The South Summit Council of Governments (SSCOG) held its annual organizational meeting on December 11, 2025, to adopt the 2026 budget, five-year capital plan, and health insurance renewal. The meeting also addressed personnel transitions, including accepting the resignation of the secretary and electing new officers for 2026, and discussed potential expansion through consolidation with Norton and Barberton dispatch services.
And we'll begin with a pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Without our secretary, and as everybody knows, we're in a transitional period here. We've taken a hard look at uh the we did an amendment to the bylaws at the last meeting uh and have made a decision that it's in the best interest of the COVID to uh fill the positions of treasurer and secretary from outside the two communities so that there's no confusion about uh uh who's paying for what uh for those services. So with that uh we did accept that the last meeting uh the uh resignation of our treasurer uh and uh on the uh agenda today will accept the resignation of our secretary. Uh that means we don't have a secretary today, and so your able uh chairperson is going to fill both roles uh today, and we'll see how that goes. Uh all right. So first of all, uh we have uh approval of the minutes of the uh regular meeting on September 25th. Uh and uh those have been uh distributed to all and signed by the president, and I would call for a motion for approval. I move to approve, all right. And I would second that motion, any discussion. Um mayor Adamson, yes, and uh Mayor Jurgen? Yes. Okay. Uh next would be the approval of the special uh the meeting uh minutes of the special meeting of Wednesday, October 29th, 2025. Those also have been prepared, circulated, signed by the president. Uh and I'd ask for a motion to approve those. Move to approve. And I will second that motion, any discussion. Uh Mayor Adamson, yes, Mayor Jurgen. Yes. Okay. All right. On to topics of discussion. And uh gosh, we're I think we're probably this is our fourth year of our organizational meeting meeting, I guess. Uh and the topics here can uh consistent with our bylaws. Uh we are required to adopt our annual budget at this meeting to adopt our five-year uh approve our five-year plan at this meeting. And then uh because we're on a calendar year with our health care, it's been the uh recurring uh practice of uh approving the renewal of our health care uh or in the event at some point in time we switched to a different carrier, there would be approval of that. So those are the topics of discussion, and we'll begin with resolution 202506, a resolution approving and adopting the 2026 annual operations budget for the operation of the South Summit Council of Governments, South Summit Dispatch Center. Uh we'll have some discussion, but I'll begin to be we'll get to that discussion. I'll I'll begin with a uh I will move to approve resolution 202506, and then uh we'll have discussion afterwards if there's a second. There's a second. All right. And with that uh discussion, uh Leslie, uh we uh we've already had some significant discussions about that budget, but you want to give us a summary and if there's any questions, we can entertain those. Sure. Um under the personnel portion of the budget. We have added um new line items for the treasurer, the secretary position, and um bond insurance. So those will be added. Um there's been some increases from the aspect of the um contract that was approved this past year. Um the total personnel is 1,880, 490 1,880,497. Um then we go down to like the operations. We added the contract services for Julian and Groove in here. Um phone services went up. I did not have enough budgeted for 2024 for that. So there is a um an increase for that. And the total operations budget, $365,883. No, it's um from our experiences in the municipalities. And this is just an observation.