City updates: Planning, Financial, Zoning

Rachel Mendell — Staff

The Galion City Coun­cil Finance Com­mit­tee met Jan. 26 to dis­cuss elec­tric rates. The com­mit­tee approved tak­ing off the 4 per­cent adder rate. The mat­ter will come before coun­cil as soon as the leg­is­la­tion is writ­ten. (Inquirer photo/Rachel Mendell)

Finan­cial Plan­ning and Super­vi­sion Commission

The Finan­cial Plan­ning and super­vi­sion com­mis­sion of Galion met Jan. 26 for nine min­utes for the pur­pose of approv­ing bond rollover for 2012. The $1.16 mil­lion will be rolled over into bonds with a cap of 1.95 per­cent inter­est. The city will pay a down pay­ment on the bond of $282,495 and the new total bond debt will be $1.4 million.

Belinda Miller reported last year’s inter­est rate on the bond was 2.1 per­cent. The new inter­est rate is 1.95 per­cent, sav­ing the city sig­nif­i­cantly. The funds are used for ongo­ing city improve­ment projects.

The next meet­ing of the Galion Finan­cial Plan­ning and Super­vi­sion Com­mis­sion will be May 9 at 9 a.m. in the city build­ing. Mem­bers present were Ken Barker, Sharon Han­ra­han, Joe Forkin, Belinda Miller, Gene Toy and Gail Baldinger. Jack Weisheit and Ken Barker were excused from the meeting.

Finance Com­mit­tee

The city council’s finance com­mit­tee met Jan. 26 to revisit elec­tric rates for res­i­dents and busi­nesses and hear the Sawvel and Asso­ciates report again. Res­i­dents and busi­ness own­ers were on hand to hear the pre­sen­ta­tion as well. All com­mit­tee mem­bers were present – Roberta Wade, Gail Baldinger and Walt Keib.

The com­mit­tee approved to drop the 4 per­cent adder rate that is still on elec­tric bills. The next step in the deci­sion will be leg­is­la­tion that will come before council.

Three hand­outs were used in the pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion: the Sum­mary of Cost of Ser­vice and Rate Study of Dec. 1, 2011; The Cost of Ser­vice and Rate Study Elec­tric Sys­tem of Jan. 26, 2012; and Com­par­i­son of Exist­ing Rates to Cost of Ser­vice and Pro­posed Rates for Galion.

Sawvel and Asso­ciates pre­sented its find­ings to the finance com­mit­tee once again. The num­bers of the study did not change.

Dis­cus­sion cen­tered on pro­jected power sup­ply costs and how they would affect res­i­den­tial elec­tric bills. Over the next eight years cost was ana­lyzed to jump up and down, but Sawvel sug­gested costs be “lev­elized” over the next three years to make the increases in util­ity bills gradual.

Don Gruen­e­meyer of Sawvel and Asso­ciates urged the com­mit­tee to break out res­i­den­tial from small busi­ness for the cal­cu­la­tion of base power rate because they have dif­fer­ent power needs. He also stressed each rate class needs to pay for its own use. As it stands the large power users [indus­trial] are pay­ing more than what it cost to sup­ply them. Res­i­den­tial users are pay­ing less than what it costs to sup­ply them with power. This results in large power users sub­si­diz­ing res­i­den­tial users. This is the rea­son­ing behind rais­ing the res­i­den­tial base rate while low­er­ing the large power user rate.

Sawvel also sug­gested there be a way to pay for secu­rity light­ing, such as an add on charge. At present there is no rev­enue com­ing in to sup­port secu­rity light­ing. This does not mean street lights, but rather indi­vid­ual secu­rity lights pro­vided by the city.

After the pre­sen­ta­tion, res­i­dents made com­ments con­cern­ing the neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of the util­ity rates in Galion, Bucyrus has to pay their city’s util­ity rates through a tax, Shelby elec­tric costs less than Galion (but no one knows why), and los­ing man­power to other com­mu­ni­ties that pay more.

Wade urged the finance com­mit­tee to take the step of sep­a­rat­ing out city util­ity costs from the util­ity costs of the busi­nesses and res­i­dents. “When you give some­thing for free, they over-consume,” said Wade. “It’s wrong that they [res­i­dents] have to pay the gov­ern­ment elec­tric cost.”

Keib won­dered how that move would affect the water and sewer rates.

“You need to shift those costs,” said Wade. “We need to take that step and find out.”

“Are we going to mea­sure every­thing in every department?”

The finance com­mit­tee decided to cal­cu­late out num­bers to see how much the water and sewer depart­ments spend on elec­tric­ity and to sep­a­rate city util­ity expenses from the rest of the community.

Keib said the study should be com­plete – more than just elec­tric use by gov­ern­ment offices, but other expenses as well.

Toy warned that would also mean the ball fields at PECO Park if the goal was to be fair across the board. That cost would be passed along to those that use the park.

After the dis­cus­sion dis­solved into a shout­ing match, halted by Wade, city man­ager Gene Toy reminded those present how many busi­nesses have stayed and are thriv­ing, includ­ing HTI, Covert, Galion LLC and E-Crane.

The finance com­mit­tee meet­ing was adjourned. The next meet­ing of the Galion city coun­cil finance com­mit­tee will be announced at a future date. The Sawvel report is avail­able from city offices.

Galion City Zon­ing Board

The Zon­ing Board met Jan. 24 for the pur­pose of dis­cussing sign ordi­nances. There was much dis­cus­sion about how the sign ordi­nances should be enforced, the frus­tra­tion of busi­nesses in under­stand­ing the sign ordi­nance and other com­mu­nity sign ordi­nances. The com­mit­tee left the sub­ject with the assign­ment to study the old sign ordi­nance and com­pare it with the new sign ordi­nance in prepa­ra­tion for pro­posed changes to the ordinance.

Zon­ing inspec­tor Matt Ross gave a two-year report of a zon­ing audit he per­formed. There were 247 per­mits processed includ­ing res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial. Ini­tially 37 per­cent of per­mits were turned down, but most of those pro­ceeded through the appeal process and most of those were finally approved. It was agreed that the sys­tem is working.

The next meet­ing of the Galion Zon­ing Board will be Feb. 29 at 5:15 p.m. in the city build­ing. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend.

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Jan 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.