or what happened at City Hall the last two days
From 1:00 am to 3:30 am I posted this list of posts, by 8:30am they were all deleted...
5136. Wed at City Hall by SolonPol, 02/09/12 1:09 AM
1. FREEDOM!! by bystander75, 02/09/12 1:12 AM
1. Ala Braveheart? by SolonPol, 02/09/12 1:14 AM
2. Deer Killing by SolonPol, 02/09/12 1:14 AM
3. Public Records by SolonPol, 02/09/12 1:33 AM
4. Police Dept Bldg troubles by SolonPol, 02/09/12 1:46 AM
5. Historic Homes by SolonPol, 02/09/12 2:20 AM
6. Aurora Rd by SolonPol, 02/09/12 2:46 AM
7. Stop dodging me Eddie by SolonPol, 02/09/12 2:54 AM
8. Gimme a break by SolonPol, 02/09/12 3:27 AM
SO I responded with
5136.1. Censorship at its absolute worst...
by SolonPol, 02/09/12 10:30 AM
Re: Very sad... by bystander75, 02/09/12 10:30 AM
So this forum kept surewoodi's threat to intimidate me and violate the forum rules, but very swiftly deleted my commentary on city hall actions. This is a new record, usually it takes city hall at least 12 hours to respond, this time they not only responded in less than 5 hours, but did it before 9am. We have an early riser at city hall. I see they left surewoodi's threat but deleted my response to it.
So what got it pulled?
THERE WERE NO UNTRUE STATEMENTS, THERE WAS NO MOCKING OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS, THERE WAS JUST THE SAD SAD TRUTH ABOUT WHAT WENT ON AT CITY HALL FOR THE LAST TWO DAYS.
Well BSer, I'm glad you read it and liked it. For the rest of you, well it will be reposted to my own blog far beyond the reach of local politicians to interfere with, and if you don't like, just talk to me about solving the issues I raised and I'll be happy to report that too. Thanks to this forums buggy nature I composed all the posts on Notepad++ and pasted the rough draft into this forum.
See for all the "in the Mayor's hip pocket" crap I get, I'm really just a balanced reporter who often has a differing view from the masses. But when I am critical of city hall, they notice and respond quickly.
Here's a summary of what I said... And Joe you are going to have to go to the URL that I'll post here soon to read it since I can't keep posting it here every few hours only to have it deleted.
But take it from BSer, when he says its a must read, its gotta be true...
5136. Wed at City Hall
Here's a run down of what I learned at city hall today. Most of it from the Safety Meeting, some of it from conversations. Should I write this post or bow to intimidation of cowardly chickenshits who want to intimidate me?
5136.2 Deer Killing
The police chief said that only 3 shooters are active in Solon, so on any given day 20 of the sites aren't active. The Patch's list is slightly smaller than the older list on the SolonDeer sites because several kill sites were dropped.
The same guns and silencers are being used as White Buffalo used, but the Feds (USDA WS) are using standard ammo, White Buffalo used a hand packed lighter load ammo, just strong enough to bring down a deer, but with less power than standard ammo.
The part time semi retired Hromco is in charge of all notification issues. Supposedly all adjacent properties to a kill site are to be notified each time killing is done.
5136.3 Public Records
I noticed that the LPV site is no longer listed for archive videos, any meeting video before Sept 2011 is no longer available online. IF you know which video you want you can buy it from city hall for $3 per meeting. Previously 2 full years of video were online.
Meeting minutes used to be available from 2005, now there is only one year listed, with 2 years possible if you search for it. The search process has some inconsistency, its one of many new web site issues that I'll be reporting to the city.
This is hard to understand given that these records are already stored electronically and only use a modest amount of storage.
Yesterday at the financial budget meetings the director talked about our huge amount of paper records and associated storage costs. He will be proposing a more aggressive records retention schedule. He also discussed a major challenge in scanning city records, apparently there is a huge backlog in the process.
5136.4 Police Dept Bldg troubles
The 12 yo building has some major HVAC problems for some time now. Parts of the building can't be heated in the winter and drop to under 60 degrees. Another problem occurred with the air conditioning in the server room. The committee approved an RFQ for a consultant to analyze and recommend an HVAC solution.
At yesterdays Finance Meeting they announced police dispatch software is incompatible with the new phone system so $18K is being budgeted to replace it.
5136.5 Historic Homes
An architect reviewed the condition of the historic buildings on BB Rd, the Solon Historical Society, the Lynch House, and the Bull House. The Mayor reported safety violations in the Historical Society building that she corrected immediately since the building is open to the public. Other issues are awaiting action of the Safety and Public Properties Committee. It was mentioned that these costs were very large, one set of costs for safety was large, but the cost to open the buildings involved accessibility and current building code issues was even larger.
Kraus said that our long term plans should not include the city owning the Lynch and Bull houses. Russo pointed out that we have to weigh and justify the future usage of the homes with the cost. The Mayor pointed out that the previous Master Plan's idea to build an amphitheatre there is no longer. See
http://bettersolon.blogspot.com/search/label/MasterPlan
In similar news the red home at the Community Park is city owned and has water leaking and safety hazards. The committee approved the demolition of the building, it will be done by the city's service dept for considerably less money than a private contractor. The garage will remain for now. The Mayor mentioned the Master Plan, being the only citizen to attend all meetings (those appointed didn't), I don't recall any such discussion.
5136.6 Aurora Rd
An overview of the Aurora Rd intersection was given at the end of the meeting in a last minute revision of the agenda. It was discussed about 43 min in and will be fully presented next month.
This is a new traffic study which contradicts but doesn't supersede the unpublished (as yet after 1 year of requests) the Master Plan Traffic Study, adopted as Chapter 23, but most recently the online version
http://solonohio.org/index.aspx?nid=272 has removed all chapter headings to make it more readable because of missing chapters (which still exist today after the committee has stopped regular meetings)
See
http://bettersolon.blogspot.com/2011/03/master-plan-feb-10.html or
http://bettersolon.blogspot.com/search/label/MasterPlan
The MasterPlan called Aurora Rd the most immediate problem. Now that Geauga Lake is closed, traffic is better, but that property will not remain undeveloped. The new traffic study recognizes that but doesn't seem to have a long term solution. Several ideas were discussed, intersection by intersection from SOM to the county line.
One big possibility is to take away the bike lanes used by bikes, pedestrians and mail trucks and restripe the road to three lanes, one in each direction and a left turn lane so traffic isn't impeded by those stopping to make left turns.
5136.7 Stop dodging me Eddie
Geez, three days in a row. I told you I've got stuff on my mind, you're my councilman, and we need to talk. Is this avoidance technique what got Joe started? Funny after you dodged me yesterday your former opponent called to discuss these items... And you couldn't remember who he was? Didn't you see his sign on my front yard or that we were talking Monday night?
Come on Eddie, if you're going to be Mayor ya need to start paying attention to the squeaky wheels in the city. Call me or email me...
5136.8 Give Me a Break
Horse Crossing
Didn't write this item that night
Postscript / Updates
Called Eddie at lunch, we had a nice conversation about opportunities to improve Solon Govt, we agreed that the city web site/transparent govt and the MasterPlan were two specific areas in need of large improvements.
More too come...
Responses
More too come...
Status: Rough Draft, updated 12:52
