So the election was Tuesday, and all in all I am fairly happy with the results. I am not going to get into my political views, just now I am fairly happy. One Issue that has me disappointed though was Issue 16. This issue was presented to the residents of Sugarcreek. It was going to take the soon to be expired Sewer levy and shift it into the newly formed Safety Services fund. Well needless to say it failed, it was a difference of 65 votes, but it still stung a bit. I know it took me a few days to post on this, but I wanted to calm down and collect my thoughts before I wrote on it. That way I don't type something I might regret later.It might still happen, but at least I have thought it out a while.
Let me share a little bit more about the proposal. The Sewer levy as it sits right now is a 1/2% percent income tax. Meaning if you don't work, you don't pay. Also a good majority of the income tax comes from the workers at the various Belden Brick plants in Sugarcreek, at least half if not more live outside of the village. After that comes Pro-Via door, which also has a lot of employees coming to work from outside the village. The Sewer levy was originally placed on the ballot 16 years ago. It was to help fund much needed improvements to the sewer plant of the village and to bring it up and beyond into the future. When it was originally placed before the citizens it was told to them that when it expired it would be taken off, unfortunately it was never worded that way on the ballot. So it was now left to the village council to decide the fate of the levy when it expired. The council that serves now has decide that it would be in the best interest of the village to leave it on. And after careful contemplation they felt that establishing a Safety Service fund and utilizing the soon to be defunct levy would be the way to supply funding for it. As it stands now, the Fire, Police and Street department are all funded from the general fund. Luckily the Fire Dept. is pretty well self sustaining thanks to contracts they have with surrounding townships for coverage. But the Police and Street departments both pull from the fund, and both require high budgets to maintain day to day operations. By establishing the Safety Service fund the general fund would be left just for the street department. Freeing up money to do some much needed maintenance around the village.
What else was decided was that due to the fact of deteriorating conditions of the Fire and Police facilities a new one was going to be designed and built that would house both Police and Fire. Let me give a little synopsis of the facilities. First the police station is to small to house the operations that the Police Department does. As of right now the police have to operate out of three rooms. Which at one point was fine, but newer standards have been established as to what a police station needs. In a new station you need to have a separate room for suspects and victims, ours has one room. In a new station you need to have a room to hold your prisoners, ours has none. In a new station you need to have a room to store your weapons in, ours has them within sight of criminals. I am not going to keep going because there is a lot more that needs updated. Now on to the fire station. The major issue here is the fact that our apparatus bay floor is below street level, so whenever there is a heavy rain we have flooding.So after hours of dealing with storm damage we have to return to the station grab squeegees and spend another hour or two pushing water down the drains. And this water is usually in lake form due to the cracked bay floor. This also happens to the police department too. As a result of flooding we have had black mold in the basement not once but twice. The first time it made our EMS personnel sick with upper respiratory infections. Let me show you some pictures of our station as it sits today.
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As you can see it is kind of cramped truck wise. The sad part is if we need a truck in the back then we need to waste valuable time to pull the truck in front out just to get to the needed truck.
Finally the levy would have provided for two firefighters on station during the day. As any volunteer firefighter can tell you pulling a crew during the day is no easy feat. And in time of need you don't want to wait 10-15 minutes just for a fire truck to leave the station. So by having two guys at the station we can insure the truck can get out in the 5 minutes that is recommended by the NFPA. (The people that regulate fire departments).
So since it failed we now have a major decision to make. Do we put it back on the ballot in May, or do we chock it up to a loss and move on? What is your opinion and please leave a comment I want to know, good or bad I won't hold a grudge. And no matter what we decide to do I want the citizens of Sugarcreek to know that when you call 911 we WILL be there no matter what.
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