Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Village council members in Oak Harbor held their latest meeting on Sept. 2, highlighted by the application for a tree grant, the first reading for adopting a comprehensive parks plan, and addressing a traffic issue raised by a local resident.
Tree grant
Mayor Quinton Babcock said the village has applied for a grant through the Ohio Department of Natural Resource’s Division of Forestry, which has the potential to trim some big, old growth trees in Veteran’s Park and fund the planting of over 100 trees locally.
The grant proposal requires an element related to tree planting, but the Division of Forestry also hammers home that those applying need to have a “disciplined investment strategy,” Babcock said.
“They want to make sure you're educated on how to manage an urban forest,” he said. “Then you have to do a risk assessment — are all our trees safe or are there trees that have to come down because there are risks they could fall on someone or something? Then you have to address those trees and make sure your trees are getting regular maintenance.
“We have sort of generally gotten to a point where we have implemented all of those things, so we're in a good point to start.”
Thus, Babcock applied for the grant, and he has ambitious goals.
“We have some really, really big old growth trees in Veterans Park, and $10,000 of the grant was to bring in a trimmer to trim those trees just because those are substantially larger than we're equipped to handle,” he said. “And then the remainder of the grant, around $80,000, involves planting over 100 trees.”
Babcock is realistic about likely not getting everything asked for in the application, but he hopes to get some assistance.
“Frankly, I don't anticipate the Department of Forestry necessarily awarding that entire amount,” he said. “Not necessarily because the amount is big, but a hundred trees is a lot of trees to kind of get through at once. What I would hope is that they'll approve us for some of those trees and we focus those plantings.”
A focus of those new plantings would accommodate big trees, which from a natural resources perspective provides more ecosystem benefits than smaller trees, as well as a lot more shade and a reduction in home cooling bills.
“We focused a lot of the spots where we'll prioritize planting along the pedestrian corridors like Main Street between the park and downtown, where it’s relatively highly used by pedestrians because it connects our big park to downtown and the community more broadly,” Babcock said. “There's a lot of open spaces where we can plant more trees.”
Parks project
The town’s comprehensive parks plan has been completed, and officials had a first reading for a resolution to adopt it.
“One of the strategies that we identified was to dive deeper into the parks,” Babcock sad. “We've never had a comprehensive parks plan. At one time, we've done some one-off planning for different parks. But what we found was something would sound like a good idea. We'd all say, ‘Oh, it's a good idea.’ We'd go out and get some money and then we'd realize, ‘Oh, hey, we didn't really think this through.’ It wasn't very well thought through.
“This, to me, was an important step, not only to be organized, but just strictly from an engineering planning point of view, and also from a public input point of view. We had a steering committee which involved residents, and we pulled in the Park District of Ottawa County for their perspective and some things like that.
“We had a community committee, and then we also did a survey, where we prioritized what amenities people wanted. And then we sort of added a schematic level of planning.”
Babcock said they have some plans to reconfigure Veterans Park in particular, generally keeping a lot of the same stuff, but making it a way that makes more sense.
“The problem is that Veterans Park is so spread out that you're watching your kids play a little league game and then your other kid is off somewhere playing that's far away, and you can't keep an eye on them both,” Babcock said. “There's that kind of connectivity (problem), especially if you're an older adult or you have mobility issues. There's no good path sometimes to get where you're trying to go. Our plan addresses a lot of those things.”
There are also some new amenities that residents wanted the village to explore, such as splash pads and pickleball courts.
“Those ranked high on the list, so there are some new amenities we're going to explore,” Babcock said. “But the biggest thing I would say that we heard from folks is that a lot of the amenities we have are kind of on the money, but they want those amenities to be newer and maybe better maintained and those kinds of things. Without the benefit of planning in the past, our investments weren't as strategic as maybe would have been optimal.”
There will be a parks committee meeting prior to the next general council meeting on Sept. 15, where they will review the plan in more details and start to figure out which projects make sense exploring first.
Student pick up issues
A resident of East Ottawa Street spoke before council about vehicles blocking driveways on her side of the road during times in which parents pick up their students at the school. Two residents on her side of the street are over 90 years old. One of those two had a fall last year, and EMS had a problem getting to her driveway because of the blockage. Thus, the resident felt it should be addressed by the village.
After discussion, Babcock said village officials will draft up an ordinance to help an effort to resolve the issue by preventing parking during school hours on that side of the street. He said that way it can also go through three readings, and anyone who has other comments on the issue can have their voices heard.
