Okay, good evening.
I will call the Monday, February 23rd, 2026.
Regular City Council meeting to order.
Jenny, would you please call the roll.
Miss Aludo.
Mayor Ambrose-Grooms.
Here.
Vice Mayor DeRosa.
Here.
Miss Johnson.
Here.
Mr. Keeler.
Here.
Miss Cran.
Here.
Dr. Lamb.
Here.
Okay, we'll make a motion to adjourn to executive session for the purposes of personnel matters considering
the employment and compensation of a public employee.
And considering the appointment of a public official, is there a second?
Second.
Thank you, Jenny.
Would you please call the roll.
Mr. Keeler.
Yes.
Vice Mayor DeRosa.
Yes.
Miss Johnson.
Yes.
Dr. Lane.
Yes.
Yes.
Miss Cran.
Yes.
Miss Aludo.
Yes.
Okay, I will remind the viewing public that we will reconvene this meeting in this location
at 7 p.m.
Thank you.
Okay, we will reconvene the Monday, February 23, 20, 26 regular Dublin City Council meeting.
And Greg, would you like to lead us in the pledge?
Thank you.
Okay, this brings us to citizen comments.
This is an opportunity for a citizen to comment on any topic that is not on this evening
as agenda.
Hopefully, you had the opportunity to sign in the kiosk if you chose to speak publicly
this evening, if not, we will recognize you in order.
Lindsay, do we have anyone?
We do not.
We do not.
Is there anyone present that would like to speak relative to something not on this evening's
agenda?
Hearing none.
Consent agenda.
Is there a request to remove an item from the consent agenda?
Hearing none, I will make a motion to approve the consent agenda.
Is there a second?
Second.
Jenny, would you please call the roll.
Miss Cram.
Yes.
Mayor Amrosgrooms.
Yes.
Mr. Keeler.
Yes.
Dr. Lamb.
Yes.
Mr. Ludo.
Yes.
Ms. Johnson.
Yes.
Vice Mayor DeRosa.
Yes.
Okay, this brings us to introduction.
First reading ordinances.
Portion of our agenda.
I will make a motion to approve the council rules of order and read ordinances 0, 7-26-13-26 together.
Is there a second?
Second.
Thank you, Jenny.
Would you please call the roll.
Mayor Amrosgrooms.
Yes.
Miss Cram.
Yes.
Yes.
Vice Mayor DeRosa.
Yes.
Mr. Keeler.
Yes.
Dr. Lamb.
Yes.
Ms. Ludo.
Yes.
Ordinance 7-26.
Authorizing the city manager to execute an accept necessary conveyance documents and contracts
to acquire a 0.019 acre warranty deed and a 0.074 acre easement from the property located
at 7065 Shire Rings Road identified as Franklin County Person Number 272-00233 from Jason
Huffman for the public purpose of constructing a shared use path which shall be opened to
the public without charge.
Ordinance 8-26 is regarding acquiring a 0.021 acre warranty deed and a 0.086 acre easement
from the property located at 7055 Shire Rings Road from Jason Huffman.
Ordinance 9-26 is acquiring a 0.12 acre easement and a 0.024 acre warranty deed from the property
located at 7025 Shire Rings Road from Daryl Schwerk and Stephanie Schwerk.
Ordinance 10-26 acquiring a 0.082 acre easement from the property located at 6111 Holiday Lane
from Michael E. Ramsey and Sharon D. Ramsey.
Ordinance 11-26 is acquiring a 0.068 acre easement from the property located at 6111 Holiday Lane
from Allen E. Albu Hassan and Rachel Abba Hassan.
Ordinance 12-26 is acquiring a 0.071 acre easement from the property located at 6957 Shire Rings Road
from Ronnie Green.
And Ordinance 13-26 is acquiring a 0.091 acre easement from the property located at 6113 Shire Lane
from Barry Messa, Jr. and Angela Michelle Messa.
I'll do so.
Thank you.
Our staff report will be brought forward this evening by Brian Gable.
Welcome.
Good evening, members of Council.
The Shire Rings Road, Ironman Road to Cosgrove Road project will construct a shared-use path
along the south side of Shire Rings Road connecting two existing shared-use paths and improving
the overall shared-use path network connectivity.
In 2024, the city entered an agreement for the construction and maintenance of this path
with Washington Township.
The township submitted and received link us grant funding in 2024 funding in 2026.
Acquisition of property interests from nine property owners in the project area are necessary
to construct this project.
Seven, the seven ordinances before Council this evening provide for seven acquisitions
of property as detailed in the staff memo.
The city has participated in good faith discussions with the property owners and have arrived
at mutually agreeable terms.
These are all but two acquisitions for the project, one of which is going through the
appropriation process and you will hear about shortly.
The other is nearing completion of negotiations.
The adoption of these ordinances authorizes the city manager to execute all necessary conveyance
documents and contracts to formally acquire the necessary property interests.
Staff recommends adoption of ordinances 07-26 through 13-26 at the second reading and public
hearing on March 9th, 2026.
I will do my best to address any questions Council may have regarding these ordinances.
Very good.
Thank you.
Is there anyone present from the general public that would like to speak relative to this
legislation this evening?
Hearing none, Council questions discussion.
It's exciting to see this move forward.
It will be a great linkage in that part of the city.
Jenny, please call the roll.
I'm sorry.
My apologies.
This is first reading.
Senate reading, public hearing will be scheduled for March 9th on March 9th, 2026.
This brings us to ordinance 14-26.
Appropriate a 0.090 acre easement from the property located at 6114 Shire Lane identified
as Franklin County personal number 272-000357 from James A. Rave for the public purpose of
constructing a shared use path which shall be open to the public without charge.
I'll do so.
Great.
That's with Brian Walker, staff report.
Good evening again, members of Council.
This ordinance is within the same project as discussed in the previous ordinances this evening.
Ordinance 14-26 will approve the appropriation of an easement on one property.
The parcel is highlighted in red on the right hand of your screen in the slideshow there.
Attempts to contact the owner of this parcel or any authorized representative of record
have been unsuccessful.
That certainly hopes to negotiate this acquisition with the property owner.
However, this legislation allows the city to proceed with the appropriation process should
contact with the owner not be feasible.
The city's negotiator sent certified copies of the previously approved resolution to
the appropriate, excuse me, resolution to appropriate to the home and any associated
owner representative.
Should the owner or a representative be found the city will work to achieve a fair settlement
for this acquisition?
That recommends approval of ordinance 14-26 to commence this appropriation and to allow
the project to remain on schedule and proceed to construction.
I'll be glad to address any questions Council may have regarding this ordinance.
Very good.
Thank you.
Is there anyone present from the general public that would like to speak relative to this
legislation?
Hearing none, Council questions, discussion?
Okay.
This two will be four second reading public hearings scheduled for March 9th, 2026.
It's 15-26, amending Chapter 72 and 75 of Dublin's codified ordinances to enhance safety
regulations from micro-mobility devices and other similar devices.
I'll do so.
Thank you.
Our staff report will be brought forward by Genie Willis and Joe Bacheler from Frost Brown,
Todd Gibbons.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Good evening, members of Council.
Tonight, staff is pleased to present the draft code for micro-mobility devices for
your consideration.
Joe Bacheler, as you mentioned, played a significant role in developing the draft
code is with me here tonight to provide legal insights into the existing and proposed
code and will review each for you.
This evening's presentation will begin with a brief overview of the code sections affected
by the proposed micro-mobility updates and how those sections interact with one another.
Joe will then walk through the proposed code revisions, highlighting the key changes,
clarifications and policy considerations reflected in the draft.
The presentation will then next focus on helmet considerations, including options and
the policy implications associated with each.
I will then provide an overview of the education plan outlining how existing programs, partnerships
and communication channels will be leveraged to support implementation of the updated code.
The presentation will conclude with staff requesting Council feedback and direction
particularly on how any potential changes to helmet requirements prior to the second
reading.
With this, I will turn over the presentation to Joe to review the changes made to the
code since the January 20 meeting.
Hi, so as we discussed last time, there was a little bit more thorough presentation of
the overall code proposed code amendments.
I'll go through a couple of the big points.
One in 7506 is really where the big meat of this ordinance is in terms of the rules for
all of these devices on road sidewalk shared use pads.
A couple other points 7512 defines micro-immunity devices and aims to clarify that by also
specifying what is not a micro-immunity device to avoid any confusion.
75.13 adds a parental responsibility requirement that a lot of other cities have the double
and does not currently have.
And then 75.14 adds some clarifications about fleets like VO that are currently operating.
Now I'll move on to some changes since the last meeting.
So one as Council members Kramer and Keeler had discussed, we have amended the definition
of miniature motorcycle to clarify that it applies to both a combustion and an electric engine.
Per Council's direction, we also remove the helmet requirement.
And then also with some constituent feedback that we have received since the last meeting.
There was a clarification in the code that we've been working on where current state law
does not reflect where current code does not reflect where code currently is.
So state law used to require riding within three feet of the right edge of a roadway.
It now requires as far right as practicable.
So we have eliminated the three foot requirement in current code.
And then also we'll be shifting one of the requirements into 75.06 so that it's easier
for a rider or a constituent to read the code and understand some exceptions to that right
side of the road requirement as well.
And those changes, most of them are currently in the draft code.
One of them came within the last couple of days.
So it will be in the next version of the code that is presented to you.
We also again remove the helmet requirement.
