January 4, 2021 - Meeting Minutes

 

Due to COVID-19, this meeting was permitted by Sub.H.B.197 to be held through a conference call.  Notification was sent to the Massillon Independent, posted on the front doors, and posted on the BrewsterOhio.com website.

 

Brewster Village Council met in regular session with Mayor Chuck Hawk presiding.

 

7:00 P.M. – CALL TO ORDER

 

Council Members bowed their heads for the invocation provided by Clerk-Treasurer

Kris King followed by the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

 

Charles Hawk, Mayor

Dale Fox, Council Member                           Andrew Hess, Council Member                 

Thomas Hilliard, Council Member              Brett Long, Council Member

Sydney Radich, Council Member                               Mike Schwab, Council Member

 

John Anthony, Solicitor                                Kris King, Clerk-Treasurer

Michael L Miller, Village Administrator

 

Mayor Chuck Hawk asked if there were any additions or deletions to the December 21, 2020 Council meeting minutes.

 

COUNCIL MEMBER SCHWAB MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER FOX and motion carried to approve the minutes as read.  The Vote: all yes.

 

COUNCIL MEMBER SCHWAB MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER FOX and motion carried to accept the bills in the amount of $ 41,723.87.  The vote: Radich, yes; Schwab, yes; Fox, yes; Hess, no; Hilliard, yes; Long, yes.  Motion carries.  Clerk King explained that she could not process all the bills due to the end of the year and a software update.  The bills will be caught up by the next meeting so expect the number to be high.

 

 

There were no guests.

Mayor Hawk opened nominations for the position: Council Member Hilliard nominated Council Member Schwab and Council Member Hess seconded the motion.  Council Member Schwab accepted the nomination. No other nominations were made.  Mayor Hawk closed nominations. The vote: All yes.

 

Mayor Hawk provided Council with an email of the 2020 Council Rules for review.  There were no suggestions for changes. 

 

COUNCIL MEMBER FOX MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER LONG and motion carried to approve the 2020 Rules of Council for 2021.  The vote: All yes.

 

ORDINANCE 01-2021: An Ordinance Authorizing the Village Administrator to prepare Specifications and Advertise for Bids for the 2021 Paving Program was given third reading

COUNCIL MEMBER LONG MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER FOX and motion carried to approve the ordinance as presented.  The vote: All yes.

 

Second Reading:An Ordinance Authorizing the Village Administrator to Contract with GPD Engineering for Professional Services for the Integration and Programming of a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System) at the Electric Substation.

 

First Reading: An Ordinance Authorizing the Village Administrator to Contract with Engineering Associates for Services to Prepare Specifications and Required Bid Documents for a Brewster Electric Department Garage and a Street Department Garage and Declaring an Emergency.

 

Council Member Hilliard asked why it needed to be passed under emergency.  VA Miller stated that if we go through the three readings and then wait the required thirty days, it will be mid-summer and the cost will be significantly higher.  It would probably also not be completed before the following winter because the construction companies will already have their summer booked with other projects.  Council Member Hilliard is concerned about the funds.  VA Miller stated this ordinance is only for the design of the buildings. 

 

COUNCIL MEMBER FOX MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER LONG to suspend the rule requiring three separate readings and bring the legislation forward for passage.  The vote: The vote: Radich, yes; Schwab, yes; Fox, yes; Hess, no; Hilliard, no; Long, yes.   This motion requires a super majority (3/4 of all Council).  Motion fails.

 

LEGISLATION TABLED AT THIRD READING:

A Resolution expressing the Intent of Brewster Village Council to sell the Unneeded, Obsolete, or Unfit Municipal Property on the Internet.

 

COUNCIL MEMBER SCHWAB MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER FOX and motion carried to untable the legislation.

 

RESOLUTION 02-2021: A Resolution expressing the Intent of Brewster Village Council to sell the Unneeded, Obsolete, or Unfit Municipal Property on the Internet was given third reading.

