EARLY PLANS … Brittany Theis of the Fayette Bull Thistle Festival Committee, addresses Council about the early plans for the 2021 event. (PHOTO BY TIM KAYS, STAFF)
By: Tim Kays
With the 2020 event crunched by COVID-19, efforts are now underway to plan for the 2021 Fayette Bull Thistle Festival. At their March 10 meeting, members of the Fayette Village Council heard of the early efforts to reorganize and reenergize the annual festival.
One of those who are heading the committee, Brittany Theis, reported to Council that their first meeting was held last week, and that two more meetings have been scheduled.
The next meeting of the Bull Thistle Committee will take place at the Opera House at 6:45 p.m. on March 25, to be followed by another meeting on April 8 at the same time, in the same venue.
The meetings are open to the public. “We are definitely going to be open to any suggestions on anything,” Theis said. “We have some ideas, and it may take a little while to implement them.”
Several things were discussed in brief, ranging from storage, to insurance coverage, to event planning. Some of the proposed events include a softball tournament and a fire department waterball tournament.
Another subject was the annual fireworks show that was moved from Harrison Lake to behind the school. “We wanted to ask you guys if you had any input on…possibly moving the fireworks back to the lake,” Theis inquired.
“I do know why it was moved,” said Village Administrator Genna Biddix. The fire department requested, and this would have been the fire chief prior to this one, that they move them away from the lake to the school.”
“I was involved in those talks. There were two alternative locations. One of them was village property, the other was the school. That’s the only reason I know…the fire department requested that; Harrison Lake was not happy.”
“And now with the state out at Harrison Lake, I’m not sure who you would need to get permission from to bring them back.”
“It was 150% on request from the Fayette Fire Department that they be moved. He was citing some laws that had been changed around fireworks in the State of Ohio and the proximity that they could be to spectators, so on and so forth.”
“And that’s what I heard too,” Theis said, “…that the last one was that because they were shooting off bigger fireworks, they needed more of a launch base.”
“We’re just fans of them,” Biddix replied. “We’re fortunate to have them right in this community for the festival. We’re just trying to accommodate whatever it was that kept them alive.”
“I have been speaking to Austin at Maumee Valley Planning Organization about Allocation Project options for the Project Year 2021-2022 Community Development Block Grant cycle,” Ms. Biddix said in her report to Council.
“Fulton County was awarded $150,000 for this cycle and there are very few entities that qualify for this pot of money. I had planned to talk about our options for this particular funding source at the last Public Works meeting but we ended up having to cancel that meeting.”
“However, Austin has given me a few more ideas of things we might want to consider so I plan to present that to Public Works at the next meeting next week.”
“I also learned that road projects are no longer an allowed use of funds, so we are very fortunate to have received funding for the South Cherry Street Improvement Project.”
“We got that in under the wire, so they may do improvement projects similar to ours in the future because we have infrastructure upgrades happening there.”
“We have catch basin reconstruction as part of that project, so we may be able to do some things like that in the future, but the state is waffling on that right now as to whether that would actually qualify in the future.”
Ms. Biddix reported on developments with the utility billing website payment portal, saying, “Last year when we received the Coronavirus Local Government Relief Funds, we were excited at the prospect of getting to use some of those funds to set up an online payment portal for utility bill payments.”
“Since we already had credit card processing through our bank’s merchant services, we requested adding web payments to our menu of services. Before we could get to this point though, we had to make some major changes to our merchant services, which took several months to complete.”
“However, we are now on a much more favorable service fee schedule, only available to governments, which will significantly reduce our annual credit card fees and new website processing fees to virtually nothing…around $15 a month now. It was several hundred before this; it’s all very dependent on what we run through.”
“I am currently working on building out two payment portals on the Converge website, one for credit cards and one for ACH. Next, I will build out a place on our website for these payment links to live.”
“Once that’s done, I will do some testing and then as long as all goes well, we will include an insert in the next water bill allowing residents to start using it. ACH and credit card website payments will have the same convenience fee structure as we have always had for credit card processing, which equals 3% of the amount being paid. For example, a $100 payment will result in a $3 convenience fee.”
Ms. Biddix reported that there have been significant developments with local impact in the American Recovery Plan Act.
“I was invited to participate in a Zoom meeting this upcoming Friday with some of the other Administrators in Fulton County, with Erica Krause, the NW Ohio regional aide for Senator Sherrod Brown,” she said.
“This meeting was scheduled in anticipation of what occurred over the weekend. This past weekend, the Senate passed the American Rescue Plan.”
“The bill now goes back to the House for final passage, and then to the President for his signature. It includes significant aid to help Ohioans during this crisis.”
“The bill includes $350 billion in aid for state and local governments. I was sent a spreadsheet of estimation for each local subdivision; the Village of Fayette is slated to receive an estimated $240,000.”
“Again, this is an estimate. The final allocation amounts may vary a little as the Department of Treasury finalizes their allocation process.”
Biddix referenced a 16-page guidance document, which states, “We provide $350 billion to States, territories, Tribes, and local governments to be used for responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency, to offset revenue losses, bolster economic recovery and to provide premium pay for essential workers.”
“Unlike the last pot of money that we received under the Local Government Assistance Fund,” Biddix continued, “…this does not have as many strings attached so far.”
“It’s basically, from what I’ve read in here and in other sources, It looks like it can be used for revenue replacement. It looks like it can be used for mitigation of COVID-19.”
“It looks like it can be used for personnel expenses. I don’t think they’re going to restrict much to do with this, but before we make any plans to do anything with it whatsoever, I think that we will learn from the last go around and not put so much effort and/or thought into what we’re going to do with it yet, until they have made all their changes…and all the time they want to flip flop back and forth as to what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.”
“We’ll save ourselves some work, like we didn’t do the last time around. I wanted to let you know that it’s coming though, and that’s just a general estimate, so I’ll bring more information on that as I get it.”
“We got some odd $106,000 the first go round, and this is close to a quarter million dollars. So considering the impact that the Village of Fayette felt from hits to our income tax – if you can even call it that – in consideration to what we’ve experienced over the last couple of years of revenue collection, we’re really fortunate.”
“This quarter million dollars is a bonus in my eyes. We could have been in a whole lot different in the financial situation than we were after 2020, and of course some of that is still going to trickle in through 2021, but this definitely helps.”
In other actions, Council approved a motion to pay the bills in the amount of $116,394.57, and heard the first reading of Resolution 2021-01, approving the Solid Waste Management Plan Update for the Joint Solid Waste Management District of Defiance, Fulton, Paulding and Williams Counties.
Tim can be reached at tim@thevillagereporter.com