However, we were asked to look further into some of the helmet considerations starting
with the 18 year old requirement.
So serving other communities, it's somewhat of a mixed bag.
There's a small plurality with an 18 year old requirement from New Albany, Columbus,
and Bexley.
And I know that there was questions from Council Member Keeler regarding how that would apply
to renting via devices, for example.
So under VO's current agreement with the city, they won't rent to anyone under 18 so that
wouldn't be impacted.
Now current state law does not allow renting to anyone under 16 so there's a little deviation
there.
But we understand the standard industry practice is to not rent to anyone under 18 for various
reasons.
And also there was some community feedback provided that we forgot to mention at the last
meeting where the Dublin residents who took the survey expressed broad support for some
form of a helmet requirement.
And then so with that, there are several options.
One, we can clarify the fleet section to say that no rentals are allowed for anyone under 18
which would then not impact any helmet requirement.
And two, it could be a 16 year old helmet requirement which aligns with the revised code.
And option three is that we can pick and choose some device helmet requirements, that's
not included on the slide, but that could be devices that are not fully human powered
require a helmet up to a certain age while manual devices might not.
And now, Jeanne, you can go to the education.
So thank you, Joe, for that brief overview.
So Dublin already has a strong multi-channel micimobility education framework in place
and is provided in more detail in the memo if you are looking for that information.
As the code is updated, existing youth programs, school partnerships, community outreach and
online resources will be leveraged and aligned to reflect the final amendments, reinforcing
an education first approach to safety and compliance.
Fiscal and micimobility education begins early through the Dublin Community Recreation
Center Programming with Safety Education Week, incorporated into youth camps for ages 4 through 9.
Instruction from the Dublin Police and Washington Township Fire Department focuses on age-appropriate
safety, helmet use, and basic roadway and awareness.
The city's annual Dublin bike rodeo further reinforces these messages through a hands-on
safety event led by Dublin Police featuring a skills course, helmet education again,
and opportunities to safely test-ride shared micimobility devices.
Community-based education is also supported through the mobility concierge pop-up meetings
and the slow-down Dublin campaign, which promotes safe speeds and shared responsibility among
drivers, bicyclists, scooter riders, and pedestrians through signs, outreach, and ongoing communications.
Our school resource officers play a key role in reinforcing safe riding behaviors and
regulatory awareness in our schools, including development of an interactive web-based tool
to help students and parents understand where devices may operate and the applicable age
and helmet requirements if any.
These efforts are complemented by partnerships with our Dublin City Schools and a comprehensive
set of online resources, including bicycling, motorized mobility, and micimobility webpages
along with new tools such as the Active Transportation Safety Guide and the micimobility
matrices.
The screenshots on the right show a small sample of the existing educational videos that
can be repurposed and modified for the micimobility education.
Together, these established programs provide a strong foundation to support the updated micimobility
code, ensuring consistent messaging, broad community reach, and safe, responsible micimobility
use across all ages and modes of travel.
So with this, staff is seeking direction from City Council if they would be supportive
of either option or the third option that Joe mentioned for helmet requirements to be
advanced to the second reading.
Staff will incorporate any revisions based on Council feedback, if any, and recommends
adoption of ordinance 15-26 at the second reading public hearing on March 9th, 2026.
Thank you, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Very good, thank you.
Is there anyone present from the general public that would like to speak relative to this
legislation?
Hearing none, Council questions, discussion?
I just had one comment.
To be clear, I missed the definition of things.
So a motorized bicycle, though, is a, is a, is a mo-passion, yes, that's the mo-passion.
It's not.
Okay, yep, got it.
But for the motorcycle, when we combined them, I'm sorry, say the last one.
We combined them.
We changed the term, the gas engine and the electric engine, yes, we clear the motorcycle
for the motorcycle.
Okay, correct.
So a motorized bicycle is still like a mo-pass.
Correct.
Got it.
I had one question.
I was reading.
Let's see, it was page 269, hold on, let me find the right page.
The section, there was one, so section 75.06, it was D. It says that no person to operate
a micro-mobility device, a bicycle, electric bicycle, in a parking garage.
But don't we have covered parking at the library, like in theory, you would ride your micro-mobility
device into that.
So there is a specific location that would be in the northwest corner of there.
And so there, yes, it's, I guess it's just a test, it's just a technique.
Okay, so it's really meant to cover the riding up and down the ramps.
I figured that's what it's meant to cover.
I just, I knew we had covered parking in a garage somewhere, but it's like right off of
the sidewalk, so it, I feel like that, that would not work.
I didn't know if we needed to say except for parking the device or something, but that's
why, I think that's the only place we had covered parking was the parking.
That is my understanding.
Okay.
All right, no worries.
Thank you.
Other comments?
So there were some questions that were posed to us, if you want to.
So there's the recommendation, and then here's the question posed about helmets.
Would anyone like to chime in or deviate from the last direction we gave to that?
I would just say I think there was new information after the VO rental.
I don't know that it was made clear to us that you could not rent one of those vehicles
if you were under the age of 18.
And I thought that it was a good point to say we don't want to have someone go rent.
But I can't imagine that we would have a helmet agreement for 18 years of age and older.
But perhaps it might be appropriate then to say for younger 12, 14, 16, whatever pick
the age, that it may be appropriate to have a helmet requirement given that it will not
be in conflict with the rental micromobility tools that are available in the city.
So I like the second option that was presented here just because it aligns with state law.
It just makes it cleaner and easier and wouldn't cause us to have to make changes requiring
people to bring helmets with them as they're going to do a micromobility device since they
don't rent to anybody under 18.
It doesn't matter.
So that I would be supportive of that because I just feel like it makes it cleaner and easier.
It's just easy to understand.
Are we completely clear that there's no caveat for family rentals?
Like I take my son and he's 14, we're going to go rent a scooter.
So we can't do rent a scooter.
So with the end user agreement and it does seem to be standard industry practice, that if
a parent allows a child to ride a shared rented device, it can only be a manually powered
pedal, bicycle.
So it would not be an emotor type of device.
So the double scooters, yeah, it would be a bike that they would be riding.
So to be clear, Ohio law is if you are under the age of 16 and writing a micro-mobility
device, as we defined it, you have to wear helmet.
So the way the Ohio law is written is that you must be 16 years of age in order to be
able to rent a micromobility device.
Okay.
But there's no Ohio law requiring a helmet on any of the devices, e-bikes, class 3 e-bikes,
yes.
Okay.
And that one we did not remove.
That is correct.
Personal, assistive, mobility devices, yes.
Helmets are required.
But in terms of scooters, any of the devices that we're talking about, class 1 class 2 e-bikes,
the skateboards, no.
There's no requirement.
The state has no requirement.
The state has no requirement.
Okay.
So I'm still supportive of not having a requirement.
If the state does not have a requirement, I would say not muddy the waters and make it
confusing as the who needs the helmet.
So can I ask the question?
You said there was some new information about when we asked the residents, there was
strong support for a helmet.
Could you share a little bit more information about that, please?
Yes, so as part of the community's wide survey that we conducted late last year, one
of our questions specifically was, do you support the provision of a helmet requirement
for youth under the age of 18?
Overwhelmingly our residents supported that, the survey respondents supported that with
nearly 90% of the respondents saying, yes, they felt that that was appropriate to include
in our provisions.
Thank you.
So I'm in agreement with 88% of the survey respondents and I still think, and I think
14 is a, I don't know that it has to be, you know, 18, but I am still supportive of
a helmet requirement for youth and we could discuss what is youth, is it 12, is it 14,
whatever.
I would also say that in conjunction with that, I would request and I do know that the law
enforcement group has free helmets for people that can't afford to, we do have a helmet
program, I'm correct in that, I might not, we do, yes.
That we would continue to provide them so we're not making a law for which someone who
couldn't financially manage it, do it, but, because we want to encourage bike riding.
So again, as an avid bike rider, I would strongly advocate for a youth helmet.
Thank you.
You said bike twice.
So this option one, more or less says the vendors we choose to operate the fleets, these
are rentals only, not personal devices that somebody owns, they can't rent to someone
under the age of 18.
That's already in place.
We've, that addresses the folks that are renting.
Any of the question of the people that own their own device, it would seem like residents
are supportive, the majority of residents are supportive of it.
So I would say any rider under the age of 18 must wear a helmet, thanks.
So quick question for the survey that was conducted, how many respondents did you get
to that survey?
I believe there are 320.
So that's actually a really good number.
I looked on Zen City and there was nothing I could find on Zen City about the question
of helmets for market mobility, for youth, but I think the survey actually speaks very
loudly to that.
I actually am in favor of the helmets, initially I wasn't only because there wasn't a distinction
about the rentals, but now that there is, like Council Member Keeler says, this only applies
to the privately owned.
The rentals, actually that's already said and done because you can't rent under 18.
So the reason why I support it is because the vast majority of preventable head injuries
are to those 16 and under.
So this is, and this is just a position to me, this is something that we can actually help
prevent a public health problem.
And so the age that's tough, I don't think you're going to get any 18 or 17 year old to
wear a helmet, but certainly I think 16 is reasonable.
And so I would be supportive of a helmet requirement for 16 and under.
Other thoughts?
Well, I generally believe everyone who rides a device, nobody plans on having an accident
and everyone should wear a helmet, that's my personal thought.
People should wear helmets.
I don't believe that it's the role of the city government to mandate that.
I think it's a personal choice and I don't see how we police it, how do we enforce it?
