THE DETAILS … Pioneer Village Administrator Al Fiser reports on the T&W Project that is winding down. (PHOTO BY TIM KAYS, STAFF)
By: Tim Kays
The Village of Pioneer has a new budget for 2021. On the evening of December 14, members of the Pioneer village Council suspended the rules of reading and adopted Ordinance 19-2020, establishing permanent appropriations in the amount of $5,795,759.86 for 2021.
That number is down 19.8% from 2020, but the decrease is in no way is reflective of the ambitious plans that the village has for the upcoming year, including finishing up the T&W Parkway project and getting the South State Street, North State Street, East Mulberry Street and Lincoln Street improvement projects underway.
$902,912.80 has been allocated to the Water Fund, up $588,020.60 from 2019. Amongst other things, that increase reflects work on the water plant scheduled for 2021. “Obviously the project for the water plant, that’s all in there under the water budget,” said Village Fiscal Officer April McMillen. “That also includes a new roof at the water plant. Out backhoe will be up next year…that’s in the budget.”
Village Administrator Al Fiser gave an update on the T&W Project “This week,” he said, “…they should complete the sanitary connections out to the lagoons. Basically, they’re down to clean up. They’ve got a couple manholes they need to put risers on for storm, but it’s finally winding down, and in spring they’ll topsoil and seed. That’s the plan anyway.”
Fiser reported on a request from Street Department Supervisor, Anthony Burnett. “Our Street Supervisor seems to think we need a new pickup, and I would concur,” he said. “We’ve got a 2006 Chevy that we use for snow plowing, but it’s starting to need repairs. It’s a 2006; it doesn’t owe us anything.”
“I got a couple of bids from Ford. He wants to stick with Ford if you guys decide you want to do it. And the way we buy it, it’s…through the state but it’s for fleet. We got two bids one from Montpelier Ford, which they didn’t give us a fleet price. The bid was $41,568.10. Both of them have the same equipment: Heavy front end, ready for snow plowing.”
“Where we bought the last two was Bryan Ford, and he did give us the fleet price for the same truck. That bid was $30,339, plus $25 title fee. That fleet price is about $11,000 cheaper, so if you guys decide you want to do it, and I recommend we do, I would recommend Bryan Ford, which is sort of a no brainer.” Council moved to approve the purchase of the truck from Bryan Ford, as well as a new snowplow from Kalida Truck for $6,900. Both items are reflected in the 2021 appropriations.
Ms. McMillen also reported, “Medical Mutual our December bill for the village employees for the health insurance, they gave a 30% rebate back on their last bill because they said a lot of people didn’t go to the doctor this year. they took about just around $3,000 off our last Medical Mutual bill for the year. That was pretty nice.”
Fiser also clarified a point from the prior meeting and noted that the MARCS radios ordered through the village by Bridgewater Township for Township use are on the way. Mayor Ed Kidston said, “Bridgewater, gave us money to buy radios, and we bought radios. That’s what we did. They gave us money for radios…we bought radios.”
Councilor Randy Cochran brought up the subject of the old Joy Hotel building on First Street. Constructed in 1855, the 165 year old structure is decaying rapidly, and there is a growing call for action on the part of the village to do something about the growing eyesore.
“There is something that can be done,” said Village Solicitor Tom Thompson, “…and it starts with sending a letter. April did send me…the contact information for the owner, and I need to work on the letter to get out to him that will start the process. But it’s not a quick fix. You’ll have to give him a reasonable amount of time in order to bring it up to snuff. And then if he doesn’t do so, then the village can take some action to bring it down or whatever you think needs to be done.” Mayor Kidston asked, “So…how long of a time do you think we’re looking at?” “I would think realistically, somewhere in the three to six months range,” Thompson replied.
In other actions, Council appointed Katie Wells and Mr. Fiser as village representatives to WEDCO, and Mayor Kidston as a representative and Board of Directors member of the Ohio Municipal Electric Association.
Council approved Ordinance 18-2020, an ordinance authorizing the Village Administrator to enter into an agreement with Bell Engineering Limited Inc. for design services and construction observation services in South State Street, North State Street, East Mulberry Street and Lincoln Street improvement projects within the village.
“We got the two $325,000 grants,” Mayor Kidston said of the upcoming projects. “We received the two zero interest loans for another $325,000, although it’s $325,000 divided by two…two loans. They’re zero interest over 20 years. We just filed Friday, all the paperwork for the $500,000 grant from Critical Infrastructure, and I appreciate everybody who sent letters.”
“I know there’s a couple in here that sent letters, and we had quite a response…14 or 15 letters I think total. The residents really responded well for us, took pictures, commented on how bad the sidewalks and the curbs are. That type of thing, that was kind of testimony that we needed to file with that grant. We’ll probably know on that sometime late January or early February.”
“Of course, the State is already committed I think it’s close to $900,000 for the blacktopping of State Street. So we’ve got sizable grants and zero interest loans. When it all said and done, we’re still going to have to come up with about a million dollars to do all those projects. That number is pretty close. It will kind of depend on for sure if we get this $500,000 infrastructure grant, but we’re going to do almost $3 million worth of work for a million bucks…pretty good deal.
Mayor Kidston continued, “Just so nobody gets really excited, we’ll do the design. We can’t bid out before June of this year, based on the $325,000 grants. If we’re successful with the critical infrastructure, we may not be able to bid out our portion of it until around August or September of this year. So nothing’s going to happen the first part of this year.”
“As far as construction, we’ll get it designed, get it approved by all the regulatory agencies, and we’ll be ready to put it out for bid as soon as we can. As soon as we get our portion done, which will probably be spring 2022, then ODOT will come in and blacktop. So that’s going to be a couple year project.”
“As a trade off with some of the villages in the county, I agreed that we would not submit anything next year for grants, because they voted to give us two grants this year, one for North State, one for South State. To my knowledge that’s never happened before. It was a far stretch to think that we could get it done, but we did. And as for thanking them for that, I offered that we would not go in for next year. I think there’s projects enough on our plate anyway, so I think we’ll be we’ll be okay.”
Tim can be reached at tim@thevillagereporter.com