Oregon city council answers questions, recognizes developmental disability awareness month

 
Despite a lack of quorum due to a few council members being unavailable, the Oregon city council answered a few important questions from the citizens and recognized a local group at its meeting on March 10.
       
Nabil Shaheen, the community outreach and communications manager for the Lucas County Board of Developmental Disabilities, was on hand to accept a proclamation from Mayor Michael Seferian for Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month.
       
Shaheen thanked the council on behalf of his board’s superintendent, Michele Myerholtz, and the 300-plus employees that make up the board and the hundreds of residents they serve in Oregon.
       
“Oregon is a place that is near and dear to the board,” he said. “Right down the street here is the former Jay Shuer School that in 1971 had the innovative mind to open such a school, which was an innovative idea that folks with disabilities could have such access. Then on the other side of Seaman is the sports complex that hosts our Special Olympics state softball tournament every summer.
       
“So, we really appreciate the opportunity to be here and your partnership with the city here to continue to raise awareness about the work that we're doing, recognizing the barriers that are still there, and working together to continue to overcome those barriers and focus on the inclusion of these individuals that we are all trying to help reach their full potential.”
       
In the citizen portion, Steven Dunaway opened with a recommendation that council members consider recusing themselves more when particular issues arise that could cause a conflict of interest. He referenced a comment he made at a recent city council meeting.
       
“I made a comment about a person on council,” he said. “I had heard a rumor. I was like, ‘No, that rumor can't be true.’ But like I said, as a citizen, we know more about you guys than you know about us.”
       
He then said he has spoken with the ethics commission in Columbus, and they told him he should present a document in reference to one of the members of the board in regard to recusal. He then presented the document.
       
“It’s in regard to the fact that there are times when members of council should think about recusing themselves,” he said. “And I think on a financial issue, such as who's going to pay for grass getting mowed, there's someone on council that should be recusing.
       
“And recusing also incorporates they're not allowed to talk about it. So one of our farmers, who happens to be on council, Beth Ackerman and her husband, there will be financial loss if they have to start mowing. That's not my problem. I mow my grass every two weeks. I mow out by the front. I trim it. And everybody else does. It's fairness to the taxpayers that everybody does their own thing.
       
“In regards to that piece of paper I gave you there, I got from Columbus that when we were voting last year about a tax increase, there should have been a recusal there also because of what that document says. There should have been a recusal.
       
“It's not something that (makes) a person (unfit to be) on council. But when certain issues come up, you have to think twice about, just because I don't like something, what's best for the citizens?”
       
Brenda Gift spoke next, first expressing appreciation for council giving three readings on the right-of-way issue before asking two questions.
       
First, considering the city set the precedent that they mowed the right-of-way on properties even though the original zoning said the property owners were responsible, has the city done a cost analysis on the issue?
       
“I look, as a taxpayer, cost versus cost,” she said. “The cost of mowing has got to be approximately $200, right, the fee that would be charged for enforcement under that, and the cost to write letters and everything, plus however much time it takes after. What I want to know is, does the cost of just mowing it exceed the cost of doing business to make the enforcement happen?”
       
Next, she saw on Facebook that there’s been an ask that cities absorb an increase in police and fire retirement. If the city doesn't pay into police and fire retirement, is the state going to continue that amount?
       
“The Facebook page said the union has set this up,” she said, “and that people should call and kind of lobby against it. ‘Call a representative because it's going to be a cost to the taxpayers. It's an expense on the city.’
       
“But also, I'm all for police and fire getting the retirement they should. So if the city doesn't do that, is the state going to uphold that? Are they going to do their part? I'd like to know what you guys know about the difference, and if we're being asked to call and do different things, I'd like more information.”
       
Seferian responded to the first question regarding right-of-way mowing.
       
“It really wasn't a policy for the city,” he said. “The city cut some grasses that didn't get cut. It was really not by policy. It's something that happened on request, and we were not passing anything that required the grass to be more clarified to be cut. That already did pass in May of last year. It was always a requirement of each resident that owned property to cut their right-of-way. It became more clear in May of 2024. And we had many complaints of people saying, ‘You selectively cut people's grass. That is unfair.’ That's what caused it all to (come to) a head.
       
Seferian added that they are taking the minimum charge out. It will just be the actual cost the city incurs when someone’s yard is cut.
       
“We got a dollar an hour per person and per piece of equipment … We're not out to enterprise off of that, just cover the cost. And the people do have, remember, an option. When they're required to cut it, they have the option number one of cutting it themselves or hiring someone. Years ago, the city used to take bids for commercial mowing companies to come and give us a cost so that when we would go out, we hired that done.
       
“And people would let their grass not be cut because we got a discounted rate and it was better than they could get. Well, that ended. So we start charging according to what it cost us. And you'll be surprised, a list that had several hundred people on it diminished to 10 and sometimes three or five because they could save a lot by getting on the phone and finding someone to cut it or cut it themselves.
       
“It did kind of self-heal itself for a while. And I think the same thing will happen when we start cutting people's grass and they find out it's kind of costly. They'll find another way to do it other than let the city folks do it, and hopefully it will be self-healing also.”
       
Regarding the police and fire pension funding issue, city administrator Joel Mazur said that if it passed at the state level, it would be an unfunded mandate coming from the state.
       
“To date, nobody has really provided anything to show that the police pension fund is actually hurting or in peril of any kind,” Mazur said. “So this is just a tag-on because right now, this is just for the employer's share, so every employer has to pay into the pension fund.
       
“It's not (the) employee share or anything like that. It's going from 19.5 percent to 24 percent. It would be phased in. As of last year, it was phased in over a six-year period. I don't know what it's going to look like when it's reintroduced this year, but all indicators are pointing to that this is going to be reintroduced again at the state level, probably in the state budget, and possibly another standalone piece of legislation at the state level, so they're going to try to attack it in two ways.
       
“But this would be, once it reaches that full amount, this will be hundreds of thousands of dollars that the city would have to pay out of its general fund to fund additionally into the police pension fund.
       
“(One) of the arguments that I've heard (for it) is that, ‘We just want to support our police’ … well, we do support the police department. Everybody supports their police departments. But paying the additional amounts that they're asking us to pay, that's the expense of three to four officers per year that they're asking us to pay for, where when you get into the bigger cities, you're talking millions of dollars. When you're talking Oregon, Ohio, it could be several hundred thousand dollars eventually.
       
“And that's a big expense for our general fund that we struggle with now. That's why the Ohio Municipal League is against this because really it's an unfunded mandate that gets tacked onto city general funds all across the state.”
       
Mazur said he will be attending a legislative rally through the OML, but area leaders are also organizing a more localized legislative rally where elected officials from around our region would go to Columbus and lobby legislators against raising the pension fund the way they have it laid out.
       
The third and final citizen to speak was Omar Smaidy, who asked about short-term rentals and about the state looking to put limitations on the city’s ability to regulate short-term rentals.
 
Mazur said that it appears that legislation will be reintroduced at the state level, but at this point, he recommends just waiting to see what happens there as the city council has previously passed legislation in 2024 about short-term rentals.
       
“Basically, there are a lot of cities out there that ask questions,” he said. “You get a lot of complaints, and we've seen this happen before here and that's why we had short-term rental legislation last year that was passed. You get the complaints from the short-term rentals, the neighbors of the short-term rentals, and that's what's happening now.
       
“There must be some type of lobbying group going to Columbus saying, ‘Hey, we don't want to have regulations put on us for short-term rentals’ because either they own short-term rentals or maybe the companies are lobbying too. But there's a push right now to get more legislation at the state level reintroduced to prohibit cities from regulating short-term rentals.”