Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The Village of Walbridge held its latest council meeting on May 21, highlighted by discussion of a potential update to the tax code and a stormwater fee.
The current tax credit to each municipality sits at one percent, and Walbridge is looking to drop it to 0.75 or 0.50 percent. The proposal, which would put the village more in line with the rates of other local areas such as Millbury, had its second reading at the meeting.
“We’re not increasing the tax rate, not changing our tax rate in that respect, but just changing the credit,” Walbridge mayor Ed Kolanko told The Press two weeks ago. “You know, like every community, we're starting to see some costs going up, but our revenues are staying pretty flat. We're looking at different ways to do things to make sure we can provide the services that we do for our residents.”
The finance committee met on the issue May 20, and there will be a third reading at the next meeting on June 4 at 6:30 p.m.
Stormwater fund
Village council also discussed the potential of establishing a stormwater management fund, and council member Karen Baron said that the finance team believes would be a good thing to get into place.
“It would actually be proactive to get a budget in case there were large expenses, let's say some kind of street disaster,” she said. “Let's say something like a sinkhole (issue) that Toledo's having right now, which would incur huge costs. Something like this fund would help offset that.”
The fund would be specifically earmarked for repairing storm sewers maintenance and repairs.
Kolanko said a lot of other communities have this type of fund in place already.
“It's money that we're generating to help for a specific need,” he said. “So whether that's our MS4 permit that we have to do annually, whether it's to repair catch basins, whether it's when (village administrator Todd) Robson and his maintenance crew are jetting lines on Martin … anything that's related to it will be used for it.”
Kolanko said the potential tax rate change and the stormwater fee aren’t necessarily because of financial struggles, but it’s more about being proactive.
“We're being proactive, but we're actually in a very strong financial position, better than we have been in the past ten years but it's not wrong being proactive. Right now we're pretty generous to be more in line with other communities. This is forward thinking because our costs are going up and things of that nature.”
Having the stormwater fund, which would appear on water bills, would also assist with grant applications.
“If it's a road grant, whether it's a sewer grant, whether it's a park grant, we have to provide a statement of financial resources,” Kolanko said. “(They want to know) how much money we have to set aside for these kind of projects. So when it comes to recreation, they want to see what kind of recreation fund we have. When it comes to streets, they want to see what our street budget is. When it comes to stormwater management, we don't have one, so we have to submit our general fund.
“And they're going to look at it and say, ‘You have a lot of money in your general fund, you don't score very high.’ Other places that have a stormwater management fund set up score better than we do for stormwater grants. By setting this up and directing some money into that specific account will help us in the grant application process. This is us trying to be proactive and forward-thinking.”
POW flag
Lake Township trustee Lorie Davis and local VFW post commander Jason Algarin donated a new POW flag to the village, which will be raised at Veteran’s Park by the library.
Railway Park playground update
The playground equipment upgrade at Railway Park is progressing, and the actual playground will extend almost to the gazebo down by the hill. There will be a grand opening, ribbon cutting type of ceremony once the weather allows the completion of the process.
“The footprint of that is going to be about double than what it was before,” Kolanko said.
New signage
After discussion over recent months and cost estimations, council approved the replacement of four signs around Walbridge at a total cost of $31,064.85.
One will be a Welcome to Walbridge sign coming in off I-280, and two others will be for Loop Park and Railway Park. The third one, an LED sign, will be for the front of the administration building.
Kolanko said the current sign in front of the building was brought over from their old location on 111 N. Main Street, and he estimates it to be at least 50-60 years old. He added that the signs will have a consistent look.
“We’re sprucing it up and making it look more modern,” he said.
