CLAYTON — An ordinance authorizing the sale of 3.7884 acres in the Village of North Clayton to Bella Sorella Pizza at a price of $200,000 was tabled by Clayton council at its Jan. 18 meeting.

The ordinance was also tabled at the Jan. 4 council meeting. After a brief executive session on Jan. 18 council voted to table the ordinance again.

Council plans to bring the ordinance back for consideration at its Feb. 1 meeting. The ordinance includes a provision to forgive the loan for the purchase price in return for Bella Sorella maintaining an agreed level of employment and “other conditions” within the purchase and sale agreement.

Also included in the ordinance is wording authorizing the city manager to pay closing costs, if any, as specified by the purchase contract and settlement statements with costs not to exceed the $35,000 spending authority granted to the city manager per Clayton Codified Ordinance 121.01.

If the amount exceeds $35,000 it would have to come before council for vote in a public meeting.

The ordinance calls for Bella Sorella to employ approximately 12 people after it constructs a restaurant on the 3.7884 parcel and eventually increasing its employee base to 18 with an initial annual payroll of at least $375,000.

In other business, city council passed a resolution supporting the placement of an income tax levy on the March 19 ballot. The levy would include a 1 percent increase to the current 1.50 percent city income tax while restoring a 100 percent tax credit to residents that work in another jurisdiction with an income tax rate of 2.50 percent.

“This piece of legislation will allow me as the city manager to print flyers, do yard signs and just things in general in support of the income tax that we have on the March 19 ballot,” said Amanda Zimmerlin. “When we did this for the November ballot, we actually passed the two pieces together and we did not do that this time, so we are requesting the ability to do that now.”

Newly elected Councilman Ryan Farmer made a proposal to council for consideration that would enable him to help the city promote the levy. Farmer has experience in prioritizing budgets.

“While we are voting for marketing of the income tax, we are struggling with cuts. I would like to offer up that while we can’t cut ourselves to prosperity, we can’t tax ourselves there either,” Farmer said. “At the same time there is a sweet spot that we as a council need to find, and I would like to offer up my services having done budget prioritization in my professional life to have us come together and try to understand our priorities in spending in the city so that we can make a better case to the public on if we need an income tax increase.”

Farmer said the public should be informed of a “cutline” that shows what services would be lost if the levy fails.

“I think that would help instill some confidence in how we are looking at the budget and how we are trying to be good stewards with the people’s money,” Farmer noted.

He said he had made some notes on how this could be accomplished and would provide that information to members of council in the coming week as well as making it public just as a general plan on how the city operates in order to obtain feedback.

“It is something that I think will help all of us maybe even understand each of our own values on how we see the city and what we should be paying for and what we should not,” Farmer said. “When you are constrained on money, you can’t say that everything is of equal value. Some things are going to be more important than others. We need to understand that and how we spend our money needs to portray that.”

Zimmerlin said that if that is what council would like, that is fine.

“I think a good point to start would be looking at our 2024 budget,” Zimmerlin said. “I know you were not on council when that got passed, but this council and body and staff looked at what we had in the budget, what our priorities were, and what services we could continue to provide.

“I think your idea is a very good one, but that is something that we definitely need to communicate to our residents so whenever you do that, I don’t know what you have written down but that is definitely a good place to start is where we did the 2024 budget,” Zimmerlin added.

Farmer said that the general approach is not necessarily just picking alternatives for what is cut.

“But it is understanding our values and aligning those values to those alternatives to tell us which ones should go first and which ones we should keep first,” Farmer stated. “The idea is that you come up with a prioritized one to end list so we don’t argue about every single item in the budget, we argue about what is around the cutline – what should be above it and what should be below it because the consensus should be if it’s at the top, everybody thinks it should be at the top, and if it’s at the bottom everybody thinks it should be at the bottom.”

Farmer noted the city does the “what” with its transparency in terms of city funds, but it does not do the “why” of transparency.

“Why do we choose to fund this, and not that? I am trying to get to that,” Farmer stated. “I will provide a write up for you to review. If you want to tell me to kick the bucket on it, that’s fine, but I want to offer it up as a tool we can use as a council to facilitate our decision making.”

Council member Tina Kelly asked if it was legal to do that and said she thought council had discussed forming a committee to help market the levy.

“If a council member like Mr. Farmer wants to make recommendations like he just described, I would suggest you have a work session to discuss that,” said Law Director Martina Dillon. “That is probably the most transparent, the best legally conforming way to do that would be my recommendation.

“As far as the committee, pursuant to the council rules I believe the council has the authority to appoint a committee to study what ever issue they would like studied and report back to council similar to what we did with the salary review committee,” Dillon added.

Mayor Mike Stevens told Farmer he appreciated his offer.

“I think it is an excellent idea and it is something that I think I would be in favor of going forward,” Stevens said. “I personally would not be in favor of holding this up to make that decision, because unfortunately we don’t work very quickly and the special election is coming up soon. I think it would be rushing it. I m open to that idea and I support that, but I think Amanda said it best is that we have done all that.

“I know you weren’t on council yet, but we have done all of that,” Stevens added. “I am confident in our staff. They’ve made cuts and most of them are things that I think we would all agree that the first things to be cut were all of the extra stuff. So far we haven’t had to cut personnel or purchases or anything like that.”

Stevens said he would definitely support Farmer’s proposal going forward. Farmer stated he did not intend to formulate a plan in two months.

“I think that would be unreasonable,” Farmer said. “Some of things you need to do, you need to sit for a while and jell.”

He proposed a few work sessions for council to review his plan.

Council members noted that council needed to pass the resolution now in order to place the levy on the March ballot to avoid a conflict in November when Northmont City Schools will have its levy up for vote.

Council voted 5-2 to pass the resolution as written with Farmer and Ken Henning voting no.

Reach Ron Nunnari at (937) 684-9124 or email [email protected].