allowed to bring to order the consul reg'lar council meeting of monday july twenty eighth two thousand and fourteen roll call please mr sylvester has a judge roll up mr lewis is not expected to start part first item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of the regular council meeting of july fourteenth two thousand and fourteen and move the minutes be approved sakit any further discussion changes the current size if a tree has the potential of growing about their criteria they they would would cut that that's still their policy and are willing to bend on it i know they've met with some property owners visually  and i planted these trees twenty four years ago on the the option that they'll never grow big no no no pine no maple no nothing i have a pear tree i have this most gorgeous tricolor beach is probably worth five thousand dollars and it's just amazing it's blocking my visual and the sun for my house and that's going to be wiped out totally i won't have any option to go and plant but then they said that if you call and complain that then they send out the forst never when the players resent her and their party no complaint was never in there then you should register to satisfaction with their selection and then they send out the forst does that have to go through the washington county courthouse because that is where the bill supposedly had been placed and made this law with the state through first energy i don't know how but anyway that's you know came to to the house well that's very old excuse me but anyway it's very close to the house and it shows my house i don't have air conditioning it's really wonderful to have the tree with you know the breeze coming through with the leaves and all  this is winter you don't even see the leaves and stuff so they do and have been trimming which is that you know understandable but those trees are like two hundred feet tall massive massive to thank all of you for the opportunity to speak this evening and i want to thank all of you for what you've done so for many of you have been out the window mayor area you've looked at the situation involving us i believe you looked at some of the other areas over in stone age and long view several of the homeowners have filed complaints with the p c not one hundred percent sure that that's going to stop first energy because we've mentioned to them  to them recently about that they've just kind of said yeah ok and according to the piece you see information we have they really should not be starting until those complaints are resolved a number of us have met individually with first energy and again there has been no movement and again i need to stress this is a new policy over the last forty fifty years allegheny and west pan is always come in and done directional pruning on the trees first energy's taken the position that they're going to come in and do the clear cutting spray the herbicides and be done with this  we understand that and again i guess i think we all have come to the to the consensus that the only way we're going to address this is through litigation we are as mr ball point out the last meeting you know the court of public opinion is also a good place for us to start and you've done a fine job in that we really appreciate that we've started a petition physically and also online for peter's township people to support this we thank mr sylvester for the information he's spoke at the town hall meeting that we had to make any basically said the same thing that we were all these little critters touch a council yesterday and i want to sound like a broken record but every time you talk to first enery energy everyone gets a different story the only way to get this resolved and put into a reasonable fashion that protects the homeowners here in peter's township is litigation i'm here asked the council tonight to consider spearheading that on behalf of all the residents that are affected thank you thank you i'm tom hand one twenty one drew a drive i basically agree with everything he said so far the only difference in my case is one of the trees i put in sixteen years ago was spent power came cut down a couple trees they gave me a credit they said here's a list of trees to buy i put one of those trees in now it's not acceptable so they're just going to cut it down it's thirty feet if you give them a writing by any chance or did you get that writing and not coming out this long time ago and i didn't save anything that's why we're trying to make them put in writing whatever they're attempting to do this and you know i've gotten i've told these guys no no no no and then someone else came out representing first energy and i said you're not going to cut down the street there's a tree that tree i said these trees japanese maple a dork maple a flower in crab and a while the ones that are about twenty to twenty five feet tall to maple trees and three black walnuts there i take out now i did some research of my own i went to the federal energy regulatory commission  the commission i went to the north american electrical commission and i did some research on the right of ways and who has authority to do what essentially what i found out by doing that is my hands are tied once any individual first enery the individual energy carrier so getting back to fifteen years ago when west bank came in and trained they did very little in a way of removing trees totally now am objecting so someone came out and they did send me a letter to the person who said they did not get one but i objected they sent someone out i have a letter in my receipt now that says these door trees are going to be sa up just a second if i go to north american energy i forget the name of it again but they discuss our king and everything that was on the in the media also out of age and from first  came out also in last sunday's paper the main reason we want to do this trimming is to prevent parking well if you go into and i think there's you know somehow has to be  going to answer to yet how does the energy arc thirty feet because the line right there are seventy two feet off the ground i had the man from first energy measure that are thirty feet to that tree when but lisa millar one twenty seven fireside and i really don't have dimensions or anything but they did come to our house they gave us an option of cutting them down in october and one of them is in our yard and it does branch out we offered to get it cut and tram then they said now we are also my concern is the behind on drilling we have a hillside in between and i know that brush is running out and i know we enjoy the right away as part of our yard on the left well part but i'm concerned about when they go up to cut that