And so to pass an ordinance without teeth, I'm not in favor of that, I'm not in favor of
a helmet law and I'm not in favor of passing an ordinance that we really can't realistically
enforce.
Other thoughts?
Well, you know, as a mom of kids, I think that it is helpful to have a backstop sometimes
when you want to encourage some behavior that maybe not be widely popular, but if you could
say, well, it's the rule and you have to, it's not my rule, it's the rule and it's there
to keep people safe.
I think that might be good enough reason and I don't think chief is going to, you know,
have a new department that's going to be on helmet patrol around the city, but it may
help some parents communicate to their kids that this is important and your safety is important
and it's just not me that's concerned about you, it's the community at large that is
as well.
So, for that, I would be interested in selecting an age.
I agree that, you know, 17, 18-year-olds are not, you know, I probably would be in the
14 range because you're not in high school yet.
It seems like that's when some of those things change a little bit, but I don't want to
leave out a people group that might be, you know, more susceptible to injury.
So, I think there is enough support to discuss what's the right age.
So I would welcome thoughts on what is the right age.
I think if we're going to do it, I think 16 makes some sense.
Having a current 15-year-old in my house, I think 16 probably makes some sense.
If I could have them be 16 when they're driving in the car with their friends, I'd do
that too with the helmet on.
Just saying.
I'm fine with 16.
That works for me.
Okay.
Now, we need to make the amendment.
No.
That will come back in second reading.
I can have the code revised by the second reading.
Okay.
So I think the first one is probably the selected one and then the age would be 16.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
We can get that feedback for second reading.
Any other comments members would like to make prior to moving on?
Okay.
We will have second reading public hearing scheduled for March the 9th, 2026.
This brings us to Introduction Public Hearing Vote Resolutions, Resolution 08-26.
Appointing a member to the Architecture Review Board for the City of Dublin, Ohio.
I'll introduce it.
Thank you.
Our staff report will be brought forward by our admin committee, Chair, Vice Mayor Kathy
D'Rosa.
Right.
Thank you very much.
At the final meeting of 2025, Hillary Damasser was appointed to fill a vacancy on the
Planning and Zoning Commission, as you recall, therefore creating a subsequent vacancy on
the Architecture Review Board.
Pursuant to the chart or such vacancies must be filled within 60 days.
Council conducted interviews and have selected a candidate to serve in that role.
Accordingly, it is my pleasure to recommend to Council Adoption of Resolution 08-26,
Apporting Terry Sidel to the Architecture Review Board.
Thank you.
Very good.
Is there anyone present from the general public this evening that would like to speak relative
to this resolution?
Hearing none.
Council questions?
Discussion?
Jenny, would you please call the roll.
Vice Mayor D'Rosa?
Yes.
Mayor Amrose-Grums?
Yes.
Ms. Johnson?
Yes.
Dr. Lam?
Yes.
Ms. Aluto?
Yes.
Mr. Keeler?
Yes.
Ms. Cram?
Yes.
Resolution 09-26, accepting the lowest and best bid for the 2020-26 Street Sweeping Contract
and authorizing the City Manager to enter into contract for the project.
Undesign.
And our staff report will be brought forward this evening by Jay Anderson.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Good evening, members of Council.
Before you, this evening is Resolution 09-26 to set the bid for the 2020-26 Citywide Street
Sweeping Contract.
This contract is executed with a maximum of three-year term with the option to renew
each year based on the performance of the contractor.
This contract includes five complete sweeps of the city throughout the year and has the
option, optional sweeping services that can be executed upon our request.
One bid was received for this contract and submitted by SCA of Ohio in the amount
of $148,800,800, which is 9.8% below the projected amount within the 20-26 operating
budget.
SCA of Ohio, which is a subsidiary of sweeping corporate of America, has successfully provided
street sweeping services for the city for the past several years in contract variants.
Staff has thoroughly revised the bid, or I'm sorry, reviewed the bid, and SCA of Ohio
has historically provided says factory services for the city.
Staff is recommending the adoption of Resolution 09-26, and I'm happy to answer any questions
you may have.
Very good.
Thank you.
Is there anyone present from the general public that would like to speak relative to this
resolution?
Very none.
Council questions, discussion?
I just have one, Jay.
How many street sweepers does the city own?
I know we have at least one, because I see one driving around with our little logo on
the door.
Yeah, we have one.
They're very expensive and very expensive to maintain, and thus using this option has
proved cost-effective solution.
I would say we need another additional two street sweepers if we were going to do what
we do with this contract.
So the contract really brings some value.
So we use the one that we have often?
We do.
So that's set aside for any emergency response we may have.
We use it for events sweeping, any type of special request, you know, that's at hand
and ready to go at a moment's notice, support PD with a lot of operations with that.
So yeah, we do get quite a bit of use out of it.
Very good.
Thank you.
Uh-huh.
Okay.
If there is no further discussion, Jenny, which please call the roll.
Dr. Lam?
Yes.
Miss Aluto?
Yes.
Miss Cram?
Yes.
Miss Johnson?
Yes.
Vice Mayor DeRosa?
Yes.
Mayor Amro's Grounds?
Yes.
Mr. Keeler?
Yes.
Other, this brings us to the other business portion of our agenda.
And we will begin by the zoning code and subdivisions regulation audit introduction in our staff
report.
We brought forward this evening by Sarah Holt.
Welcome.
Thank you, Mayor.
Good evening, Council.
We are here to formally and enthusiastically introduce the code audit project to you.
You may have seen mention of this project in the city manager's report.
Planning has recently hired Clarion and McBride Dale Clarion to help us.
They are trusted partners that we've worked with on a lot of significant projects.
An audit is an analysis and prioritization exercise.
It's a necessary step before we actually start to make any changes.
In other words, this project will provide prioritized steps for future code updates.
And the project will not rewrite the codes yet.
And it will not reopen previously approved plans.
So the purpose tonight is to provide an overview of this project to you, relay a summary of
the project kickoff activities, and receive high-level council feedback on the project direction.
As you know, there are many visionary and adopted plans that inform this effort.
And these include envision Dublin, the economic development strategic plan, the housing study,
most recently the sustainability plan, and the development review process improvement
efforts began in 2024 and they are ongoing.
And of course, we have city council goals of sustainable, connected, and resilient.
All of these documents have bold ideas that support consistent goals.
And our challenge is that the current codes are outdated and may not help us achieve
the goals that we see.
So now we have an opportunity to modernize them and at the same time, fold in the efficiencies
that we've discovered through the development review process improvement.
Examples are specifically touched on in the memo.
In your packet, you also have a policy summary matrix, and that recaps the goals of envision
Dublin, the housing study, and the sustainability plan, and how those intersect with this project.
To emphasize, the audit is a natural outgrowth of these visionary efforts, and again, our
primary goal is to ensure that the codes support the vision.
So first taking a look at where we have been.
We contracted with the consultant team in late 2025, and in January and February of this
year, we had a multi-day project kickoff, and that involved stakeholders, board and commission
members, a technical advisory committee, full staff, and the consultants.
We had a very successful survey, and that was combined with in-house and virtual meetings
and interviews, and we received very thoughtful and useful feedback throughout the whole process,
and there is a summary sheet in your packet.
So now the formal introduction comes to you all, and please note that in March we want
to have individual discussions with you to get some more detailed information about your
thoughts.
In the second quarter of this year, you will be seeing both draft and final documents
to comment on and hopefully to adopt.
It's important to remember that phase two of this project actually implements the audit.
That's where the changes start coming in.
This project phase two is budgeted for later this year, and that will involve robust participation.
So based on the kickoff survey and the discussion results and our team experience, these are
the potential topics for investigation, and this is by no means a complete list, but the
topics are wide-ranging include everything from reformat and reorganize the codes for ease
of use, improve development standards for things like parking, landscaping, signage,
using or removing underutilized zone categories, examining mixed-use strategies, and this is
a much larger topic than we had originally anticipated, so we are now working on developing
a separate and parallel contract with the consultants to help define what is mixed use,
and how do we achieve it while minimizing city risk?
We are also going to consider housing variety, update and clarify procedures, and overall
just modernize the philosophy and the approach of the codes.
Next steps as hinted at previously include individual meetings with council members, and that's
in March, the project team will compile all of these inputs and draft the audit document,
and then the team will present the draft document to both Planning Commission and City Council
for last inputs and adjustments, and then based on that, the team will finalize the code
audit report, present it to Planning Commission for a recommendation, and to City Council
to review and hopefully adopt.
And then we can commence phase two, which is the actual implementation of what that report
talks about.
So to that end, we have some specific questions for you.
To paraphrase what policy areas or priorities should be emphasized, how should the codes
balance clear standards versus discretionary review?
What level of flexibility and creativity is anticipated versus high quality design and
predictability?
What housing types, land use concepts, or topic areas need particular attention to support
our long-term vision?
And are there additional areas of refinement regarding the initial inputs?
And then of course, any other considerations that you might have?
And with that, I am happy to answer any questions.
Very good.
Thank you.
I would like to comment, is there anyone present this evening from the general public
that would like to speak relative to this topic?
Hearing none, Council, questions, discussion.
We've got six, five plus questions, pour us.
I'm going to start.
Anybody?
I suppose I can start.
I guess the policy matrix that was attached here, I'm assuming that was developed from the
stakeholders you've talked to to date then, is that where these came from?
