By Dominic Weiss
The Cadiz village council met Thursday, Feb. 1, to discuss ongoing events and projects in the village.
A citizen came in to address the concern about homelessness, and the increase of it he felt was happening in the community and surrounding area. He’s been working to gain support from the village and local churches and is aiming to work together with them to provide warming centers and help people get what they need to fix their situations. “People aren’t necessarily looking for a hand down, but a hand up.”
Village Administrator Brandon Ludwig gave an overview of the village app GoGOV’s progress. It is moving forward. A launch date will be announced at the end of February.
Council and the mayor discussed economic development in the business district on Lincoln Avenue. There are several properties that might be available for development. The village will be doing a study on building a road to connect to the Teramana property behind Tractor Supply. The mayor is going after state funding for access and infrastructure on that property.
After some conversations with the public about walkability to the hospital, and meeting with WVU, the council approved to move forward to apply for TAP (Transportation Alternative Program) money, a grant through ODOT. It’s the same program they’ll have funding from for the sidewalk project connecting Stanton Avenue to McDonald’s. Council will be using the grant to install a sidewalk out to WVU hospital. WVU has expressed full support for this project. There will be public meetings on the project down the road, Ludwig said.
Dirk Harkins, who runs the 911 Veterans Event at Sally Buffalo Park every September, came to speak on behalf of the event. He’s planning on growing the event and has moved it from one weekend to two this year. The first weekend will have a 22-mile walk to honor the 22 veterans who commit suicide every day.
Bonnie Rutledge from the News-Herald came in as well to discuss having a community project to put up a mural on the side of the old Western Auto building.
The village is moving towards raising their disconnection fees for delinquent water accounts (your water gets shut off if you don’t pay for two months, and a disconnection fee is added to the bill to have it turned back on). The fee is being raised from $25 to $100. This is to help decrease the number of delinquent accounts in the village. Other communities that provide water have reported that this has been successful in decreasing shutoffs and delinquent accounts.
Ludwig explained that the village applied for an equipment grant through Ohio EPA and received full funding to purchase a leak detector for water lines. There were multiple water breaks during January, with four of them happening in the span of five days. Cadiz fixes the breaks themselves, instead of contracting out the work. “That’s a really important thing for a small community, to be able to use our own manpower to go out and fix those,” Ludwig said. The street, water, and sewer department work well together, and saves the village money by not having to pay to contract out the work.
In 2017, the village set a rate structure for their water bills that would go through to 2030. It has rate increases built in for every year to accommodate all the EPA required projects they’ve been doing. This year the village will be freezing the water rates so the bill will be the same as last year. This has been in the works for the last six to eight months as the village has received grants for many of their projects. They plan on either restructuring the rates or freezing them again. “As we continue to get grants and funding for these huge significant projects that impact the entire community, we’re going to continue to look at either restructuring or continuing to freeze rates until we have a better idea of what monies are available through grants and what monies are available through our debt fees,” Ludwig explained. “We can take a full year’s look at what they are, what we’re bringing in compared to what we’re spending, compared to what we’re having to pay for these big projects. It basically allows us to see if we have the flexibility to restructure those rates so that they’re not so significant and aren’t such a big impact year to year. If we have rate increases built in until 2030, can we take that and stretch it back another five years to where it’s smaller amounts every year?”
The stage committee for ‘Mark at the Park’ have been working on booking bands and events for the summer concert series. The opening date and first concert will be announced soon.