and they're going to go right through our yard and tear it up and when they cut those things down they're going to leave it right there that has animals and you know living there and you know that i'm just becoming like a dead forest and then in the front yard they said that they would cut them down and somebody said leave the logs in the brush or they'll take the brush but if they leave the stump then that's a stump sticking out we have to get a ground it out that leaves the and a hole in the yard and we just had to have two other trees cut down from ash borers and that's a thousand dollars and we have three trees they're cutting down so that who's going to fill in that those holes and who's going to stump those grime and those stumps and make it look nice if not our property is going to look like crap and one other thing on our side of our house they gave us the line we have to look at this and they are flush with the house in the garage and that was the cut off where we could put any trees and everything else had to be clear we have to basically have those pruned in half but the stumps can stay and they're flush with the house but everything has to go swim like two two trees left in our yard that are going to be half so i'm yes was there anyone else on this subject yesterday  one of the local labor unions so i had one of first energy's linesmen come out and take a look and cleared up a lot of information for us a lot of questions number one is the mark for one hundred thirty eight thousand is no more than eight to ten feet number to the line sag or sway can only be three quarters of the distance from the closest line so for instance if the lines are twenty feet apart that sag or sway can only be fifteen feet so he also said that these lines between number seven and number nine tower under hurricane like conditions maybe would sag or sway six feet so from that that's that's really all i have to add you know dawn kind of covered everything else for two numbers to what we keep being told about sag and are things that are beyond my capability  comments this is a part of the agenda where anyone can speak on a non agenda item you have five minutes to do so and again it would be an item not on the agenda to have anyone who would like first item on the agenda is ordinance providing for the operability of sprinkler systems including a lounge to not operate for extended absences in a detached well yes  considered as a month or more to turn off their system under certain conditions the purpose of putting that on the agenda was to get feedback from council as to whether or not he would consider such an ordinance correct this ordinance is an outgrowth of a suggestion that was made some time ago by yours truly in fact at a meeting we had with the with those two gentlemen that let's do a simple minded ten word order that sort of ordinance that says if you're away from your data your home let us show sprinklers off for an extended period of time and show up here tonight and i see the meeting fact sheet has it exactly right i don't know who wrote this but it says allows doing the extended vacation vacancy of at least one month the owners of a patio home to disable the system upon notification of neighbors the township along company and insurance f nexpectedly and probably deliberately so the fire department had a lot of input to the initial draft and we have what i consider an overly bureaucratic invasive  impossible to comply with type of ordinance that renders it impossible to live with and as a result and maybe that's the intention i don't know the result is that nobody will ever be able to use  you i won't bore you with with all the details but i just think that you should not you should permit somebody to come in and check on my furnace or my toilets once in a while while i'm gone but this order says no no no can't be done while it makes sense in major industrial settings i've done it myself to have an impairment coordinator which is a function of a safety department a media company typically to worry about these kinds of things that is totally inordinate and totally inappropriate in in a small homeowner's association we have trouble enough getting somebody to serve on the board of the home let alone taking on the responsibility legally and otherwise of being responsible for it for four minutes or in this kind of program i don't think it's appropriate to ask to have to ask your neighbors permission to so i submit to you that this may be new to you and so on and there's a good marriage for for having the possibility of allowing us to turn it off because that deals with the worry  we have the fears that we have when we're sitting on the beach in florida something my system is going to go through ok and it happens it's not because of design deficiencies in hidden brooke happened to my neighbor across the street ok sixty thousand dollars or the damage but we've covered that ground already i think there's merit to allowing as sensibly languished proposition to let us do so and i would urge you  onerous stuff as i have outlined from this ordinance and come up with an ordinance that is customer friendly responses to what i think a lot of homes would like as it any questions concern is more fundamental i think that any relief that's granted should be granted every one of those one or months whether or not they're traveling to florida or were ever i think nancy he's sitting in the second row she was in a way when presta would have both a sprinkler system and also a alarm system which is connected to the fire department and the police department that the homeowner should have the option to have one of the other two actually disconnect one of the other and even if you disconnected the sprinkler system you still would have a system which would protect you more than probably ninety nine percent of any one else in the township i do suggest that al station that they have checked with their insurance company that they've checked with the fire department and maybe their neighbors and no one disagrees that it's it's a legitimate risk to be to allow them to turn their system off but i would think that if you and i have such a a going to be a part of is going to rattle communities now certainly with it people that have adjacent walls and floors and things of that nature fire suppression systems absolutely appropriate i took tape measure out that i live next to the n c i'm thirty two feet from her house and over fifty feet from the next house i'm over one hundred feet from the house behind me i see no reason for me not to be able to turn off m i understand you pass an ordinance and you don't feel you can repeal it but i think you have enough residents that don't