The September 18, 2023 Vandalia City Council meeting began at 7:00 PM and included an oath of office for Fire Marshal Scott Jacobs, a presentation on public finance debt limitations by bond counsel Chris Franzmann, public comments on local properties, and approval of three resolutions and one emergency ordinance. The meeting also noted upcoming fire prevention events, received reports from boards and commissions, and entered executive session for collective bargaining strategy.
The City Manager reported that October is Fire Prevention Month, with an open house on October 1, 2023 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Fire Station One. He also noted that Fire Chief Althouse traveled to Washington D.C. to oppose proposed federal legislation that would increase the size and weight of commercial trucks.
The September 18th, City of Andaya Council meeting is now called the order. We'll start with a moment of reflection, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag in the United States of America and to the Republic. One leg under God indivisible with other DT and Justice Burrow. All right, we have no minutes to approve, and that brings us to communications petitions and awards. Uh the first item is the introduction and oath of office for Fire Marshal Scott Jacobs. Mr. Wendt. Thank you very much, Your Honor. Um I'd like to reintroduce. I know that you already know Fire Marshal Scott Jacobs. Um he's been with the city for some time. He's got uh a lot of varying capacity uh both as a part-time fire lieutenant here at the city of Vandalia working at the city of Dayton, and most recently is our community risk reduction coordinator at the city. Um Fire Marshal Jacobs uh exhibits an extremely high level of customer service. He's somebody that you can send into a business to work with young people or staff internally for training or information, and you know that he's going to reset represent you well as well as the city. And so without further ado, I'll ask his uh family to come up here with him and we'll go ahead and swear him in as fire marshal. I hope so. That I will support the Constitution and will obey the laws of the United States and of the state of Old Mine. But I will go observe the competition of the charter and ordinances of the city of the indeal and will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of the office of fire marshal within the division of fire fire marshal. Congratulations. And hopefully he lives up to that today. No, I'm just kidding, Chris. It's good to see you back. Thank you. Good evening. Um thank you for the introduction. Thank you for the invite. Congratulations to the fire marshal. That's a terrific accomplishment. And I'm just happy that uh the fire department and half the audience didn't leave before my presentation, so I feel a little bit better. Really should have given them the chance to. I'm really still can if they want to. It's gonna be a riveting. I'm still on duty, so we got to read that. Sorry about that. Okay. The city manager, I know shared with you the memo that we put together late last week. It talks about debt limitations, legal debt limitations for an Ohio municipality. I'm going to assume that everybody's had maybe even a chance to skim it, if not read it. So I'm not going to go through it in great detail. I'm just going to give some highlights. So essentially, a brief step back in the history. The last time Ohio convened the constitutional convention was in 1912. So 111 years ago was the last time this state's constitution was meaningfully changed. And as part of those changes, there was a focus on debt limitations, controlling indebtedness, controlling borrowing. At the end of the day, this council, trustees, commissioners, the Ohio General Assembly are all stewards of the taxpayers' dollars. So it was thought back then that it would be appropriate to put in place legal limitations on how much money can be borrowed. Okay. And so that was a long time ago.