Cardington residents confront council about water rates; Humvee issue; city administrator

By Eve­lyn Long -

The water rate issue, mat­ter of whether to keep a recently acquired Humvee, and need for a city admin­is­tra­tor dom­i­nated the May 21 Card­ing­ton Vil­lage Coun­cil meeting.

Dis­cus­sion on the Humvee brought to the vil­lage the month before brought a neg­a­tive response from Paul O’Brien, a South Mar­ion Street res­i­dent, who asked the sta­tus of it.

O’Brien said, “Since we have no offi­cers on all shifts and we have a drug prob­lem that needs address­ing, we don’t need a Humvee, we need offi­cers on the street. The Chief and offi­cers’ time could be bet­ter spent.”

Jackie Ivers of East Main Street, said she thought it was an impor­tant thing for the com­mu­nity and it rep­re­sents some­thing the kids can look at and learn from.

Cory McFar­land of East Main Street, said he felt the Humvee was an unnec­es­sary tool to this town.

“We don’t need it for any­thing,” he said.

He said he didn’t feel the tax pay­ers “should have to pay to put fuel, insur­ance and upkeep” (towards the vehicle).

Jon Nip­pert of South Mar­ion Street, noted that he thinks the Hum­mer “is over the top” and he reminded the mayor that she said she would hold a meet­ing once she gath­ered infor­ma­tion. The mayor apol­o­gized and said the finance records could be shared any­time as they are pub­lic record, how­ever, she would like to gather infor­ma­tion besides that so no false infor­ma­tion was given.

“I would like to have a plan in place before such a meet­ing,” she said. “I have met with the engi­neers on some grants.”

Mel Robin­son, of Chester­ville Avenue, said the “Humvee was ridiculous.”

Act­ing Police Chief Hus­ton had a let­ter from Pas­tor Mark Goo­gins who was in the mil­i­tary for ten years and worked on Hum­mers. Hus­ton had Goo­gins look at the vehi­cle to see what “we have” before coun­cil decides what to do with it.

Ivers asked if the Humvee is going to be sold and where would the money go.

Hus­ton explained that it can­not be sold — it has to be given back or given to another depart­ment that is will­ing to take it.

Coun­cil­man Tim Abra­ham thanked every­one com­ing to the meet­ing and said he was sur­prised at the num­ber show­ing up about the Humvee. He noted that we as a com­mu­nity need to look at our­selves and has heard through the grape vine that we are the laugh­ing stock of the county because of the Humvee and if that is true, he noted that he feels every­thing starts at home, mean­ing we prob­a­bly started that.

Refer­ring to the police depart­ment, he said it is easy to look at the police depart­ment and pick, pick, pick see­ing all the things they do wrong. “I was a police offi­cer for eight years and there was com­plaint after com­plaint at Mount Gilead. The com­mu­nity sees the street guys, the fire depart­ment and like them but a police offi­cer — because they give you a ticket — it can be a thank­less job. While we are at home watch­ing Sur­vivor they are out doing our dirty laun­dry for us — we need to remem­ber they need our sup­port — you may not like the chief, or an offi­cer but we still need to remem­ber they are out there to do a job and we need to sup­port them as a community.”

“Work­ing in Ful­ton recently and see­ing where there is no police pro­tec­tion — it’s a mess with cars going down Main Street 50 miles an hour — I don’t want that here.”

Abra­ham invited every­one there to come to every meet­ing to get to know what is going on instead of hav­ing to read it in the paper or even worse, on the streets.”

A vote was taken on send­ing the Humvee back. Answer­ing more ques­tions, it was noted the Humvee costs the vil­lage noth­ing except for the time it cost the staff and the gas used. Lia­bil­ity would be the only insur­ance on it. When asked if the Humvee could be passed on to some­one else later if we kept it, Hus­ton said we could, how­ever this was not meant to be a cruiser, it was for emer­gency sit­u­a­tions for the com­mu­nity and kids to show them at the school, etc.