 

COUNCIL MEMBER SCHWAB MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER FOX and motion carried to approve the legislation as read.  The vote: All yes.

 

MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT REPORTS:  

 

 

               Plan to contact American Title

              

               Waiting on Ryan to get back to us with the information.

 

COMMUNICATIONS: 

Nothing to report.

VILLAGE ADMINISTRATOR: Mike Miller

Council received the Village Administrator’s report last week to review.

 

COUNCIL MEMBER FOX MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER SCHWAB and motion carried to accept the VA’s January 4, 2020 report as written and emailed to Council and to enter it into the record of tonight’s Council meeting.  The vote: All yes.

 

Administrator’s report for period 12/22/2020 thru 1/4/2021:

 

• Fire Station Addition – Progress. Construction continues to wrap up. The Return Room Floor, EMS Supply Room Floor, and the Gera room Floor have been epoxied. The signs have been attached to the south side. Move in has commenced. 

 

• Fire Station Addition – General Change Orders. No more general change orders.

 

• Fire Department Addition – Plumbing & HVAC Change Orders. No changes since last meeting.

 

• Fire Department Addition – Electric Change Orders. We finally have our last “set of change orders from Hilscher-Clark. They are: 

 

• Fire Station Addition – Phones. An issue that we weren’t aware of came up as we began transition to the new Fire Department Addition which increased offices from 1 to 3 for the Fire Department was phones. When we asked Staley to move the existing phone and add 2 more, we were informed that we could not add any more phones to the existing system. Fortunately, the Village has been talking about a new phone system for a number of years, and solicited prices twice since I have been here, the last time in 2018. We were able to get a revised price from Staley and should have new phones installed in the Fire Addition and Village Hall in the near future.

• Fire Station Addition – Changes Orders & Overall Budget. No changes since last meeting. At this point, the overall cost status is essentially the same as last meeting. Theoverall perspective of where we stand with the Fire Addition Budget:
• Original contracts for General, Electric, and Plumbing/HVAC amounted to $1,479,348.
• General change orders to date amount to $131,603.92.
• Plumbing/HVAC change orders to date amount to $3,023.00.
• Electric change orders to date amount to $21,723.89 with the additional $6,158.39.
• Total cost including change orders to this point brings us to $1,635,698.81 with the additional $6,158.39 if recommended changes above are approved. We are 10.6% over the original award.
• A “mitigating” factor is that Council has designated $22,000 +/- from the Triner Estate bequest towards the glass garage doors, which amounted to a $22,311 increase/change order.
• We will back out the costs (General and Electric) for the hands dryers and paying for those costs out of CARES/COVID Funds (not yet shown).

 

• Jefferson Ave Sanitary Sewer Replacement Project. Construction activities continue for the Jefferson Ave Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation Project. Central Allied has 300 days to complete the project.

 

We will be reporting CDBG payments to OPWC, and when CDBG Funds run out, submitting payment requests for Central Allied to OPWC directly. CDBG money is first spent, so the amount we will need to draw down on the OPWC Grant and Loan will be less than the full amount we received. So, unless there is more than $190,000 in change orders (highly unlikely) the Village will have no money expended for construction.

 

• Jefferson Ave Sanitary Sewer Replacement Project – Construction Administration and Inspection. To reiterate, with the bill from Hazen & Sawyer for November, there is $1488.86 left on the Construction Administration Contract. Hazen & Sawyer has indicated that they will see the Jefferson Project through within reason.

I was reminded at the bid opening by Hazen & Sawyer that the Construction Administration Contract did NOT cover inspection, so I was already in the process of having another entity available in the event we needed inspection. I am now expanding the “scope” of those duties to include changing the Engineer of record for the construction portion of the project, whose main duties will be to review pay request, review any submittals from Central Allied (most complete), and to assist with inspection if necessary in the event something is beyond Brewster employee’s capabilities.

