Street fund deficit paid off

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

Galion City Coun­cil held a reg­u­lar meet­ing on Aug. 28. Sev­eral com­mu­nity improve­ment projects were approved and the remain­ing street fund deficit was paid off.

First, Stephen Knapp was sworn in as a police offi­cer for the Galion Police Depart­ment by City Man­ager Gene Toy. Knapp was for­merly an aux­il­iary offi­cer in Crest­line from 2004-12.

In leg­is­la­tion, Ord. 2012–65 approved a project to improve the storm sewer sys­tem on North Mar­ket Street, in the area near the inter­sec­tion with Het­rick Street. Toy explained that the sewer in that area is old and some houses sit directly on top of it. Res­i­dents there expe­ri­ence flood­ing prob­lems reg­u­larly and the project would fix it.

This is one of three projects the city applied for last year to receive a State Cap­i­tal Improve­ment Grant from the Ohio Pub­lic Works Com­mis­sion. OPWC has awarded the city $105,000 for the project, esti­mated to cost a total of $761,536 ($656,536 in local funds will cover the remain­der of the project).

Ord. 2012–66 was a reim­burse­ment agree­ment between Galion and the Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion. The state will reim­burse the city for costs asso­ci­ated with recently mov­ing the water line under the bridge on State Route 61, just north of Jen Cor. ODOT will be replac­ing that bridge in the near future and the water line needed to be moved so it did not inter­fere with the project.

Ord. 2012–67 accepted a FEMA grant that the fire depart­ment received last week. The $70,300 grant, com­bined with the local Galion share of $3,700, will be used for the pur­chase of reflec­tive house address signs, new smoke detec­tors and other fire safety ini­tia­tives. Ord. 2012–68 appro­pri­ated $7,000 to the air­port fund. Toy said it would be used to design new air­port run­way light­ing and safety fea­tures, and some of the older hang­ers will be removed.

Ord. 2012–69 trans­ferred $800,000 from the gen­eral fund to the street fund, thus elim­i­nat­ing the remain­ing debt in the account. Toy empha­sized that it does not elim­i­nate ALL of Galion’s out­stand­ing deficits, but all of the deficits that the state audi­tor saw as fis­cal emer­gency cri­te­ria are now paid.

An audi­ence mem­ber asked where the $800,000 came from and if the city would now have money in the street fund to use for paving projects.

Toy responded that the gen­eral fund has had a sta­ble upward climb in its bal­ance for sev­eral years due to good finan­cial plan­ning and spend­ing, and is there­fore sta­ble enough to make such a trans­fer with­out harm­ing the gen­eral fund. “In the­ory, with the deficit eliminated…we can look at start­ing paving projects,” he stated.

Ord. 2012–70 used $100,000 from the street fund to pay the remain­ing amount owed for an urban paving project (orig­i­nally approved last year through Ord. 2011–95). This was unre­lated to the pre­vi­ous ordi­nance because this money was used to pay an out­stand­ing debt.

Coun­cil mem­ber Cathy George thanked the city depart­ments for oper­at­ing under bud­get in order to allow the left­over money to be used for the trans­fer, as well as build­ing the gen­eral fund to be able to pay off the remain­ing city deficit.

Galion res­i­dent Don Faulds com­mented, “The cit­i­zens have helped pay this back as well. The com­mu­nity should be thanked.”

“Your point is well-taken. We wouldn’t be a com­mu­nity with­out the cit­i­zens and they deserve credit,” George responded.

All of those ordi­nances passed as emer­gen­cies. The final piece of leg­is­la­tion was a sec­ond read­ing for Ord. 2011–80, regard­ing an alley vaca­tion. The ordi­nance died for lack of a motion to vote on it. Later in the meet­ing, Coun­cil mem­ber Tom Fell­ner set a date for a sec­ond pub­lic hear­ing about the alley vaca­tion for Oct. 9. It will begin at 7 p.m. in Coun­cil Chambers.

In other busi­ness, Coun­cil mem­ber Wal­ter Keib pre­sented some finan­cial sta­tis­tics in response to Coun­cil mem­ber Paul Flannery’s con­cerns about city finances at a pre­vi­ous meet­ing. The infor­ma­tion was from Keib’s time as chair­man of the finance com­mit­tee that showed income and expen­di­tures for every year since 2004.

