Plea for policy change during City Council

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

Danielle Poland led a 27-minute dis­cus­sion in the cit­i­zen com­ment por­tion of the Galion City Coun­cil meet­ing. Poland explained that she moved to Galion last Octo­ber with her hus­band, Mike, and their two chil­dren but Mike lost his job soon after. He found another job, then got laid off one week later. Danielle can­not work and receives dis­abil­ity com­pen­sa­tion, which their fam­ily has mostly been liv­ing on.

The family’s first util­ity bill in Decem­ber was $255 (for elec­tric, water and sewer). Poland said they strug­gled to pay it, the Util­ity Depart­ment was not will­ing to work with them and they had to go to Com­mu­nity Action and Chris­t­ian Co-op for help. That evening, she said their bill due the fol­low­ing day was for $248. Mike started a new job on Mon­day and had $100 to put toward the bill. They requested a two week exten­sion on pay­ing the remain­der of the bal­ance but were denied by the Util­ity Department.

“I was on the phone for five hours yes­ter­day try­ing to make sure our power doesn’t get shut off…It is so demor­al­iz­ing,” Poland stated. She felt that peo­ple are strug­gling but the Util­ity Dept. is not help­ing, even if cus­tomers are try­ing to pay.

Poland said she was aggra­vated by all of the trou­ble they have gone through to pay their bills, yet not given any lee­way. In a tear­ful plea, she asked: “What are we sup­posed to do? What if I lose my kids because our util­i­ties get shut off?”

[Rachel Mendell/media-credit] Danielle Poland (stand­ing) talks about util­ity bill issues dur­ing the City Coun­cil meet­ing on Feb. 12.

Deputy Finance Direc­tor Paul Robin­son recalled the Polands’ sit­u­a­tion. He noted that the issue is they have not lived in the city lim­its for at least six months. After six months of res­i­dency, spe­cial pay­ment arrange­ments can be made. He said that the rules are the same for every­one in the city and he must fol­low pol­icy, but did tell Poland about the Win­ter Cri­sis Pro­gram offered through Com­mu­nity Action.

Poland responded that she did approach the agency again, but it was unable to help this time around. She asked Coun­cil to think about the peo­ple with no elec­tric and try to do some­thing to help the cit­i­zens, pos­si­bly by chang­ing rel­e­vant policies.

Robin­son noted, “We do help a lot of peo­ple, but less than one per­cent of cus­tomers are hav­ing this prob­lem.” He reported that last month, there were 50 per­cent less shut offs than last November.

Coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade agreed with Poland. “We do need to have some type of flex­i­bil­ity for peo­ple in these situations…It could hap­pen to any­body.” Wade also agreed that Galion’s util­ity depart­ment is dif­fi­cult to deal with.

“I’m not much for chang­ing pol­icy for indi­vid­ual peo­ple, but what does Coun­cil think of putting some­thing on the floor to allow them to go ahead and make a pay­ment arrange­ment?” Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Gail Baldinger asked later in the discussion.

Coun­cil mem­ber Tom Fell­ner, who chairs the Plan­ning, Zon­ing and Util­i­ties Com­mit­tee, said a solu­tion would not be that sim­ple because actual leg­is­la­tion would be needed to change pol­icy. “We’re will­ing to look at the pol­icy and make sen­si­ble changes,” Fell­ner stated. “And I would invite cit­i­zens such as your­self to help make those changes,” he said to Poland.

Poland was sup­port­ive of that effort. “It’s not that we’re say­ing we’re not going to pay our bill. We had a por­tion of the money.” She said Coun­cil should do some­thing to help peo­ple, and not pun­ish the ones who are try­ing to pay.

Near the end of the dis­cus­sion, Wade asked if a motion could be made to change the min­i­mum res­i­dency period. Fell­ner was not sure if Coun­cil should act on a case by case basis, argu­ing that they could be there every night decid­ing on cases. “It’s dif­fi­cult to help your sit­u­a­tion in the short term, but we’re cer­tainly will­ing to revise pol­icy across the board,” he said.

Another cit­i­zen to address Coun­cil dur­ing the meet­ing was Andy Daniels. He handed out a pro­jec­tion chart to Coun­cil, based on fig­ures from the 2013 Five Year Recov­ery Plan that Coun­cil passed recently. Daniels pointed out pro­jec­tions for the city’s elec­tric fund, which showed net oper­at­ing losses over the com­ing years.

Accord­ing to Daniels, because of those losses the city would be bank­rupt by 2018. “What can Coun­cil do to make changes in the bud­get to fix this?” he asked.

City Man­ager Gene Toy explained that the pro­jec­tions are based on the Five Year Recov­ery Plan, but the plan does a poor job of pre­dict­ing what actu­ally hap­pens. In any given year, the pre­dic­tions of an account do not match with the actual end bal­ance for that year. “The plan assumes you will spend all money that is appro­pri­ated, but real­is­ti­cally that does not hap­pen,” Toy concluded.

“What good is it then? Why do a Recov­ery Plan?” Daniels asked.

Toy responded that a Recov­ery Plan is done because a munic­i­pal­ity is required to when under fis­cal emer­gency, but he agreed that it is “an exer­cise in futility.”

The third and final cit­i­zen to speak that evening was Don Faulds, who accused city offi­cials of still not fol­low­ing the City Char­ter. He reminded every­one that the city gov­ern­ment is still under the Char­ter until the end of May.

Faulds pointed out Sec­tion 5.04: Depart­ment of Finance, which states that the Direc­tor of Finance “is appointed by the City Man­ager, sub­ject to approval by motion of the Coun­cil by a major­ity vote of its members.”

Faulds explained that Finance Direc­tor Karen Wal­ters resigned on Jan. 4, yet no one has replaced her. He cred­ited Deputy Finance Direc­tor Paul Robin­son for doing a great job,

putting in a lot of extra work, extra hours, and han­dling the extra pres­sure. “Mr Robin­son has han­dled the city finances for five weeks, yet has not been given any author­ity from Council.”

Faulds said the City should take imme­di­ate action to cor­rect the issue, as city finances are impor­tant “given Galion’s history.”

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Feb 13 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.