Council considers ramp regs, tattoo parlor placement

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

Galion City Coun­cil held its final meet­ing for the month on Nov. 27. Coun­cil mem­ber Wal­ter Keib motioned to enter into exec­u­tive ses­sion, imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the meet­ing, to dis­cuss the com­pen­sa­tion of a pub­lic employee. The motion passed 4–3 and Coun­cil then approved the agenda as amended.

Galion YMCA Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Terry Grib­ble was present to pro­vide Coun­cil with a yearly review of rev­enue from the Heise Park Pool dur­ing the sum­mer. Accord­ing to Grib­ble, 2012 was the best year the pool has ever had.

It was open for a total of 458 hours and received $42,594 in rev­enue. As per the reim­burse­ment agree­ment between the City and the YMCA, Grib­ble reported that the City only needs to reim­burse the YMCA for $594. (Last year, the City paid $3,371).

Pub­lic hear­ings regard­ing tat­too and body pierc­ing ser­vices and res­i­den­tial hand­i­cap ramps were held. No one from the pub­lic com­mented on either issue.

Two pieces of leg­is­la­tion related to the pub­lic hear­ings were later dis­cussed. The first read­ing for Ord. 2012–92 received some heated dis­cus­sion. The ordi­nance was to amend the Plan­ning and Zon­ing Code to add tat­too and body pierc­ing ser­vices as a con­di­tional use in the Gen­eral Com­mer­cial Dis­trict (sec­tion 1149.03).

Such busi­nesses would be sub­ject to Chap­ter 1183 of the City Ordi­nances, which pro­hibits the loca­tion from being within 1500 feet of any res­i­dence, school, church, library or pub­lic park.

Keib was against the leg­is­la­tion, say­ing that res­i­dents would not have a say if a busi­ness wanted to locate in their neighborhood.

Law Direc­tor Reese Mills explained that by fed­eral law, a city gov­ern­ment can­not exclude any type of busi­ness from oper­at­ing because it is con­sid­ered dis­crim­i­na­tion. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion would con­trol where the tattoos/body pierc­ing ser­vices could operate.

If a tat­too or body pierc­ing ser­vice sets up in the city, the Galion Health Depart­ment would be respon­si­ble for per­form­ing inspec­tions and enforc­ing health and safety codes.

The first read­ing passed 6–1.

That evening was also the first read­ing for Ord. 2012–93, which also amended the Code, to adopt a def­i­n­i­tion for res­i­den­tial hand­i­cap ramps. It would also enact a new sec­tion, 1175.08, to the Code which per­mits ramps in all res­i­den­tial zon­ing dis­tricts accord­ing to cer­tain requirements.

Build­ing Inspec­tor Matt Ross added that the ordi­nance also would reduce the set­back dis­tance (so that more peo­ple would be eli­gi­ble to install ramps) and exempt ramps from lot cov­er­age limitations.

The first read­ing passed unanimously.

Ordi­nances 2012–90 and 2012–91 to autho­rize agree­ments with Rich­land County for a res­i­den­tial back-up inspec­tor and com­mer­cial back-up inspec­tor, respec­tively, were tabled.

Ross explained that some changes to the word­ing in both agree­ments needed to be made at the request of Rich­land County Commissioners.

In other busi­ness, a let­ter was received from Ken Jarvis thank­ing City Man­ager Gene Toy and city employ­ees for their help with cross coun­try meets at Ammans Reservoir.

In his com­ments, City Man­ager Gene Toy reminded the pub­lic that Come Home to Galion is Dec. 1 begin­ning at 1 p.m. He also announced that there will be an annual work ses­sion on Dec. 5 at 3 p.m. between Coun­cil mem­bers at the finan­cial super­vi­sor office, and the Finan­cial Plan­ning and Super­vi­sion Com­mis­sion will meet on Dec. 19 at 9 a.m.

The city opened bids for the North Mar­ket Street sewer project. After 11 bids received, the

low bid was for $530,180, about $100,000 less than the City Engineer’s estimate.

Dur­ing cit­i­zens com­ments Andy Daniels was the only per­son to address Coun­cil. He called the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion between the City and the County Board of Elec­tions a “Catch-22.”

Daniels stated that, based on his con­ver­sa­tions with the Board offi­cials, they require a let­ter from the City Law Direc­tor instruct­ing them on how to pro­ceed with the petition/election process for Galion’s upcom­ing elected offices.

“I request of Coun­cil tonight for some­one to motion to get that process rolling,” Daniels concluded.

Mills responded that he sent an email to the Board of Elec­tions on Mon­day with a copy of the cover sheet of the peti­tion for Issue 5, say­ing that all of the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion should have been on that doc­u­ment. As of the Coun­cil meet­ing, Mills had not got­ten any response from the Board.

Coun­cil then entered into exec­u­tive ses­sion with no fur­ther action to be taken. Its next meet­ing is Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. at the Munic­i­pal Building.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Nov 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.