Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The Oak Harbor village council had a second reading at its latest regular meeting on Feb. 17 for one ordinance and one resolution. The ordinance would authorize the village to enter into an annexation agreement with Salem Township, while the resolution would better enable the distribution of liquor permits in the revitalization district.
Mayor Quinton Babcock said there are some properties in town that are in town, but legally they are not in village limits.
A solution is needed for multiple reasons.
“It becomes I would say an issue of fairness,” he said. “These are folks who are by all means benefiting from village roads, benefiting from village parks, but they're not contributing (in terms) of paying their fair share like their neighbors are.
“But probably more important than that is that it becomes a jurisdictional issue. The village of Oak Harbor police department does not have jurisdiction over those properties because they're not in the village. That's the primary thing that this addresses.”
Technically, it's not legally necessary to go through this to annex the properties, Babcock said.
“All that's required for us to annex those properties is the agreement of the property owner, but with that said we wanted to approach the township about this. We've had several conversations with the township about it to kind of document the consensus that both us and the township agree that it is in everyone's best interest for some of these properties to be annexed (in order) to solve these jurisdictional issues.”
Babcock made it a point to say that people will still get emergency services.
“But, there's a possibility that you're expecting an officer to show up and have jurisdiction over an incident and then they don't,” he said. “That's the biggest, really deep thing that they're addressing. There are homes and residential properties. There are actually some school district properties owned by the school that have this scenario. It's mostly fields that the school owns adjacent to the school. We've had conversations with them. We don't have an agreement with them yet officially to annex those properties but the logic behind the annexation agreement is to have an upfront conversation with the township about what our thoughts are about some of these properties and come to an agreement with the township about what we agree on with respect to what should be annexed.
“We don't necessarily have agreements finalized with any of these property owners, but we have talked to I would say most of the property owners I can think of. I think we've talked to five of them letting them know, ‘Hey, we feel this is an issue and we'd like you to annex into the village.’”
Babcock and council are expecting a third reading at the next regular meeting on March 2. Salem Township would also have to pass it, although Babcock isn’t sure where they stand in the process at this moment.
“We sort of had an agreement in principle they were on board with this, but then they decided they wanted some additional information, so I don't know where they're at in that process,” he said.
Liquor permits
Babcock and council are also working on an amendment via resolution to allow local businesses within the revitalization district to more easily obtain liquor permits.
Oak and Anchor Grill wasn’t able to obtain a liquor permit, for example, as there were no more left in the system, and this would assist in a situation like that.
“Everyone kind of agrees we want restaurants,” Babcock said. “It’s not necessarily that we're looking for all kinds of sort of bars, but people would like to go to a restaurant, get dinner, have a beer with dinner, that kind of experience”
Businesses can get a permit through the Ohio Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Transfer (TREX) program, but they have to fork up either $20,000 or $40,000 to do so, and Babcock doesn’t want businesses giving up capital like that to make this happen.
“There's no sense in that,” he said. “People and small businesses should have access to these permits. We shouldn't put them in a situation where they have to go invest $20,000 of their capital digging up a liquor permit.”
This resolution would expand the area for liquor permit authorization.
“When we first passed (the area), it was sort of downtown proper,” Babcock said. “The way this works, just for context, is it creates more permits, but those permits are only available within the ‘revitalization district.’ So you don't want to necessarily do the whole town, because maybe we want to make sure those permits are available for downtown.
“As first set up, it was very downtown in a very narrowly defined sense, and what we're doing with the district and the amendment is extending it out to the Benton Street corridor. There's a corner where 163 bends where it comes into 105, and Kozy Corners is there. There used to be a Pizza Hut there. It's kind of a commercial corridor there coming into town that we want to again have the opportunity for those folks to utilize liquor permits if they want to.”
Warbler Capital of the World
A first reading of a resolution to collaboratively market with the Black Swamp Bird Observatory to accept designation as the Warbler Capital of the World also took place.
“We’re very excited about that,” Babcock said. “We've heard a lot through all of our comprehensive planning and everything we've done over the last few years that people really want a thriving downtown that sort of looks like, for many of our residents, something they grew up with or something that's got lots of restaurants and places to shop and all those kinds of things.
“One of the strategies that we're interested in utilizing to get there is collaborating with ecotourism folks like the Black Swamp Bird Observatory in order to get visitors downtown so that they can help support our small businesses and our restaurants and that kind of thing.
“We’re excited about that. I think we've got lots of residents who are very excited about the nature elements that they live around. Not everyone is, but I think everyone can appreciate that this is something that helps us get the kind of restaurants and amenities that everyone's hoping to have.
“In order to have the kind of quality that small businesses and people expect in today's day and age, we have to lean on visitors to help support that and what kind of visitors are we interested in attracting and sort of cultivating? I think the kind of folks that Black Swamp Bird Observatory is working with — the kind of folks who appreciate the nature and kind of what we have to offer and can support the businesses.”
Pay increases
One other first reading was to update the maximum pay increase for village officers and employees. It hasn’t been updated in two years, and the village is looking to allow for a maximum six percent increase.
“In order to bureaucratically make sure people could receive those raises, we had to update the pay on it,” Babcock said. “Just to be clear, the ordinance enables people to make that much money. It does not give them that much money. It’s not that six percent would be completely outrageous, but it doesn't give a six percent increase. It just allows them to make it. How we started doing the schedule was when we pass our budget for the year, we identify what's appropriate. So, in the next month or so, we'll identify (if that is) two percent, is it three percent, and we'll grant that to all the employees.”
