Bucyrus Council opposes H.B. 601, hears about utility program

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

BUCYRUS — Dur­ing Bucyrus City Council’s Nov. 20 meet­ing, con­cerns about House Bill 601 were raised. The bill, which is still in com­mit­tee in the State House, would change how city income tax is man­aged, caus­ing cities to lose rev­enue. More specif­i­cally, City Audi­tor Joyce Schifer esti­mated $500,000 per year in losses for Bucyrus.

In new busi­ness, Love referred H.B. 601 to Finance Com­mit­tee. It will meet Nov. 26 at 6:15 p.m. in Coun­cil Cham­bers to dis­cuss the bill.

Before open­ing meet­ing busi­ness, City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Sis Love extended sym­pa­thy to the fam­ily of local entre­pre­neur Har­mon Guss, who passed away recently. She also con­grat­u­lated City Law Direc­tor Matt Crall on win­ning the cam­paign for county pros­e­cu­tor and thanked the cit­i­zens of Bucyrus for vot­ing in favor of the levy renewal.

Also, Love reported that the defeat of the .5 per­cent levy increase will affect the city’s 2013 bud­get, and Coun­cil will keep the cit­i­zens updated.

One vis­i­tor addressed Coun­cil that evening. Mike Cham­bers, regional account man­ager for Util­ity Ser­vice Part­ners, Inc., gave an overview of a util­ity pro­gram offered by his com­pany, which is an enter­prise pro­grams part­ner of the National League of Cities.

It is a util­ity pro­gram for water and sewer lines at no cost to the city. Home­own­ers who sign up for the optional pro­gram pay a small monthly fee of $4–6 per line to cover the cost of any main­te­nance or repair work that needs done to the por­tion of the lines that they own. Util­ity Ser­vice Part­ners uses local work­ers for the repair and maintenance.

Cham­bers added that the com­pany is cus­tomer service-oriented and tries to tai­lor the prod­uct to each city’s needs and work with city gov­ern­ments. About 200 cities par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gram, includ­ing 10 in Ohio.

A mailer with more infor­ma­tion about the pro­gram will be included with util­ity bills in Feb­ru­ary or March, but res­i­dents may enroll any time. In the mean­time, res­i­dents who would like more infor­ma­tion may con­tact the Service-Safety Director’s office at 419–562-6767, ext. 221.

The Finance Com­mit­tee met on Oct. 30. Chair­man Steve Pifer reported that the only order of busi­ness was approv­ing appro­pri­a­tions, which came before Coun­cil later dur­ing legislation.

In city offi­cer reports, Mayor Roger Moore was absent that evening.

Service-Safety Direc­tor Jeff Wag­ner reported that city admin­is­tra­tion attended the open house at the new Craw­ford County Health Depart­ment on Oct. 31, say­ing that it is a nice, well-utilized facil­ity. Other recent events they attended as well were: Ohio Munic­i­pal League Con­fer­ence, Com­mu­nity Care March, Spook­tac­u­lar, Bucyrus Area Cham­ber of Com­merce Annual Din­ner and the Opi­ate Summit.

Wag­ner thanked 888 Ohio­Comp for its dona­tion of 60 turkeys to the com­mu­nity, divided among local churches and the Sal­va­tion Army, and also Vel­vet Ice Cream for allow­ing the use of its facil­ity and trucks for deliv­ery and pickup of the turkeys.

Admin­is­tra­tion was dis­heart­ened to learn that a sign at Har­mon Park was van­dal­ized by three juve­niles. How­ever, the offend­ers were caught and charged for the dam­ages. “We’re grate­ful to the cit­i­zen who called it in,” Wag­ner added.

City Law Direc­tor Matt Crall reported that his last day in his cur­rent posi­tion is Jan. 6; he pro­vided Coun­cil with the rules for hir­ing a replace­ment law direc­tor. Schifer referred to the Finance Com­mit­tee mak­ing the nec­es­sary appro­pri­a­tions for year-end balances.

In leg­is­la­tion, Ord. 35–2012 appro­pri­ated $8,700 from each of the fol­low­ing accounts: water­works, sewage dis­posal, waste man­age­ment, solid waste and storm water util­ity. The funds went to the per­sonal ser­vices item with the storm water admin­is­tra­tion cat­e­gory. The ordi­nance was adopted.

Can­dle­light shop­ping is Dec. 6, in down­town Bucyrus. Love encour­aged local res­i­dents to sup­port local busi­ness. The 2012 Annual Christ­mas Open House is Dec. 11 from 5–8 p.m. at Dillinger’s Event Center.

Also, Craw­ford County Children’s Ser­vices asked Coun­cil to par­tic­i­pate in Adopt-a-Child. Coun­cil mem­bers each donated $10, which was to be used to pur­chase gifts for a child in need.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Nov 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.