By Jordan Studer
New Washington Village Council met Monday evening to discuss some important happenings within the community.
The meeting began with Mayor Ben Lash recognizing Wurm’s Woodworking Company (WWC) for their hard work that has made New Washington a better place.
“We started a program a few months ago thanking individuals and organizations because we feel like New Washington is a great place to live and we have a lot of good people doing a lot of good things and making the village better. We asked people to nominate individuals, companies, schools, and churches,” Lash explained.
Representatives from WWC were present at the meeting and were presented a plaque for their accomplishments. Lash explained that WWC was one of the first companies to be nominated by the public. Lash continued on to thank the company personally for all they do.
“We’re very grateful for you and the things you do that are beyond your business. You do a lot to help a lot of organizations and we appreciate all of that,” Lash said.
After pictures were taken of the council with WWC representatives, the floor was open for the hearing of the public. One particular community member, Barb Powell, came to the council with a request to help convince her neighbor to fix their sump pump runoff so it wouldn’t come into Powell’s yard.
Powell explained how she had already tried to communicate with her neighbor to civilly fix the issue, but to no avail. Powell explained how the neighbor’s drains were backed up and to fix it they initially pumped the sump pump water into the yard, which flowed into Powell’s yard as well. The neighbors then chose to pump the water through a hose where it was pumped onto city property.
When the neighbor was asked by the city to not pump the runoff onto city property, they moved it to be pumped onto Powell’s property. According to Powell, this has caused her property to flood and has also caused her basement to flood.
“I walked out tonight and it’s above my shoes. No communication allowed there because we aren’t allowed on the property. Hence, she won’t even acknowledge it…It’s definitely a mosquito risk with that standing water, on her property, and on mine too. With West Nile and the Zikka virus, that’s nothing you want to deal with either,” Powell explained.
Powell’s request was to have council help her get her neighbor to move where her runoff is flowing to. Lash assured Powell that he and the council would come out to her property and assess the situation as soon as possible. Powell then thanked the council for listening to her.
The council then moved on to other orders of business. Lash mentioned that it was brought to his attention that there are some sidewalk damages in Uptown New Washington. Lash said that there had been a suspicion that the damages had been caused by a grinder being used for current road construction being conducted by the state.
Lash explained that he and Norm Lucius, the Village Administrator, are digging into the situation to see if the damages were indeed caused by the road construction, or just the occasional bump by a snow plow. Lash rationalized that he takes it upon himself to make sure the hard work put in by the village to keep everything nice, indeed stays well groomed.
“A lot of people did a lot of work and spent a lot of funds of their own and did fundraising to make the downtown look nice. And we have a responsibility to address this situation if they damaged them,” Lash stated.
Lucius discussed with the council the sink hole that had occurred on July 7 by Mickey Mart. Lucius explained how he quickly took action and got the community involved to assess the situation.
“It was a hole probably big enough you could bury two garden tractors in…it looks like there was an old catch basin years ago, some tile was there but everything was plugged up with mud,” Lucius remarked.
According to Lucius, the mud was all dug out by Cliff Alt and the tile was cemented shut as to ensure no more problems. The hole was then filled with stone and Studer-Obringer was able to form and pour concrete to cover the area by Saturday morning. Lucius expressed his gratitude to all of those community members who jumped in to help with the situation.
“We’re thankful for the people that really jumped in and helped us solve the problem,” Lucius said.
It was also brought to the council’s attention by Lucius and Fire Chief Mark Heefner that there is a fire hydrant near the reservoir that has gone dry due to a leak. Lash told Lucius and Heefner to do what needs to be done in order to fix the hydrant quickly but asked that in future situations the council remember to use local businesses for projects as much as they can.
“I think we need to think about what happened now when we have future projects. Absolutely follow the law, but we need to do our business in town whenever we can,” Lash requested.
In further reports from Lucius, he also mentioned that per request, new benches have been placed at the Tee-Ball fields. He explained that the pool had received new benches in the gazebo, so the old gazebo benches were moved to the Tee-Ball fields. Fire Chief Mark Heefner also mentioned that the fire equipment will be serviced this summer.
It was also discussed and voted upon to use the Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) for future tax purposes. The next council meeting will be held on Monday, July 24.