T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Shadyside council member Melanie Haswell informs council that she will be heading up both the citizen advisory committee and beautification committee.

SHADYSIDE – The village of Shadyside will bridge the gap between its council and residents at 5 p.m. Sunday by creating the citizen advisory committee.

Council member Melanie Haswell will head that committee, as well as a beautification committee which will meet at 4:30 p.m. Sunday

Haswell said that the purpose of the advisory board is to organize events and bring eyes and ears to what the village is doing to improve itself. She added that the beautification committee’s first goal will be to implement antique-style street lights.

“​​We’re going to work on getting those neat, old-fashioned, like Hallmark-town street lights, like you see through St. Clairsville,” Haswell said. “It’s going to cost some money, but I have some ideas of people that we can get in touch with.”

Mayor Mike Meintel said that he is hopeful that both committees will vastly improve the village.

“We’ve got big ideas, we’re going to reach for the stars and maybe reach the clouds,” Meintel said.

Haswell also will regularly attend the Shadyside School Board meetings on top of guiding those committees. She said that, in such a small village like Shadyside, it’s important that the school and council work hand in hand.

“I just think it’s a good interaction to keep track of what’s happening in the school and I do believe, especially in our small town, everybody’s pretty close and think that we should be kept in touch with what’s going on in the school and they should know what’s going on the council,” Haswell said.

She’ll be able to report back to council what occurs during the school board meetings.

Council member Robert Dorris then spoke about how he plans to continue using social media to regularly inform residents of what’s going on in the village. Dorris said that since being sworn into council he has been posting video content to the Shadyside Discussion Facebook page to inform residents.

“I’m taking this very seriously, and I do want to continue putting out these videos. The videos have, as far as I’ve seen, have been well received,” he said. “My last video has reached 6,000 people which is more than the whole village, which is weird, but it is reaching people, and I think that the information we’re giving out as a collective group is probably more than most villages that I know of.”

Dorris added that although he is only using Facebook now he plans to use the other main social media websites to further expand the village’s voice.

Lastly council member Brandon Parr announced he will be creating a Designated Outdoor Refreshment Areas committee so that the village will be able to implement DORA.

DORA is a specified area of land that a local legislative authority such as city council or township trustees has designated as exempt from certain open container provisions as laid out in Ohio Revised Code Section 4301.82.

Before creating the committee he asked council if it would prefer to only have Shadyside residents on the committee or if it would be helpful to have anyone who is knowledgeable and interested in joining.

Haswell said that it may be useful for him to reach out to Bellaire and St. Clairsville who both already have implemented a DORA.

Parr agreed that it would be best to keep his options open when gathering interested parties for the committee instead of it only being village residents. Meintel replied that he agrees and he regularly reaches out to people all across the state for input.