Zack Van Zante
Ms. Keener
AP Government
18 August 2016
Democracy in Action
The Fairview Park city council meeting was held in city hall for a regularly scheduled meeting. This particular meeting was for people to receive the city’s approval for new construction projects. The first action was to take attendance of who on council would be voting today. Once roll call was complete, they started taking people’s cases. That day, my troop leader, was first on the list of articles to go over. My troop wanted to build a shed in Messiah Lutheran’s church parking lot, since they are our home church, so our Scoutmaster asked council if they would be happy with the plans we had. As they scoured over the plans we gave them, they had one complaint, “the shed isn’t going to be this red color right?” It was explained that was the generic computer model, they suggested we paint it in neutral colors, beyond that we were cleared. Next a man from PNC Bank spoke, explaining the PNC Bank on Lorain was moving and wanted to build an ATM in Giant Eagles parking lot. The council told him of the recent ATM machines being hit with cars and stolen, to which he told them PNC Bank planned to concrete the ATM four feet down with steel reinforcement. Council asked about security measures and if it would be a problem at night, the man explained they would have lights and a camera. Once all of council’s questions were answered, the man sat back down, as the next stood as his case was called out. A carpenter, the school across from Messiah Lutheran wanted a fence for the children to play unseen in the front of the school. The council was delighted by his fence idea and just asked it be neutral colors. Other cases came and council gave their judgment, going on for an hour.
The people on the council who were of importance were the mayor Eileen Patton and the council president Michael Kilbane, with ten other wards and varying ranks. All of them coming for a local government council meeting. From this meeting I had learned that there were ATMs being stolen in Fairview Park and Rocky River and other cities around the two.
This event shows to me that our city wants to have everything be looking good with nothing too out of the ordinary to keep our city respectable and decent, as it has been since 1910. With all the questions of safety, that goes to show they want to make sure people will not be hurt by what they approve; mandating the lights and camera for the ATM so people can use it safely at night.