 

The process is complete, and we have a contract in place for Thrasher to perform the remaining Construction Administration, which will include periodic inspection and testing. 

 

Central Allied has held up submittals or issues they would have submitted to Hazen & Sawyer for a few days until we arrived at this resolution,

 

I was also communicating with Stark County CDBG throughout the process.

• Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI). The AMI Project continues to move forward. The First Article electric meters are scheduled for delivery January 4^th, 2021. The base station has been delivered and installation has begun. Core and Main, the company that was awarded the Village’s AMI Meter Project, indicated that within a couple of weeks the antenna/receiver and other infrastructure necessary to support the AMI Meters will be in place. The Electric Department can soon begin installation.

The contract amendment (“change order”) can be signed January 20^th, 2021, so we will start getting delivery of the water meter attachments after that date.

 

• Generator for Police Department. I now have two (2) quotes for installing the Police Department Back-up Generator (old Village Hall/FD Generator). The low bid is Wood Electric at $23,500. I requested a bid from another contractor but received no response.

 

Installation of the back-up generator will assure continued operations of the Police Department in the event of a power failure. It can only serve the Police Department. The current configuration is two meters/panels – one at the PD and one at Street. Code and safety considerations don’t allow us to mix.

 

The plan LONG TERM is to if/when a new Street Department Building is constructed, to feed the last 3 Street bays from that structure/service, and then split the PD bays portion back over to the PD/Generator. My thought is rather than full blown additional back-up generator for the new Street Department get battery back-up garage door openers so we can get equipment out, with something much smaller for lights etc. (like a home Generac). Much less expensive.

• 2021 Paving Program.I have provided background for the upcoming Finance and Streets, Alleys, Curbs, Storm Sewers, & Sidewalks Committee Meetings on the 2021 Paving Program. The Clerk-Treasurer has indicated that:
• we have in the paving fund approximately $72,000
• we will have another projected/approximate amount of $160,000 in the paving fund by July 1^st, 2021
• TOTAL projected amount for 2021 Paving Program of $232,000

 

I have sent out a PRELIMINARY list of streets for 2021 in spreadsheet form, showing the Pavement Condition Ratings (PCRs) from 2017 and PCRs from 2020. The cost projection is $191,000 and is an estimate based on recent bids. That estimate will be affected by how many ADA Ramps need to be installed. The separate list in the table below the main list are potential streets to be added, within the budget constraints of course.

 

Tentatively, the streets that I recommend paving this year are:

 

Street	From	To
2nd Street SE	Jefferson	East Terminus
Main Street SE	Wabash	Cleveland
Jefferson Ave SE	5th	7th
5th Street SE	Cleveland	Jefferson
5th Street SE	Wabash	Cleveland
1st Street SW	Grant	Lincoln
Grant Ave SW	2nd	1st
2nd Street SW	Wabash	McKinley
McKinley Ave SW	2nd	North terminus
Chestnut	1200 feet +/-

 

     I also recommend adding at least one street from the following list:

 

Street	From	To
Harmon Street NE	Wabash	Mohican
Tuscarawas Ave NW	Pinewood	Chestnut
Superior Street NE	Wabash	Mohican
6th Street SW	McKinley	Washington
McKinley Ave SW	Main	2nd

 

I also provided a spreadsheet for all Brewster Streets reflecting where we stand on a “projected” December 2020 PCR.

 

This will be the first year in a while that we have no OPWC or MRF Funds for paving to extend what we spend on paving, as a result of the paving income tax expiring in 2021 and not being certain we have a local match in 2022 to leverage an OPWC Application, and not wanting to tie up money from 2021 and/or delay our overall paving in 2021 because we would have to wait until after July 1^st, 2021 to start if we got OPWC funds for paving in 2021.

