By Mary Faulds
CCN Correspondent
Galion City Council finished work Tuesday evening on several pieces of legislation stemming from March.
On their third and final reading, three ordinances were passed with no discussion to advance funds and amend the city’s appropriations and recovery plan to the tune of more than $500,000 to prepare the area around the Sleep Inn just south of U.S. 30 on Ohio 598. The money will be used to extend city water and sewer services and create some new streets for the property that will eventually house a Valero gas station on 598.
Also unanimously passed, but amended, was the ordinance for the Freese Grant projects. Councilmember Shirley Clark amended the ordinance saying her parks committee had the final numbers in place. The amount to be requested for the first phase of a multi-use recreation trail was reduced from $600,000 to $320,000, while the Heise Park basketball court resurfacing project was increased from $28,000 to $49,500 due to the cost of materials. All four projects, which also include two park bathroom facilities, will be presented to the Freese Foundation at its meeting later this month.
After passing legislation from the previous month’s meeting, council pushed through legislation Tuesday evening aimed at enticing new business to the city.
The first was a trio of ordinances aimed at annexing a slightly larger than 15 piece of land that currently houses the old PECO building at the corner of Brandt Road and Ohio 598. Mayor Tom O’Leary said this plan is the fruition of work from at least the past five years. The current owner of the property, JBS Development, LLC, requested the city annex the land in a filing with the Crawford County Commissioners on March 27.
O’Leary stated that the plan for the property was to demolish the part of the building that faces Brandt Road and build a spec building. Council President Carl Watt affirmed that there is a business, which he declined to name, interested in the property either to lease or buy after the building is built, and annexing the land is just the first step in that process.
Council suspended the rules on each of the three ordinances and passed them for a final reading unanimously.
Two other ordinances were brought before council to amend the city’s tax code with a job creation tax credit. Councilmember Dr. Thomas Fellner said the first ordinance was amendments to mirror Ohio’s job creation code. The second was an establishment of guidelines for the tax credit. For example, a business creating up to 49 new jobs could get as much as a 50-percent credit on city taxes for as long as 10 years, with “job” being defined as full-time or full-time equivalent positions.
After a question from the council, O’Leary explained that an existing business could get the credit as well if they created enough jobs to trigger the threshold.
Law Director Thomas Palmer said they could consider some additional wording to the guidelines similar to what is in Kent, Ohio, requiring businesses to remain in the city at least double the time of their tax credit. O’Leary affirmed that idea saying that if something like this had been in place before, some businesses that left Galion might not have cut and run as soon as their tax credit expired. The new code also will help his office, he said, negotiate and entice new businesses to invest in Galion.
The two tax credit ordinances were unanimously passed in their first reading.