jpatterson@mariettatimes.com
In a series of Marietta City Council committees Thursday, legislators reviewed an administrator’s resignation, proposed permanent improvement projects and city responses to complaint-driven practices within zoning and blight.
Safety-Service Director Steve Wetz announced that Assistant Safety-Service Director/Human Resources Director Jeff Skinner has tendered his resignation to the mayor effective April 30.
In the Employee Relations Committee, the resignation prompted discussion concerning residency, education and experience requirements of the role.
Upon review of statutory city requirements with the state of Ohio, and signatory needs for city contracts and other administrative functions, council is expected to see legislation brought forward for consideration next week.
¯ Event was tentatively scheduled for July 9-11.
¯ Cost to hold the event is around $50,000.
¯ Marietta levee is one site for the Powerboat Nationals.
Source: Carmen Taylor
For the second year in a row, there won’t be a roar on the Marietta riverfront.
The Riverfront Roar board of directors voted to cancel the event last week, which was tentatively scheduled for July 9-11 on the levee in downtown Marietta.
Carmen Taylor, committee chair, said the decision was made as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine “still hasn’t released the full go-ahead for festivals.”
“On April 1, we had to make a lot of commitments monetarily and we weren’t sure how it would work. It’s an awful lot of money,” she explained Tuesday. “It’s about $50,000 right now and that’s totally free to the public.”
jpatterson@mariettatimes.com
Planning was at the center of three discussions amidst three hours of Marietta City Council committees Thursday. Pedestrian Safety Planning
Streets Committee Chairwoman Susan Boyer focused her questions on grant administration of the Ohio Department of Health’s Creating Healthy Communities’ programmatic funding Thursday following the citizen-driven outline of pedestrian safety needs along the Franklin Street Corridor in the lower west side (Harmar).
“We were recently contacted as a neighborhood, from the county health department’s Creating Healthy Communities Coalition as part of their 2021 work plan for improving pedestrian infrastructure,” prefaced Councilman Geoff Schenkel, D, Fourth Ward (the ward in which Harmar and the lower west side sit).
jpatterson@mariettatimes.com
Marietta City Council concluded 2020’s work Wednesday with a special business meeting via teleconference, wrapping up final finance needs and ratifying the next three years of unionized fire protection for the city.
Ordinances 158 and 159 were introduced before a full legislative body, the first a financial exercise used to maintain compliance with state expectations to balance the books at the close of any given year and the second to ratify the next three years of a contract with the International Association of Fire Fighters.
Ordinance 158 backed out funds, called unappropration, to prevent being over appropriated for projects and expenditures that did not take place in 2020 which would flag an issue in annual auditing.