THE CHOICE IS YOURS … Holiday City Village Administrator Gary Baker addresses Council on the request to lease village-owned property. (PHOTO BY TIM KAYS, STAFF)
By: Tim Kays
Members of the Holiday City Village Council approved a request to solicit bids for the lease of village property at their February 18 meeting.
Solicitor Cara Wall reported, “I was asked…about the ability of the village to lease property owned by the village. The short answer is yes.
The village can lease its land or general property. There’s a couple of conditions on it, generally speaking. It has to be land that the Council decides is not of use to the village. And there also has to be a notice of bid process for it, so the highest bidder for that lease is the one who would get it.”
Wall’s report dovetailed with the report of Village Administrator Gary Baker, who said, “We have an individual that wants to lease the property across from the Auto Auction, next to our substation.”
“And I guess I need to know whether you want to do that. If we’ve got to go through the bid process, we’ll have to advertise.”
“We’ve always had somebody else interested in the property; they wanted to buy it. This gentleman just wants to lease it, and his terms are to have a 90-day cancellation of the lease.”
Council approved a measure to solicit bids for the leasing of the aforementioned property. No minimums or deadlines were put forward with the vote.
“Contracts are signed on a culvert on Selwyn Drive,” Baker continued. “He’s not going to do anything until it gets closer to when the asphalt plants open. Everything’s froze up now and full of snow. They’re ready to go soon as we get some decent weather where they can work.”
“The police are starting to get their office outfitted,” Baker added. “They got their computer finally, and they’re getting ready to use it.”
In other actions, under suspended rules of reading, Council adopted Ordinance 2021-3, authorizing participation by the village in the Ohio Market Access Program (OMAP).
OMAP is a program designed to help local Ohio governments find lower borrowing costs when they issue short-term notes.
In this case, Council approved the financing of the annual note on the substation. “We pay off the one note,” said Clerk/Treasurer Lauri TenEyck-Rupp.
“The $1,680,000 is the note we’re paying off, and we’re making our principal payment of $110,000.” “It’s a bond anticipation note,” said Baker. “We do that because interest rates are less.”
Council suspended the rules to adopt amended Ordinances 2021-4 and 2021-5, both of which pertain to the electric grid. 2021-4 adopts interconnection standards for installation of parallel operation of customer-owned renewable electric generation solar facilities of 25 Kilowatts or less, and 2021-5 approves Solar Renewable – Rider C.
These measures dictate that when the rules are silent, codified village ordinances will apply to the governance of operations, and when there is conflict between the ordinances and the new rules, the new rules will prevail.
Ms. TenEyck-Rupp reported that deposits for January were $682,596.70 and the regular checking expenses were $602,292.78. The remaining balance is $4,095,693.06. The Star Ohio balance was $184,843.99.
Councilor Sean Rupp asked, “Are we anywhere on figuring out what we can do to sell lots, or if we can do it?” “I had an idea,” Baker replied. “Dennis Miller from Maumee Valley (Planning Organization) is looking into it.”
“He thinks the program is primarily for cities and for urban development, and we wouldn’t be eligible to do that. One other thought was to have someone else buy the property, do the development on that ourselves, and assess some of the improvements to the lots.”
“The owner of the property would obviously pay before they would be released.”
Tim can be reached at tim@thevillagereporter.com