The Blue Ash City Council meets tonight at 7:05, February 11 to consider the final development plan of the Parkview portion of The Neighborhoods of Summit Park, vote on the collective bargaining agreement with the town’s firefighters, review pay increases for certain city employees not represented by collective bargaining units, and other business. Anyone can watch the meeting on the city’s YouTube page (https://youtu.be/hfH8sO08AO4).
The Parkview plan calls for single family and multi-family condominiums. The plan appears to revise a previous proposal presented to council at their January 14th meeting. The plan provides for 42 detached townhome units and 30 units in the condo buildings. According to the January 14th council minutes, base prices for the townhomes are $500,000-$800,000. The one, two, and three bedroom condo units will range from $450,000 to $750,000.
The master plan calls for this portion of the development to include mixed use elements however, developers have not been able to secure tenants yet.
According to the city administration memo, the collective bargaining agreement comes to council after two sessions of negations. The agreement provides for wage increases of 2% in 2021 and 2.25% in both 2022 and 2023. The agreement that would take effect on February 20th if approved, also makes changes to the “Kelly Day” selections, removes the article addressing “fair share” provisions, doubles the the number of vacation hours that can be taken annually for “emergency situations”, and reduces trade increments from four hours to one hour.
In a separate item the administration is recommending council make changes to the 2021 Position Classification plan and the 2021 Annual Pay Plan. If adopted, these changes would add an additional 1% pay increase to the previously conditionally approved 1% raises for some employees. The total 2% raise is in line with raises negotiated with city bargaining units and more in line with neighboring communities some of whom are granting 3% raises.
These raises are less than the 3% raises expected in an XpertHR survey of 460 US employers but is higher than the 1.3% cost of living adjustment by Social Security and the 0.5% increase announced by OPERS, Ohio’s largest public pension fund.
The meeting will begin with a public hearing for anyone with comments of the Parkview development. If you would like to address council for this or later in the meeting address other matters to council you may join the meeting by registering in advance at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zgSidbPFS6- AHQKHazvUNg. If you prefer, you can email your comments to: administration@blueash.com.
The full agenda for tonight’s meeting is at: https://cms4.revize.com/revize/blueashnew/document_center/2021%20Council%20Agendas/2-11-21%20Agenda.pdf. You can also find the memo from city administration to council with more details at: https://cms4.revize.com/revize/blueashnew/document_center/2021%20Council%20Memos/2-11-21%20Council%20Memo.pdf.