The policy matrix, the multipage one, the 15 page one, we actually went back through
those three adopted documents and pulled out all of the action items to highlight where
this activity could intersect with those documents.
Okay, because a lot of those things aren't actually, I guess, fixable in the code.
Maybe I guess it's the right answer.
The code's not the solution to a lot of those things, so I was a little perplexed about
what that meant.
But you're just saying that you're using that as a basis of where some code changes could
be possibly changed.
Exactly.
And making sure that we don't miss anything.
Okay.
All right, so as far as, I guess the questions, what came to mind for me was particularly
an envisioned Dublin, we came up with some new categories, I guess, or the LA and
used categories, which don't exist in our code yet, and we've found that that obviously
causes a problem.
So I think that's one of the big things that needs fixed, we need to define those.
So again, I don't, I guess the ideas I have have probably already popped up.
You gave us such a high level of these or the categories we're going to talk about.
I don't have any specific things to add, because I'm sure you've talked, I mean, there
was something in there about sustainability, so I'm sure you've considered wind and other
things that might pop up.
My initial thought was kind of ties to our website and education of the code, because
it's really hard to find information about our code.
If you type in CDO Dublin code, it takes you to the American Legal Publishing, which
is kind of hard to search.
You can search by a word, but then it pulls it up everywhere and the average public doesn't
know that section 152 or whatever is zoning.
I think it would be great to, at some point, have an index of code section, basically equivalent
to a book index, like so you could go to, oh, decks, and it would tell you the code sections
at least that you could go search through American Legal Publishing.
So I think something that helps people find what they're looking for, like right now,
you could go to permits and find out you need a permit for a deck or a pool or a fence,
but it's really hard to find out how you get approved for solar panels or an accessory
building.
You know, you want to put a shed up.
So I think there's a lot of work on our website we can do, because right now you can download
the registry code as a PDF, and it's great, that's easy, accessible.
Like the width or text flex, that's not out there.
You don't have to go search for it.
So I think we can improve it from a public facing side, because it's not just developers
who go and look for this stuff, you know, the people want to know if they can put a shed
up or if they can, I got a question the other week, can I put up a small little,
wind turbine?
You know, I just, there's, it's really hard to find anything.
So I think as we're looking at improving the code, we also need to improve how people
find the code and find the answers, so that we don't always have to email planning staff
and ask you guys to search something down for us, so I think that's kind of all I have
at this point, since you gave us such high level stuff.
Like Amy, I mean, I completely agree with everything that Amy just said, there's, I mean,
I think you've covered every policy area you can cover in the policy document, the matrix
that you gave.
I mean, there's a lot in there, from, you know, aging in place to environmental sustainability.
It's all in here.
I'm not sure I could come up with another category if you'd really pressed me to.
So I'm really supportive of the matrix that you have here.
As far as like what level of flexibility and creativity, I think that if you're going
to consider things, all things should be on the table.
It doesn't mean you have to select all things, right?
So I think that developers are always going to look for things that are predictable and,
so that they know sort of what the process is to get something developed.
But I don't know if that's any different for a homeowner who's trying to build a shed
or put in a wind turbine, right?
You want to be able to have that predictability.
So I think that has to be a consideration as you're going through this process.
You know, I mean, we've talked about a lot of different potential concepts, particularly
for aging in place.
So I think those are things that should be considered.
We've talked about a lot of that over the years.
I think you've addressed it in the policy matrix.
So I'm not sure that I have a whole lot more to add, but I will double down on what Amy
said about looking for things, especially for someone like me that I'm not in that world
every day.
So if it's hard for Amy to find something and she does this kind of stuff all the time,
it's really, really hard for your average person to find something, you know, when you want
to put up that shed or what have you.
So I would just, I would double emphasize that.
But thank you.
The matrix is really, even I understood it.
Thank you for your work on this.
I can think of a couple areas that I would emphasize, and I reflect back to we had a
joint board and council workshop last August and some of the issues that came up.
The mixed uses you have in there, I think the vernacular is going to be really important
here because, for example, when we say it's going to be mixed use.
So it's all housing and I have a coffee shop.
That is not mixed use, that is housing with a coffee shop.
So I think getting the balance of when we say mixed use, it is a mix of uses and give
some frameworks around what we're talking because as we know, when this code was written,
there wasn't, I mean, mixed use wasn't a thing, right?
So it doesn't.
But I think we have to have some level of policy or specificity because I know right
now the planning and zoning group are looking at these and they're like, well, there is
something in there, but that isn't the spirit.
So I think we have to, and it's hard to do in the code for flexibility, but I think we
have to put some frameworks around it because it can't be all things and it can't, because
we're up against it right now.
So I did have a question a bit about the timeline, this will not be fast.
What is the timeline to completion on this?
Roughly.
Well, the timeline for completion of the audit part of it is the second quarter of
this year.
I mean, to actually update, yes, and we don't have a timeline right yet because we don't
know how many sort of individual projects there might be or phases.
It is going to be substantial.
And that makes sense to me.
So the reason I say that is I would like to see us prioritize those things that are common
at us now.
And that is a big example of something coming at us now because you would mention in here
we're going to have to have a second agreement.
I would move that way up the timeline and move that forward because there are being decisions
being made now that we don't get that land back from.
So I would advocate for that and from a big policy area.
And to that, I think there is density and intensity as it relates to these.
We've had a lot of discussion about having, you know, three feet between buildings, you
couldn't put two air conditions and mo between the two, right?
So as we think about mixed uses, we think about higher density.
I think the intensity of that and the footprint.
And I know that's a lot.
But I think we need to think about what are the policy.
We're not saying that sometimes density is important but it's important in this relationship.
So I would refer back to some of that joint meaning we had and I would focus really on
a couple of those particular areas again because we're facing.
We had done some early guidelines as the code was getting, as things were getting finalized
so whatever we could do related to that.
And I would agree that, you know, different housing types are going to be important but
we should think through them then as we're talking about this and we go through.
So at this point, those would be my considerations of prioritization and topics.
Thank you.
So thank you so much for the summary.
As someone new to this whole process, I'm still learning and so I thought this was fantastic.
I think I took a little broader approach to this only because I am so new and I don't
really know all the details as a lot of the other council members do that have served
much longer.
Our experts in this and so the way that I looked at this was number one, you know, what do
we need to do to the code to make Dublin the premier city that will attract employers,
attract workers, but also give all families a path to live here in Dublin.
You know, from the young recent college graduates, the young families, to the more established
families, but also to our elderly.
As many people know, one of the things I always say is that my son, when he went off
to college, he came back after his first year and he said, I didn't realize how much
I love Dublin.
I want to come back here when I'm done with school.
And my response was, buddy, I don't know if you're going to be able to because of the
cost of housing.
And similarly, my parents recently moved to Dublin too.
And so, you know, affordability for our seniors is something top of mind to me.
The second thing that I use to kind of guide my view of this was actually the survey summary
that you guys did, which I thought was excellent.
So correct me if I'm wrong, but, you know, some of the things that I thought that was said
in this survey summary was that some of the most challenging and unclear aspects was the
zoning district regulations, the general development standards, and the overall code format,
correct?
That's correct.
Yes.
But the subdivision regulations were viewed as, you know, a little more understandable, a
little easier to deal with.
But I think if I read the summary correctly, what was requested was, you know, clearer
developmental approval standards, internal process alignment.
And those are the big things, correct?
So those are the challenges staff had with that.
That is correct.
Yeah.
And similarly, you know, the matrix, I thought was actually really helpful to you because
I sort of crosswalked, you know, how the code has to change to adopt the direction from
envision Dublin.
And as council member Cram mentions, there are some challenges with that because of the
categories that was defined.
And I think the categories specifically were like neighborhood village, center, urban,
right?
But we don't really have code for that.
So that's challenging.
And so those are, I think, those are what I actually use as far as to answer the questions
that you have because in my mind, one of the biggest thing is plan alignment.
So plan alignment with the envision Dublin future use land classifications, but how that
walks with the housing substudy or the housing study and the sustainability plan.
Because it was pointed out, you know, like there's a 6040 residential, some non-reserves
or land used.
So how are we going to do that?
At the same time, I think it was actually pointed out here that the housing study notes
that, you know, there's projected growth of 30% for seniors by 2040.
So how do we do that?
And so in answer to some of the questions, you know, I think that one of the big things
should be plan alignment with envision Dublin with the rest of the studies that you mentioned.
For me, intergenerational housing, attainability is going to be huge for that.
So I think a lot of the code prioritization would have to be done in modernization to
that.
I think those are the big things.
Some of the other things that we talked about, and I think was mentioned like the sustainability
stuff, some mobility, you know, like micro-embility transportation parking, I think that should
be also included in that as well too.
One thing that I was thinking about that I would love to see added is something about
maybe like a dashboard or some metrics that council can use so we can see how we're
progressing in all of these things.
So like housing for elderly, you know, housing for the young.
What do we mean by mixed use and how that's defined?
Because to be honest, as a newcomer coming to this, it's a little hard for me to keep up
with that.
So some easy metrics and easy dashboard that we could use to kind of keep track of all
of these things.
Other than that, I thought this is fantastic.
I think there's lots, lots more to discuss.
So I'm going to echo a lot of my council members' thoughts.
I think sustainability should really guide the code.
The vice mayor mentioned density and the current code as I understand it and I'm at a severe
disadvantage because I've never been on planning and zoning but it provides or I should say
Envision Dublin provides guidance on the range, density range.
