Republican Women get Galion updates

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

At the July 9 meet­ing for the Repub­li­can Women, Galion City Man­ager Gene Toy was the guest speaker. He updated the group on what was hap­pen­ing in Galion, includ­ing sev­eral projects and the ini­tia­tive for amend­ing the City Charter.

One of the major projects Toy men­tioned was the widen­ing of State Route 598, which is cur­rently set to begin in July of 2014. The road will be widened from the inter­sec­tion at Heise Park Lane all the way to Grove Street, which is by the Galion Com­mu­nity Hos­pi­tal, and the bridge by Church Street will be replaced by the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (ODOT). The $3.3 mil­lion endeavor is being paid for via a $2.2 mil­lion grant, $400,000 in local funds, and ODOT is pay­ing $700,000 for the bridge replacement.

Sis Love, pres­i­dent of Repub­li­can Women, was con­cerned about traf­fic rerout­ing dur­ing the project. Toy said that the city is work­ing with ODOT and busi­nesses on that stretch of the road to come up with solu­tions for the rerout­ing. He said one option dis­cussed was main­tain­ing one lane of traf­fic for the dura­tion of the con­struc­tion, but was not pos­si­ble due to the bridge replace­ment and the high traf­fic level that goes through S.R. 598.

“It would be less expen­sive to close the road com­pletely, at least dur­ing the bridge replace­ment. We’re con­sid­er­ing widen­ing the road on one side of the inter­sec­tion [with State Route 19] and fin­ish­ing it com­pletely before mov­ing on to the other side,” Toy stated.

The project will take at least one full con­struc­tion sea­son and will also address the base fail­ure under the road on the south side of the inter­sec­tion. In addi­tion, side­walks will be added to both sides of the road.

The city is also under­go­ing an elec­tri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion upgrade. Toy said that most non-Galion res­i­dents do not real­ize that Galion has munic­i­pal power, mean­ing that elec­tric­ity is main­tained by local agen­cies instead of large power com­pa­nies. One advan­tage, he said, is that Galion res­i­dents can get their power back on faster after storms, like the recent one that Ohio is still recu­per­at­ing from.

Toy also said that Galion is still under a fis­cal emer­gency but has made progress toward recov­ery. While he admit­ted that it was the worst finan­cial sit­u­a­tion the city had ever expe­ri­enced by far, he said that the five year recov­ery plan is help­ing and will hope­fully get Galion out of its cur­rent sta­tus by the end of 2014.

One mem­ber asked what would hap­pen if the change in the Char­ter was suc­cess­ful. Toy responded, “It remains to be seen whether or not the effort is suc­cess­ful.” He found it inter­est­ing that it took a lot of time and work in the 1980s to cre­ate the Char­ter but some­what sim­ple to put an option on the bal­lot to get rid of it.

How­ever, he said that there are still a lot of steps that need to hap­pen before it goes on the bal­lot of the Novem­ber elec­tion. The Board of Elec­tions must ver­ify all of the sig­na­tures, the Law Direc­tor must approve the lan­guage of the amend­ment and then City Coun­cil has the final say on whether or not it gets put on the ballot.

Toy also men­tioned that the new Med­Flight sta­tion at the Galion Munic­i­pal Air­port is open and local man­u­fac­tur­ing is growing.

In old busi­ness, July 16 is the dead­line for can­di­dates request­ing cam­paign fund­ing from Repub­li­can Women. Aug. 7 is sched­uled as the spe­cial elec­tion in Bucyrus for the income tax levy. Bucyrus Mayor Roger Moore attended the meet­ing and said that the city is in dire need to pass the levy.

The next meet­ing for Repub­li­can Women is Aug. 13 at noon, in the back room of the Pel­i­can House. Some polit­i­cal can­di­dates run­ning in this year’s elec­tion will attend.

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