Inside Toledo City Council is an ongoing TFP series highlighting notable resolutions, appointments, ordinances and resolutions made by up to a 12-member council.
TOLEDO – An unsolicited petition presented by Toledo mayoral candidate Roberto Torres put added a bit of heat to the Tuesday afternoon’s Toledo City Council agenda review.
Only when ordinances are still in committee can the public express their opinions on them, and ordinances are not open to public comment during review or meetings by council. So, Torres’s interruption was met with an immediate rebuff from council member Adam Martinez (District 2), who was presiding over the agenda review.
Generally, the agenda review looks at mundane parts of government and asks questions of department heads so they have more information before voting on them in meetings.
As such, a full quorum was not present at the beginning of the review, but council members trickled into the meeting, until Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, and Theresa Gadus (District 3) were the only absent government officials from the council’s semi-circle.
Most of the review involved questions like George Sarantou (At-Large) had concerning fire hydrants.
“If you would indulge me,” he said, “I do have a question on the hydrants. How often are they painted?”
Sarantou thought the hydrants were painted every two years, but the Hydrant Replacement Program (02TMP-11415) clarified that fire hydrants are repainted every five years.
This and many other day-to-day agenda items made up the bulk of Toledo City Council’s session, but then, towards the end of the review, Torres approached the podium in front of the council with a petition from residents of District 1.
The signatures were collected in reaction to ordinances 223-25, 224-25 and 225-25, which would rezone areas respectively around 4004 Angola Rd., 0 South Byrne Rd. and 3920 Angola Rd.
The rezoning in those three areas would allow Rocky Ridge Development LLC, a company that mines lime for use in agriculture, to mine in areas close to residential zoning.
Martinez slammed the gavel and told Torres the council had not recognized him.
Then Martinez handed the floor over to council member John Hobbs III (District 1), whose district was being rezoned and who had recommended the area for re-zoning, for comment.
Calmly and evenly, Hobbs addressed the opposition to the three ordinances. “The owner of the motorcycle shop had come in and stated that he was not in support of this before, but in our last hearing he now is supporting this. So, I’m asking that we do not go through this again. Everyone has had an opportunity …” was all Hobbs could get out before Torres interjected.
“I have 303 signatures of residents …”
A swift gavel smash from Martinez interrupted Torres, but Torres continued speaking. As Torres was escorted out of the council chambers, Hobbs calmly continued.
“My next statement was going to be I do not want this floor to be used for political grandstanding of anyone that is a mayorial [sic] candidate.”
Torres corrected Hobbs on his way out, saying he was a “concerned citizen.”
Council then began discussing Senate Bill 36 before taking a break for an executive session to discuss staffing, while Torres, Toledo City Council candidate Blair Johnson and an affected Toledoan Bill Hoag, were outside council chambers discussing the rezoning ordinances with other media.
“I grew up in that neighborhood,” Hoag said in the lobby, and shared that he owns a number of houses in that area. Hoag said the rezoning and pollution from the mining was a “definite concern,” and that many of the residents in the area “had no idea what’s going on out there.”
According to Hoag, the hearings on the matter, which took place earlier in May, were inaccessible to residents and provided too little time for residents to give feedback. “My recommendation would be that they go out there…and they’ve gone out there to the Angola-Byrne corridor, but not at the convenience of the residents.”
After a little more than a day, Hoag said he was able to muster around 200 signatures against the zoning change.
Johnson then weighed in. “Toledo is looking to go green…we’re looking to plant more trees. Why are we looking to plant pollution?”
Torres, Johnson and Hoag said they were going to present the signatures at Toledo City Council’s offices. All three ordinances are on the agenda for the June 3 city council meeting.
Hobbs declined to comment any more than he already had.
> Before the Torres/City Council standoff at the agenda review, Council went into extensive questioning about the future and programming of the Chester J. Zablocki Center, a senior and community center on 3015 LaGrange Street, as they reviewed a possible $150,000 feasibility study.
“With the support of the Area Office on Aging, they have elected to move over to the new Wayman Palmer YMCA. With that move, they will be serving their existing clients, and the hope is to pick up and serve additional seniors that are in the new Wayman Palmer market,” said Rosalyn Clemens, director of the Department of Housing & Community Development.
Multiple council members noted that about $1 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars had been put into revitalizing the Zablocki Center, and that they hoped it could continue to be put back into full use soon.
Clemens assured council members that was part of the plan, but for the time being some programming would be moved to the new YMCA.
> $14,700 was proposed to replace stolen golf carts at Ottawa and Collins Parks. Council Member Sam Melden (District 5) explained a new solution to the theft of golf carts from the Golf Commission. “They [the Golf Commission] brought up the notion of a GPS software that created a geo fence area where the carts, once they hit that boundary, were shut down.”
Unsure of how expensive that kind of software would be, Melden proposed that a financial analysis should be done to see if the cost of the software would be less than the cost of replacing the carts.
Theresa Morris (District 6) agreed with the Golf Commission’s solution. “Any kind of a GPS, because this is ridiculous. I mean, it seems like this happens a lot, and again these are taken. These aren’t lost. These are maliciously taken, so I think it’s important that we do have legal surveillance. Or that we do have some sort of a security system in place.”
