Council debates fire truck purchase

Sarah Ein­se­len — Staff

Cub scout Cody Mur­phy, right, attends the Galion City Coun­cil meet­ing on Feb. 14 to earn a merit badge.

By Sarah Einselen

Inquirer Reporter

Galion city coun­cil debated fru­gal­ity ver­sus safety at its reg­u­lar meet­ing Tues­day night in coun­cil cham­bers, finally tak­ing a step toward autho­riz­ing the pur­chase of a new pumper truck for the fire depart­ment on a 4–2 vote—but two more read­ings of the ordi­nance remain.

The ordi­nance under dis­cus­sion autho­rized city man­ager Gene Toy to pur­chase a $360,000 pumper truck from KME-Kovatch Orga­ni­za­tion through the state pur­chas­ing pro­gram. It wouldn’t be a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process because the state pro­gram has already done the bid­ding and got­ten a good price on the truck, Toy and fire depart­ment Chief Phil Jack­son said.

But some mem­bers of coun­cil were reluc­tant to autho­rize the outlay.

“I’d like to see this put on the back burner because we’ve got some projects on the front burner relat­ing to elec­tric rates,” said 4th ward coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade. “The city has been on a spend­ing spree pur­chas­ing equip­ment and we need to put a stop to that for a while.”

Wade said the pur­chase could be recon­sid­ered in future years, per­haps as early as next year, but was not appro­pri­ate at this time.

“I know it’s a large expen­di­ture,” replied at-large mem­ber Cathy George. “But what price do you put on safety?”

The pay­ments would be spread out over ten years, and assum­ing a 3 per­cent inter­est rate, would cost the city about $40,000 per year start­ing in 2013. The cost was built into the city recov­ery plan and 2012 bud­get but Jack­son had hoped to receive a FEMA grant to cover the pur­chase. The depart­ment got a smaller grant instead to be used for other purposes.

Jack­son, on hand to make the fire department’s case, explained that cur­rent pump capac­ity stands at 2,750 gal­lons of water per minute, less than the 5,000-per-minute needed to ade­quately respond to a fire at one of the large area build­ings like Hydraulic Tech­nolo­gies or the hos­pi­tal. The new truck would replace one the city pur­chased in 1989 and would ensure the department’s com­pli­ance with fire pro­tec­tion stan­dards, Jack­son said.

“What’s impor­tant to note about that,” he said, “when ISO rates the fire depart­ment, we have to com­ply with cer­tain stan­dards.” If the city can’t, its rat­ing from the Inter­na­tional Orga­ni­za­tion for Stan­dard­iza­tion drops, affect­ing insur­ance rates for home­own­ers and busi­nesses. Cur­rently the depart­ment falls short on pump capac­ity, as well as some other areas, and the new truck’s design and equip­ment would rec­tify the shortcomings.

“As soon as coun­cil sold that other truck with­out a plan to replace it, we were dinged by the ISO,” he said. He referred to the sale of a city pumper truck about four years ago. The depart­ment has needed a new pumper since, said Jack­son, but the pur­chase was pushed back while the city took care of its other finan­cial needs.

“We’re just try­ing to get a sen­si­ble, effi­cient truck that’s safe by all stan­dards,” Jack­son said. “We’re look­ing at sav­ing costs down the road, but we really have to make this purchase—soon.”

Coun­cil mem­bers Tom Fell­ner, Walt Keib, Cathy George and Gail Baldinger approved the ordinance’s first read­ing, over­rid­ing coun­cil mem­bers Roberta Wade and Paul Flan­nery. The ordi­nance will be held to a sec­ond read­ing at the next coun­cil meet­ing on Feb. 28.

Facil­i­ties projects, amended con­tracts and an annexation

Coun­cil also passed a num­ber of emer­gency ordi­nances and approved a sec­ond read­ing of an ordi­nance that adds the old Union school prop­erty to Uptowne’s design-review dis­trict one.

The city will apply for a State Cap­i­tal Improve­ment Pro­gram or a Local Trans­porta­tion Improve­ment Pro­gram loan to be used for the North Mar­ket Street storm sewer project. The 30-year, 0 per­cent loan would amount to $105,000 and would be matched by the city’s local share, $656,000, to reduce stormwa­ter inflow and infil­tra­tion in the street’s sew­ers. The project was orig­i­nally to be com­pleted using city funds plus a sim­i­lar amount of debt, so Toy got the OK from state auditor’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive Belinda Miller to bor­row at the zero-interest rate rather than the 2 per­cent that had been budgeted.

Toy was also autho­rized to sign a coop­er­a­tion agree­ment with Polk Town­ship for paving Dawsett Avenue between State Route 19 and South Street. The Ohio Pub­lic Works Com­mis­sion will pick up 58 per­cent of the $190,000 project, with the remain­ing 42 per­cent being split between Galion and the town­ship. Polk will pay about 15 per­cent of that local share.