 

As you all may remember, I have previously indicated that the PCRs from 2020 were less than satisfactory. Both the Street Superintendent and I had issues (still do). And, while there were some revisions, I still do not feel the 2020 PCRs accurately reflect current condition OR order of worst to bestof our streets. That is why I have both the 2017 and 2020 PCRs in the spreadsheet. That is why I also reached out to do a “poor man’s” PCR for 2021, rating ONLY for those streets that have NOT been paved in the past 4 years to reduce the cost for the PCR. As Council is aware, the PCR has been a valuable tool in planning the annual Paving Program, so having an accurate PCR will help plan our Paving Programs for 2021, 2022 and 2023.

 

One twist this year is 2^nd Street SW – we need to replace the curb & gutter we took out for the storm drainage project, which has been taken into account.

 

Another “twist” is my suggestion to add accessibility to Bimeler bay installing curb & gutter and sidewalk on the west side of McKinley north of 2^nd. With curb & gutter on 2^nd, cost should be more reasonable at same time, and fulfill an objective listed in the Village’s Comprehensive Plan that was adopted in 2013.

 

My goal is to bid out early in 2021 to get best prices and hopefully an early start. A combined Finance and Streets Committee Meetings have been scheduled for January 4^th at 6:30 pm.

 

• Auctioning Village Property that is Obsolete and No Longer Needed. Council will be considering on third reading a Resolution expressing the intent of Brewster Village Council to sell unneeded, obsolete or unfit municipal property on the internet. It mirrors one passed in 2020. 

 

I am totally in support of auctioning off our surplus property that we either we cannot trade it in, or sell it to another political subdivision, or Council decides we can get more money and spend less resources selling on the internet. But, placing an ad in the Canton Repository or the Massillon Independent and then putting items up on our website to gets bids wasn’t/isn’t going to get us much competition/bidding. Again, I have been looking at various auction services that provide political subdivisions a wider audience to sell surplus/obsolete property at no cost to the Village.

 

I recently participated in a presentation by Public Surplus. Public Surplus is a service that provides a platform for a number of public entities to auction surplus equipment. Public Surplus touts themselves as the largest online public surplus auction site, with over 5000 participating entities and over 7,000,000 hits each day. It would be free to the Village to use. They change a buyer’s “premium (10%). They provide an audit trail and keep records for 7 years. They would also provide a link on our website. Some area entities that are already “members” are Canton, Cuyahoga Falls, Mansfield, Wadsworth, and Jackson Local Schools.

 

A link to get an overview is https://www.publicsurplus.com/sms/mansfield,oh/browse/allcat  It is Mansfield. You can look around to get an idea how it works.

 

I have received copies of Public Surpluses standard buyers/auction contract and documents for John to review. We can edit/amend it to whatever we feel is appropriate.

 

If we are going to make internet sale of our surplus/obsolete property work for the Village (at least recoup our advertising costs and hopefully get as much as we were offered at trade-in or sale to another political subdivision) I feel this is what we need to do.

 

I will await Council’s direction.

 

• Electric Substation – SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System). In February I informed Council that during the preliminary engineering phase of the project, the Village chose to include SCADA hardware in the new control house. This was deemed the most efficient and expedient course of action based on the Village’s ultimate desire to install a SCADA system. It would potentially cost more to add SCADA hardware after completion of the Electric Substation Upgrade/Expansion Project. SCADA allows the Village to be a much more efficient process to supervise and manage our distribution system. Preliminary engineering work was completed. SCADA hardware was included in the bids for the Electric Substation Upgrade/Expansion Project, and installation and wiring of the SCADA hardware in the control house was completed as part of the Substation Upgrade/Expansion.

 

Adding the new SCADA hardware required the following SCADA related preliminary engineering work:

 

 

The SCADA work was separately tracked under Task 300 on GPD P/N 2018040.01. Because the SCADA might be a cost that AMP Transmission may reimburse a portion of at some point as part of the 69 kV Asset Purchase, and so that there is less confusion, we entered into separate agreement with GPD in an amount not to exceed $16,000.

