OK. Can you say hi, Joanna?
Hey, everybody.
All right. Then you can just mute and...
Yeah, we'll do.
I can't see my phone when you're here, so maybe text gen or something if you want to say something.
OK, we'll do. Thanks.
Yep.
OK.
I'm just going to turn everybody on.
Yes.
That's you.
I didn't ask you.
You just do the electives first?
I didn't have any, so just my regular whip.
OK. We're going to get started.
I'm going to call the meeting in order.
Pledge of Allegiance.
I'm going to call roll.
Councilwoman Misako.
Here.
Councilwoman Bolden.
Here.
Councilman Leaman.
Here.
Councilman Fabis.
Here.
Councilman Maggio.
Here.
I am also here.
We have the Mayor and the Fire Chief and the Burner Manager and our Junior Councilperson, Ian Spoboswood.
Welcome, everybody.
We have registered comments from the public tonight.
Yes, we do.
of Marcy and Caleb Sturgis, wish to speak about air quality.
I'll tell you, I grabbed one of those sheets ahead of time stillers.
Five minutes, I'll give you one minute notice if you need it.
I assume so, just have to say it.
We are Caleb and Marcy Sturgis, 3253 Wayne Bell Avenue,
and our comments are related to air quality.
First, I just wanted to say we addressed you guys a few months ago
about the ventilation noise for the Jean-Louis restaurant,
and Ben, I wanted to thank you publicly.
They built a plywood structure around it,
and the noise is a lot less than it used to be.
Now, granted, we still have ACs going and stuff,
so we'll see what happens this fall,
but I just wanted to publicly thank you for taking our concern seriously.
I appreciate it.
My pleasure now.
What we want to do is talk about air quality right now.
I think everybody here knows that Allegheny County
has some of the poorest air quality in the nation, actually.
One of the things that I've noticed in and around Dormont in the past few years
is how many fire pits are in people's backyards.
It's fun, it's relaxing,
it's not when you have houses that are as close together as we do here in Dormont.
When you burn firewood,
Allegheny County stipulates that you can only burn dry, seasoned firewood.
There are people that are burning greenwood and wetwood and plywood.
We actually had a neighbor through the alley
that they were burning old paper files in their fire pit.
There's a bunch of neighbors out.
We thought some of these houses was on fire.
This was just a few weeks ago.
I mean, I see fire pits all over the place
that are feet away from property lines,
which is completely against code.
I see people burning all sorts of things
that they shouldn't be burning, Matt.
You probably get a bunch of calls about this.
I really don't see anybody regulating this.
I don't see anybody enforcing this.
We have these older houses that don't have central AC.
You can't open your windows when you have people at the fire pit.
It's not like the smoke stays in property lines.
You know, with the elderly, with children,
people with respiratory issues,
everybody is affected by these fire pits.
I am actually one of the people with respiratory issues myself.
I'm an asthmatic, and it's not just the smoke.
It's the particulates that you get from these things.
The way the houses are built in this area,
they're still meant to breathe.
They were some of the definitely early age construction.
It doesn't matter where you are.
The materials definitely get inside your house.
Some of the issues that we keep on coming back to
is just air pollution in general,
that we have failing grades across the board
inside the county for our air pollution and air quality.
The main thing that we keep on to deal with
is the smoke coming across property lines.
Most people inside this borough
are on a tenth of an acre or less.
The topography of the area does not permit for smoke
just to rise directly above the property.
Any sort of a prevailing...
Two minutes more.
This smoke does not rise straight up
as any sort of prevailing breeze
will cause it to definitely just drift
in other people's properties or windows
on a nice night like tonight.
We're literally just waiting for somebody
to start burning something and to fill a browse.
Just so you know, the clearance that you have to have
from the outside of a fire pit
is 15 feet to any structure, any property line,
or any public access way, including roads, streets,
sidewalks, and alleys.
Any lot that is under 35 feet wide
does not meet this clearance.
You are literally...
In order to enforce this, which you have to do,
you're going to have neighbors
on fire pit and we can't.
My suggestion would be to do
what the City of Ambridge has done.
They have houses very similar to ours
without the topography, however,
and they had a complete ban of fire pits
within their city limits.
Everybody's happy, their air quality's better,
and it's a lot safer of an environment.
Thanks for listening.
Thank you.
It's a health issue, it's a nuisance,
but it's also a safety issue.
The proximity to property lines,
does permit sparks to go
across other property lines
and potentially create a fire word,
which is going to be a lot more disastrous
than just a normal nuisance.
Good job.
Thank you.
Any other registered comments?
