To order.

We have all council members except Councilwoman Marks, but she's gonna be here momentarily.

So first I will move to approve the minutes of the June 30th joint meeting of committee of the whole and planning commission.

Motion's been made and seconded.

Any discussion?

Hearing none.

All those in favor?

Aye.

And that motion passes.

Okay, so we have two items uh on the docket tonight, essentially.

Uh we have the communications explaining those items, but the real matters of substance are ordinance 162025, which is complete streets, and ordinance 172025, which is the case uh advisory board.

So I thought we'd start with complete streets.

And um sorry, Vice President Baker.

Uh do you want to kick us off with that?

Sure.

Yeah, thank you, uh President Keppel.

Uh so in Granicus, and then I also sent to our colleagues um basically a compare version of the original combined complete streets ordinance, which um councilperson um Streebig Keppel and myself uh introduced along with the mayor.

Um but it still needed a little work.

There were a couple discussion points within the original ordinance that we introduced back in April, uh, but it built upon you know uh nearly two years of of work uh to come to the right complete streets model for Lakewood.

Um a lot of other municipalities have a lot of different sizes, have a lot of different ways of doing this.

Um we knew that we had to work really closely with the administration, public works, planning, law, a bunch of different departments that come up what with what was right for Lakewood.

Um we've seen complete streets maybe not deliver on promises in other communities because maybe one department championed it and it didn't kind of have a cross department collaboration of buy-in as to what the process would be.

So I I we can quickly go through um some of the edits uh and then I don't know if the administration has they may have points on some of the edits as we go through them.

Um but on the first page the the planning commission brought up some language which is important about our warehouse clauses that you know it's not just citizens but residents and visitors uh you know need a safe network.

Um so we made some changes uh changing citizens to residents of visitors uh to the community um and then residents and visitors again.

The chair of the planning commission noted that Lakewood wasn't actually planned as a developed or as a dense walkable streetcar community, it was more so just developed that way by individual kind of builders of of certain sections of town.

So we um included that we we put protect property values as opposed to increased property values.

Um and then also on the second page there was a whereas clause that we wanted to make sure that and and I I don't you know the law department may have some explanation on this point, but we wanted to make sure that you know as it relates to our charter and the enforceability of complete streets, um that there was an acknowledgement that if the administration agrees and that's reflected in the ordinance that the mayor ultimately signs to the extent it passes that those issues would be um nullified or or or no longer a problem.

Is that a a good way to describe it, Director Vargo?

Thank you, Councilman Baker.

Through uh the chair, I think that's fine at the highest level instead of getting into the details, but I I think uh it was well said by yourself.

Thank you.

Love to hear that.

Um thank you.

Um it's been a long day already.

Um and then we would change signalized intersection and we also removed wide travel travel lanes.

I think that was just a holdover language.

Going into the meat of the ordinance, um in uh definitions, we changed around a couple things.

Um, preserve or add the prevalence of trees, so kind of nodding to the element that to the extent we can preserve the tree canopy.

I know we're already doing that um, you know, as we plan public works project, but but might as well codify it.

And then we had a little bit of discussion about recycled materials, how it's challenging sometimes in public works projects, particularly road projects that do that, uh so we use sustainable instead.

Um and this is where we get into the meat of some of the things um we talked about uh which you know a lot of this ordinance revolves around what is the definition of a transportation project that would trigger complete streets, the process, and then where it would fall in the process.

Um so we there was a robust discussion about how some of our roadways in town.

You know, the projects that we do, the bigger projects are coordinated with either the How Department of Transportation, Kyoga County.

Uh a great example of that is the Lake Clifton Connector project where we're uh doing a road diet and adding some some nice pedestrian bike infrastructure um near the border of Rocky River and over the Rocky River Bridge on Clifton.

That's technically a county project.

Um and and or an RTA project um, for example, in our neighbor to the east, RTA is doing uh bus rabbit transit project down West 25th corridor.

Uh so that's technically an RTA project, and RTA is running it, uh, even though it's a city of Cleveland right-of-way.

Um so we wanted to have some nod in the ordinance that while the city might not be able to require by this ordinance that those entities follow complete streets, our complete streets ordinance.

We wanted to make sure that the administration and council were aligned that we would really encourage them to do so.

And if you've ever been involved in some of these transportation projects, a lot of them take federal funds, and a lot of those federal funds through the NEPA clearance, which is the National National Environmental Protection Act, requires you have some public process anyways.

Uh so I think a lot of these entities like ODOT, the county or RTA will be thankful that there's a plug-and-play process that they can look at our ordinance and see and say this is what we need to do, so we're no longer flying by the seat of our pants.

We kind of have a process that we can follow.

At the same time, we can't require them to do so.

Um so we just put encourage.

I put strongly encouraged what the administration said let's do encourage, so it's okay.

Um for tier one transportation projects, uh public comment, uh good point from some folks that the Detroit Avenue was not included as a as a route or intersection in the active transportation plan.

Uh but it is such a vital spine in our city that we wanted to make sure that if a majority or a large portion of Detroit was redone, reconstructed, or or worked on, that it would trigger tier one process.

Um so that's the intention of the edit in the tier one area.

And then tier two, this is basically the projects that aren't required to go through planning commission, but the administration will make best efforts to add complete street elements.