Galion Council discusses finances and electric rates

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

High­lights from Galion City Council’s Aug. 14 meet­ing were pre­sented in the Aug. 15 issue of the Inquirer. How­ever, there were numer­ous pieces of leg­is­la­tion dis­cussed and the Finance com­mit­tee report shed light on an inter­est­ing issue for Galion res­i­dents. The recur­ring topic through­out the meet­ing was elec­tric power generation.

First, in leg­is­la­tion Ord. 2012–59 increased appro­pri­a­tions to the infra­struc­ture account by $6,000 using money received from the state via the Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Block Grant. The next ordi­nance (2012–60) trans­ferred $10,000 from the gen­eral fund to the fire demo­li­tion account.

City Man­ager Gene Toy explained the leg­is­la­tion is the result of a 2011 house fire on West Atwood Street. The house has since been ren­o­vated and the city is return­ing dam­age deposit monies to the homeowners.

Ord. 2012–61 trans­ferred a total of $270,000 from the gen­eral fund to the fol­low­ing accounts: income tax/contractual ser­vices in the amount of $30,000; law/salaries and wages in the amount of $20,000; and $220,000 to to urban paving.

Finance Direc­tor Karen Wal­ters explained the trans­fers will ensure that the city has enough appro­pri­a­tions in those accounts through the remain­der of the year. Debts also need to be paid using the urban paving account, which is why such a large trans­fer was needed.

Under Ord. 2012–63, the city entered into an agree­ment with the Mansfield/Ontario/Richland County Health Depart­ment. Employ­ees of that depart­ment will inspect facil­i­ties in Galion with com­mer­cial plumb­ing or med­ical gas from now on.

Chief Build­ing Inspec­tor Matt Ross explained that spe­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is needed to con­duct such inspec­tions. In the past, the state has been in charge of it, but this year Craw­ford County con­tracted with the Rich­land Co. Health Depart­ment; Galion is sim­ply keep­ing things con­sis­tent with the juris­dic­tion in the rest of the county.

As men­tioned in Wednesday’s edi­tion, Ord. 2012–64 dropped the 4 per­cent adder rate on elec­tric bills. What it means for cus­tomers is that the aver­age elec­tric bill of $84 with the adder could now be about $81.

Toy and Mark Triplett, elec­tric depart­ment super­vi­sor, worked with Belinda Miller, a finan­cial super­vi­sor from the state auditor’s office, in past months to ana­lyze city finances and rev­enue for the elec­tric depart­ment in order to deter­mine when the adder rate could be removed. In order to make up for the loss of rev­enue from the adder rate, cuts were made to the util­ity fund budget.

Toy explained that more money than nec­es­sary was allo­cated to sev­eral funds and annual projects. Such allo­ca­tions were sim­ply reduced so that more money could remain in the gen­eral fund. For exam­ple, if $300,000 was appro­pri­ated for a cer­tain project each year but only $50,000 was con­sis­tently spent on it in the past, the appro­pri­a­tion was reduced to $100,000—which is still dou­ble the amount typ­i­cally needed.

All of those ordi­nances passed as emergencies.

Ord. 2011–80 was leg­is­la­tion per­tain­ing to an alley vaca­tion extend­ing from Atwood Street between inlots 416 and 417. This was the same alley dis­cussed dur­ing the pub­lic hear­ing at the begin­ning of the meeting.

The res­i­dents on each side of the alley want it vacated due to a lack of on-street park­ing in front of their homes. The alley is 16.5 feet wide; those res­i­dents would each own half of it. They must use the alley for access to their garages and have agreed that, if vacated, they will share it as a driveway.

Coun­cil mem­ber Dr. Tom Fell­ner was not sure if the vaca­tion would be good for the long term. “What hap­pens when the prop­er­ties change hands?” he asked.

