Council rededicates the Freese Foundation and its creator Horace E. Freese

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

Dick Hot­ten­roth, chair and pres­i­dent of the trustees of the Freese Foun­da­tion, ded­i­cates the plaque in honor of the trust’s founder Horace E. Freese in honor of his father Egbert M. Freese. The Freese foun­da­tion funds schol­ar­ships and park main­te­nance each year.

By Rachel Mendell

The Galion City Coun­cil met for the first time in 2012 to con­duct begin­ning of the year busi­ness and assign com­mit­tees for the new year.

Dick Hot­ten­roth, chair and pres­i­dent of the trustees of the Freese Foun­da­tion, attended the meet­ing to ded­i­cate a new plaque (see box) to the city in mem­ory of Egbert Freese and his gift to the cit­i­zens of Galion.

The foun­da­tion was cre­ated in 1999 for the ben­e­fit of the res­i­dents of Galion, specif­i­cally the main­te­nance of the parks. Money given to the city could have been “lost in the needs of the com­mu­nity,” he said, or be “the goose that laid the golden egg.”

The $7.5 mil­lion fund has grown with care­ful plan­ning to 10 mil­lion, Hot­ten­roth said, and has been set up as a trust that, if cared for, will last indefinitely.

To date, the foun­da­tion has deliv­ered $4 mil­lion to the res­i­dents of Galion with $800,000 of that total being in schol­ar­ships to Galion High School graduates.

Hot­ten­roth praised the gift of the trust Horace Freese began in mem­ory of his father Egbert Freese, which has also helped the city of Galion dur­ing the recent finan­cial trouble.

Coun­cil mem­ber Walt Keib, also a mem­ber of the foun­da­tion board, said, “This man did not get con­sumed in his own riches.”

Keib said he has watched as stu­dents have ben­e­fited from schol­ar­ships and he looks for­ward to the day in 2016 when the foun­da­tion loan to the city will be paid off and the money can again go toward the parks.

City man­ager Gene Toy said he had often pon­dered the photo of Egbert Freese lean­ing on his golf club with only a few words ascribed to the pic­ture that has been on dis­play in city offices. This new plaque explains who Freese was and why The Freese Foun­da­tion exists.

In other busi­ness, Gail Baldinger was elected pres­i­dent of coun­cil and Walt Keib was elected vice pres­i­dent of coun­cil. New mem­bers Ken Bod­kins and Paul Flan­nery were in atten­dance. Mem­ber Tom Fell­ner was excused from the meeting.

Com­mit­tees were set up for the new year. Roberta Wade will chair the finance com­mit­tee with Walt Keib and Gail Baldinger as mem­bers. Cathy George will head up the laws and ordi­nances com­mit­tee with Roberta Wade and Tom Fell­ner attend­ing as com­mit­tee mem­bers. The plan­ning zon­ing and util­i­ties com­mit­tee will be lead by Tom Fell­ner with mem­bers Gail Baldinger and Ken Bod­kins. Parks and recre­ations will be chaired by Ken Bod­kins with mem­bers Paul Flan­nery and Cathy George.

Plan­ning zon­ing and util­i­ties will meet the fourth Tues­day of each month at 6:15 p.m. Laws and ordi­nance will meet the sec­ond Tues­day of each month after the city coun­cil meet­ing. Finance com­mit­tee … Parks and recre­ation com­mit­tee will meet the sec­ond Tues­day of each month at 6:15 p.m.

In leg­is­la­tion, the coun­cil passed a num­ber of house­keep­ing issues done each year includ­ing the annual mate­ri­als ordi­nance, the coun­cil rules, and the agree­ment with Craw­ford met­ro­pol­i­tan Hous­ing Author­ity. The coun­cil passed the ordi­nance to pur­sue fund­ing for a new dump truck and plow. The old 22-year-old vehi­cle will be given to the elec­tric line depart­ment as a spare. The coun­cil approved financ­ing for SCADA at the waste­water plant that will fund new data read­ers ($125,000) needed to gather infor­ma­tion that needs to be reported to the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. This has been in the bud­get since 2011. Belinda Miller said the bond rate is look­ing good – 1.95 per­cent and hope­fully better.

The coun­cil also reap­pointed Den­nis Long to the Galion Board of Health.

