By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
The Bucyrus Economic and Finance committees approved sending legislation to City Council that will have Bucyrus enter into a partnership with Galion and Crawford County for the 2016 CHIP program.
The Community Housing Impact Preservation Program (CHIP) helps low income individuals that own a home, or rent to use government assistance to renovate their homes, or purchase heaters to replace old or defunct heaters for their homes.
As a whole the county is expected to receive $1.15 million with $350,000 being allotted to Bucyrus, $350,000 being allotted to Galion, and $450,000 being allotted to the rest of Crawford County.
The CHIP program is expected to become available to residents beginning in the fall.
The Public Lands and Buildings and Finance committees both passed a motion for legislation to put farm lands owned by the city up for bid.
Atotal of just over 134 acres at five locations will be going up for bid by the city after council passes legislation to post the bids for the land to farm it. Farmers won’t be able to grow corn with the acreage by the airport due to clearance for the airplanes flying in and out of the airport.
Along with approving the CHIP Program for the year of 2016 and sending farm land to bid the Finance Committee also approved sending to legislation a change in the sewer rate chart to match that of the original legislation passed.
Once approved by council the sewage rate for Step Three Industrial/Commercial Residential will be at $4.08. This is up from the $4.02 on the chart as it was a typographical error. Outside City Limits will increase from $10.37 to $10.38, and Step Five will increase to $6.26 to reflect the wording in the statute passed by City Council.
The Platting Committee approved drafting legislation prior to holding a public meeting on rezoning a few plots of land for the future site of the Tim Horton’s/Donato’s restaurant.
The addresses of 420 South Poplar Street, 504 South Poplar Street and 506-508 South Poplar Street were approved for draft legislation prior to a public hearing on the rezoning of the land scheduled for March 21.
Video storage was brought forth to the Bucyrus City Council joint Committee session Thursday night as the Council was looking to upgrade storage capabilities.
Dan Evans of King Office Supplies was on hand to answer questions about the security camera storage capabilities as well as information on potential future upgrades to the system.
According to Evans’ report, currently Bucyrus security cameras through his company are stored on an 8-terabyte hard drive which can store video for 10-15 days. However with the additional security cameras around city hall that storage for those videos last only 9-10 days.
For video to be stored for 30 days Evans suggested that council increase their storage capacity.
“I propose a storage system of 24 terabytes that could be upgradeable (sic) to 48 terabytes in the future,” Evans said.
City Council member Mark Makeever inquired as to what the storage upgrade would cost. Evans responded by saying that the initial cost would be $5,515 dollars for upgrade and installation. Evans added that the drives themselves cost a couple hundred dollars, but the expensive part is the storage unit of those drives.
Makeever asked Evans how long it would take his company to upgrade the storage for Bucyrus. Evans responded by saying that it could be upgraded within the week once approved.