Council votes on rezoning former high school site

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

Galion City Council’s March 12 ses­sion was the sec­ond read­ing for Ord. 2013–17, rezon­ing the vacant prop­erty on West Church Street to Res­i­den­tial Mul­ti­ple Fam­ily. If the leg­is­la­tion passed, a project pro­posal from The NOAH Project and Showe Man­age­ment Com­pany would be one step closer in receiv­ing state fund­ing to con­struct a senior hous­ing facil­ity at the site.

City Man­ager Gene Toy clar­i­fied that the leg­is­la­tion only facil­i­tates the pro­posed Eden Place project. If the zon­ing is changed but the project does not hap­pen, zon­ing would not revert back.

Coun­cil mem­ber Cathy George motioned to approve the leg­is­la­tion, with a sec­ond by Coun­cil mem­ber Tom Fell­ner. Coun­cil mem­ber Roberta Wade com­mented that she was sup­port­ive of the project and said Council’s approval of rezon­ing the prop­erty would give the poten­tial project an oppor­tu­nity to move forward.

Chuck Swick, a neigh­bor of the prop­erty, was against the rezon­ing. He felt the project would not blend in with the neigh­bor­hood and could pos­si­bly lower prop­erty val­ues. Swick went on to say neigh­bors were not pro­vided the proper oppor­tu­ni­ties to give input. He recently knocked on doors at homes adja­cent to the prop­erty to speak with other peo­ple in the area. Out of 36 peo­ple spo­ken to, 32 signed a makeshift peti­tion object­ing to the rezoning.

“These peo­ple are over­whelm­ingly against this…It is not the project we dis­agree with, but the loca­tion they have cho­sen,” Swick empha­sized. He argued that there are other loca­tions in Galion that already have the appro­pri­ate zon­ing, such as the lot across from Drug Mart or unde­vel­oped land behind Burger King.

Bob Cerar, chair­man of the Plan­ning and Zon­ing Com­mis­sion, was present that evening. He clar­i­fied the Commission’s process in con­tact­ing neigh­bors: All prop­erty own­ers within 200 feet of the site were mailed let­ters, 32 in total. The Com­mis­sion held three meet­ings, where com­mu­nity mem­bers could give input. He added that many peo­ple were in favor of the project.

“We took the neigh­bor­hood very much into account when we made this deci­sion. It’s not been some­thing we’ve pushed through,” Cerar con­cluded. “We still think this is a good project for Galion.” After the Com­mis­sion gave approval for the rezon­ing, leg­is­la­tion was pre­sented at the Feb. 26 City Coun­cil meet­ing. The first read­ing passed after much discussion.

Dur­ing the March 12 meet­ing, Swick main­tained that he received a dif­fer­ent response from the neigh­bors. He crit­i­cized the groups propos­ing the project for not going door to door and get­ting bet­ter com­mu­nity input.

Cerar asked him how many of the peo­ple who signed the peti­tion were at the meet­ing that night. No audi­ence mem­bers gave an indication.

Shirley Clark, another cit­i­zen, was con­cerned with the con­t­a­m­i­nants that are allegedly still in the ground at the site. “If you’re gonna put elderly peo­ple up there, you bet­ter con­sider what you might be dig­ging up,” she warned.

Soil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion was a major dis­cus­sion topic dur­ing the pre­vi­ous Coun­cil meet­ing as well. In 2005, Galion City Schools com­mis­sioned a full envi­ron­men­tal study of the site, which was con­ducted by CTL Engi­neer­ing. The study indi­cated lev­els of arsenic in the soil (see bot­tom of page for details).

At that point in the March 12 meet­ing, Galion Board of Edu­ca­tion Pres­i­dent Den­nis Long read excerpts from the 2005 Phase 2 study. He read that arsenic is a “nor­mally occur­ring ele­ment in the area.” Accord­ing to Long, the recent con­cerns about the prop­erty are due to “a lot of par­tial infor­ma­tion going out.” He encour­aged skep­tics to look at the full report.

“In look­ing at the entire report, their rec­om­men­da­tion is that no fur­ther envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment is required or rec­om­mended,” Long stated. He added that in a recent email received from CTL Engi­neer­ing, the experts stated they have no con­cerns with that prop­erty and said it would be suit­able for senior housing.

In Jan­u­ary of this year, Showe Man­age­ment com­mis­sioned a new envi­ron­men­tal study, with only a Phase 1 com­po­nent. Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Asso­ciates con­ducted it, and the con­clu­sion was “no fur­ther eval­u­a­tion or reme­di­a­tion is necessary.”

Scott Hun­ley from Showe Man­age­ment was also present for the meet­ing. “After we heard the con­cerns at the last Coun­cil meet­ing, we spoke to CTL and the envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer that did the new Phase 1 study,” he began. They dis­cussed the arsenic lev­els, and both con­sul­tants con­firmed that north­ern Ohio com­monly has high arsenic lev­els, mostly due to farming.

Hun­ley said the EPA-recommended meth­ods for deal­ing with arsenic is to have sod on top of the soil, or pave­ment or a build­ing on the prop­erty. The only health risk is if the soil becomes air­borne, but there would need to be a con­sid­er­able amount in order to be harmful.

He empha­sized that cer­tain pro­ce­dures would be used dur­ing con­struc­tion to limit dust. “We would not want to pro­ceed with any sort of devel­op­ment where you have envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors that cause concern.”

“I just don’t feel right about this thing,” Coun­cil mem­ber Steve Rowan stated. “I’d feel bet­ter if the soil was retested.”

Hun­ley responded that a new Phase 2 study would not tell any­thing more than what is already known.

Cit­i­zen Matt Strick­ler was the final per­son to speak dur­ing the dis­cus­sion. He asked Coun­cil to lis­ten to the con­stituents, say­ing, “They’re the ones who have to look at it every day. If they don’t want this in their neigh­bor­hood, I don’t think it should be in their neighborhood.”

When the leg­is­la­tion finally came to a vote, it was approved 4–1, with Rowan abstain­ing. (Bod­kins and Flan­nery were both absent due to health rea­sons.) It was ques­tion­able whether or not an absten­tion was permitted.

Later in the meet­ing, City Law Direc­tor Reese Mills advised, “A mem­ber should abstain from vot­ing only in the event of a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est,” namely per­sonal or finan­cial. Mills added that the intent is to pre­vent Coun­cil mem­bers from abstain­ing when there is a highly con­tested issue.

How­ever, Rowan’s absten­tion had no effect on the out­come of the vote. The rezon­ing was approved and the project appli­ca­tion has been sub­mit­ted to the state, await­ing fund­ing approval.

***

In the Phase 2 envi­ron­men­tal study from 2005, eight soil bor­ings were taken for lab analy­sis. Results indi­cated that heavy met­als like cad­mium, chromium, lead and mer­cury were “below detec­tion lim­its.” Arsenic con­cen­tra­tions in all but one sam­ple were above Ohio EPA standards.

Nonethe­less, the con­clu­sion of the report reads: “It is CTL Engineering’s tech­ni­cal opin­ion that no fur­ther envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment is required and/or rec­om­mended for this property.”

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