Mt. Gilead Council reviews budget; possible council vacancy; local liquor license

By Randa Wagner -

Bud­get con­cerns, a coun­cil seat and a pos­si­ble liquor license for Pizza Hut were top­ics con­sid­ered in the past two Mt. Gilead Vil­lage Coun­cil meetings.

Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Steve Hart said the Finance and Per­son­nel com­mit­tee met Dec. 20 and Jan. 2 and 14 and dis­cussed the pro­posed 2013 budget.

“With everyone’s efforts, hope­fully it’s not going to be as bad as we think,” he said. “We’re try­ing to get pre­pared in case it is.’

Ed Kline said he and John Cur­tis met with Chief Brian Zer­man and went through the bud­get and ‘phi­los­o­phy about where we’re at.’

“We gave him the charge of going through it and mak­ing cuts,” Kline said. “He’s try­ing to cut down on over­time and we appre­ci­ate his efforts to trim it down. We com­mit­ted to meet quar­terly and see where things are at.”

Rogers said some com­plaints came into the vil­lage about not enough salt being applied to the roads after the last snow event.

“With our bud­get cuts and so forth, you’re prob­a­bly going to see more of the same,” Rogers said. “Trucks won’t be salt­ing until all the plow­ing is done. Hills and inter­sec­tions are what we’re going to focus on. Salt is almost $65 a ton and we have to use it sparingly.”

Dianne Matuch has been unable to attend coun­cil meet­ings due to a year-long work com­mit­ment that con­flict with meet­ing times. She informed coun­cil she is will­ing to resign her seat, since she is unable to ful­fill her role. Vil­lage Solic­i­tor Matt Grif­fith agreed to con­tact her and advise her of the pro­ce­dure to vacate her seat.

If Matuch resigns, the posi­tion will be adver­tised and coun­cil mem­bers will make the final deci­sion of who fills the seat.

Kocomo Pizza, Inc., doing busi­ness as Pizza Hut, has applied for a D1 and D2 per­mit from the Ohio Divi­sion of liquor con­trol. The divi­sion con­tacted coun­cil ask­ing if they would like to hold a hear­ing regard­ing the community’s posi­tion on the matter.

A D1 license allows for onsite sales of beer and a D2 license allows for sales of wine and pre­pared and bot­tled cock­tails, cor­dials, and other mixed bev­er­ages to be con­sumed onsite.

Annual Busi­ness and 2012 Review

Steve Hart was re-elected as Coun­cil Pres­i­dent. Reg­u­lar dates and times will remain the same: first and third Mon­day evenings at 7 p.m. except for July and August, which meets the third Mon­day of the month only.

The Mt. Gilead Vil­lage Rules and Pro­ce­dures were adopted with a change to ‘lim­i­ta­tion of debate’ (regard­ing pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion dur­ing a coun­cil meet­ing). It was pro­posed: ‘No res­i­dent address­ing coun­cil shall be allowed to speak more than once on any one sub­ject until every res­i­dent choos­ing to speak shall have spo­ken. No res­i­dent shall be per­mit­ted to speak more than five min­utes on any one sub­ject. More than one per­son dis­cussing the same sub­ject shall be lim­ited to a max­i­mum of ten min­utes total.’

The rea­son given was it has occurred sev­eral times recently that, ‘once you get past five min­utes or so, it just goes into a down­load spi­ral. Peo­ple start mak­ing alle­ga­tions and tem­pers flare. I feel this would behoove us.’

Grif­fith and Brininger, LLC, of Mt. Gilead were retained to serve the role of vil­lage solic­i­tor at a rate of $32,700 annu­ally. Matthew Grif­fith rep­re­sents the firm at coun­cil meetings.

Mayor Mike Porter told Vil­lage Ser­vice Coor­di­na­tor Bill Swain he felt he did a nice job with the streets in 2012, con­sid­er­ing what he has to work with. John Cur­tis said he appre­ci­ates the extra effort the crew puts into street maintenance.

Mt. Gilead Fire Chief Greg Young reported 22 responses since the last report: 7 motor vehi­cle acci­dents (3 of which were on I-71), 5 squad assists, 1 struc­ture fire, 1 pub­lic assist, 4 mutual aid responses, a car fire, a diesel fuel spill on the free­way, a car­bon monox­ide check and 1 burned food call. Total responses for 2012 were 349.

John Cur­tis reported the Street Com­mit­tee will have its first meet­ing of the year on Jan­u­ary 30 at 6 p.m. in the coun­cil room.

Tim Clap­per sched­uled a meet­ing for the Util­i­ties Com­mit­tee for Jan­u­ary 28 at 7 p.m.

Ed Kline was hop­ing to sched­ule a meet­ing for the Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment and Zon­ing Com­mit­tee and would be con­tact­ing Dianne Matuch (absent), of the Fire and Police Com­mit­tee, for a pos­si­ble date.

Kline reported the News Color Press build­ing on Neal Avenue sold to Jack Hall and Dave Decker, and it has been leased (leasee not named at the time).

Emily Shaf­fer said the Codes and Reg­u­la­tions Com­mit­tee met that evening, deal­ing with rules of pro­ce­dure and five ordi­nances. Some will see changes and some will be revis­ited after more research. The com­mit­tee will meet next on Feb. 4 at 6 p.m.

Dan Rogers said there was still a prob­lem with the fil­a­ment (bad bac­te­ria) in the sludge at the sewer plant, and it’s being treated with chlo­rine to kill it. Cold tem­per­a­tures ‘slow things down’ and causes the bac­te­ria to mul­ti­ply more quickly. He said the water plant is doing nor­mal main­te­nence on the iron fil­ters and water soft­en­ers and some of the valv­ing. Quotes have come in on the main­te­nance pro­gram on the Cald­well (ele­vated water) tanks and coun­cil will wait until the com­mit­tee meet­ing to make deci­sions on that.

“We’re going to try to break out some of the cost asso­ci­ated with re-coating the tanks,” Rogers said. “There’s parts of the tanks at high ele­va­tions, and the vil­lage doesn’t have the equip­ment to [reach that level]. The com­pany will come in and do the main­te­nance inside the tank and on top.”

Rogers also gave an update on the water line work south of the vil­lage on U.S. 42.

“We’re start­ing to get mate­r­ial in to fin­ish the 2000 feet of 8-inch water line on S. Main Street and hope to have all the mate­r­ial in [this month].” he said. The money to pay for the project comes from Issue 1 State Cap­i­tal Improve­ments funds.

The instal­la­tion of pit meters con­tin­ues (water meters that are installed in front of houses in a pit rather than in the house or building).

Rogers also noted he had a meet­ing with the staff to review the cut­backs needed to stay within bud­get this year because of the reduc­tion in the gen­eral fund.

“The rev­enue is going down, and they under­stand,” said Rogers. “Every­one is will­ing to do their part.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.