Community Meeting
February 5th, 2015
A Community Meeting was held at the Faith United Methodist Church, 1616 Blue Avenue,
Zanesville at 6:30 pm.
The agenda was as follows:
1. Welcome – Ann Combs
2. Opening Remarks – Mayor Jeff Tilton
3. City Presentations
a. Public Safety Director – Fred Buck
b. Police Department – Chief Ken Miller
c. Fire Department – Chief Eric Waltemire
d. Public Service/Community Development – Jay Bennett
e. Code Enforcement – Tim Smith
4. Community Questions – Ann Combs
5. Closing – Ann Combs
Mrs. Ann Combs welcomed everyone to Mayor Tilton’s second town hall meeting. She
asked for everyone’s vote on May 5th for the bond issue that will be on the ballet to build a new
Senior Center. She then introduced the City panel.
Mayor Tilton thanked everyone for coming out on this cold evening. When he started as
Mayor, he wanted to communicate to the community all the services that the city employees
were working on. This was the second meeting and there would be future meetings. He also
thanked Ann for being the facilitator of tonight’s meeting on such short notice.
Mr. Fred Buck is the Director of Public Safety and shared that our Police Department is now
at full staff. They are led by Chief Ken Miller, Patrol Captain Tony Coury, and Administrative
Captain Doug Merry. The new Jail Administrator is Michelle Duke. He reported that both
floors of the jail are now opened. We passed the jail inspection. We currently have a DAP
officer, Jim Devoll. We are starting work on the Neighbor Intervention Unit (NIU). We will
look at the different neighbors and calls that come in and try to address those issues. We will
have to prioritize the most important issues to work on in those neighborhoods. We feel that
drugs are the most important issue at this time. We now have 44 patrol offices. We have 19
correction officers and 10 in the dispatch office, with approximately 7 support staff.
Our Fire Department is preparing to swear in a new chief tomorrow, Eric Waltermire. We
have three Assistant chiefs to run the fire scene’s day-to-day operations. We have one, 40 hr.
Assistant Chief that we just changed from Deputy Chief. This allows us more flexibility to cover
overtime.
Mr. Tim Smith is our building inspector and had a busy year last year especially with the
building of the hospital. We also have two Code Enforcement Officers. If you need anything
from Public Safety, please call Fred Buck. The chiefs and Fred meet once a week to discuss
issues and suggestions.
Chief Ken Miller has been with the department for 35 years and in this position for about one
year. When looking at the annual report, there was a couple of impressive statistics. Burglary,
robbery, car theft and overall theft all went down last year while drug related arrests increased.
He also shared that there have been many improvements to the jail.
Chief Waltemire reported that we have three fire stations and 16 people on staff at those three
locations. We purchased an ambulance about a year ago so residents will see a Zanesville Fire
Ambulance/Medic. This allows us to add medic services to the city. We have had approx. 6
calls a month and it is generating revenue for us. The Fire Department had a busy year with
4100 runs. We are very proud of average response time – from the time of call to the dispatch of
the vehicle in the driveway, is 3 min and 42 seconds for those 4100 runs. Future of the
department is very strong.
Mr. Jay Bennett had handouts in the back that consist of Organizational Chart, Winter
Operations Policy for Street Cleaning, and the Current Paving Program for 2015. He stated that
the previous speakers deal with the hard issues within the City while he deals with the fun things
in the city; parks, airport, trash removal, water to your house, and community development.
Jay shared that City Council is asking for the Administration to prepare a comprehensive plan for
community development, which includes transportation, housing improvements. He recognized
Susan Jones from the Pollock Apartments for being on the Comprehensive Planning team. He
sent kudos to the Street team for getting the streets cleaned for the morning commute and
reminded us that this is the season for pot holes. Please be patient with us, call Jay or the Mayor
when you see pot holes so we can add to our list.
Tim Smith shared that Code Enforcement’s goal is to preserve and protect our neighborhoods.
They performed 1800 inspections last year. The biggest problem we face in Code Enforcement
is we are over 50% rentals verses ownership. Code Enforcement continues to add the downtown
buildings that need condemned to the list for future renovations. Through Tim’s involvement
with the Land Bank Board he is trying to get the land parcels back into owners’ hands so they
can take care of it. We continue to look at cleaning up Mead Street to help with some
redevelopment of that property.
Ann thanked all the presenters for their presentations and opened the floor for citizens to ask
questions.
One asked about the possibly of getting two more code enforcement officers to work the
weekends to help with the back yard mechanics but Mr. Smith said it would not matter if we did
have them on the weekend because there would be no one in the office to create the paperwork.
This citizen also let Mr. Bennett know that the Sanitation department gets thumbs up.
The next question was how do you file a report on an officer? Chief Miller responded make
us aware of the problem; call the supervisor on shift and let them know, and then we will take
care of it.
Another Guest asked if there was any information on the demolition of the Good Sam
Hospital Building. Mr. Bennett said no timeframe at this time.
The next guest shared kudos to the response time of the Fire Department.
Mr. Bennett sent kudos to Bo Keck and his staff for allowing us to use their phone system to
send out more than 3,000 phone messages to the community for this evening’s meeting.
The last citizen shared that she likes these meetings to help inform the community of what is
going on and appreciates the communication from the City.
Mayor Tilton then stated that the next meeting will be in late March.
Ann Combs thanked everyone for coming and bid them safe travels home.