How Kent City Council is tackling COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many changes to the way local government operates, and Kent City Council is not an exception. Gwen Rosenberg, Kent City Council Member at Large, shared with us some of the projects the city is working on and how the pandemic has impacted the way they do business.

Q: What sorts of projects is the city working on right now?

GR: The city’s always working on a tremendous number of different things all the time, between infrastructure, working on economic development opportunities, paving streets, looking for grant money, a lot of the infrastructure projects that we have are years out in advance, grant projects and things like that you plan for way, way out. 

The city is working in conjunction with the university on the Main Street corridor, which is a huge project. Main Street was getting really beat up there so the city entered into a memorandum of understanding with the university to evaluate that Main Street across from campus to see if there’s kind of a mutually agreeable traffic flow and things like that. 

Our Parks and Rec department is working on a new, underneath the Main Street Bridge, we’ll be working on the hike and bike trail that was a grant that was you know basically to get the ball got rolling on that years ago, to get money to replace the set of stairs so basically make it accessible for biking right now, you have to kind of carry your bike down some stairs. But on the other side of that we’ll basically have a ramp, and a set of stairs. 

Obviously with the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a number of things there that the city is working on to really try to help local businesses. So one of the things that had been talked about at least lately, was the possibility of a DORA… but basically it’s a very specific section of downtown Kent, where people can purchase a beverage, an alcoholic beverage, it normally would not be allowed outside the establishment but, but we’ve got mapped out so you can go into an establishment that serves alcohol and purchase a drink in a specific cup. It’s a DORA cup and then you can kind of spread out a little bit so that’s one of the things that sort of got fast tracked, I guess would be to say, with the Main Street Kent organization was that the DORA. All of a sudden got a lot more attention as it occurred to city leaders that hey, you know these restaurants or bars are not going to make it if left to kind of suffer to this pandemic and as a, as a city official I of course felt obligated to do whatever we could, explore every opportunity to get our bars or restaurants or retailers some more opportunity for business and one of those was encouraging people like hey come on downtown you can get something to eat, you can get some takeout you can even get a takeout you know a glass of wine, or even a cocktail and sit outside spread out. 

Q: Was DORA in the works pre-pandemic, or did it come up during the pandemic to find a way to support local businesses?

GR: So Main Street Kent and our city manager had been made aware of the potential for this DORA, right so things happened in the state that made this a legal possibility, right. So the Heritage Ohio Foundation in conjunction with our Main Street Kent organized organization okay this is a, you know, this is sort of a thing we can look at now that we couldn’t before, what do you think, and so there’s always a lot of very thoughtful conversations with that organization and their board. And so it’s sort of something that had been mulled over, right, just sort of like, we’d never the city have never quite done something like that.

People were having conversations about that before. And then this pandemic really it was like highlighted the opportunity that this thing that we had been exploring could become something of a lifeline to our businesses, so of course then it was like alright let’s get serious how would we do this, what would it look like. And it looks pretty amazing.

Q: How has COVID impacted what you as a council can do?

GR:  So our city manager, in conjunction with a number of other people, including our fire chief, our police department, representatives from Kent State University. We have like a task force like a command Task Force in times of great emergency, right. City council is a slow moving vehicle, you know, having nine people discuss well you know we’re only meeting twice a month. That’s not the most efficient way to deal with a crisis. So a global pandemic is a crisis and needs immediate attention by people that have all of the details at hand. So, we have basically this, I want to call like a unified command Task Force. So we have that comprise of key stakeholders, decision makers. And so they were able to kind of get things going.

So obviously right away, you know, budget, like what are we going to do like what are we going to do to protect our budget so we’re not as a city, struggling because you know our income tax revenue could be impacted, you know how about Kent State, you know, basically getting those people down at a table to talk about how they’re going to manage things.

Q: What is the Hometown Foundation and how does it work?

GR: The Hometown Foundation, it kind of goes back to the south end of Kent, that we just kind of get it was just designated as like a historic or historic South End designation, and Howard Boyle and a number of other people in this city have long ties in that neighborhood. And so, you know, when you’re looking at a city and you’re looking at different parts of the city, homeownership is something that you really want to encourage. So, that neighborhood and other in other parts of the city as well, was looking at okay we’ve got some properties that maybe have tax liens or maybe are like really kind of too far gone that you know the city isn’t in the business of buying homes and fixing them up, but a foundation, a nonprofit, a nonprofit entity like that.

(Boyle) has a board of people, you know, so he’s assembled a board, including some people from the city to look at okay like what can we do to take some of these properties that are unutilized or underutilized or have a host of kind of financial barriers right like I said like tax liens or things like that that make them almost unsalable, right. So his foundation is going to go in, purchase the property to take care of. Take care of some of the burdens to sale there, and then put it back up on the market.

Q: How is the new City Hall project coming along?

GR: So we had our committee meetings where we had to iron out something, so that was you know we had to talk about costs, we had to talk about whether we wanted to put in this third floor space. We had to discuss, we heard from Rhonda our finance director, about funding it and how we’re going to fund it, you know residents had legitimate questions and concerns about, you know, what will cost them or taxes or other things like that. So you’ve heard us discuss that at the next meeting will be like a vote on it so we voted on it. So you’ll, you’ll see the actual,

the ordinance or what have you, the legal part of it they will vote at the kind of secure it. So we’ll be moving forward with that city hall project. So this was kind of, this was a big step in making this project happen. And it was kind of a last step before you’re like, Alright, like here we go like, you know, the ball is rolling towards you know construction of this project.

Q: What would you say that the most challenging thing for the council this year?

GR: This pandemic is really challenging and you know we’ve got a lot of residents in our city that the majority, many, many residents are dramatically impacted by this pandemic. You know, your number one concern is people getting sick, God forbid, people dying, we haven’t had anybody you know pass away from COVID in our city. That’s not to say it’s not going to happen, so your number one concern is our residents, you know, and then beyond the actual physical health of it is what about their financial health, you know, what about our, you know, our food banks. What about our kids that are getting school lunches?

I just keep saying like everybody’s got to come through this one piece, you know, and that’s the big concern that I have, it’s a big concern that Council has and the city has, it’s like, this is impacting everybody, and some people it’s impacting dramatically. If not, health, then dramatically like their family’s foods, you know security in our financial stability. I mean, are people going to be able to pay their rent, are they going to be able to have food, are their kids kids who are maybe special needs are struggling to be able to get the education they need. There’s a lot, this is still an ongoing barrier. 

Q: What sorts of upcoming projects is the council planning on voting on or considering working on?

GR: There’s always stuff in the pipeline like I said. The City Hall project has to be something that will kind of be periodically hearing about, you know, response to COVID as things kind of pop up and things need to be addressed, and the Main Street corridor is some that I know for sure will be coming up.

Q: What will Democracy Day in October look like?

GR: It gives residents an opportunity to voice their thoughts and feelings about democracy, and then all of that information that they submit gets sent on to the state. 

It’s interesting to hear the resident’s thoughts. A lot of it, quite frankly, is kind of more of a national comment and more national policies that aren’t necessarily something under a city council’s purview. 

Q: How has COVID impacted what you as a council can do?

GR: One of the first things of course, that we look at is to make sure that we’re sound. We made cuts absolutely everywhere we possibly could, every department was asked to cut, to trim their budget where they could, raises were put on hold. There’s a whole host of things that kind of went into motion as soon as this started, so yeah so financially a whole lot of things happened with regards to city planning city budget you know even just forecasting and things like that.