Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Lake Township has fallen behind on road repairs over the years due to rising costs, which spurred trustee Richard Welling to propose a three-year, two-mill levy that will be on the ballot this November.
“The whole purpose of it is to get us caught up on our roads,” he said. “When I first became a trustee 25 years ago, we were asphalt paving almost three miles of roadway a year. Now, because of prices, we can barely get a mile. This will help get us caught up because we're getting behind on road paving mainly because of the cost.”
Welling stressed that this is only a three years and done levy.
“This is not a permanent levy,” he said. “It's not a replacement levy. It's not a five-year renewable levy. It's a three-year-and-done levy.”
The cost to a homeowner of a $100,000 house would be $70 a year, and it is estimated to bring in around $523,000 per year for three years, Welling said.
Welling also said it would help take care of the main roads in the township, including Lemoyne Road. In fact, he said where he’s at on Lemoyne, it hasn’t been paved since he was a teenager.
“It would give us a good 15 to 20 years,” he said.
The other issue is any state and federal financing that they would rely on in the past is probably all gone now, he said.
“It's a resident's decision,” he said. “It's their roads. Every single person uses them. Every person depends on them, and it's their decision (how they vote).”
The levy will be geared specifically for road paving and repair. It won’t be used for leaf pickups, brush pickup, or normal road department stuff.
“I proposed it because our roads are just not getting caught up, we're getting behind,” Welling said. “I proposed it to our trustees, and they agreed to it.”
“We're just getting way behind on road paving.”
Joint Lake Township and Walbridge OPWC grant slated for June 2026 completion
A joint project between Lake Township and Walbridge involving the repaving of a portion of Walbridge Road between Luckey and East Broadway will now have an estimated June 2026 completion date in order to fix a bridge over a culvert in that stretch.
The original project’s grant money didn’t cover the potential cost of the bridge replacement. However, Lake Township’s road department supervisor Steve Fry made a recommendation to consider replacing the bridge over the old culvert in an effort to prevent having to go back in later after the road was done.
Thus, the joint project’s engineer, Kleinfelder, engaged the Wood County Engineer’s Office to see if they would pay for the bridge repair over the culvert, and they agreed to pay for it as long as both Lake Township and Walbridge agreed to split the engineering cost aspect of it, which was about $30,000.
That will delay the completion of the road project until June 2026. Walbridge mayor Ed Kolanko said Kleinfelder confirmed with the OPWC to make sure the project could extend into next year, and they said it was fine as long as work was completed by June.
“We’re moving forward still in a joint effort and adding to the project to replace the bridge over the culvert, making it more safe for traffic,” Kolanko said. “It's a logical step. It was a good call by Steve Fry, and we're happy that the Wood County Engineer's Office is helping us out and replacing that and making the street quite more safe and passable.”
