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Council to vote on wastewater plant project loan

Marietta City Council plans to vote on a new loan application for the next scope of renovations for the city’s wastewater treatment plant Thursday.

Council members met Tuesday to discuss with City Engineer Joe Tucker and Wastewater Superintendent Steve Elliott the newest loan from the Ohio Water Development Authority for engineering fees for Scope 4 of Phase III of the renovation and to review the proposed schedule for engineering and bidding in 2017.

If granted, the $401,400 loan would allow the city to refine plans for the plant as the city moves into the most costly phase of renovations.

“By editing our engineering I’d estimate saving our overall cost by a couple million dollars,” said Tucker. “And if we keep to the task schedule for the year, this loan would simply roll into the 30-year construction loan next year for the third phase like Phase I and Phase II.”

Previous phases of the project have been paid for similarly through loans from the Ohio Public Works Commission and Ohio Water Development Authority and then assessed through water and sewer rates. In November of 2011, the city began Phase I of the renovation at a total cost of $5,645,106. Following the completion of that phase, the city began Phase II in January of 2013 at a total cost of $6,722,226.

Scope 1 of Phase III came in at $1,127,615 in loans and Scopes 2 and 3 at a total of $6,806,698.53. The projected total cost of Phase III is $14,749,985.

Permitting

Council plans to further discuss next week taking back permitting duties from the county.

The 2016 legislation adding the duties and corresponding compensation to the engineering department’s office manager had failed in council when county commissioners indicated to council their intent to keep the duties.

But in an eleventh hour move on Dec. 22 by commissioners, access, driveway, right-of-way, land development, zoning, demolition, sewer and water tap permits will now only be continued by the county permitting office through the end of January.

“So if we don’t take these back, no one is doing permitting for the city in less than 30 days,” said Councilwoman Sarah Snow, R-at large, chair of council’s Planning, Zoning and Annexation Committee.

Council will further discuss revisions to the permitting contract with the county next week in committee and vote on the changes to the office manager position and salary on Jan. 19.

Fire

Council will also discuss in Employee Relations Committee next week the possible addition of an assistant fire chief position to the city’s fire department.

Marietta Fire Chief C.W. Durham spoke Tuesday about the need for the city to reinstate the position for the safety of residents and property owners.

According to estimates for the 2017 budget from Assistant Safety-Service Director Bill Dauber, the position of assistant fire chief would cost $65,989 in salary and benefits.

But council did not authorize that spent at the end of 2016 for this year’s budget.

“The question remains how are we going to pay for it?” said Councilman Tom Vukovic, D-4th ward, and chair of Finance Committee.

Durham said his department only uses the city’s general fund to pay for 17 of its 36 employees, the other 19 drawing funding from the city fire levy fund and from third-party billing revenues.

“We lost this position more than eight years ago because of constraints to the budget but I feel it is a disservice to the city if I don’t continue to bring this forward because of the risk both to firefighters and residents’ lives without the proper structure and manpower to fight our fires,” he said.

Durham said in his tenure as fire chief for the past decade, overtime has dropped 92.84 percent while emergency calls have increased approximately 30 percent in the same time. Between 2015 and 2016 alone the increase was 3.1 percent with 2016 total call volume closing in December at 3,654 runs.

“Our runs are constantly going up and it’s more and more important for us to have the training and the manpower to respond effectively and safely to those,” said Durham.

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