Coun­cil has dealt with that pos­si­bil­ity in the past after it approved an alley vaca­tion. When one of the prop­er­ties got a new owner, there was a con­flict with shar­ing the alley. Because the owner legally owned half of it, there was noth­ing that the other res­i­dent could do. Because of this, Coun­cil was hes­i­tant on Tues­day to pur­sue the new vacation.

There was also some con­fu­sion over the leg­is­la­tion being labeled as a sec­ond read­ing because coun­cil mem­bers could not remem­ber when the first read­ing occurred and the first pub­lic hear­ing about it had been held on the same evening. Fell­ner moved to change the leg­is­la­tion to a first read­ing, which passed 5–2 with Fell­ner and Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Gail Baldinger dissenting.

It was the real sec­ond read­ing for Ord. 2012–54, which adopted stan­dards for cus­tomers with renew­able elec­tric gen­er­a­tion facil­i­ties of 25 kW or less. Under the leg­is­la­tion, the city would credit any­one putting power back into the sys­tem through renew­able energy sources, result­ing in lower elec­tric bills.

Coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade expressed con­cern with cred­it­ing peo­ple who use renew­able energy gen­er­a­tion. She insisted that because the city is pay­ing for peak demand of elec­tric gen­er­a­tion through its con­tract with Amp Ohio, it should not encour­age cit­i­zens to use less power.

She called the con­tract a long-term invest­ment that the city is stuck with no mat­ter what. If more and more cit­i­zens install renew­able sources of power like solar pan­els or wind tur­bines, she said that it could affect how much elec­tric­ity the city gen­er­ates. Wade thought the pos­si­bil­ity of the city pay­ing for more elec­tric­ity than it was gen­er­at­ing could be a major issue in the future.

How­ever, cur­rently only one res­i­dent is using a solar panel. Sev­eral mem­bers of Coun­cil found it unlikely that there would be a large influx of other res­i­dents using renew­able energy due to the high start up cost.

Triplett esti­mated that it takes $30,000 to install one solar panel. Although sav­ings would be reflected in elec­tric bills, it would take years to make that money back. Baldinger added that when the Amp con­tract expires, Coun­cil could then review the city’s power needs.

In com­mit­tee reports, Wal­ters announced that some cus­tomers did not get elec­tric bills for the month of July due to a glitch in the sys­tem. So far, at least ten peo­ple have been affected that she is aware of. She said to con­tact the finance depart­ment at 419–468-1823 if you are not receiv­ing bills on time.

Wade, who serves as Finance com­mit­tee chair, then directed the con­ver­sa­tion toward Prairie State, one of the elec­tric­ity providers that the city has con­tracted with. A lengthy dis­cus­sion followed.

Cur­rently Galion is pay­ing $100,000 per month in inter­est pay­ments for the con­struc­tion of the coal-fired power plant but has not received any power from it, which has been online for sev­eral months. Wade was con­cerned about the costs that the city is liable for, espe­cially in light of recent legal action being taken against the company.

Belinda Miller attended the meet­ing. She argued that Galion is pay­ing for a rel­a­tively small por­tion of the project. “[Galion’s] lia­bil­ity for shar­ing the cost is insignif­i­cant com­pared to some other smaller com­mu­ni­ties than you that bought into big­ger proportions.”

Wade asked if any type of risk analy­sis had been con­ducted before get­ting into the con­tract. Miller responded that Sawvel per­formed the study about the city’s elec­tric­ity needs and pro­vided rec­om­men­da­tions that Coun­cil based its deci­sion on when it approved the con­tract ear­lier this year.

At the end of the dis­cus­sion, Wade said she would still like to set up a pub­lic meet­ing about Prairie State to bet­ter under­stand the project. “I want to under­stand why Sawvel thought it was a good idea for the city of Galion to buy 40 per­cent of what the city of Cleve­land bought…When some­thing feels risky, you don’t buy a lot of it,” Wade explained.

