, we held a Committee-of-the-Whole meeting to discuss the oil and gas well at the Church of New Hope. This is a vertical well that has already been drilled. The Service Department estimated there are about 36 wells currently in the city, many of which are in the northern part of town.

The driller needs the city’s permission — only because part of the drilling radius includes Ritchie Road (which the city owns). All of the surrounding property owners have already signed and agreed to it. The drilling will likely result in free heating for the Church of New Hope.

With that said, the mayor has completely washed her hands of this. She refuses to take a position. Last night, the Service Director said that the mayor will sign the oil lease if council wants her to. In my opinion, that position is an abdication of the mayor’s duty to advise counsel on contracts. It also allows her to take the easy way out on a contentious political question, rather than taking a position on an issue that worries many residents.

Because the mayor has no interest in this matter (one way or the other), the drilling company was left with no option but to work through council. City council, of course, consists of seven people, and often, seven different attitudes and perspectives. Regardless of how you feel about gas wells, it’s bad practice to negotiate with the city being potentially divided at the negotiating table.

So last night, I proposed that council instruct the mayor to nominate one person to negotiate the best deal possible with the drilling company — and then council will have the chance to vote on that proposal. That motion passed 5-1 (with John Pribonic being the sole “no” vote). It might be a few weeks before that proposal is on the table. I intend to work with the administration to see that the city is compensated justly — or else we won’t lease the mineral rights at all.

I learned on Thursday afternoon that advertising for bids to sell (or perhaps not sell) the small piece of city-owned land in Highland Chase does not require legislation, so I made a motion, which was unanimously approved, to do that. The property will be advertised for five weeks. At that point, we will have a clearer picture as to whether a sale will occur.

Generally, the city is immune from lawsuits over injury to person or property. Despite that rule, there is a mechanism by which the city leaders can approve compensation for such injuries. It’s called a “moral claim.” As the name indicates, the city has no legal obligation to pay. The obligation is solely moral, if at all.

We had two moral claims presented to council this week. The mayor and her board of control denied both. Council can overrule those decisions. As you’ll read below, council did.

One moral claim was about $1,200 for a woman who fell when stepping in a pothole on a city street. Unfortunately, she broke her wrist. My opinion is that the city cannot be the insurer for all such injuries. Nobody fights harder to fix our crumbling roads than me, but Stow simply can’t pay every time someone trips and falls. The city has a policy that road repairs must be fixed within 24 hours of the city receiving knowledge of them. In this case, the city was not notified. Where there is no notice, there is no opportunity to fix, and where there is no opportunity to fix, you can’t argue that the city could have done anything to prevent the injury (except, of course, have a fully functioning road-repair program — but don’t get me started on that). Council approved the moral claim by a 4-2 vote, with Jim Costello joining me in voting “no.”

The other moral claim was for a defective city water meter, which the residents claimed caused them $2,100 in flooding damage to their basement. The residents had homeowners’ insurance, but they chose not to make a claim against the policy (likely because of the $1,000 deductible and possible increase in premiums). The law director told us that the deductible is the maximum we could give them. I made a motion to amend the legislation to give the residents $1,000, which would have been their out-of-pocket loss if they chose to make an insurance claim. That motion passed 6-0 and the payment of the $1,000 passed 6-0.

Paul Zuravel’s bid to rezone his property, and his neighbors’ properties, from R-1 to R-2 failed by a 0-6 vote.

We heard about 12 residents speak out against this change to the character of their neighborhood. I had concerns about the increased housing density would do to the Leewood/Graham Road intersection.

I think people have an interest in keeping their property zoned as it currently is, unless the city has an overriding concern. Here, the only concern was Zuravel wanting to build five houses on his three parcels, instead of four. That doesn’t do it for me. Certainly, no property owner has a right to have their property rezoned.

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City council will meet next on April 23 with a Finance Committee meeting and Roads and Safety Committee meeting.