North Canton
Residents and Anyone Having Interest in the Business of North Canton City
Government:
Pasted below is a
link to a video of the North Canton City Council meeting held on Monday,
February 8, 2016.
Description of Video:
February 8, 2016 – City Council Meeting:
Councilwoman Marcia Kiesling was absent at the Executive Session and the Council meeting.
The video covers a City Council meeting lasting about one
hour and eighteen minutes. The video opens with Council adjourning from an
Executive Session (held behind closed doors) that lasted slightly over one
hour.
North Canton City Council considered 21 pieces of
legislation. Eleven ordinances were passed on an “Emergency” and one ordinance
was tabled. As best as can be determined, at a minimum, City Council
appropriated in excess of $5,824,000 among the twenty ordinances that were
enacted into law.
The ordinance that was tabled (Ordinance No. 6-2016) was a
proposal to change the Rules of Council that would have discontinued a decades
old fixed schedule of four Monday night meetings a month in exchange for a
meeting schedule that would allow Council to meet when they so desired.
Another change to the Rules of Council that was also tabled
was a proposal to place cumbersome restrictions on videotaping of City Council
meetings.
Interesting points in the video can be found at:
3:18 minutes into the video, Council President Jeff Peters
begins the meeting apologizing for his conduct at the previous Council meeting
held on February 1, 2016.
7:10 minutes into the video, Council President Peters states
that the Mayor and members of Council will no longer be allowed to respond to
citizens who speak at Public Speaks.
8:15 minutes into the video, Miriam Baughman is the only
citizen to addresses City Council at Public Speaks.
15:45 minutes into the video, Law Director Tim Fox attempts
to explain how emergency legislation is implemented in municipal legislation
(as best as I can hear as Mr. Fox is another individual who is hard to
understand).
17:00 minutes into the video, Councilmember Stephanie Werren
explains her Ordinance on Animals and Fowl and gets herself fouled up in
attempt to persuade Council to pass her ordinance on an emergency. Law Director
Tim Fox attempts to explain the legislative process to her.
21:10 minutes into the video, Council President Peters calls
for a vote to table Ordinance 6-2016.
58:30 minutes into the video, Councilmember Werren appears
to lobby for changes in Council rules
stating “…she wants to do things differently to make things more efficient
(paraphrasing as it is very hard to understand what she is really saying).
1:05:30 minutes into the video, Council President Peters
retracts statements he made at last week’s Council meeting when he said
residents can speak every Monday night at Council meetings. The promise by
Peters that residents could speak at every meeting was quoted in a February 2,
2016, Repository story titled, “North Canton City Council walks away from
schedule, video changes.”
That promise lasted less than a week. Further it begs the
question, WHY was Ordinance No. 6-2016 even on the agenda when a week ago,
Council President Peters said that the proposed changes to Council rules would
not change and video restrictions would not be imposed?
1:06 minutes into the video, Law Director Fox explains the
purpose of a Special Council meeting in an attempt to rebut past criticism of
the quantity of Special Council meetings that have been convened by Council
over the last year. Mr. Fox further implies that City Council has been holding more
meetings than required. The rebuttal by Mr. Fox falls flat in that last month
(January), City Council only met on two of the required four Mondays of the
month. And that has been the general pattern of Council for more than a year.
Rules of Council call for Committee meetings the first and third Monday of each
month and Council (Legislative) meetings the second and fourth Monday of each
month. Council is frequently getting off schedule holding either a Committee
meeting on a Council night or a Council meeting on a Committee night and simply
calling the meeting either a Special Committee meeting or a Special Council
meeting. All of this in violation of the current Rules of Council and City
Ordinances. The schedule of Council continues in confusion as Council cancelled
next week's regularly scheduled Committee meeting.
How is this true? Council only met two of the four Mondays
in January. For February, they have already announced they do not plan on
having a meeting on the third Monday in February. By that count, North Canton
City Council has already missed three regularly required Monday night meetings
and we are only midway through the second month of the year.
1:10 minutes into the video, Mayor David Held compliments
Council President Peters for tabling the proposed meeting schedule changes as
well as unrestricted videotaping of City Council meetings.
Thank you,
Chuck Osborne