see a need to have this type of this system in their home there's been over a million dollars worth of damage due to water damage i won't grant you there was a fire recently in our neighborhood a grease fire the water system did this fire season didn't put that fire out exasperated the fire the neighbor put the fire out with a chemical distinguisher which is the type of thing you use on a grease fire  the fire department arrived not right away so now this neighbor has well over one hundred thousand dollars damage to his house where if the fire department when they came in or told fire was out i made the decision will make that decision and let the let the flat the let the water run for what it doesn't make any sense the fact that i'm required to have a fire extinguisher system i feel comfortable with that i'm not going to turn m i'm not going to turn my arm system off but i think we ought to have an option and this month some attorneys must have had some work to do or something with this regime and would you agree to that's what you really i had to read what you should read it it's crazy you know i'm going to be a facility or implemented parent coordinator which means i can't leave have a motorhome i may decide to go to florida for a couple of weeks but notify the fire department it's often notified and it's off let me deal with my insurance company not up to you that's not your business there's something in the insurance business called an experience right bill will tell you about that he's been insured business fifty years everything's kind of like a credit report experience rates as this community has a whole bunch of robbers this community has a whole bunch of fires for our community has a whole bunch of floods for a reason we need to stop  premium because i have the risk of a frozen system doesn't make any sense so i think you ought to revisit this whole thing we appreciate your time on the community i think if you paul everybody in our community they're going to say we have the option very much thank you and sprinkler systems do exist in a lot of communities and it a lot of commercial buildings certainly the experience that's as you said experience happened in your neighborhood chief said he was going to get some names to our community that we could get the system for foreigners fifty dollars that was a top dollar he said fire chief still since the meeting we discussed that has not gotten  fifty dollars mr williams got an ad hoc as much from a different company from a different house in the neighborhood four thousand five hundred dollars that's each house would cost approx me four thousand five hundred dollars still back to the situation where you say you can't change the law if you can amend the constitution you can amend the law are written years ago and it really wasn't required and as far as every chief fire chief in the world wants  house is going to say that when this settles the water problems are going to start all the new homes up behind up behind the kmart same thing's going to happen to them eventually to his going to happen it's just is not the wouldn't the safety of our firefighters and i've heard that too but again the fire chief and his assistant said that they've helped right to some of the most serious and in the toughest laws there are and they don't want to run into the into a building and have the floor collapsed story buildings that's all we're asking for but the first thing we see is this i mean this is this is almost like saying you came to us and asked for help so we're going to teach you a lesson for questioning our judgment why don't necessarily agree with that if you where it's coming from if you read this that's what it sounds like we ask for help and we don't like we do carry but there's no way that word suppressed tonight i can pretty much guarantee that i could tell you fit doesn't be a whole lot of of money to keep our citizens safe that being said you know the requirement for sprinklers of certain types of dwellings does make sense in other types probably you  you know when you have to say certified letters to a dozen different people because you're going to be on vacation it doesn't to me make a great deal of sense i would kind of think in terms of if if you know if it were to be granted that the systems could be turned off that the fire department be notified and you know you deal with your insurance company you feel good to deal with them if the i would also think that maybe if the homeowners association would enter into it in an understanding with the township that people have the option of turning their their systems off then fine it takes care of notifying you know another group of people final i would to you know i would probably be looking at it like well such that i would spend the money to do it but then again as if that's a personal decision i don't think that that we need to make decisions about who needs to be notified in tow counsel to look at a number of different provisions number of different options i think counsel understands this was something to look to appease a couple different factions in terms of their priorities a lot of the more onerous provisions that are a place in this ordinance come from the national fire protectors association that's their language that's why you see all these notices you see i can't remember the name of the individual the impairment ordinator begin to be appointed that that is from the national fire code and things along those lines so i don't think i know council just for the audience they didn't direct it these provisions be put in place taking input from the fire department input from the township we put together a number of different ways to notify people so then the township could then take a look at this in see if they were going to do something like this what made sense you know what works what the fire are would not find objectionable as your expert and so that's why this was drafted in such a fashion for a number of different parties hands in it because you may see a lot of redundancy in this particular draft because it does speak to all these different ways to notify people and it's more of a choice for counsel if you were to look at an order like this which of these ways are palatable which of these ways of does make sense so that's apollo and i talked before and i want to let him know that was sort of the genesis of this this wasn't i think how to appreciate something that was put in front accounts of the past and because there are so many options within this particular draft we don't have a public hearing option with this kind of ordinance so just draft in this particular way so we could be in there are suggestions about what