“Over that seven year period, it is stag­ger­ing that [the city] spent $82 mil­lion less that the bud­get of 2004…Two years in there—2010 and 2011—we spent $15 mil­lion less than in 2004,” Keib stated.

Keib also brought up another point regard­ing a recent arti­cle that appeared in the Colum­bus Dis­patch in which Coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade was quoted about Galion’s invest­ment in Prairie State.

Keib asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on her quote, which he read: “‘Now the red flags are fly­ing,’ said Roberta Wade, a Galion City Coun­cil mem­ber. She was on a panel when it approved the invest­ment, although she doesn’t remem­ber any brief­ing about the risks. She is the only coun­cil per­son now ask­ing for more scrutiny of elec­tric­ity contracts.”

He argued that the state­ment was incor­rect, cit­ing a 40-slide power point pre­sen­ta­tion about Prairie State given dur­ing a Coun­cil meet­ing two years ago. Accord­ing to Keib, Wade attended the meet­ing, which was pre­sented by R.W. Becks. “You can hardly say that you weren’t briefed,” he concluded.

“I was not aware of the risks involved in this…We have a bill for $1.2 mil­lion in stranded costs but no power. We now have three months of $100,000 pay­ments and no power. If that’s not red flags I don’t know what is,” Wade responded.

Keib pointed out that ‘unaware’ and ‘not briefed’ are two dif­fer­ent con­cepts. “The other things is,” Keib added, “you’re the only coun­cil mem­ber? So the rest of us are chopped liver. I’ve been to Colum­bus three times to look into this…You’re not the only per­son on this coun­cil con­cerned about electricity.”

In another item of new busi­ness, George announced that on Nov. 3, the Opi­ate Task­force is hav­ing a walk from 9–11 a.m. It begins at the Square and ends at Heise Park, where some speak­ers will address par­tic­i­pants. She asked the com­mu­nity to come out and sup­port the effort to make peo­ple more aware of the drug problem.

Wade then brought up the stranded costs the city owes for the can­celled coal plant project in Meigs County, which Galion entered into sev­eral years ago. “The city received a memo from AMP in Feb­ru­ary 2011 say­ing the city had stranded costs of close to $1.3 mil­lion. If we par­tic­i­pated in the AMP Fre­mont Energy Cen­ter, there would be a credit…and stranded costs would be reduced to $920,000. Then at the end of May [2011], we entered into the Fre­mont Energy Center…but AMP later noti­fied the city that stranded costs were around $1.3 mil­lion and the credit was now only going to be $233,000.”

She asked Law Direc­tor Reese Mills to look over that con­tract and see if the orig­i­nal deal of a larger credit can be enforced to reduce the stranded costs.

Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Gail Baldinger then asked Wade, “Can you describe to me exactly what a ‘stranded cost’ is?”

Wade said stranded costs entail the startup costs of enter­ing into a project like land pur­chase or engi­neer­ing fees, but they should ask AMP what it con­sid­ers stranded costs to be. Dis­cus­sion about stranded costs went on for sev­eral min­utes and Baldinger even­tu­ally asked Toy for clarification.

Coun­cil mem­ber Ken Bod­kins expressed his con­cern that Coun­cil mem­bers need to “quit bick­er­ing” over the details of energy con­tracts. He also had another item of busi­ness, say­ing a res­i­dent in his ward was still not get­ting elec­tric bills.

Finance Direc­tor Karen Wal­ters iter­ated what she said at the last coun­cil meet­ing, which is that cit­i­zens still not get­ting bills mailed to them need to con­tact her office. The num­ber of the Finance Depart­ment is 419–468-1823.

In city manager’s com­ments, Toy men­tioned that he attended a ded­i­ca­tion cer­e­mony for Daugh­mer Savan­nah on Aug. 27. He encour­aged peo­ple to go there and check out the new state pre­serve, located at 786 Marion-Melmore Road (15 miles west of Galion and 9 miles south­west of Bucyrus). Also, he announced that Trick-or-treat in Galion will be Oct. 28 from 2–4 p.m.

With no cit­i­zen com­ments that evening, the meet­ing was adjourned. Coun­cil will meet next on Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. in Coun­cil Chambers.