By Krystal Smalley
ksmalley@wbcowqel.com
The Bucyrus City Council may discover that before it’s done, the Plymouth Street project could require as many miles of paperwork as it does asphalt. The bulk of work done at Tuesday’s City Council meeting had to do with legislation regarding that project.
The Plymouth Street project is being done in conjunction with the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and is being completed with the use of federal funds. A requirement by ODOT forced the city to hire a pre-qualified firm rather than using the city’s engineering firm Brandstetter Carroll. Those funds were unappropriated and then re-appropriated in the amount of $255,000 Tuesday night to hire a federally-approved company to do the right-of-way work.
Council also gave consent to ODOT to perform two-lane resurfacing on Ohio 98 from Ohio 4 to the Bucyrus north corporation line. ODOT’s portion of the project is $1,599,415.54 while the city will be funding 20 percent of the project, or $399,853.88. The city already appropriated $630,000 for the water and sewer work on the Plymouth Street project. Construction for this portion of the project is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2016.
Other appropriations included $5,000 to repair the Aumiller swimming pool, $500 to pay the final funds for the planning and design of the new Water Filtration Plant, and $9,600 for maintenance of the Solid Waste fleet.
The final piece of legislation passed during Tuesday night’s Council meeting addressed changes to the police chief’s manpower ordinance. When the FOP contract was ratified, it removed the certification pay and set a $1 per hour increase to the base pay. The police chief was not covered under the FOP contract; rather, his pay is set by the manpower ordinance. That $1 per hour increase was added to the police chief’s base rate for 2015 and 2016.
The Bucyrus city fireworks have been scheduled for dusk on July 3 at the fairgrounds.