2023 State of the City
Mayor Jeff Reser
Delivered to Bucyrus Rotary Club February 28th, 2023
I would like to thank my Rotary colleagues for allowing me to present my final State of the City address to you today. This will not be a “farewell” address but a presentation on some of the events pertaining to the City during by time of service as well as an analysis of the important issues that will be addressed this year and also those issues that will be especially challenging to future administrations and to us as citizens. I began my mayoral service in 2014, shortly after the death of Mayor Roger Moore and will be soon completing my ninth year as Mayor of Bucyrus. Even though this is my last State of the City address I still have about ten months in office and I promise you that our administration in not on auto-pilot for there is much to do. In fact, the last two years have been extremely busy and challenging–the most challenging of my tenure and I would like to make sure that many of the projects that have been in planning are either completed or well on their way to completion.
It has been a privilege to serve my hometown as Mayor for my term of office, which will be nine and a half years at the end of the year and, I believe that I will have been the third longest serving mayor in the 202 years of Bucyrus history. In “mayor” years that is about 70 years of service! During my tenure I have been challenged to use all my “people” skills that have been developed in owning a retail business. Having a background in business and finance has also been helpful. But, in case you don’t know this, government does not work like a business. It works much slower and much louder. Everyone has an opinion now, thanks to social media. I do believe that we have achieved many of our goals able because of the staff at City Hall, in particular, SSD Jeff Wagner and Administrative Assistant Kelli Patterson who, in their own life’s experiences , brought creative skills to their positions that have made my job much easier. We have a great team and these two persons do not get nearly enough credit. In addition, Bucyrus is blessed to have a solid group working out of city hall including the Zoning, Income Tax, Council Clerk and Utility office. These good folks work hard and care for the city and it future. I would also like to mention former council President, Sis Love, who was the first female mayor for Bucyrus and a great mentor and friend. I know that I will look back at the end of my service and realize that the success of an administration is a team effort in every respect. I was blessed to have a great team.
Allow me just a few minutes to reflect on the last nine years and then I will address the topic of my presentation which is the current state of the city. My goal as mayor was to make Bucyrus an enviable community when compared to cities our size and I believe that we have made progress in that goal. We have an attractive business district, our streets our clean and repaired, we have begun a tree program which was sorely needed and we have improved our crime rate which was too high at that time, primarily because our Police Department was underfunded due to lack of revenue. I was fortunate to have begun my term just as the one half of one percent Safety Forces income tax levy was initially being collected which now brings in about $1.7MM per year. We were able to bring our safety forces back to full staff and were able to maintain full staff for several years. We saw a substantial drop in crime in Bucyrus due to the support of the citizens in passing the Safety Forces levy. We also have substantially upgraded our EMS service to the city.
I was also fortunate to have followed Mayor Roger Moore who had already begun the planning for two important projects—the water treatment plant and Schines Art Park. We were blessed to be able to finance the WTP at the perfect time of low interest rates which allowed us to save our water customers over ten million dollars over the course of the loan. The water treatment plant was opened in the fall of 2017 and Schines Art Park was opened in the same year. Both projects were critical to Bucyrus. SSD Jeff Wagner and engineer Lyn Makeever’s vision to become a water supplier for residents outside the city and that has become a reality. Last year, we started the effort by bringing city water to Stetzer Road. This year, we are putting the shovel in the ground to supply water to the village of Nevada as well as Sulphur Springs and other areas, providing a clean, safe water source to areas in need. Water service to Oceola is also in the planning stages and should become a reality within the next year or so. Extra revenue from water sales reduces the financial burden of the payment of our water treatment plant on our residents and helps to slow future rate increases.
We are very proud to have completed Schines Art Park–it is a gem unlike any other downtown park that I’ve seen. We are blessed to have maintained much of our historic district and have enhanced its beauty with the Art Park—and it gets a lot of use. I think back to the planning and construction and there were many challenges that we had to overcome but the effort was worth it. This couldn’t have been possible without the vision of Mayor Moore and our own Joe Armbruster.
The downtown business district sets the tone for the entire community. It needs to be clean, historically significant and well preserved in order to be vital in being a source of jobs and housing. Above all, it needs to be a gathering place for our community, a source of pride, and the events that are held downtown have significantly increased since Schines Art Park has opened with First Friday events, concerts, and movies to name a just a few. It is important to keep the momentum going. Because of budget issues we cannot look to the city to keep the momentum. I believe that it’s time to form an organization composed of downtown merchants and building owners to make sure that our business district remains vital. This committee would work with city leaders to establish building standards and recommend improvements and be able to apply for grants to restore and repair buildings.
