Session, meeting scheduled for Council

While many municipalities will take the night off for the patriotic festivities, the Oberlin City Council could have a marathon meeting July 3.

The Council is scheduled for a work session at 5:30 p.m. with a regular meeting at 7 p.m.

While the work session only will focus on one topic, the regular meeting has 12 pieces of legislation, a proclamation and appointments to a commission.

The work session will be a continuation of the June 5 work session where the Council heard some of the results of the Impact Group’s recent surveys of residents.

According to Council President Ronnie Rimbert, some of the council members were unhappy with the last presentation citing a lack of answers from the representatives from the firm and an issue with the way the data was broken down.

“There’s some information we weren’t real pleased with in the study,” Rimbert said. “They had it broken up by gender, but they didn’t have it broken up by race and things like that. Some of the people on Council were upset because they feel as though that is key, too.”

The Council will also rubber stamp the Oberlin Planning

Commission’s appointments for the city’s Climate Action Plan Review Committee.

There are a few things of particular interest on the agenda for the regular meeting.

Oberlin’s plan to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day is up for the third reading.

The new holiday, which will be the first of its kind in the state, would put focus on Native Americans who lived on the continent for a millennium before the Italians discovered the Americas.

Council also will consider an ordinance that would open up their options on what kinds of trees that can be planted along city’s streets.

“What we’re trying to do is give people a little more leeway of what kind of trees they like to plant,” Rimbert said. “Written now, there are specific trees that can be planted, and so forth. We’re trying to get away from that and give a little more latitude about what can be planted.”

The city also will accept bids to repair East College and North Pleasant streets as well as sidewalk repairs.

Rimbert said these are normal yearly work the city performs to make the roads and sidewalks safe for cars and pedestrians, respectively.