Coun­cil amended the city con­tracts with Resse F. Mills and David W. Keller for city law ser­vices to clar­ify the com­pli­cated way they were paid. Where before they were half pub­lic employ­ees, half inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors, “this essen­tially makes them PERS [Pub­lic Employ­ees Retire­ment Sys­tem] employ­ees, clears up the con­tract and even saves us a lit­tle bit of money,” said Toy. The pre­vi­ous con­tract dated back to 1994.

Bid­ding will begin soon on the influ­ent upgrades on the city waste­water treat­ment plant. “If it seems like a project that’s been around for a while, that’s because it has,” said Toy. “It really needs done, needed done five years ago.”

It was planned last year, but all bids came in over bud­get. Toy and oth­ers tweaked the plan—modifying only the man­ner in which things would be fixed, not the actual things to be fixed—and will try to fix every­thing in one fell swoop, since the repairs require divert­ing the waste­water com­ing into the plant. The esti­mated cost is $904,000.

AMP Energy asked the city to sign a replace­ment cer­tifi­cate relat­ing to the financ­ing of the Prairie State Energy Cam­pus project, which coun­cil approved. The old cer­tifi­cate didn’t ref­er­ence the Build Amer­ica bonds that have become avail­able through the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act, so AMP’s legal coun­cil said the par­tic­i­pant cities should exe­cute a new cer­tifi­cate that says basi­cally the same things but adds lan­guage about those bonds.

Coun­cil approved request­ing the annex­a­tion of about three acres of city-owned land on which sits the air­port house. The land is in Rich­land County and is adja­cent to the city’s cor­po­ra­tion lim­its. Toy explained that assum­ing Med­Flight estab­lishes its base there, which it looks like it’s doing, employ­ees there wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily have to pay income tax to the city unless their employ­ment base—i.e., the air­port house—were within city limits.

Reports

City manager’s com­ments and com­mit­tee reports fol­lowed dis­cus­sion of the ordi­nances. Toy asked coun­cil to con­firm the appoint­ment of for­mer deputy finance direc­tor Karen Wal­ters as the new finance direc­tor, fill­ing the place of Audrey Brodzin­ski, who resigned last year. Coun­cil did so unanimously.

Finance chair­per­son Roberta Wade said the Finance Com­mit­tee had decided to break out city gov­ern­ment util­ity usage to relieve cit­i­zens of that built-in cost on their util­ity bills and to give the gov­ern­ment branches moti­va­tion to con­serve their usage.

“It’s a big project, but ulti­mately it will take those gov­ern­ment costs out of the elec­tric rates,” Wade said.

The Plan­ning, Zon­ing and Util­i­ties Com­mit­tee will meet at 6:15 p.m. Feb. 28, before that night’s coun­cil meet­ing, to con­sider an alley vaca­tion, zon­ing related to a tat­too par­lor, a sign issue and zon­ing issues con­cern­ing farm­ers’ markets.

The Laws and Ordi­nances com­mit­tee met for about half an hour directly after coun­cil adjourned to dis­cuss a pre­lim­i­nary draft of an ordi­nance requir­ing con­struc­tion con­trac­tors to be licensed in order to work within city lim­its. It’s designed to help pro­tect cit­i­zens from fly-by-night con­trac­tors, though as com­mit­tee mem­ber Roberta Wade said, “it’s still buyer-beware.”

The com­mit­tee also dis­cussed draft­ing leg­is­la­tion to ban dis­tracted driving—specifically tex­ting while driving—and con­sid­ered pos­si­ble ways for law enforce­ment to work with metal pur­chasers to catch cop­per thieves.

Can­di­dates address council

Three can­di­dates for pub­lic office addressed coun­cil, stat­ing their will­ing­ness to coop­er­ate with other local gov­ern­ment enti­ties and ask­ing for coun­cil mem­bers’ and the public’s indi­vid­ual support.

Stan­ley Flegm, run­ning on the Repub­li­can ticket for reelec­tion as county pros­e­cu­tor, has already spent 10 years in the office, plus two other terms in the 1980s.

“I think that over the years we’ve been able to estab­lish a very good work­ing rela­tion­ship with the staff in Galion,” he said. Also, he tries to coop­er­ate as much as pos­si­ble with local law enforcement.

Mark Baker, run­ning as a Repub­li­can for county engi­neer, grad­u­ated from Galion in 1980 and returned after a hia­tus to serve 10 years as the county’s deputy engi­neer. He’s com­mit­ted to work­ing full-time as the county’s engi­neer, he said.

Den­nis Ster­ling, who lives just out­side Galion, is run­ning to rep­re­sent the newly-drawn 87th dis­trict as a Repub­li­can. He spent 27 years in law enforce­ment and another decade with the Ohio Labor Council.

“I want to pro­vide you with a voice at the State­house to do things right, to do things fair and to do things rea­son­able,” he said. He’s mar­ried to Galion Police Lt. Lynn Ster­ling and vol­un­teers at the Mount Gilead Fire Depart­ment, where he used to be a fire­fighter and now helps with admin­is­tra­tive tasks.

“Fair and rea­son­able gets things fixed,” he said. “I don’t plan on going to the State­house to cre­ate prob­lems. I plan on going to fix problems.”

Posted by Sarah Einselen on Feb 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.