Baldinger argued that he has not seen any doc­u­men­ta­tion that the project is risky. Also, he said that the Finance com­mit­tee should have been involved dur­ing the orig­i­nal dis­cus­sions of Prairie State before the con­tract was approved and claimed that Wade did not make an effort to get the com­mit­tee involved.

George added that when the Sawvel con­sul­tants held a meet­ing, they addressed all of the issues that Wade brought up that evening. She said that if Wade had not left that meet­ing early, she would know that the con­sul­tants went into great detail explain­ing every­thing about the aspects of the agreement.

The Finance committee’s next meet­ing is sched­uled for Aug. 28 at 6 p.m. (before the next Coun­cil meet­ing) in the town­ship room. It will dis­cuss more about Prairie State and review related energy contracts.

In other busi­ness, George read a state­ment about the Char­ter amend­ment, which will appear on the bal­lot in this year’s elec­tion. She said it was falsely labeled as an ‘amend­ment.’ “The inten­tion of Mrs. Wade and her group is to abol­ish our city Char­ter,” George stated.

She praised the work of the vol­un­teers who orig­i­nally drafted the Char­ter in 1985 as well as the 2009 Char­ter review com­mit­tee and asked those who sup­port the abol­ish­ment to think about what they are destroying.

Also, Baldinger asked Coun­cil mem­ber Paul Flan­nery if he brought any evi­dence to the meet­ing to prove state­ments he made at the pre­vi­ous Coun­cil meet­ing. Flan­nery had com­mented that the city has gone “back­ward” since the Char­ter went into affect more than 25 years ago and has been oper­at­ing at a loss. (After those state­ments Baldinger requested that he bring sup­port­ing evi­dence to the next meeting.)

Flan­nery, who appeared con­fused by the ques­tion, responded that he did not have any mate­ri­als with him. “I’ll bring that in and you bring one in say­ing we’ve advanced,” he said.

Baldinger pressed him to present what he had to the Finance com­mit­tee so that mem­bers could review it and then present some­thing to Coun­cil. He asked Flan­nery mul­ti­ple times when he could deliver the evi­dence. “If it was impor­tant enough for you to bring it up, it’s impor­tant enough for the Finance com­mit­tee to review it.”

In his city man­ager com­ments, Toy announced some upcom­ing events like Hot­dogs on the Square on Aug. 17 and today’s Cash Mob, which begins at noon. Also, the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion has a sur­vey on its web­site (www.access.ohio.gov). Toy encour­aged the pub­lic to take the sur­vey and share their opin­ions on how ODOT is doing and upcom­ing trans­porta­tion projects.

Lastly, Toy read his state­ment announc­ing that the street fund deficit would soon be elim­i­nated, a sig­nif­i­cant step in get­ting the city out of fis­cal emergency.

Only two cit­i­zens addressed Coun­cil Tues­day. First, Roger Stall asked Coun­cil to do some­thing about a vacant dwelling that has become a pub­lic safety hazard.

Baldinger explained that, after Stall made him aware of the dwelling at the last meet­ing, he talked to Toy, who then asked Ross to look into it. Ross said that he has talked to the county trea­surer about the prop­erty and requested that the county fore­close it. What to do about the prop­erty is still being considered.

Chris Stone addressed Coun­cil at the request of Joe Kleinknecht from the Galion Area Cham­ber of Com­merce. Kleinknecht could not attend the meet­ing due to a recent surgery.

Stone stated, “On behalf of the mem­bers of the Galion Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, I would like to per­son­ally com­mend Mr. Gene Toy and his team for the work that they’ve com­pleted over the last sev­eral months regard­ing the elec­tric­ity rates.”

He said Toy’s dili­gence and per­sis­tence resulted in the removal of the adder rates, and he there­fore did the right thing for the com­mu­nity. Stone hoped that cit­i­zens would take the time to thank Toy as well.

Sev­eral mem­bers of the audi­ence could be heard scoff­ing through­out his com­ments. Some also made dis­sent­ing remarks under their breath con­tra­dict­ing Stone’s state­ments about Toy.