What I've seen for to 17 units per acre, that's pretty big difference.
And I think we need to be sensitive to what that particular area of butts, where it is
relative to other, it's surroundings, let's say.
So there's an area on rings road where there's a proposal for development.
And I think we need to be very sensitive to what's along rings road, what's along that
roadway.
And then maybe more dances you get back into the parcel but guidance on that.
And I think because we have population growth, we need to account for this, but we also
need to be sensitive to it.
And as Dr. Lam mentioned, we want Dublin to remain a desirable place to live.
And I think we need to keep in mind as council member Reiner used to say, conservation design.
We can't get away from that.
That is what made Dublin Dublin.
So for me, sustainability is kind of the overarching issue.
And then density, intensity, and conservation design should guide everything.
But there's clearly been a lot of thought and a lot of stakeholder input into this matrix.
So there's a lot of really good stuff here that you can build upon.
I think we're here to just kind of give the go ahead and say, yep, that looks good.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Again, this was really great overview and I've learned a lot reading through everything.
Just one comment because so much has already been said.
We do use some terms in the code, in some of its land use designations, rural, maintain
the rural charm.
I know what that means.
I think I know what that means, but it could be very different than what other people feel.
So I think terms like that can either pigeonhole us or leave it too broad and maybe can
get us into some trouble.
So just calling attention to terms like rural character or maintain the rural character
or uniquely Dublin, I think that's something that we've stumbled across with different
developments in the past.
What exactly does that mean?
I guess I would encourage the audit to identify some of those, maybe what we feel are benign
terms, but ones that tend to be sticking points over time.
So thank you.
I'm going to take these questions in reverse order because that's how they line up better
in my head.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Refinements.
So the two, four and five, of what additional areas of refinements should be considered
regarding the initial inputs.
So I think so often when a project gets to planning and zoning and struggles is because
there was either a breakdown in the telling or the hearing of direction from staff
and so oftentimes you get an applicant coming in to the commission and they're either,
there's had a hard time understanding what staff was trying to tell them or that they
didn't want to hear it and they said, I'll, you know, I'll take my chances.
So I think that that checklist of feedback from staff needs to be really critical for there
to be a lot of clarity for the applicant.
So housing types land use concepts, topic areas should receive particular attention for
our long term vision.
I think we really need to focus in and have a robust portion on transit oriented development.
So as we see link us come in to run in through the center of town to, to everyone's point
is we're, we need to add housing.
We don't have really enough real estate and quite frankly it isn't affordable enough
anymore to add lots more single family homes, you know, on the third of an acre or quarter
of an acre or whatever that is.
That's probably we're not going to see lots of that come in for a host of reasons.
But I think we really will have a lot of opportunity for transit oriented development
and I don't really want us to wait until link us has been built to start contemplating
the transit oriented development along those routes because then you're looking at, you
know, three to five years before you have folks living in them and that's not going to
make those, those transit models work and we don't want to lose access to them.
So we, we need to kind of try to line those things up and get our, ourselves, get our
house and order in terms of the code so that as these alignments become more and more
clear and the timelines of those become more clear that those two things can happen
at the same time.
Similarly, on our Western border when we talk about passenger rail, I think we need to
start looking at more transit oriented development.
What is that going to mean for us?
What is that?
What is the Dublin version of that going to be?
And how many units can we add?
If we, you know, if we looked through where link us might come through of how many stops
there might be, we know there's going to likely be one in Bridge Park, we know there's
likely going to be one somewhere near the Kroger area or, you know, 161 Frans Road, somewhere
in through there, there's likely going to be one maybe at the OU neighborhood and then
hopefully it will terminate into a passenger rail stop.
To look at how many units or contemplate could we add there, it's the easiest place
to do them because they have the smallest impact on our roadway network.
So I'd like to see us lean into that, lean into code language about transit oriented development
and see how many units would feel comfortable for our community in those spaces.
Then when it talks about what level of flexibility, creativity should the audit consider in
allowing development standards to support high quality design while maintaining predictable
and community expectations, I think we need to look at our materials, right?
So there are, every day there's a new material out, right?
Like I get this, I don't know how I got on the algorithm on my phone that shows synthetic
stone that you nail onto a building, I get those popped through my phone all the time.
So there's new materials coming out every day, not all of them are good.
So I think we really need to work with someone in the industry to develop a list of materials
so that one of the big tripping points is when they say, well this is a new material and
we want to present it to the commission because we think it's going to be great and its
durability is through the roof and its cost is in the basement and so on and so forth.
So I think we really need some expert advice so that we can have very high quality long-term
durable buildings while we manage predictability and expectations.
So I would encourage us to do a lot of work in the material space.
And then how does city council want the code to function as implementation tool for adopted
plans, particular in terms of balancing clear standards with discretionary review?
And I think when we talk about mixed use there's been a lot of discussion about, is it a
project with a mix of uses, is it a mixed use building, is it, you know, what are those
things?
And that conversation is long.
But I think if we had some standards of saying you're new development, you can't rely on
your neighbor's development, right?
But in your new development, and I'm going to make up the percentage because I don't
know that they're right.
If it's 60% residential and 40% of commercial use, then you are granted a density, right?
So density X, if you bring in a building that has that mix of uses rather than trying
to say this is an apartment building with a coffee shop, this isn't a mixed use building,
this has an amenity, you know, instead of a gym, it has a coffee shop.
So I think when we talk about percentages of the building coming through that would have
would remove some of this, the discretionary nature of the review.
So I would like to see something around that be contemplated in this space.
And then what policy areas or community priorities should be emphasized or considered as the audit
moves forward, I will go back to what I already said.
And it's going to be, where can we add density?
I believe it's around transit oriented development.
Where can we add density to the community without having negative impacts to the people that
enjoy their single family home experience because a lot of people come here for that experience
and we don't want to reduce that experience by introducing new uses in proximity to someone
who wasn't comfortable in that space.
So but we do need to find spaces to add housing.
And I think that on those transit corridors is going to be the place to do it.
And I think that's where a lot of work needs to happen.
So do you have the, maybe once in a while again?
I have one more thing to add and it's my pipe dream, but I'm going to throw it out there.
I know it probably won't happen, but I would love to see the code look at considering
quality, reusable buildings versus one use.
We build things for one purpose and they're not adaptable, you know, old buildings you
could change them into all sorts of things and we just don't build that way anymore.
And I've said it multiple times over the years and this is my one pitch I'm going to say
again, I would love to see us encourage reusable construction of high quality, reusable buildings.
Yeah, I would echo that I think we've experienced that together for a long period of time that
any building over four stories or whatever would be slab buildings rather than stick buildings
so that in the event that they would have some adaptability for different uses over the
course of time, it's the reason why we still have Metro Center and have the opportunity
for redevelopment there.
So you heard a lot from us, do you have any questions, is there any clarifications, what
else can we give you to make this a successful endeavor?
Great feedback, thank you so much and I would just ask you to look for requests from
I think Mara Hunter is going to send them out so that we can hear from you in more detail
as we go on in March.
Okay, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
Okay, this brings us to our Public Safety Briefing Q1 of 2026 and our staff report will
be brought forward by our very own chief.
Welcome.
Good evening members of council, thank you for the opportunity to provide our first
quarter public safety update this evening.
As we talk about where we stand in 2026, want to start with how we finished in 2025, so
just as a reminder, the goals for 2025 that we established to help support delivering
our mission of protection service and public safety and partnership with the community,
were critical incident and major crime preparedness and response, that defense reduction throughout
the city, overall traffic safety improvement, and then effectively addressing issues of
significant community concern.
In 2025, the graphic we have on the screen this evening and just as a reminder, we published
monthly through the city manager's update as our commitment to transparency and accountability
and how we are performing in delivering on those goals each and every year.
As we talk about how we finished 2025, again, these metrics are benchmarked against previous
activity we have recorded through reports of incidents in 2024.
And what we saw in 2025 was we ended the year progressing in a positive direction and
downward trends, decreasing in overall theft defenses, decreasing in theft from vehicle
offenses, and breaking in entering offenses.
We ended the year with the exact same number of reports for theft and attempted theft
of vehicles or stolen vehicles.
We did see a decrease in burglary offenses as we ended the year.
We are still tracking some increase in overall crash reports over the last couple of years.
We'll talk a little more about that information as we progress through the presentation this
evening.
We did see a decrease in OVI related crash reports from last year.
So in 2026, just wanted to share, we have amended our goals slightly.
It really is the same spirit of, again, underlying and supporting that mission of protection service
and public safety and partnership with the community.
Our goals for 2026 as we had conversation with our supervisors entering the year will remain
critical incident and major crime preparedness and response, theft offense reduction throughout
the city, overall traffic safety improvement.
And then we split the goal, that split the fourth goal into two separate focuses in proactive
and collaborative community outreach and engagement and then effectively addressing issues of
significant community concern.
We just felt like we had fit a lot into that last goal and wanted to make sure we highlighted
and had an opportunity to make prominent those occasions where we're reaching out and connecting
with the community and collaborative effort in public safety.
So as we begin 2026, wanted to talk a little bit about some of the incidents that we've
had the opportunity to address and some of the focuses for the year.
From a critical incident preparedness and response, we were able to meet with the Washington
Township Fire Departments Administration in January to discuss our responses to a couple
of incidents of arson that occurred at the end of 2025, felt like it's really important
for us to continue to engage with the fire department to learn from those experiences and
from those investigations.
