Shadyside council approves sick-day donation policy
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SHADYSIDE - Shadyside Village Council passed a resolution during Monday evening’s meeting allowing all village employees to donate their sick days to other employees who are in need.
Mayor Mike Meintel said the resolution is a general practice throughout state agencies.
"If somebody comes down with a sickness who doesn’t have enough accrued sick leave balance. Other workers could donate just their sick time, not personal and not vacation time to help that person out," Meintel said. "Hopefully, there won’t be any fraud with it, sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t, but it’s a practice that’s done throughout the state."
He added that when he previously worked as a warden at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction’s Correction Reception Center, he implemented the practice, which saw great results.
"It helped everyone. There’s some people that get illnesses when they’re in the hospital for a long time, they have to be off work for a long time and it just helps those individuals," Meintel said. "It's just fellow workers helping one another."
He added that he believes the new resolution will allow the village to catch up with other state agencies while being a good practice for the staff.
"I’ve donated sick time to people who needed it throughout my career with Ohio," Meintel said. "I think we need to come up with the times, and I think this is a good practice for the village to do."
He then asked council if it would be interested in updating its food truck ordinance following an incident that occurred this past weekend.
Under the ordinance, food trucks operating inside the village need to contact the village and fill out an application, which then is approved through the mayor’s office.
"We very seldom have food trucks in this village, and we were taken off guard last Friday. An individual business had a food truck in to celebrate their one-year opening anniversary, which is a very good thing. And the business owner didn’t do anything wrong. It’s on the vendor to contact the municipal building, fill out the application and get the approval for it. None of that was done, and that vendor actually made a lot of good money and said that he was going to be back every week after and we just can’t have that, we’ve got businesses in the village that sell donuts," Meintel said. "We’re protecting our brick and mortar businesses in this village. There’s an avenue that we’re exploring for food truck vendors, but they definitely cannot be in the Loop area."
Council member Robert Dorris suggested council should update the ordinance to include all mobile businesses wanting to operate inside the village.
He said he wants the potential updated ordinance to cover a broader range of mobile businesses so if someone offers oil changes, haircuts, ice cream trucks or anything else that would be a mobile business, it would be covered in the ordinance.
Meintel agreed that he believes the new ordinance should apply to all mobile businesses. He added that he believes applications should be voted on by council.
Meintel added that if council agrees, he will contact village Law Director Kelly Kotur, who was absent from the meeting because she was attending a conference, to begin working on the updated ordinance and have it prepared for the next council meeting, which will be at 6 p.m. Aug. 24.
Council agreed for him to contact Kotur.
"We are going to have council approve those applications for food trucks just like we do for building permits," Meintel said. "That way everybody knows what’s going on, and it goes through an approval process."
He then announced that Ohio state Sen. Brian Chavez will hold a town hall meeting at the Shadyside Community Center on Tuesday, Aug. 18, at 3 p.m.
Meintel expressed his excitement and said the town hall meeting is important for the village because Chavez is one of the elected officials that the village heavily relies on for help when it needs resources or funds.
He said the meeting will end at 5 p.m. and encouraged all residents to attend.