No further registered comments.
Okay.
Test, test.
Is it working?
Can you hear this okay?
Okay.
Sorry about that.
Okay.
Let's go over the consent agenda.
We have a change order for motion A.
Do you want to talk about that a little bit, Ben?
Yes, so the change order
for our road and construction alley project,
the number looks much higher
than what our actual number is.
So while it's 152,483,
this includes the sidewalk work
that we are doing
in conjunction with residents.
So we've tested this
on a smaller scale last year
and expanded quite a bit this year.
And I've spoken to Mr Favis' committee
about this.
A lot of people saw
the program that Brentwood started
to fix sidewalks
throughout the community.
We started in a
less controversial way
or a little easier way
where where we had a construction zone
that was going to be
happening for the year,
code enforcement staff
went through and assessed all the sidewalks
in that area.
And then we provided notice
to those residents
with the contract price
that we had through our contractor
saying we can replace
all of your bad sidewalk
at this price.
You're going to have to replace it one way or another.
This is the best time to do it
because we can get you a much better rate.
And a lot of people jumped on board with that.
But then we took it
a step further and we sent letters
to everyone else in that area
whether even if their sidewalks were not
bad enough to require
code enforcement action.
And basically stated
we know that it's not that bad.
However, this is one of the best opportunities
you will have to get nice new sidewalks
put in at a decent price.
And a lot of people took us up on that.
One gentleman
around Glenmore I think replaced like
everything in front of his house as well as
the sidewalk going up to the front door.
Dr. Schneider is a property
property place.
The place everything along
Glenmore.
Great.
So,
and it's not just in this area.
We also have this over on ordinance
in a variety
of places that we've been doing this
kind of work.
So a large section
of this number is that and will be
recouped from people paying
their bills back to us.
In general, we're
trying to keep people to one year
payments to pay back these.
There are some cases though that we've talked about
going as far as two years out
just to help
with some of the payments that people need to make.
Trying to keep it as fair as possible
while improving the borough.
So
that inflates our number for our change order
because anything that is not in the
actual contract, the original
contract itself has to show up
in that change order.
The largest
cycle piece to this is
the
expected work at the
end of Dwight Avenue
that I've been telling council about in my
weekly reports.
Once you get down
to the end of Dwight which is
scheduled for total reconstruction
there is nothing
to hold the road up
and water is running
off of our roadway down the hill
which was not a problem before
under normal rains
but with the
changes to the types of weather
and with the severe weather that we keep getting
it has become an issue
such that there is a lot more water
which is starting to cause erosion
at the end of the roadway and we have to be able to support the road
and take care of that water.
So
we've worked with
the construction company to create a plan
to put in
And a catch basin at the end and then create a channel system that will take the water down
to the creek that it ends up in. But that project alone will cost around $60,000, but it is really
a necessity at this point. I said this was not an issue before, but this year has really
shown us some extreme weather more frequently than what we have had in the past. Hence,
the amount of the change order for that project. Any questions? Other questions on that item?
The next item, which I just had received that morning, the morning that I put this together
so I did not have an opportunity to retype the state's contract, but this is a five-year
agreement that we put together with PennDOT. This is for the winter maintenance along West
Liberty Avenue and McFarland. The borough does the winter maintenance and PennDOT compensates
us for the work that we do. They do an annual calculation. Our roads, I believe, are what
they consider Class B, which, I think, pays out $1938 per mile, something along those lines.
So it's not a huge amount of money that this brings in for it, but PennDOT does compensate
us for the work that we do plowing, insulting those areas. However, our agreement has
expired, so this is to renew with another five-year agreement.
Is this $1938 per episode or per season? No, no, no, per season.
Okay. Is that this is not? It's not a lot of money, but it's this or we wait for
PennDOT to show up to clear. Right, and it's our street anyway, so even if it
wasn't a state road, we'd be clearing it. So this is... It's nice to get something.
Yeah, great. Okay, fair enough. That makes a lot of sense.
Hey, Ben. Well, can I interrupt? Joanna said the video is not working on the
broadcast. Just FYI. I don't know if there's anything. Can you see if the camera's on?
Is the light on? Oh, it's not on.
You can go look at my computer. It should still be up, but...
Just wanted to let you know in case you were concerned. Thank you.
Okay, moving on to action items. That's public comment time.
Does anybody have public comment on the consent agenda motions?
Okay, action items. So under the action items, we have a motion to approve a memorandum of
understanding with the Dormant Police Association for the promotion of Clark
Wataki to Sergeant. We have discussed this item in the past or at the point that
we need to approve this. So what we have talked about is that we have...