Although they remain in frequent, it's important for us in a setting of learning to talk through
how we handled those, how we communicated and prepare for the occasions where we might
have to respond to those types of events in the future.
And so thankful for Washington Township for hosting us in January.
When we talk about critical incidents, we often talk about crime or the preparation that
certainly a focus from us as the police department and safety as a focus for the fire department,
but want to also recognize that critical incidents can mean any occasion where there's
prolonged event that occurs in our community that impacts safety.
And so I want to give thanks to the city manager for bringing together all of the department
directors that have an impact and focus on navigating through those major weather events
and pulling together a virtual EOC so that we could continue to communicate throughout
that weekend and make sure that, again, thanks to Jay's team, Parks and Rec, the communications
team, for all coming together to make sure we had the right focuses as we navigated those
few days of heavy snow in January.
From crime trends this year, I want to talk and highlight a couple of incidents as we have
successfully resolved some criminal trends occurring or some criminal incidents that
have occurred.
At the beginning of February, we had an incident that was newsworthy on that evening with a stolen
vehicle that was driven by an adult and a juvenile who unfortunately crashed into the building
at the Donatos building on South High.
Those individuals fled from that incident but were quickly apprehended and I wanted to,
again, highlight just the responsiveness and preparedness for the officers on the occasions,
those events occur.
We certainly want to do our best to prevent those at all costs, but on this occasion it was
something we needed to respond and handle quickly.
And so for the officers who responded, Sergeant Clark, officers, Williams, Ford, and Borton
all responded quickly after officer Steinke's traffic stopped, turned a little more dynamic
than anyone anticipated that morning, but I want to give credit to the officers for responding
and quickly bringing into custody those two individuals and include a highlight for the
communications technician McKinley Ward who did an excellent job of communicating during
that event.
But I also want to highlight and focus that there was some critical support from community
members and when we talk about partnership with the community, that includes on those
occasions where something has occurred and we have residents who are willing to pick up
the phone or to communicate with the officers as they're moving through a situation safely
certainly to communicate with the officers where we're looking and that was critical in
bringing those individuals into custody very quickly.
So as we highlight some additional incidents, again, that partnership with the community,
we're very grateful for and appreciative and would encourage residents to call us when
they see something that seems suspicious as it did in this occasion and a couple of others
that we'll talk about.
On some other incidents, I wanted to highlight, again, as communication from the public,
we had an incident where there was a camera that was placed in a strange location within
the community.
We had some community members report it to us.
We took a report and immediately began investigating and were able to identify the person
who had placed that and what we suspect was more nefarious intent than just a trail camera
and were able to quickly identify and address that issue with that individual.
And great work, again, by the community and highlighting it and then detective Aaronovic
and identifying that individual shortly thereafter.
As a commitment to continuing to leverage technology, on February 6th, we had an incident
where our flock system notified us of a vehicle that was traveling through the community
that was reported as stolen.
It was an unauthorized use that had actually been missing for a couple of years, but our
officers were able to use that technology along with the drone that evening, drone as
first responder technology as well to identify where the vehicle was and then safely and
quickly bring that individual into custody.
And then from the communication of information with our law enforcement partners in the central
Ohio area, that's a critical component of us resolving issues that are not just in
Dublin, but that impact our public safety partners and other communities in our communities adjacent
to us.
And the community impact unit did some excellent job work in communicating about a specific
trend of activity with singular individual who was involved and then making sure that
we were able to safely resolve that and hold that person accountable for those offenses.
Again, a highlight of that continued partnership in central Ohio.
From the crime trends that we were tracking towards the end of last year, we did highlight
that incidents of burglary reports was something that we were trending a little bit of an
uptick all those incidents remain rare in our community, but just wanted to highlight
again the theft prevention efforts in making sure that security systems are not just in
place, but utilized and make sure that the software is updated and those are on.
As a recognition, again, of additional technology, we've leveraged to help us resolve these
critical incidents in the aftermath that they do occur.
Our law enforcement planner, we had a unique incident of a report of an unoccupied apartment
that was burglarized and the individuals attempting to sell the appliances that they took
from that apartment.
That investigation remains open, but wanted to highlight that our law enforcement planner
or our crime analysts used some technology for facial recognition on the surveillance video
we were able to obtain from that incident.
We would not have had identity on the suspects, otherwise we are still working through that
it's not the sole source of what we would use, but that facial recognition technology gives
us an additional lead.
And so, again, just wanted to highlight how we are using technology to help us investigate
crimes in the aftermath that they occur.
As a preventative, we made a commitment last year with our community safety ambassadors
and from our officers to really focus on, because we saw that trend in burglaries throughout
the year, just catch our attention, we wanted to make sure that we highlighted the emphasis
on vacation house watch, and certainly saw that commitment from our officers and our
community safety ambassadors throughout the year.
From a traffic safety perspective, again, our officers continue to remain focused on traffic
safety and traffic enforcement in the right places at the right times for the right reasons.
Our commitment certainly was highlighted by our continual effort.
The number of traffic stops are focused and slow down, doubling on the focus and emphasis
on speed, and then the speed warning cameras and leveraging for those community concerns
that are in neighborhoods where it's probably advantageous for us to use some technology
and then have our officers be freed up to focus on the areas elsewhere in the community
where we can work traffic enforcement, the speed warning cameras continue to give us an
additional resource to be able to be responsive to the community.
From the Business District Unit's first year in operation, really great work on the part
of Sergeant Kirby and Officer Webber and Officer Dobny, you can see their first-year activities
focused again, traffic in that area, there's a large corridor on Riverside that is an intentional
focus on their part along with the traffic enforcement officers in patrol, but their efforts
and focus does not go unnoticed by not just the department, but certainly by the community
and proud of the work that they have done in carving that path for that team as they
had their first year of operational activity.
And then from community outreach and engagement, again, highlighting that goal intentionally
this year to focus on those connections with the community, I want to thank the City Manager,
Washington Town Fire Department Chief Donahue, Dr. Marshowsen, and then Catero CEO Sarah Harrison
Mills for participating in the panel on mental health as part of the Martin Luther King
Sunday supper event earlier this year, our hope is to platform the feedback we received
at that event into some additional conversations with the community about mental health and
the resources that exist in support of those in need during times of crisis this year.
And then as it relates to recognition, I want to thank the City Manager for the support
and City Council for support of the Drownless First Responder Program.
This photo on the screen is a picture of Sergeant Clark who was recognized as one of the
Dublin Strongest Link Award winners at the end of 2025.
So grateful for his effort in furthering that program.
And his recognition beyond the City of Dublin is a testament to the innovation in that
program.
The City received notice that we, and thanks to Kendall for submitting the application,
received acknowledgement in an award from the Ohio City County Management Association
for Innovation and Local Government.
So really proud to see that program highlighted in the support of council, the City Manager,
the IT department and Sergeant Clark and the team of Drown pilots for leveraging that program
this year and certainly seeing the success of that program and that technology in our community.
And then lastly, we had a number of new starts that ended the year in 2025 people moving
into new positions and some moving on from their career here in Dublin.
So on the left, you'll see Sergeant Moreland and then Lieutenant Howard who were promoted
at the end of the year in 2025.
On the far right, you'll see two of our communications supervisors, Laura Meade, who is joining us
from Fairfield County Sheriff's Office as a communications supervisor and then Angie Flesher
below, who was long been in a communications technician with us but stepping into a role
of leadership as a communications supervisor with Enreck.
And then in the center, I just want to recognize a departing member in communications
technician, Chris Burkhart, who served 20 years with us as a communications technician
in the center.
The last thing I will leave and I apologize, there's not a slide in here but I feel remiss
if I didn't highlight a trend that we had actually of reports and just wanted to share
with council.
We saw in the last week some occurrences within the hotel lots in vehicles that were damaged.
We suspect as the intention looking for things in vehicles to take are based on what was
actually taken because we have very few reports of actual theft from the vehicles.
We do believe that it's important again to recognize that if you're carrying a firearm
that you remove them from the vehicle as that seems to be consistent with activity that
we've seen in the past.
But as a testament to our officer's ability to navigate and adapt quickly and respond
to those incidents, we have good plans including contacting the hotels to make sure they're
aware of that activity and how they can continue to share the prevention information with their
clients as they come through.
Our community impact unit and the law enforcement planner and our patrol section have been in contact
with other area law enforcement agencies to help develop leads for those occurrences and
to share information because it's certainly not just in Dublin that those things occur but
just wanted to share that as we start the year that's something that we're paying attention
to and this year because it's separate from the reports we get of theft from the vehicles
when it's just damage to the car, either vandalism or criminal damaging, talking with our
supervisors and our officers about how we accurately capture that information so we can
stay on top of that trend and make sure we're responsive to the public.
Should there be any questions about those activities?
And with that, I'll take any questions you may have.
Great.
Thank you, Chief.
Questions from Council?
We just really appreciate the work that you, oh, I'm sorry.
Thank you so much, Chief.
Wonderful report and huge kudos to your staff and everything you do to keep us safe.
A couple of questions.
The increase in traffic stops has been increasing by about like 1,500 to 2,000 a year.
Is that mostly for the slow down Dublin and just to warn people about driving speeds?
Yeah, that has certainly been an intentional focus from slow down Dublin and again, we operate
in what we articulate as intelligence led traffic enforcement and so that is taking a look
at where we've either seen concerns about the speed or traditionally have had validated
studies of speed concerns and so yes, I would definitely attribute that to our focus and emphasis
on slow down Dublin.
