Present for Village Council's special work session, wherein the group set goals for the near future, were Village Clerk Judy Kintner, Village Manager Johnnie Burns, Council President Kevin Stokes, Vice President Gavin DeVore Leonard, Brian Housh, Carmen Brown, Planning and Economic Development Director Meg Leatherman, Police Chief Paige Burge, and via Zoom Council member Trish Gustafson. The meeting was led by Project Lead Elyse Giardullo, shown at center. (Video still)
Village Council sets goals, talks upcoming projects
- Published: April 25, 2025
Shoring up communication between Village staff and elected officials. Renewing efforts to build a municipal broadband network. Reviewing the Village’s sidewalk policy. Updating the Active Transportation Plan. Retaining existing and bringing in new businesses.
These were among the many goals Village Council members set for the near future at a special meeting, Friday, April 11.
The meeting was led by Village project lead Elyse Giardullo, who earlier compiled each individual Council member’s goals and visions for Yellow Springs, and extracted six key themes to focus on in goal-setting: community engagement and communications; financial sustainability and fiscal responsibility; municipal infrastructure and utility development; economic development; housing development; and leadership and professional development.
Over the two-hour meeting, Giardullo ushered Council members — as well as Clerk of Council Judy Kintner, Village Manager Johnnie Burns, Planning and Economic Development Director Meg Leatherman and Police Chief Paige Burge — through each of those categories, and landed on theme-specific and measurable goals staff and Council will carry out in the coming months and year.
“We’re here to come to a consensus on what goals we want to keep and what needs to be prioritized,” Giardullo said at the outset of the meeting. “What we’re aiming to do is get … clarity, alignment and direction of a shared vision forward.”
“Once we agree on what matters most, the strategies and actions will follow,” she added.
Communications
Starting first with communications-based goals and objectives, those in attendance agreed — the communication within Yellow Springs government and the communication to local residents have gotten better over recent years, but could still use improvement.
“I think we really need to monitor our communications more — always being open, honest and transparent,” Council member Trish Gustafson said, adding that she would like Council members to use only their government emails for public engagement.
Council member Brian Housh suggested Council could do more to recognize and catalog the ways in which the Village has addressed citizens’ concerns. To that end, Manager Burns suggested his team could put together a “living document” that illustrates yearslong progress and physical improvements in Yellow Springs.
Ultimately, the group expressed interest in Village staff continuing to improve upon its mechanisms for local outreach and public relations — that is, continually updating the website and sharing information through social media and the quarterly Village newsletter.
Financials
A number of the goals Council members turned in to Giardullo ahead of Friday’s meeting weren’t aspirational, but are, in fact, already being executed.
Among those were “continue identifying revenue opportunities and close gaps in uncollected taxes and fees,” “pursue additional grant funding for infrastructure, housing and public safety projects” and “conduct periodic financial audits.”
“Continuing to do something just means we’re doing our job over here,” Clerk Kintner said. “I mean, it would be very embarrassing if we weren’t going after uncollected taxes — it’s just what we do, it’s our job. Maybe we need to more clearly define what we mean by ‘goals’ as opposed to what function of our government is making us happy or unhappy.”
Heeding this recommendation, Council members either struck or combined some financial goals and came away with a few actionable items such as potentially beginning the annual end-of-year budget planning discussions much earlier. In the same vein, Burns requested that Council do more to budget for grants so the Village can better match and leverage any awarded funds.
Infrastructure, utilities
Municipal broadband was the first topic Council members broached in their discussion on local infrastructure.
Efforts to build a municipal fiber network throughout Yellow Springs — providing local residents with high-speed, affordable Internet access — first began nearly 10 years ago by a local citizens group, Springs-Net. In 2022, the Village took the first steps to launch a pilot broadband program, and since then, more than 100 Yellow Springs homes and businesses have opted into the network.
“But we’ve been letting this hang in the air for almost two years now,” Housh said. “We need to resolve who owns it. Should we keep it or sell it? We can’t keep putting $50,000 in the budget to cover overages.”
Housh continued: “I think we should sell it. There are other entities that might buy it and further develop it in a way that we can’t as a Village.”
“So, the measurable goal is determining ownership,” Burns added, noting that the Village’s current partner in the project, Altafiber — formerly Cincinnati Bell — would not be able to take the reins on the local project.
Following the matter of broadband, discussion turned more toward prioritization — what municipal infrastructure projects ought to be done first, at what cost, and perhaps, at the expense of what?
“So, do we want to fill every single pothole, most of the potholes or none of the potholes,” Council Vice President Gavin DeVore Leonard asked rhetorically, as an example.