Don't worry. Two sergeants who could go anytime they want at this point.
And we have an existing promotional list. However, there's no guarantee that one of
them will leave before that list expires. So rather than having to go through the entire
testing process all over again, the union has worked with us and what we'd like to do
is promote Clark Wataki to Sergeant now with the understanding that he will still be paid
at his patrolman's rate while he continues to work in that role. However,
as soon as one of those retirements happen, we will have somebody already
to fill in to that position without the needs to wait to go through the entire retesting process,
which is that we've experienced can take some time. Especially for these promotional exams,
they have to be given several months just of study time before you can even test.
Mr. Rushford has reviewed the agreement. The union is in favor of this
Chief Physignani and I are both in favor of this as well.
When are the dates for the two sergeants who are retiring?
What are the like the very last dates that they can go to?
Who are they?
Officer Zewisha has 17 months left. So whatever 17 months today is.
And Officer Kelly has 22 months, 21 months.
Okay, but they could go at any time.
Those are, well Kelly is a separate issue. Sergeant Briglia is the other one who is not
in the drop plan, but he does not have to enter it. I believe he's eligible this year.
Oh, to ask you what time he is, but he's eligible, yes.
His plans are more up in the air still. He could go at any time, but
the drop plan means they have to go by that certain date,
but they can leave before then if they want to.
So if the right position were to come up elsewhere,
they could give us a couple of weeks notice and be gone.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, any other questions from Council?
Okay, public comment?
Okay, do we have any discussion items?
Anybody?
We'll use time to announce our
budget meetings. Let me give you one second to get the right format here.
So the first budget meeting will be held on September 24th at 6 p.m.
here in Council Chambers. We will follow the same basic format for the meetings that we did last
year, so that is essentially pitch night. The department heads will come in for the meeting
to discuss any requests that they have for their departments.
We can go over any of those issues. You should have all of the information before then on the
SharePoint site, but that night they will be here to answer questions and to go over their requests.
And then I believe we are then at Tuesday the 22nd.
What about Tuesday, October 1st?
I'm sorry.
The 24th. What time is that again?
6 p.m.
Great.
Yeah.
Sorry, yes.
And then
yeah, Tuesday the 1st is the next session, so that's following last year's model will be when the
primary decisions are made. And then we will meet again on the 22nd in order to just review
after everyone has had time to think about the decisions that they have made to see if they
have second thoughts on anything.
What's the third date?
The 22nd.
All meetings at 6 p.m. I will have food for each of those.
With that I was, what's that?
Six o'clock of course.
Yeah, correct.
And I was going to make the recommendation that we consider canceling the next agenda meeting
rather than trying to meet two nights in a row for lengthy periods of time because
you'll have September the 30th for the agenda meeting, then we would be right back on October
1st. It's another thing that we did last year. We canceled one of those agenda meetings
because it was so close in with our budget schedule.
So that would be the September 30th meeting.
Yeah, that's just recommendation. We can still meet then if you want, but
considering the extra load of the budget schedule, it's just an option.
Hey Ben, I'm sorry if I missed something in one of your emails. I read the two proposals
you sent for the zoning rewrite. Are we going to have a chance to talk about those
before we would need to talk about them for the budget? It looks like we're going to skip
an agenda meeting that would maybe be the time.
Council is not the first review of the zoning proposals. That will go through the Planning
Commission next, and the Planning Commission should be making a recommendation to the Council.
However, I wanted to make sure that all of Council had that as early as possible.
Sorry, I might have read it quickly and missed that. I'm sorry.
No, I may not have had it in there because since I was off at the end of last week,
I had to rush to get everything out on time. Dover Cole just got me their updated proposal
that morning as well. Yeah, I saw that, yeah. Okay.
Does anybody have an issue with canceling the September 30th agenda meeting?
I say we go ahead and do it.
I'm sorry, Danielle. I couldn't hear what you said.
I was just asking if anybody has an issue with canceling the September 30th agenda meeting
since we're having the October 1st budget meeting the next day.
I'm cool.
It's my anniversary, so I'll take that day.
Okay, so we're going to cancel that meeting.
That worked out well.
Not because it's my anniversary, though.
Yeah, I was unaware of the anniversary before the recommendation.
I kept a lid on that just because I was waiting to see.
Okay, so we have all the budget meetings. Any other discussion items at this point?
Okay.
Ian, do you have anything that you'd like to say today?
Well, I'll go back to school.
Oh, yeah, Danielle. I'm going to start at school again today.
Start here.
Hit your button.
No, he was on.