Betterment receives updates on Project Safe, Festival of Lights

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The Galion Bet­ter­ment Com­mis­sion held a meet­ing on Nov. 5. Fire Chief Phil Jack­son was the guest speaker and pro­vided an update on Project Safe Galion.

Project Safe comes from the FEMA grant that the depart­ment received in August. Funds totaled $74,000, com­posed of $70,300 in fed­eral dol­lars and a $3,700 in local share. The money was spent on: 2,200 smoke detec­tors, 800 lithium bat­ter­ies and 2,500 blue reflec­tive house signs from Guardian Graph­ics. Fire inspec­tors also per­formed some home safety inspec­tions on request.

All of this was pro­vided free of charge to Galion res­i­dents who applied. They have processed more than 600 appli­ca­tions for 1500 items of ser­vice to date.

“This is an ongo­ing effort. We’ve had an over­whelm­ing response from cit­i­zens and we appre­ci­ate them tak­ing advan­tage of this oppor­tu­nity,” Jack­son stated.

He also men­tioned that local vol­un­teers Dave Dun­can and Danny Sword helped with some of the smoke detec­tor instal­la­tions. Appli­ca­tions may still be picked up at the Fire Department.

Jack­son explained that inci­dent data and run time analy­sis for the pre­vi­ous five years was used to deter­mine Galion’s great­est needs. There was a very high per­cent­age of fires in homes that had smoke detec­tors either not work­ing prop­erly or not present all. In fact, Jack­son said that just three weeks ago, there were house fires on North Lib­erty and Atwood streets where this was the case.

Also, there was a trend of delayed response times due to poor house iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. In addi­tion to some home addresses not being ade­quately vis­i­ble, there are num­ber­ing prob­lems through­out the city, includ­ing addresses that are out of sequence.

Some money from the grant is still left over. Jack­son said it will be used for fire inspection/preplan soft­ware and elec­tronic tablets. This will also help with locat­ing homes to increase response time, as well as assist­ing safety inspec­tors with locat­ing shut-off valves.

In mem­ber reports, Joe Kleinknecht spoke for the Cham­ber of Com­merce. The thrift shop on Hard­ing Way has closed. Kleinknecht said the lat­est Cash Mobs have been suc­cess­ful and the stores have been appreciative.

He encour­aged any­one who wants to do some local shop­ping to stop by the Pub­lic Square on the third Thurs­day of every month at noon. Cash Mob will meet Novem­ber and Decem­ber, but there will be noth­ing in Jan­u­ary or February.

City Man­ager Gene Toy spoke on behalf of the City of Galion. He reported that it is work­ing on fis­cal plan­ning and bud­get­ing and depart­ment heads have sub­mit­ted their pre­lim­i­nary bud­get requests. For the State Route 598 widen­ing project, prop­erty own­ers will be con­tacted soon to nego­ti­ate right-of-way acquisitions.

County Com­mis­sioner Doug Weise­nauer spoke for Craw­ford County. He announced that the Craw­ford County Part­ner­ship for Edu­ca­tion and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment will have a new head­quar­ters. It will be in the for­mer Cour­t­house Annex build­ing. This was announced at a news con­fer­ence last week.

Patti Rice Groth of the Hos­pi­tal Aux­il­lary said the kick off for the Fes­ti­val of Lights will be Nov. 29 at 6:30 p.m. The Aux­il­liary is still look­ing for a children’s choir to per­form. The full Fes­ti­val of Lights sched­ule is:

2 p.m. — enter­tain­ment begins

4:30 p.m. — parade

5:15 — open­ing ceremony

5:45 — Santa House open

“Lead­ing Ladies,” the lat­est show at the Galion Com­mu­nity The­atre pre­miered Nov. 9 and con­tin­ues Nov. 10, 16 and 17 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 18 at 2 p.m. On Dec. 9 there will be a hol­i­day con­cert at the The­atre. Details to be announced.

Amber Wert­man, direc­tor of the Galion His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, said the “Back to the Browns” event on Oct. 27 and 28 was suc­cess­ful. “Come Home to Galion” is on Dec. 1. The Soci­ety will have an open house at Brownella Cot­tage that day from 1–4 p.m.

Vicki Eck­en­rod, direc­tor of the Galion Pub­lic Library said she is still look­ing for a children’s librar­ian to replace Ellen Buehrer, who leaves this month. GPL is hav­ing an open house for her on Nov. 15.

Also, Novem­ber is National Novel Writ­ing Month. Eck­en­rod noted that some local writ­ers are par­tic­i­pat­ing and their progress is being tracked at the library. Dec. 1 is GPL’s Christ­mas open house.

Galion City Schools Super­in­ten­dent Kathy Jen­ney announced that the Mid­dle School was rated Excel­lent by the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion in its recent release of dis­trict report cards. The other build­ings were rated Excel­lent or Effec­tive and the district’s over­all grade was Effec­tive. Also, Galion had three NCC cham­pi­onship teams this fall.

Dave Halsey, pres­i­dent of Rotary Club, thanked uptowne busi­nesses for help­ing with the Trick or Treat Walk Your Feet event on Oct. 25. Also, Galion local Dustin Fox has been selected to go to India for Rotary’s Study Exchange Pro­gram. Next year’s SEP loca­tion is Aus­tralia. Halsey told the group to mark their cal­en­dars for July 6, 2013, which will be the Inde­pen­dence Day celebration.

The Kiwa­nis Club’s annual Toys for Tots pro­gram has begun.

The Golden Age Cen­ter is hav­ing a Thanks­giv­ing Din­ner on the third Wednes­day of Novem­ber (mem­bers only). It will also have a din­ner on Thanks­giv­ing Day that is free and open to the pub­lic, spon­sored by the Min­is­te­r­ial Association.

United Way is com­bin­ing to form a county-wide orga­ni­za­tion next year. Over 300 peo­ple par­tic­i­pated in the Drive 4 Your Com­mu­nity event; $12,000 was donated altogether.

Bet­ter­ment Commission’s next meet­ing is Dec. 3 at 12 p.m., in the Galion Hos­pi­tal cafeteria.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Nov 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.