The next meet­ing of the Galion City Coun­cil will be Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. in coun­cil cham­bers. The pub­lic is encour­aged to attend.

The finance com­mit­tee will meet with Sawvel rep­re­sen­ta­tives to dis­cuss util­ity rates at 10 a.m. Thurs­day, Jan. 26 at the city build­ing. Wade explained the elec­tric ordi­nance was tabled so that more research could be done includ­ing fur­ther infor­ma­tion from the elec­tric rate study done by Sawvel. Wade said it looked like there was an increase in the tax col­lec­tion of $1 mil­lion from last year and asked that the finance depart­ment dou­ble check their num­bers. Wade also feels the elec­tric rates should not be raised since the elec­tric fund is up to $6.5 mil­lion as an end­ing bal­ance for 2011.

George said laws and ordi­nances com­mit­tee are look­ing at elec­tric wiring leg­is­la­tion and tighter rules for recy­cling (claim of ownership).

Toy said the city is still in dis­cus­sions with Med­Flight for the pro­posed use of the Galion Air­port for one of the company’s bases. He said he attended a webi­nar on local gov­ern­ment fund­ing which gives $50 mil­lion statewide with 80 per­cent in loans and only 20 per­cent in grant money. “It’s nice for the politi­cians send­ing out sound bites, but it’s not going to do a whole lot,” he said.

Toy then praised city offices for watch­ing their spend­ing. In the gen­eral fund only 80.1 per­cent of bud­geted money was used by admin­is­tra­tion, 97.1 per­cent by coun­cil (there was an unex­pected retire­ment), 86 per­cent by civil ser­vice and the city only spent 82.4 per­cent of its bud­get last year. “Thanks to every­one that works here and has a say in spend­ing a dollar.”

Note: Gail Baldinger and Ken Bod­kins were sworn in upstairs by Judge Leuthold on Decem­ber 6, 2011. The court­room was fairly packed with fam­ily and friends. Paul Flan­nery was sworn in over at Bucyrus by Judge Leuthold on Decem­ber 7, 2011.

* The ded­i­ca­tion plaque is on dis­play in the city build­ing recep­tion area.

Fol­low­ing are the words on the new ded­i­ca­tion plaque for the Freese Foun­da­tion in honor of Horace E. Freese -

Mr. Horace E. Freese was an indus­tri­al­ist and long­time res­i­dent of the City of Galion, grad­u­at­ing from Galion High School in 1906. He was the youngest son of Egbert M. and Rosina Freese. The Freese fam­ily was of Dutch descent and first set­tled in New York, later mov­ing to Mass­a­chu­setts before finally set­tling in Ohio.

Horace’s father Egbert Freese was born in Brunswick, Ohio. In 1880, Egbert Freese estab­lished a fac­tory in Ply­mouth, Ohio for the man­u­fac­ture of clay work machin­ery and later moved the fac­tory to Galion due to its fine labor force. In 1882 Egbert mar­ried Rosina Berger and they had three sons: Her­bert, Arthur and Horace. In 1891 Egbert estab­lished the E. M. Freese & Co. (Freese Works) to fab­ri­cate machin­ery for brick and tile pro­duc­tion. This was one of Galion’s lead­ing indus­tries in the late nine­teenth and early twen­ti­eth cen­turies. Starkey Machin­ery Inc. pur­chased the E. M. Freese & Co. in 1957.

In 1961, Horace Freese pre­pared a will. This will included the estab­lish­ment of a trust fund now known as the Egbert M. Freese Foun­da­tion (in com­mem­o­ra­tion of his father) with the bene­fac­tor of this foun­da­tion to be the City of Galion. Income from this fund may be used for the upkeep or improve­ment of city parks/facilities, col­lege schol­ar­ships to wor­thy Galion High School grad­u­ates, or any other pur­poses suit­able to the mem­ory of Egbert M. Freese.

Horace Freese died March 26, 1963, but Horace and Egbert Freese will long be remem­bered in Galion for their con­tri­bu­tions to local indus­try and their gen­er­ous gifts to the peo­ple of this com­mu­nity. This foun­da­tion still sup­ports com­mu­nity devel­op­ment and city improve­ments in Galion today. The City expresses its sin­cer­est grat­i­tude to Horace E. Freese and the Freese Fam­ily for such community-minded gen­eros­ity to the City of Galion and its residents.

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Jan 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.