 

However, the original project scope with GPD for engineering of the Electric Substation Upgrade/Expansion Project did not include engineering of the accompanying software/programming of a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System). The original scope included only connection of new equipment alarms to the existing ANTX (Autotext alarm system).

 

I have been negotiating with GPD for the engineering of the accompanying software/programming of a SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System). GPD has provided a proposal to perform the engineering necessary to program, commission and place into service our Orion SCADA system hardware at Southside Substation in an amount of $69,500.

 

 

• Efficiency Smart – Rebates. Heating and cooling make up the largest portion of the average household’s energy bill. Efficiency Smart offers rebates on products that can help you save on these costs, including a $750 rebate on cold climate air source heat pumps and a $100 rebate on air source heat pumps. Visit www.efficiencysmart.org/brewster-ohio and select “Home Energy Rebates” or call 877-889-3777 for more information on available rebates.

 

• Efficiency Smart – “Buy Local” Program. The “Buy Local” program has been extended from 9/30 to 11/30.  Brochures are available.

 

• Efficiency Smart - Advanced Thermostat.  Save up to an additional $70 off the purchase of an Advanced Thermostat! Visit Efficiency Smart’s Online Savings store at www.efi.org/efficiencysmart for special Black Friday pricing and free shipping on advanced thermostats between 11/13 – 12/1. Call Efficiency Smart at 877-889-3777 for more information.

• Efficiency Smart – “Trivia Tuesdays”. Efficiency Smart is running called “Trivia Tuesdays”.  Each Tuesday in November, Efficiency Smart will post a new energy efficiency trivia question on its Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/EfficiencySmart . Those who answer correctly will be entered to win a $25 promo code redeemable on our Online Savings store. https://www.efficiencysmart.org/online-savings   Efficiency Smart will randomly select one winner each week, so residents can participate each week for more chances to win. Efficiency Smart is asking for our help increasing awareness of the contest by sharing Trivia Tuesday information.

Council Member Hilliard stated he is not fond of the planters that VA Miller is suggesting to put in front of the storefront where the first two bays of the Fire Department used to have.  He thinks that they will look bad in a couple of years.  He would rather see a couple of benches.  VA Miller stated we are replacing the bench by the Fire Department with a new one that will honor William Triner for his generous donation to the Fire Department.

 

VA Miller stated he had one addition to his report and that is a change order for the installation of a handrail for the sidewalk linking addition to the back of Village Hall and the American Legion at a cost of $3,520.

 

 

 

Council Member Long was approached by a resident and told that they like the new Christmas lights and hope they continue them down the road.

 

COMMITTEES or COUNCIL REPORTS: The Goal of any committee meeting is to discuss an issue or proposal and to provide, by a consensus of the committee members, ONE recommendation to Council

 

 

 

 

 

 

Council Member Hilliard asked if the two garage projects could be split.  VA Miller stated he could go back to the engineer for a price, but it would be more because they gave us a discount because it included the two projects together.  VA Miller went to say that this ordinance is only for the design so we can get actual prices and are not guessing at the costs.  The design will cost between 34 and $35,000.  Council Member Hilliard would feel better if we waited until after the May election to make sure we are going to have levy money for the Police Department portion.  VA Miller stated that if Council approves this step and the cost is too high, then Council can vote not to pursue the projects.  It will require another vote to proceed any further after the costs are established.  VA will send out the breakdown of the projects costs again and put it in more detail for the next meeting.

 

Chief Colucy suggested meeting at 6:00 pm prior to the next meeting to tour the Fire Station Addition.  Council Member Hilliard stated it will be pushing it because there is already a 6:30 Committee meeting scheduled.

 

COUNCIL MEMBER FOX MOVED, SECONDED BY COUNCIL MEMBER RADICH and motion carried to adjourn the meeting at 7:51 pm. The vote: All yes.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

____________________________________________________

Kris King, Clerk-Treasurer

 

 

____________________________________________________

Charles Hawk, Mayor