Do you think that's resulted in overall increased compliance with the speed limits?
You know, as we look at last year and I know we've had this conversation and question
from Council, at what point do we see some return in the, that we're not just increasing
the number of citations because that certainly is not our focus, it's not to be punitive
or to generate revenue, it's to change driver behavior.
And as we saw last year comparative to 2024, while we have more traffic stops overall by
almost 2,000, we saw a slight reduction in the number of speeding citations, which again
even that, even that amount of change, I would attribute to hopefully there being a change
in behavior in those areas that we are, while we're still focused in those areas, we're
seeing less citations that need to be written as a result of those violations.
Yes, excellent.
And then the second question ahead has to do with the drone program.
Wonderful, wonderful program.
And I think I read somewhere then the first five months, there were like 240 missions,
they were deployed.
Has that increased with time?
And the second part of the question is, where do you foresee the drone program going?
Like how do you expand from there, thoughts that you might have on that?
I think it has increased as we've gotten a comfort level and we have more pilots that
are available to fly.
And I think that also answers a projection of where we may end up.
I think the more we can have pilots available to leverage and utilize, and it's a balancing
act for our officers in responsiveness in making sure that we're getting to the scene, but
also somebody thinking through moving in that direction of deploying the drone and focusing
on that as a resource.
And so I think as we get our feet underneath this full year into the deployment of that
program, we'll have a better idea of how to leverage our personnel assets and the technology
as time moves forward as well.
Very good.
I said two questions, but I actually have one last question.
Sure.
The robot that's currently used to police the parking structures, what are your thoughts
on that and what's the plan for that?
Yeah.
I think I owe a check in with the city manager from the business district team and Deputy
Chief Latanzi on assessing what the effectiveness and leverage of that technology has been.
It's certainly grateful for us to try on the technology, but I think we're balancing
the effectiveness and responsiveness from the company on how we would leverage that continued
into the future.
So we're definitely at a point of check into assess that.
Thank you so much.
Well, Chief, we sure do appreciate it.
I suspect a lot of those increased stops were along Riverside Drive where the speed limit
was reduced.
And we had a period of time that we were issuing mornings and so on and so forth.
So that would explain or partially explain some of those big increases and traffic stops
through the change in speed limit.
But that was kind of a conscious decision that the department made and certainly a good
one.
So thank you very much.
You're much appreciated in all of your officers as well.
Okay.
This brings us to the staff comments portion of our agenda.
I will turn it over to our city manager, Megan O'Kallion, good evening members of council.
I have just a few updates this evening.
The first updates focused on 161 corridor planning efforts.
We continue to advance the cooperative planning efforts along with our regional partner jurisdictions
located along the 161 corridor.
Recent discussions with that group have been focused on preparing a scope of work for
planning next for moving forward, specifically related to coordinating land use and infrastructure
planning.
Discussions have centered on state route 161 between Dublin and plain city and the emphasis
is on aligning growth, transportation, infrastructure strategies across jurisdictional boundaries
and primarily ensuring that there's continued communication and awareness of everybody's
planning efforts in that area because there's a lot going on.
The study area that we've honed in on is shown in the highlighted area in yellow.
To date, planning next has been assisting with the facilitation and the organization of
that group under Dublin's West Innovation District Implementation Strategy Contract.
The latest conversations with the group have discussed the need to transition that work
to a contract that serves all of the regional partners in that area and that is also funded
by the partners in that area.
So in the last meeting that we had the group discussed how the cost moving forward would
be allocated across the participating jurisdictions.
So the estimated cost of the study is about $200,000.
The group discussed Union County, Madison County and Dublin contributing 50 each and
the group also discussed each of the townships contributing $10,000 each with the utility
providers being the City of Mary'sville Utilities in Mid-O'Hioh each contributing $5,000 each.
So everybody at the table will have a contribution just at different levels based on interest
population of the sorts.
So a formal project kickoff meeting has been scheduled for Friday, March 27th and that
will mark the start of working with planning next as a collaborative effort, a nice transition
point.
And Council's representatives are included in that meeting and all meetings moving forward.
So we're getting to a good place with that group.
The City of Dublin has initiated a study of unsignalized pedestrian crossings on streets
with four or more lanes to improve safety and accessibility for all ages and abilities.
The effort will evaluate existing crossings, gather resident feedback and input, incorporate
national best practices, and update the Dublin Crosswalk Treatment Guidelines and alignment
with community priorities and safety standards.
A public survey, and this is why I mentioned it this evening as a public survey will be launched
from February 25th to March 15th and that survey will be hosted on Tell Dublin and it will
ask residents to identify priority locations, suggest improvements to existing crossings,
and share what features make crossings feel safer and more comfortable.
And that feedback that we receive from this survey will guide recommendations and project
prioritization citywide and a final report is expected in the fall of 2026.
And then lastly, all are invited to the 2026 State of the City scheduled for Thursday,
March 5th at the Exchange and Bridge Park.
There's a lot of planning that's coming together.
This is our annual address and community reception as we reflect on our role in America 250,
which is the theme this year.
That's a big celebration and we're also looking ahead to initiatives that will shape
our future.
So there will be interactive engagement stations as in the past during the reception.
The reception is going to start a little earlier this year to allow for more time for conversations
and it'll start at 5.30.
The presentation will include key updates on projects and other initiatives and that's
going to begin at 7.
And it will also be live streamed on our website and we hope to see everybody there.
And that's all I have.
Thank you.
Very good.
Thank you.
Council reports.
We'll start with committee reports.
The Public Services Committee, Council Member Cram.
Okay.
The Public Service Committee met on February 11th.
We had two topics, the Greenway that had been referred to as recently.
The Greenway Quarter Screening Program and then the HOA Maintenance of Woodlots.
The regarding the Greenway Quarter Screening basically, the committee recommended staff
go back and kind of evaluate some other areas, some broader areas throughout the city.
Some of the areas suggested were we had been given information on the east side of Coffman
Road.
We asked about the west side, Cells Mills came up, Brand Road came up and then just in general
kind of our older neighbourhoods, the stuff built in the 80s and 90s where landscaping
is starting to deteriorate.
So if anyone else on council has suggestions of other areas for staff to look at, basically
we were kind of looking at a comprehensive where are there gaps in our existing streets
gap.
And then also stuff was going to categorize those gaps as whether they were residential
properties or commercial properties or school properties because the type of property
might depend, like our concern was commercial properties we might not want to screen or
they might not want to be screened because of their signage and stuff like that.
So bottom line staff was going to gather some more information.
I believe they're coming back to public services first and then we'll bring it back.
But in the meantime if you do have other ideas of other areas let me know and we'll pass
that on to staff.
Regarding the H.O.A. maintenance and the wood lot program staff was proposing to add
a grant program under the beautify your neighbourhood program.
Basically we had the storm water program out there, we had the beautify your neighbourhood
and now we're considering this wood lot so they were going to make an umbrella program
that would have all three and we advised to try to get a simplified application that would
apply to author program make it a little easier for the H.O.A.s to fill out these applications
try to remove some hurdles from the H.O.A.s so we could try to encourage them to apply.
So staff was going to go back and look at ways that they could kind of streamline the process
and there was also some discussion on streamlining how to prioritize.
Basically we thought we'd put all, we haven't had much interest in the storm water.
We get a lot on the entryways and so we thought if we just pulled all the money into one
and just see what we get and give it a year so see what kind of applications come through
that was where we were headed.
So again staff was going to go back and look into those things about how to maybe improve
the process and the application process and then bring it back to us and that was it for
public services.
Very good.
Thank you.
Finance committee.
House member Ludo.
Thank you.
So we met today at 4.30.
We had a good discussion relative to the hotel motel tax.
Staff gave a great background to remind us sort of the history of the hotel motel tax.
So that was really nice.
Then staff asked us to consider having implementing a fund balance policy which we talked through
and some additional formalized agreements with all hotel motel tax revenue recipients
that would include some consistent reporting and accountability.
So we gave staff some direction.
They are going to come back to the finance committee with the changes and recommendations
based on our feedback and then ultimately it will end up back in front of full counsel
because there will be some changes that we are going to recommend.
But if you have any questions happy to talk further.
Thank you.
Very good.
Okay.
This brings us to liaison reports and we will start with the Board of Education that is Vice
Mayor de Rosa, Dr. Lam.
We meet next month.
Very good.
US 33-quarter group and 161-quarter group will be Vice Mayor de Rosa and Council Member
Johnson.
Great.
Thank you.
Since it was Council Member Johnson's first meeting I'm going to take a stab at the report.
The US-quarter group met on the 13th of February and Council Member Johnson and I attended
along with city staff and has has become our practice of the group spent the time really
talking about the status of the major development and infrastructure projects that are planned
up and down the corridor.
I'm just going to highlight a couple areas.
The first is of which is that data centers continue to be a topic of discussion and I would
say a area of concern by many members up and down the corridor.
Jerome Township provided a brief update on the three data center locations along industrial
parkway that were given zoning certificates over the last couple of months.
Collectively, these zoning certificate properties would represent an excess of 2 million square
feet of data centers if all of those were completed as submitted.
The Township shared that they are working on updating their zoning code regarding data centers
particularly things such as landscaping, back setbacks, buffering, lighting controls,
noise, mitigation, et cetera.