Burns encouraged Council to give him and his staff more direction on the matter of prioritization, and offered up his own example to drive home the point:
“Some people want sidewalks everywhere, some don’t want sidewalks at all, some want us to grind out a pebble in front of their house,” Burns said. “At what point do we say, ‘OK, we’ve done enough work on this one thing,’ That’s where I need the help.”
Housh took that moment to steer the conversation to discuss reviewing the Village’s sidewalk policy, as well as the Active Transportation Plan — the latter hasn’t been updated since it was first adopted in 2019.
Burns suggested he would seek out grants to fund the Active Transportation Plan’s updating; he also noted that the plan has been leveraged in recent years to win approximately $4.5 million in state and federal grants.
Economic development
Much of the discussion on economic goals centered around two matters: giving equal priority to business retention and business growth, as well as determining particular roles local institutions and organizations play in facilitating retention and growth.
“So where does our lane start and where does the Chamber [of Commerce]’s lane stop? What about YSDC [the Yellow Springs Development Corporation]? Village staff?” mused DeVore Leonard.
“That’s exactly what we’ve been trying to figure out,” Burns said, adding that the boundaries between those organizations became blurry during the COVID-19 pandemic — which aligned with the Chamber’s lack of a director from 2021 to mid-2024.
One solution, Burns suggested, may come from Planning and Economic Development Director Leatherman’s more active role with YSDC — thus clearing any gap between the Village and YSDC, as well as the Village and other community liaisons with eyes on the local economy.
Housing
The category of Giardullo’s that garnered the most responses from Council members was, by a significant margin, housing — how to build more, for whom and when?
At the end of a lengthy discussion, the group came away with several housing-related goals:
• Establish clear policies and incentives for developers that align with Village values;
• Continue strategic zoning improvements to support diverse housing options;
• Determine and implement a housing strategy that encourages and sponsors the development of affordable housing in the village through incentives and policies; and
• Broaden decision-making by seeking external expertise and input on affordable housing options, consulting with professionals and experts outside the village to ensure a well-rounded and informed approach to policy and strategy development.
Without having the in-place strategies of the second and third points, Council members had some difficulty with drilling down on the specifics of both ongoing and proposed housing discussions — such as those around the senior-focused Cascades project, the proposed low-income housing tax credit or the proposed apartments at Antioch College and even a potential development at Glass Farm.
“There are just some bridges we can’t think about crossing until we get a lot closer to them,” Council member Carmen Brown said.
In the meantime, the Village can still build those bridges, Burns said.
“Even though we’re not digging at Glass Farm, we’ve been actively working on that housing plan for the last 10 years,” he said. “A lot of things have been stubbed out that way, infrastructure-wise.”
Council also received housing-related memos from two Village commissions: Planning Commission and Environmental Commission.
The former sought direction and guidance from Council regarding future steps related to inclusionary zoning. Aside from hearing Leatherman’s recommendations, Council gave no such direction at Friday’s meeting.
The memo from Environmental Commission — which the fourth bullet point above addresses — encouraged the group to prioritize “reasonable” housing and economic development, and at the same time, promote sustainable land use.
“We need to look at more progressive models,” Brown said.
Leadership, professional development
Last among the categories Giardullo identified from Council responses was leadership and professional development.
The first goal outlined was to see the creation of a Village Strategic Plan — one of the primary jobs Giardullo was tasked with when she took the post of project lead last year.
As she told the News last year, a strategic plan for Yellow Springs would look like a “roadmap” for the village, replete with community and local stakeholder input, surveys, demographics and more; Giardullo said last summer that she aimed to have the plan completed within the first year working in Village government.
Some Council members expressed interest in soon conducting a wage study for all Village job positions.
“Since I’ve been here,” Gustafson said, “I’ve had a suspicion that our police force isn’t paid comparatively well to neighboring villages and comparable cities. We should look at that. It could be why it’s been so difficult to recruit.”
Chief Burge said she’s already on it.
“We’re putting together a full recruitment and retention strategy for the department,” she said. “It includes a thorough and comprehensive look at compensation and benefits.”
Though the group didn’t decide Friday whether to hire an independent third party to conduct the future wage study, they did agree that if such a study were to be conducted internally, the results would still be trusted and acted upon.
Giardullo concluded the meeting by telling Council members that she and other Village staffers will compile the notable remarks, suggestions and goals that emerged from Friday’s meeting, and that all that information will be compressed into a resolution that Council will vote on at a future meeting.
Village Council’s next regular meeting is Monday, April 21, at 6 p.m. in Council Chambers in the John Bryan Community Center.
Contact: rdixon@ysnews.com
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