can stay what can go we also hear some of the same arguments from people in the audience that can we just make get rid of the whole sprinkler requirement if you start if you pass a law that says that it's voluntary you can too you might as well just get rid of the law because if it's voluntary it's no longer a loan we don't even have to get in don't notice requirements so this one was a recognition of a concern that a lot of residents have that at least when they're home might be able to deal with any particular issue that might arise but if there are a way they fear that their way all the time were in their homes could we draft something that does not amen or the requirement of sprinklers but i meant is how we enforce the requirement sprinklers so again that was sort of how this came about so the board does have a lot of think about how once you go forward with sprinklers in these patterns we do you have a recommendation our chief spoke at great length about why we should all stay place we are trying to find that middle ground at least birth times or people work there for that concern but as to the various notice requirements we don't disagreed not all of these will stay  place these are just food for thought for council ok oh yes  know i had a couple questions just just because it's been awhile since we talked about this but it's unclear in my mind you know what is exactly the wrong one with the systems i mean i know that they're filled with water and it you know because it's cold i mean is it a defective design is it a matter of like solemn systems are properly insulated i mean i'm like to you know they can like you were short on thinking that all obviously these these requirements were put into the code for some sort of public safety reason whether it be to protect the occupants the adjoining homeowners funny was your curious i saw when the when that was being read your look on your face thing that the look right and it's something we wrestle with because we talked about that and that's why you have all these particular notices that were looked at as to what would absolve potential liability here as to the neighborhood proper years they bought their property to a patio home situation where somewhere along the way some expert or some fire officials or some national fire departments have decided the reason you want to avoid down was that with sprinklers before so what we nationally looked at was at least notice to the neighboring property owners that we also have the concern of obviously the fire department once prepared to protect their men going into these fires too but i would agree that from a safety standpoint that's something to the board to look at but it is somewhat uncharted territory could we do what we want to do with this ordinance to try to find that middle ground because we're not repealing it we're just trying to enforce and they're having similar concerns as to what how do we just it's what do we do and they don't really have a good answer either and we talked about this hybrid approach if it's if everybody's on notice you can't complain from a liability standpoint that there but i think you can if you don't have the ability of potential sirat that i mean it's to fire me to fires to say i'm not going to go to that house because the fire because the system is in effect that it's going to be not right he has to go right if he gets killed that don't think the fact that he had noticed that there was one there isn't going to provide much insulating and i think the combination to live building and i think the big counterargument to this charge i think the counterargument would be that other people in the township was not a big proponent of you just getting rid of the ordinance altogether is from a liability standpoint of the people that bought their homes with that expectation is preferred to be not only in their own homes but in the community so that what we initially drafted was again some some hybrid with with the real question of liability and that's why it's written in such a way could we ever absolve liability i don't know this was the best we could do you know again some of it's redundant and not all of it would stay but there is a real question as if somebody would get hurt and the law requires sprinklers to be in those terms and then we have an force of new orleans that takes the requirement out as to whether that is a proper mechanism that would absolve us of liability i don't know the answer so that's why that's before the board too so we look at that that i really start here i have the same concerns that you do looking to try to make the most out of those that are the best out of a situation to accommodate the parties that's why all these notice provisions are a place to maybe alleviate maybe not limited to maybe alleviate the potential liability ok thank you you want that's what i have the distance between my home and my other homes in my neighborhood is not the different for the most part the people on top of the hill that the think the single family units so can't you have some sort of  vision that says a patio home is a single grounds that it or a multiple residence that has attached walls and has a certain distance distance from home to home i'm thirty two feet away fifty feet away is they're using the decision orman ground the common ground own by the homeowners association as the definition of a patio now that might have been a relative point when the hose were supposed to be sixty eight feet when they spread them out as far as they did that changed things ok when they took down the on the on lake front there were never going to put the the condos in for rental when they decided not to build those after the big fight that was over that that changed to so all they would have to do is say now you're not actually you don't have to have a common ground why would common ground having to do with people living next to each other  that's the way our lives reads in the development of that in place except that the patio definition and go back to your homes can't change that but you can change the common ground and you can amended to say not just common ground but houses that are so close to each other because this song this whole ball started rolling when we contacted mr muzzy and said we understood that the law had changed in that if it was thirty five feet you could you know you would have to have a system and he's a lawyer we can right has something up about that why can't that be done it's just the simple moment that if the houses are far apart and again you know the argument is ok people bought the house with the expectation of we're going to have the system to save our life there's a fire ok nine out of