Then Union County staff shared that their demand for data centers continues to be strong
across Union County, several properties under discussion and we discuss view of those.
The group talked about concerns about land use, water use noise, et cetera and I anticipate
that this is going to be an ongoing discussion for the foreseeable future because the interest
seems to be insatiable up and down that area.
Couple other topics that were relevant to Dublin included a brief discussion of the current
application in Jerome Township that has been submitted by the Meyer Stores Limited Partnership
to modify the existing product zoning of approximately 29.5 acres to allow for changes
that would accommodate a large format retail space in some associated out parcels.
The City of Dublin has formally submitted comments concerning this request, sharing concerns
related to land use capacity, compatibility, site design traffic, et cetera.
The Jerome Township Planning and Zoning Commission, it is on their agenda to hear this this
evening so we'll have more about that pending the outcome of that.
And along the 42 north of 33 continues and there were some updates about a fair bit
of significant footprint that's going to be planned or underway around the Kroger site.
And that's going to, we're really going to see I think a real build out of infrastructure
up and down that corridor.
And then finally, we talked a bit about residential housing in our discussion tonight and as
we have shared in the past, it continues, I mean, there was a report after report over
developments and I'll just share one for example, the Dell Web Development which is sort
of a different type of land use for 55 and plus in plain city along the Mitchell-Dwitt Road
which is, you know, area south of industrial.
The work is well underway and 700 homes will be added in that unit and they're expecting
some of that to open this year.
They will be in the Jonathan Alderman school district and Pulties building them.
So that's just one example we could share many but development in terms of residential
data center, command housing center command.
So just the amount of activity up in that corridor continues to move on.
So Councilmember Johnson and I will continue to update you.
So thank you.
Very good.
They support Ohio Steering Committee, Councilmember Keeler and Aluto.
In my absence, I think maybe Councilmember Aluto may have mentioned that the Sports Ohio
rebranding conversation we had.
So if you already did, consider it done.
Thanks.
Very good.
Okay.
We'll go back to Councilmember Crayam for the Planning and Zoning Commission in the architectural
review board.
So the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting from February 19th have been canceled for
a lack of agenda.
So all is pretty quiet on that front for now.
And then the Architects Review Board meets Wednesday and we'll swear in our new member
that we approved this evening so we'll have a full house again.
And a interest I guess would be the, what's on the agenda is kind of a revamp of the
Oscar site.
I know there's been proposals to kind of put a whole new thing there.
The latest is just kind of cleaning up what's there.
Okay.
Councilmember Johnson, Washington Township Liaison.
Yeah.
So Washington Township continues to take steps to formalize their 90 day moratorium on data
centers.
Again, big topic.
But they will be issuing a formal resolution that eludes to their land use plan and they
are looking to extend that to six months.
So as a part of that, they will formalize their data center stance, basically a ban on
data centers in regards to their land usage.
As they start their zoning changes, they're collecting all of their zoning changes and they'll
start to execute all at the same time.
So sometime within the next six months, they should formalize that ban on data centers
in Washington Township.
They've just hired a new, quite experienced training and safety manager, George Sorgie,
who comes to them from Westerville, who's the deputy chief in Westerville, and he also
spent 20 years in Norwich Township.
So they feel quite good that their training and safety manager position is in good hands
there.
And the last thing continues to be a pretty big topic with Washington Township is Cemetery
Space.
And Gene Bostic got up and spoke early, and I guess it was January one of the first meeting
that we attended, I believe.
The St. John Cemetery Expansion is not going to occur, maybe that's news to some of
you, but that will not occur, which I think probably prompted the letter that City Council
received from Washington Township Trustees and admins asking for partnership with Dublin
on Cemetery Space.
I've had some conversations with several of you on the history of Cemetery Space and
Dublin just trying to get a feel for what's happened.
Again, thank you for your continued onboarding and time that you give Dr. Lamanai as we come
up to speed.
It sounds like possibly this question's been answered by City Council.
And if that's the case, then I would recommend that we formalize a response to Washington
Township on our desire or our plans to engage on additional Cemetery Space.
So maybe the first step in doing that, I could ask our city manager to recirculate a previous
memo that detailed current cemetery and burial availability within our city.
I guess it spoke to number of spaces, spaces sold, number of requests, etc.
If we could recirculate that memo, Council could provide any new feedback that we have.
And then I would ask that City Manager's Office provide a formal response to Washington Township
on this.
We can kind of move and move one way or the other.
So let's just decide what our next steps will be and then let's communicate that to Washington Township.
Thanks.
Great.
Thank you.
Dr. Lam, Dublin Wellness Alliance.
Nothing to report.
Our first meeting is March 23rd.
Wonderful.
Council Member Keeler, Dublin Arts Council, Logan Union, Campaign, Regional Planning Commission.
So I'll start with Dublin Arts Council, liaison.
We met on January 27th.
Their strategic plan has been completed.
I think they shared that with us earlier in the year.
Their motto has become moving, doubling forward through public art, community, and impact.
We also received, we've received over the last several months, updates about the swing
installation that's going to occur off of Mirfield Drive.
The artist Ivan DePena has completed his work.
The Dublin Arts Council has created a marketing video of the project.
Creating and foundation work was to be gone, was to have begun until snowmageddon hit.
And that delayed the project a bit.
Fabrication is occurring in February and North Carolina.
There will be an ADA compliant path.
I'm sure Christina will be happy about that.
We'll be installing at the end of March, 10 pieces will be transported by tractor trailer
from North Carolina, hoping for a dedication at the end of May and conjunction with Memorial
Tournament's 50th anniversary.
The public art initiative that the Dublin Arts Council is undergoing starts with a four
story parking garage in Bridge Park, which I'm really happy about.
So the snail is now at Friendship Village and Friendship Village has now had an open
call for art.
The Dublin Library is going to have some murals, and the Arts Law Cabin Programming
has begun starting in May or June.
The Arts Council will be tying together history with art, fabric, dying, and storytelling.
The Logan Union Champaign, I don't have a whole lot to add about the Meyer, other than
we do have a representative on the Logan Union Champaign County Committee, and she was
the dissenting vote in that proposal.
So the vote was not unanimous, and Tammy Noble voted against the motion, thanks.
Very good, thank you, and I will deliver the Morpsey report.
So we held day-to-day on the 10th, down at Columbus State, very well attended.
If you like data, it would have been a great day for you.
We did have commission on the 12th.
We recommended a few new members, and I think our membership numbers are now up to 97 local
governments, counties and villages and townships.
So that was good news.
We have had a couple of passenger rail champions meetings, one on the 17th and one on the 19th.
And recently we engaged the Haslam Sports Group that have agreed to submit a letter of
support to our FSP grant at the federal government.
So hopefully we will hear something on that grant in the coming months.
That specific grant is, I would like to thank the Franklin County Sports Commission for
contributing $1.2 million for matching funds for that grant.
It would be an $11 million grant that would study right of way and crossings and have
a lot of safety impacts.
So hopefully we'll hear on that grant in near future and appreciate those folks that
are willing to speak to the federal government on our behalf.
So that is my Morpsey update.
We will now go to Council Roundtable, and I will start down with Council Member Crams.
It's got nothing.
As does Council Member Johnson and Eludo and Lamb.
On February the 18th, I attended a Ohio Municipal League webinar on data centers.
The presentation was mostly from the perspective of the data center operators.
So it was certainly biased or skewed in their favor.
I would say this, we have one data center currently, and it's operated by Amazon.
Amazon was one of the presenters in this webinar.
And as I've said from the beginning, if they want to build a data center anywhere, they
need to accommodate the needs of the communities.
And they've made a commitment to do that, which is really good to hear.
So from a noise standpoint, they're committed to retrofitting technology to keep noise to
a minimum.
I believe we've talked about pollution from diesel generators.
I'm not an expert.
I believe diesel generators are old technology.
New technology is run by natural gas.
So I think the more communities complain and hold Amazon or other operators, all of
them are doing it.
Microsoft, Google, they're all creating data centers.
They have to listen to us if they're going to build a data center anywhere.
And they seem to be doing that, thanks.
I just have a couple of things.
Some staff and I attended the Power Breakfast by business first and heard comments from Zach
Mears with Andrewl and President Carter from the Ohio State University.
And I thought that was an insightful time and appreciated the opportunity to join that.
And I want to say hello to my friends from the third grade at Depth Elementary.
On the 18th, I had the good fortune of spending the afternoon with 110 third graders and
they were delightful.
Today I had the opportunity to sit down with some folks representing the all-in organization
that's building the new housing for special needs folks and some market rate housing
and some below market rate housing as well.
And they shared their excitement and how much they were looking forward to seeing this
project come to fruition and how much feedback they have gotten from Dublin residents that
are looking forward to that being an option for those folks that call the city of Dublin home.
So I would like to make a motion to adjourn to executive session for the purposes of personnel
matters considering the appointment of a public official.
Is there a second?
Second.
Jenny, which call the roll?
Ms. Johnson.
Yes.
Ms. Cram.
Yes.
Ms. Ludo.
Yes.
Mr. Keeler.
Yes.
Dr. Lam.
Yes.
Vice Mayor DeRosa.
Yes.
And I would like to remind any of the viewing public we will reconvene this meeting following
executive session, but solely for the purpose of adjournment.
So there will be no other new business that happens from the dies this evening.
Okay.
If there's no other business for the good of the order, we will adjourn the Monday, February
23rd, 2026 Dublin City Council meeting at 934.
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