By: Jesse Davis
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
jesse@thevillagereporter.com
Village Administrator Shannon Shulters gave updates on a wide variety of topics during Monday’s meeting of the Swanton Village Council.
Among her several reports, Shulters shared the status of the lane and signal change project at the intersection of Airport Highway and South Main Street.
The bid opening was originally planned for the day after the council meeting but was rescheduled to September 9.
Shulters said she, Police Chief John Trejo, and village public service staff had expressed safety concerns regarding the original design from 2022, and a meeting with an Ohio Department of Transportation representative was scheduled for the day after the council meeting.
She said the project had already been delayed to spring 2026 due to the lead time on arm masts for the “huge signs” ODOT is requiring to warn drivers of the lane change. The masts currently take nine months to get in.
Shulters said the contractor’s plan was to start the paving and the lane change and to paint and stripe the road without the signs, and without changing the signal, which they planned to do at a later time.
“There’s just no way,” Shulters said. “Snow’s coming, people are not gonna pay attention. As much as I would love to trust that people are going to pay attention to the lane change and the signs that they put up, without proper actual signals, that’s concerning.”
She also shared her concerns about what happens to drivers pulling out of Kroger, not realizing they’re in a turn-only lane, and said they would back up traffic while trying to get into the middle lane. They are now considering making the lanes instead of merging in the area of Amazing Smiles Orthodontics.
Councilman John Schmidt brought up a traffic study completed in 2021, since which time he believes truck traffic has doubled or tripled.
Shulters said another study was done in 2023 that claimed there were 11,000 vehicles per day, 7 percent of them trucks. “We don’t believe that either,” Shulters said.
She questioned whether the study was done outside the school year and did not take into account associated traffic. She also wondered whether people still working from home due to COVID-19 impacted the 2021 study.
“Additionally, we’re anticipating that the cost of the [originally proposed] project, directly to the village, not including grant funds, would be somewhere in the ballpark of $90,000, or just shy of $100,000. Between myself and the service guys, we’re anticipating that the cost of the current plan that we are sort of designing more or less ourselves is probably about $30,000,” Fiscal Officer Holden Benfield said.
Shulters shared her support for the option. “It would be nice not to have the drag strip, but protected turns, signal on Airport [Highway] would resolve a lot of the issues over there,” Shulters said.
She also reported that a contractor would be completing “needed repairs along Airport Highway” in the coming weeks.
STREETS INVENTORY
Shulters said that she and Benfield, along with both public service foremen, did a tour of village streets over the course of two days to check potholes and evaluate which roads need repairs prioritized, as well as which ones can be crack sealed this year or will have to wait until next year.
“It’s very eye-opening when you take a tour of all the roads and see how many really do need attention, and a lot of them are because of previous sewer separations where the dirt has now settled, the sand has now settled, and it is causing depressions,” she said.
Shulters said there have been no resulting breaks in the infrastructure, but that it explained the problems.
MAIN/GARFIELD SIGNAL
Shulters reported that the traffic light at the intersection of South Main Street and Garfield Street has been repaired and is now working after she got an email from FET Construction saying they thought they had the parts available and could get it running again.
A crossing guard had already been assigned to the intersection before the repairs were completed, since school had started. He will finish the remainder of the week.
The village had been approved for a $382,500 ODOT grant for work on the intersection, but Shulters said now they don’t know whether it’s worth it to hold on to since they decided to keep the light.
UNIFORM SERVICES CHANGE
Shulters reported the village was going to use Shaw’s Clothing for uniform services for the public service, water, and wastewater departments after their contract with Cintas expires at the end of August. She said the service “didn’t meet the expectations that we had set for them.”
“A lot of clothes came back either dirtier than when we sent them out … or not getting clothes back at all, or certain pairs of pants, some pairs of pants were coming back with cigarettes in them,” Shulters said.
By going with Shaw’s, employees will be able to order their uniforms according to village guidelines, and it will get billed directly to the village, where it will be deducted from the employee’s uniform allowance. The clothes will then be the employee’s property and their responsibility to clean and maintain.
RESERVOIR LOW
Shulters reported the reservoir depth is currently at 10 feet “due to the ongoing lack of rainfall,” and that the well has been activated to prevent further decline.
“What’s the depth where it’s like ‘oh [expletive], there’s no water?” Kania asked. “I’m guessing 10 feet,” Shulters said. She said the normal reservoir depth is around 14 feet.
AUDIT UPDATES
Benfield provided an update on the ongoing audit, triggered by federal expenditures as part of the Water Resource Recovery Facility project.
Benfield said most of his time over the past weeks has been spent providing documents to the auditors in order to expedite their work.
“I was able to prepare a couple things ahead of time that I figured they were going to ask for, so a couple of their lists I was able to basically instantly knock out for them.
“However, I’ve gotten about 12 lists so far, and I have about three more sitting in my email that I haven’t checked yet. So this audit is significantly more in-depth than previous ones,” Benfield said.
He said that from what he has been told, the village’s situation is not uncommon, but that they will have to deal with it.
Auditors will give the village a list of recommendations, but rather than stopping there, this audit will require the village to file a record of its compliance or work toward compliance with the recommendations.
“The vast majority of them are going to be very simply – write something down in the handbook as to what people are doing. I expect the handbook to double or triple in size.
“This isn’t like a ‘our handbook is insufficient’ type of thing; it’s they want a dozen different niche things to be in the handbook, and we just need to put them in,” Benfield said.
Benfield also complemented some of the recommendations, saying there “is some good stuff in there,” pointing out the subject of cybersecurity, which was the focus of an entire section of the audit.
“We will need to do a lot of updates on the written side of our cybersecurity policies, so we’re going to have a lot of work over the course of the next year just in writing,” he said.
OTHER BUSINESS
Mayor Neil Toeppe reported that among his other efforts since the last council meeting, he has “engaged in multiple communications with the village solicitor regarding some legal matters, including discussions about legal representation for a potential court case and the strategy for dismissal.”
Toeppe reported all 14 cameras in the park are now back up and working. The council approved the hiring of part-time EMT Kearstin Jefferies at the Swanton Fire and Rescue Division at a rate of $21.03 per hour.
The council approved the appointment of Samuel Lammers to the SFRD as a full-time firefighter/EMT with an annual salary of $57,946.79. Lammers will have 12 months to obtain his paramedic license.
The council voted to remove from the agenda a first reading of Resolution 2025-14, which would approve annual 3 percent cost-of-living increases for village employees retroactive to 2023.
The council passed on an emergency basis ordinances setting the resident fees for leaf collection and street lighting. The fees remained unchanged at $15 and $32 per parcel owner, respectively.
Paving on Munson Road that was supposed to start this week has been delayed until September 5 due to delays from a subcontractor.
Shulters reported the village received its annual Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Maumee River Watershed Permit in July, and that the village is permitted a maximum discharge of 390 kilograms (859.8 pounds) of phosphorus into the Maumee River. In the most recent permit cycle, she said, the village discharged 241 kilograms (531.3 pounds).
The council ended the normal business portion of the meeting by going into executive session to discuss public employee matters, pending or potential legal matters, and economic development opportunities. No action was expected as a result of the session.
The next regular meeting of the Swanton Village Council will be held at 6:00 p.m. on Monday, September 8, at 219 Chestnut Street.