More improvements are in the plans for the extended business district with the addition of Norton Bicentennial Park at the spot just north of the Sandusky River. This area has been in decline and an eyesore. The Bicentennial Commission is working to improve the area and soon it will be a source of great pride to the community and a fitting way to honor our founders, Samuel and Mary Norton. I was thrilled with the community response to our Bicentennial celebration and we owe a debt of gratitude to the Bicentennial Committee, led by Kelli Patterson who has made a difference in our community—and they will continue to make a difference with their energy, enthusiasm and love for Bucyrus. They could have easily disbanded and patted themselves on the back for a job well-done but they didn’t. I look for great things from this committee.
Last year we said goodbye and thank-you to our long time City Auditor, Joyce Schifer, who served the city for thirty years as Treasurer and Auditor. Kali Lewis was appointed as City Auditor by the Republican Central Committee and has filed to run for a full term beginning in January of 2024. There are no “schools” for city elected officials so please have patience with your officials as they learn on the job. The procedures and language of government is foreign to the private sector and it takes years to become comfortable with the position. Thank you for serving.
2022 saw changes at the helm of the Crawford Partnership with David Zak being hired to take the place of Gary Frankhouse. I met with David for lunch before he officially came on board and, as you already have seen, David is gifted leader and we are blessed to have him leading our economic development effort. He brings over twenty years of experience but it his attention to detail as well as his ability to listen that enhance his outstanding leadership abilities. David is fortunate to have an able and enthusiastic staff which care about our community and bring talent and enthusiasm to the Partnership.
The Bucyrus Chamber of Commerce hired Averee Richardson to replace Jessie Furner. Jessie did an excellent job leading BACC and Averee continues that strong tradition of active leadership. Welcome Averee. Averee announced last week at the Economic Forecast Breakfast that the BACC is now approaching 400 members!
I would like to change tack here and take the remaining time to look ahead to the future and some of the issues that concern me and should be addressed. The political situation that we are in is difficult due to the effects of social media and COVID, as well as the seeping down to our local level the effects of national political turmoil. It’s a difficult time to serve in public office and many good candidates mention the same reason for not running for office, “I don’t want to get involved in that mess.” I understand that good folks don’t want to get involved in the turmoil but, it is not good for the city to have a lack of qualified candidates willing to lead. It’s because some of the candidates who are running for office are not running out of a desire for service. Several of our offices have no candidates from either party and, unless independent candidates step up, we will have a leadership vacuum. This will be unprecedented in our lifetimes. So please consider running for office. The city of Bucyrus has a long history of leaders willing to serve our community and we hope that this current trend is reversed. And the best candidates come from a background of service—either in serving as a member of our service clubs or by serving their church community.
Another concern is the lack of commitment by to our Park system by elected officials. We were unable to fund the pool opening this year due to revenue concerns and growing expenses in the Safety Forces budget. We also cut out $400,000 in our building repair and maintenance line. The city leaders have done well in providing funds for Safety Forces but successful cities find funds for quality of life issues for our residents, too. I would suggest a small ballot initiative to put the parks on solid footing so we don’t have to close the pool ever again.
You have probably read about the issues with funding Safety Forces. COVID and the George Floyd fallout brought changes to the number of young folks interested in policing and we have struggled maintaining our staff for the last couple of years. And last year, we lost several officers to larger departments which have higher pay scales. So, we had to adjust our pay scale to attract and keep our staff.
We don’t have the same staffing issue in the fire department but bringing EMS into the department has brought financial challenges. Taking on EMS services has provided the benefit of consistent level of professional service and our staff has received excellent reviews. But it comes at a high cost. We offered the Fire Department the same wage increase as the PD received but they rejected the offer choosing instead to go to mediation and Fact Finding. The lawyer who oversaw the Fact Finding session ruled that the FD would be given a 10 to 20% raise which was more that was requested by the FD union. Unfortunately, three city council members voted to approve rather than appeal and this significantly raised the payroll cost of the Fire Department by $300,000 per year. Last year alone we spent $550,000 in overtime costs (including pension) to provide EMS services. This is four times as much as we had two years ago when we didn’t provide EMS in our fire department. This figure would rise by $90,000 in 2023 if changes were not made. Last week, we reduced our MINIMUM coverage to four on duty. This does NOT mean that we have just four on duty at all times. This means that there will be four, five or six on duty, depending on who is scheduled off. In the first full five days of reducing staffing we saved about $10,000 in overtime and pension costs. Multiply that times fifty two weeks and you can see the potential savings to taxpayers.