Coun­cil­man Garner’s motion to send it back, sec­onded by Abra­ham, was defeated by three yeas and one nay. Fox voted against the motion. Solic­i­tor Jim Dietz explained that because there were only four coun­cil mem­bers present, the vote had to be unan­i­mous either way.

On the sub­ject of the water bills, Heather Deskins of South Mar­ion Street, asked what the base rates for the water and sewer charges goes to. Coun­cil­man Randy Fox said, “A per­cent­age goes towards the day to day run­ning of the plants and cap­i­tal improvements.”

Deskins said she took the esti­mate of 700 res­i­dents using the base rate and it came to over half a mil­lion dol­lars a year. “With that being just the base rate,” she said, “and not even the usage, I’m con­cerned that the rate may be over the top.”

Mayor Pey­ton asked her to come in and meet with her so she could give her more infor­ma­tion because no one there that evening could give her an answer in detail that evening. The mayor said she could have the rate study for her to look over and Deskins said she would like to see the water/sewer finan­cial state­ments back to 2007.

Deb­bie DiLeo, the fis­cal offi­cer, noted she can get back to 2008 but ‘before that we were on a dif­fer­ent sys­tem.’ It was agreed that Deskins would call and make an appoint­ment with the mayor.

Robin­son asked why come to a meet­ing when”what we say here doesn’t make any dif­fer­ence.” Abra­ham rejected that and Robin­son said when peo­ple come to the meet­ings and voiced their opin­ion on the water rate increases, it was voted on like nobody mat­tered. Robin­son asked coun­cil to do some­thing about the water bills.

The mayor said we are work­ing hard and real­ize the frus­tra­tion of not get­ting what you want imme­di­ately. “We are work­ing as hard as we can to make the vil­lage the best we can make it.”

Coun­cil­man Cald­well added that he has been a part of the last three teen dances spon­sored by the police depart­ment and it is a ‘very pos­i­tive thing. The inter­ac­tion between the depart­ment and the teens, they are pro­vid­ing them an oppor­tu­nity to have a place to do some­thing that isn’t out caus­ing trou­ble. There are 13 mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Explorer pro­gram and that is pos­i­tive.” He stated that being involved is half the bat­tle, and know­ing what is going on in the police depart­ment rather than just try­ing to pick them apart.

He added the coun­cil works hard and needs input from the com­mu­nity and together they can come up with the right decisions.

Deskins said she does not want it to take another 18 months for our water bills to change — “if that hap­pens our com­mu­nity will suf­fer and we will lose res­i­dents to other communities.”

Jon Nip­pert said he has a hole in his yard from the water line. Wood said he will look into it.

Mel Robin­son inquired about the hir­ing of the City Man­ager and City Admin­is­tra­tor, ask­ing if it was bid out to the pub­lic. Mayor Pey­ton explained this was her rec­om­men­da­tion to coun­cil and when they voted, it was a tie and she voted to break the tie. She added that she had rec­om­mended cre­at­ing the posi­tion of Vil­lage Man­ager and that DiLeo, “who does an awe­some job,” fill it. Pey­ton explained that the finances were a mess when she started the job and she has been through an audit and “prac­ti­cally lived here for her first year.”

In fact, she has requested a sec­ond audit to ensure that all is being done regard­ing the fund accounts. Pey­ton said DiLeo is the first per­son peo­ple come and talk to on zon­ing and she calms down angry res­i­dents with water bills and is very good at this.

“I antic­i­pate she will be a good Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Director.”

Pey­ton also said she had rec­om­mended Wood to be the vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor and he has been with the vil­lage for eight years and knows the water and sewer and is cur­rently work­ing with the engi­neers to update the sewer plant. By appoint­ing these two peo­ple and giv­ing them pay increases, “we would save the vil­lage $35,000 a year,” said the mayor.

Robin­son stated he feels the vil­lage is in a cri­sis as far as the water sys­tem is con­cerned and “we need some­one to take the bull by the horns and we are liv­ing with the mis­takes coun­cil made years ago.”