ten people bought their house that the system was in or they would have said please don't put it in because across an extra fifty thousand dollars to put it in with all the copper never ok which they were forced to use they didn't have to use if they had followed the state law at the time which would have been pla hostage is what we're all we've got thirty feet thirty five feet john williams knows that he can't get that his house relieved from it because he's only six feet away from his next door neighbor if all the houses were like that it would be understandable the majority of  point i was just going with this curious concern about the legal aspect i'm not a lawyer but i've had discussions with our council here on that very topic and when he mentioned this potential beat alliance by people buying property in homeowner in in palo homes i went up to see ed and he tracked me through all the planning documents in the approval documents for  originally and so on and there isn't a single reference in any of those documents that relates to or specifies or says anything about we're going to have sprinkler systems in this development doesn't exist except on page thirty five of my blueprints on my house down the bottom it says point to a system and surely anybody who came in to look at preston which documents did not look at my blueprints and so so from that perspective at least i think that the issue of why did people rely on these places having sprinkler systems when they made their purchase decision which may have found some legal it sticks the answer is no problem with the sprinkler system so as mr curates or earlier is it him or is it academic to just you know poor installation poor insulation poor construction i i i think those are issues that we have to consider as well you just can't change an ordinance just because of faulty extraction or or or improper installation so those are things we have to look i'm not saying that is the reason but we also have to act prudently cause we're not affecting just your particular community but others as well so we have to take that into consideration is council members believe me i want to help all of you as best that we can but we have to deal with just other property owners and other developments in the area that also have the same system that you have yes or let let last comment is we've got to move this on the problem is either could do that but if as your neighbor of my house burned down because you didn't have your sprinkler on i don't have a similar clause on i might sue the township and sue everybody else they didn't force that particular provision so as to you may ordinance that we propose that if it did happen the you would have to alert your insurance carrier because we also wanted two things in the house burn down we want to make sure that your coverage didn't lapse or you didn't have coverage because you didn't tell them that you turned off your regular system  cause a more catastrophic loss so as protection for that for you and also for us because the insurance company may look at us and say well we insured is if you understand the law required this and you let them take it off so all these live below the things that i don't necessarily agree with it but that the definitions or the regulations in the zoning boards were not the civic enough so they looked at the another ordinance which was our animal control board i'm not sure there one of the things that we have we have that this is an issue that is coming up more and more back and just as an example we had a situation on  you were ruled a certain way should not change the way our kopi board forcing that provision a you may have a number of items going to the z agencies and might be cleaner to just cleared out this one way or the other just to not let it sit there so you don't have the next person  unfortunate that we don't believe in and chickens are allowed so one way or the other clear let's clarify it that's that's my point let's let's correct whatever ambiguity exist between our words isn't there when there was obvious an ambiguity or we would have been before the zoning hearing board a group where your general feeling on what we should be doing should we be as this proposed order to totally requires it to be on a farm or do you want something in between but again if it's not a massive problem the even if you allow people to keep no more than two or three chickens i don't know the trend as well that something coming you're not mr stevens point it may be a moot point anyway do you address it or just leave papers for us i guess next yeah it's made next to me and i would i would also ask that you look somewhere in there and find out what the legal definition of a domesticated animal is because i think if you look at domesticated animal equals pet he'll probably answer a lot of the question us we took the twenty four inch pipe and to a twelve inch pipe that was recommended and to the crate behind us that was in two thousand and thirteen we were flooded twice that was in may that we've replaced water is coming through the woods from the streets you can see erosion throughout the woods throughout the grass area as you can see there's a manhole cover that you can see erosion coming around there and it just comes down the neighbor's yard in front of not takes the water down behind the so the crate that area is probably ten feet dean and that completely floods overflows and our driveway either side of our house and in the back yard and then the back yard just floods up into the house it comes in the house we have about fifteen hundred square feet a fetish area downstairs that last year it was over twenty thousand dollars worth of damage the sheriff twenty thousand dollars more than that i don't even know what the estimate is but i mean everything gets destroyed down there is of water in the and the back of our house and so we had an independent study to do something with us water that's coming down it's it's literally just flashing found and to the one area so this says a permanent solution would be to and start properly sized attention base and with a meter overflow structure yeah i mean that's if you i was home the day we got flooded in may and if you watch it it comes down the hell from across the street from us from that yeah exactly which one of those you're o need talk about more water than the enter on one of seven edgar lane i'm here to talk to you about the problem we have with these creek that runs behind our property i've been there for twenty eight years i was there when it was at your store we now have the development that is started and is basically over when the creek that has just constantly constantly where one of the