Let me address the staffing and taxation issue.
Most of the calls to the fire department are EMS calls and we average about six EMS calls per day. That is about one every four hours. Unfortunately, we cannot schedule when the calls come and sometimes there are two calls at the same time—about 15% of the time that happens. The vast majority of the calls come between 7AM and 7PM. Two personnel are required on each ambulance. It is a very expensive service that the taxpayers fund. I believe that there is a better and less expensive way to provide a high level of EMS services. I am suggesting that we develop a plan to hire part-time firefighters as well as EMTs to supplement our staff which will potentially save taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime costs. Other communities do the same. It can be done but it won’t be done unless you speak to your council representatives to strongly consider this option. The fire union is against it as well as several members of City Council. Veteran firefighters/medics cost between $150,000 and $200,000 per person, including wages and overtime, 24.4% pension as well as benefits. The best long term option, however, is to institute a county wide EMS service, joining forces with the cities and townships of Crawford County to make more efficient use of our tax dollars.
Growth in tax revenue has not kept up with the funds needed to provide safety forces to our community. On the revenue side, this is due to an aging population who do not pay income taxes, the increases of “work from home” jobs which do not pay income taxes if they live outside the city. Last year, we had over $200,000 in refunds to those who work from home and live outside the city. We also have more workers living in Bucyrus who work out of town and those workers pay their income tax to the cities in which they work. Fifty years ago Bucyrus was “self-contained” in that most everyone lived and worked in town. It’s not that way any longer. We must provide services to those workers who live in town and work out of town. So, in effect, the current income payers, those who live and work in town as well as those who live out of town but work in town foot the entire bill. Last year, during my State of the City address I urged City Council to make the tough decision to reduce or eliminate the out of town tax credit. This was not a novel idea. In fact, every other community (except one) in Crawford County and adjacent counties has enacted such legislation. Over half of the cities and villages in the State of Ohio have done the same. Elimination of the tax would have raised $1,000,000 in tax revenue. City Council was ready to reduce the credit but one member of city council changed his vote on the final vote which now adds to the financial stress that we are facing. A .25% Safety Forces tax levy is on the ballot which would provide an additional $850,000 if passed. Voters will decide.
Let me finish with some of the obstacles for growth of Bucyrus that will need a coordinated effort between government, the Partnership and private development to address and solve.
Like many other small towns throughout the State, we do not have enough builders. A recent housing study showed that we are nearly 100% occupied in apartment rentals and more are needed. Houses do not stay on the market long, even with rising interest rates. The city that finds ways to build apartments and houses will win the population battle.
Providing infrastructure is another critical issue facing the city. It has become prohibitively expensive to build new streets and subdivisions in the last few years. If we are to resume our growth then we need to work closely with County and State government as well as the Crawford Partnership to find a way to finance new infrastructure. The announcement of the Intel factory will spur growth in this area and we need to be ready. Bucyrus has a low cost of living, a great location and plenty of utilities, especially water. I am confident that we will land employers that will benefit from our many attributes, including workforce.
In closing, I am optimistic about our future. The good folks that have lived here presently and for the past 200 plus years have the mettle to face challenges—and there have been many–and I am confident that we will continue to do so. But we can’t make the mistake of looking for the solutions to our problems solely to government. I urge you to research the issues and get involved. Consider serving your city by running for an elected position. We need good people like you to serve.
I would like to thank my Rotary friends for allowing me to present my final State of the City address to you today and also thank you for allowing me to be a member of such an important organization. The tenor and tone of any community is set not by government but by its citizens, especially by the many service organizations and faith communities who work to make Bucyrus better. Why do we serve this way? We do it because we care, we do it as a “pay forward”, we do it because it is the right thing to do—following the words of the Gospel that charge us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Let’s continue to serve and call on others to do the same. Individually and collectively our beloved Bucyrus will benefit and continue to be a wonderful place to work, to raise a family, to worship and to serve others. May God continue to bless Bucyrus!