He said he feels it is time to get some­one in here to do it and the mayor said she doesn’t know where we could get two peo­ple that we could afford that will make this a vil­lage like Dublin.” She noted exam­ples of debt cre­ated by ear­lier admin­is­tra­tors and she wants to move for­ward with­out cre­at­ing more debt.

“Danny has some sug­ges­tions on how to do that that are good.” She said a vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor costs a lot of money and in a vil­lage like Card­ing­ton, you are going to get some­one young and inex­pe­ri­enced or some­one ready to retire who would be just putting in the time.

Ivers said DiLeo has been a great help to her and she is an asset to the com­mu­nity. Ivers is sec­re­tary of the Friends of Cardington.

In other business,

Terry Angel noted the Boy Scouts have painted all the pic­nic tables in the shel­ter house and will be clean­ing the con­crete. They had started a camp at the Maxwell Park.

McFar­land noted the school speed sign on Nichols Street is very hard to see when one is com­ing from the east because trees are in the way. Wood said he will have the tree trimmed.

A first read­ing was given a res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing the Fis­cal Offi­cer to set up an elec­tronic pay­ment for Stan­dard Life Insur­ance Company.

Coun­cil accepted the res­ig­na­tions of aux­il­iary offi­cers Eric White and James Kee. Kee has a full time job with the Crest­line Police Depart­ment and White has two part time jobs.

The depart­ment has now made 221 warn­ings and 83 cita­tions since Jan­u­ary 1, 2012.

He said the 2010 cruiser wind­shield was replaced for around $230. He said Offi­cer Keifer com­pleted a class on cell phone analy­sis at O. P. O. T. A., and it was a free course.

He said the Explorer Unit vis­ited Wood­side Vil­lage Care Cen­ter and had gone shop­ping and pur­chased $100 worth of prizes and played bingo with the res­i­dents pass­ing out prizes to all.

Offi­cers Keifer, Mer­man and he have been LEADS cer­ti­fied for the year and they are work­ing to get the rest of the depart­ment completed.

The Explorer Pro­gram added three more youths and had an end of the school year dance on May 19.

Andrea Hazen, pres­i­dent of Friends of Card­ing­ton, said the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion is to enhance the qual­ity of life of the Card­ing­ton Com­mu­nity by pro­vid­ing events for those liv­ing in rural areas. She said they are cur­rently work­ing on the Her­itage Fes­ti­val to take place Sat­ur­day, June 23 from 11am to 6 pm. She noted there are only four to five peo­ple plan­ning the event. Act­ing on her request to close cer­tain roads for the event, coun­cil agreed to close Park Street from Wal­nut Street (leav­ing access for emer­gency vehi­cles to enter and leave) to Sec­ond Street up to the First Fed­eral Bank (access will be allowed for the bank until it closes). The car show is to be held in the park­ing lot of the for­mer Kin­sell Foods store.

Because there will be live bands per­form­ing, Hazen asked that the amper­age be increased oth­er­wise they would have to use gen­er­a­tors which would add to the air pol­lu­tion. Danny Wood, interim vil­lage admin­is­tra­tor, will check into the elec­tri­cal matter.

A first read­ing was given a res­o­lu­tion cer­ti­fy­ing to the county audi­tor for the inclu­sion on the tax dupli­cate the amounts owed to the vil­lage for delin­quent water and sewer charges at 2845 State Route 529.

Wood described some of the activ­i­ties that took place in the vil­lage includ­ing the com­ple­tion of tree plant­ing and street paint­ing. Flow­ers are being planted in the flower boxes and they wanted to spray for mos­qui­toes before Memo­r­ial Day.

DiLeo said post cards were being sent to all res­i­dents to bring with them on June 16, vil­lage clean up day when res­i­dents bring their unwanted items to the dump­sters at the new street depart­ment between 7 am and noon.

Two coun­cil mem­bers, Sherry Gra­ham and Vickie Wise, were absent from this meet­ing, with excuse. Coun­cil adjourned the 55 minute meet­ing at 7:55 pm. The next meet­ing was sched­uled for June 4 at 7 pm.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.