By Andrew Walsh
awalsh@wbcowqel.com
New Washington Village Council members came to the table at Monday’s meeting and found a full plate on their agendas. Among these were some capital improvement projects, ongoing maintenance of current facilities, and how best to dispose of the derelict property on Scharf Street.
The big ticket item was the discussion of a new roof for Village Hall. Paul Forster brought back a quote from CoSam Construction with a couple of options for the facility. Option one was a whole new roof; strip it down to the base and start over. Option two was to put a “slip sheet” cover over the existing roof with some attendant repair work. And option three was simply to touch up the sealing and do a new gutter edge.
The brand new roof came in at the highest quote of $46,000, option two was a little lower at $29,000, and option 3 at $5,000. As the project was discussed it quickly became apparent that options two and three were not receiving any serious consideration. Forster relayed the recommendation from CoSam owner Ned Heydinger to redo the whole roof.
Forster was in agreement with this assessment, and so was the rest of council. The roof last received some work in the early 2000’s when sealant was touched up.
“I feel that we need a new roof,” Forster said. He backed up this statement by recounting the building’s history with leaking problems, problems corroborated by Village Administrator Norm Lucius and Fire Chief Dick Ackerman.
Councilman Scott Hiler proposed a potential alternative roof. At his place of work they recently revamped a flat roof to a standard apex roof, and the cost difference was minimal compared to completely redoing a new flat roof. Council agreed to investigate this option before going ahead with the project.
Official legislation for proceeding with the sale of the vacant Scharf Street property was presented to and accepted by council from Solicitor John Berger. Resolution 1273 received its fair share of discussion, as the stringency of its wording was debated. This resolution mandates that the purchaser of the property must raze the house on the lot, including complete removal of foundation and basement floor, and backfill the opening with clean dirt.
It was this inclusion of completely removing the foundation and basement floor that raised a few questions. Lucius thought this stipulation was rather strict and not really in line with industry standards. He thought this would make the property more difficult to sell. Normal procedure in a situation like this is to merely knock down three feet of the walls and then push that in on top of the floor, covering the remaining with dirt. However, council decided to go forward with the resolution as written.
With Steve Aichholz moving on to work for Buckeye Central Schools, the street department finds itself with some shortcomings in continuing its services. One of these is the maintenance of the grinder pumps in the Village Sewer System. These pumps help elevate sewage to the main line on properties whose elevation falls below this line. When these pumps require service, Aichholz handled it himself.
Aichholz has agreed to cover this service for the next three weeks, but after that the situation is up in the air. Lucius is in contact with Hall Heating and Plumbing for continuation of service. However, Council asked for better specifics on cost. Lucius reported back that it would be at $68 per hour. However, as this is normally a two-person job, council wanted to know if that would $68 per hour per person or $68 per hour total.
Joe Blum in his report presented a bid from Old Town Window for replacing five windows in the Library. These windows were originally installed in 1993 by Studer-Obringer with wood trim, and Council is looking to replace them with vinyl. The bid from Old Town came back at $1,827 for the five windows. Council requested Blum to get a price from Studer-Obringer since they installed the originals.
The last piece of note was that the contract for garbage removal was renewed with Rumpke for five more years. There is a slight price increase, in the previous agreement the price hovered just $16 per month, and under the new contract it will begin at $16.30 per month.