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 The Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall passes through downtown Wapakoneta Wednesday, September 1. Staff photo/William Laney By CARLA MEYER
Staff Writer
For 45 minutes, the roar of motorcycles could be heard passing under an American flag hanging from two ladder trucks. For 45 minutes, area residents gathered in the shadow of the Auglaize County Courthouse and Wapakoneta Fire Station waved and clapped as motorcyclists rode by.
The smiles and waves turned into clapping and cheers as the Vietnam Memorial Traveling Wall passed down Willipie Street on its way to Custenborder Field in Sidney where it was greeted by a field of American flags.
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Wednesday, 22 April 2009 |
By KAREN CAMPBELL
Assistant Managing Editor
Public hearings for a $20 proposed parcel fee charge for Auglaize County Solid Waste District Management services concluded Tuesday night.
Wanting the public throughout the county to be well informed, the Auglaize County Commissioners held six public hearings, instead of the required three, in numerous locations. Just a handful of residents, if any, showed up at most, while 26 attended a meeting Monday night in Uniopolis to ask questions.
Implementing the charge to raise more funds became necessary after a 2007 Ohio Supreme Court ruling against Auglaize County and the county’s Solid Waste Management District, which required the repayment of more than $2.06 million to the city of St. Marys, a result of the county not paying the annual monitoring costs for nearly a decade as a civil case moved through the court system. Attorneys for St. Marys filed the civil suit in May 2002.
In addition, the Supreme Court ruling made the county responsible for paying annual monitoring costs of the landfill estimated at approximately $105,000 a year for a minimum of 26 years.
The Solid Waste Management District also owes the county’s General Fund for money it borrowed to pay attorney costs during litigation. The district is paying back $40,000 a year for those costs during a 15-year period.
“The district must be in the positive and without creating an additional revenue stream, the budget is anticipated to be running in the negative by the end of the third quarter of 2009,” Commissioner Doug Spencer said. “This is solely due to the debt repayment and monitoring costs.”
The fee is expected to provide an anticipated $386,000 to the district annually.
Spencer said possible excesses in the operation were looked at, but any additional fine tuning to the annual district’s annual budget would not have bridged the gap.
Commissioners explored different avenues to raise funding, but they agreed the annual parcel fee seemed like the best choice, Spencer said.
“We were limited in our options,” Spencer said. “Generation fees bring in the bulk of money to the district, we could have doubled that or increased it and added a lower parcel fee, but we thought this was the best route.”
The $20 fee is per “improved parcel,” meaning it has at least one permanent, portable or temporary building, such as residences and dwellings, or commercial and industrial buildings, where solid waste is likely to be produced.
The fee does not apply if only agricultural buildings are on the parcel or if there are no buildings.
The fee is not per building, but charged once per qualifying parcel.
The district operates by collecting $9 per ton of waste in generation fees for delivering the waste to Ohio landfills.
An original 15-year plan established as required by the Ohio Environmental Program Agency, included a schedule for increasing the generation fees collected, starting with $10 in 2005, $11 in 2009 and $12 in 2015, but the schedule was never implemented.
“It was never necessary,” Solid Waste District Coordinator Dave Reichelderfer said. “With $9 we were able to carry an excess of funds until the Supreme Court ruling. We used up the excess doing that.”
In addition to the generation fee, the district receives revenue from the sale of recyclable material and has historically received grants from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
More than 19,300 county parcels originally were planned to be assessed the solid waste fee but information that came from a question Tuesday lowered that number by approximately 1,000, once grain condos were subtracted.
Spencer said the parcel fee is not for General Fund purposes, other than to repay the debt, not for other special revenue funds, and not accessed every time a home improvement is made or apply to renovations made to dwellings or buildings.
The fee is expected to provide an anticipated $386,000 to the district annually.
Spencer said possible excesses in the operation were looked at, but any additional fine tuning to the annual district’s annual budget would not have bridged the gap.
Commissioners explored different avenues to raise funding, but they agreed the annual parcel fee seemed like the best choice, Spencer said.
“We were limited in our options,” Spencer said. “Generation fees bring in the bulk of money to the district, we could have doubled that or increased it and added a lower parcel fee, but we thought this was the best route.”
The $20 fee is per “improved parcel,” meaning it has at least one permanent, portable or temporary building, such as residences and dwellings, or commercial and industrial buildings, where solid waste is likely to be produced.
The fee does not apply if only agricultural buildings are on the parcel or if there are no buildings.
The fee is not per building, but charged once per qualifying parcel.
The district operates by collecting $9 per ton of waste in generation fees for delivering the waste to Ohio landfills.
An original 15-year plan established as required by the Ohio Environmental Program Agency, included a schedule for increasing the generation fees collected, starting with $10 in 2005, $11 in 2009 and $12 in 2015, but the schedule was never implemented.
“It was never necessary,” Solid Waste District Coordinator Dave Reichelderfer said. “With $9 we were able to carry an excess of funds until the Supreme Court ruling. We used up the excess doing that.”
In addition to the generation fee, the district receives revenue from the sale of recyclable material and has historically received grants from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
More than 19,300 county parcels originally were planned to be assessed the solid waste fee but information that came from a question Tuesday lowered that number by approximately 1,000, once grain condos were subtracted.
Spencer said the parcel fee is not for General Fund purposes, other than to repay the debt, not for other special revenue funds, and not accessed every time a home improvement is made or apply to renovations made to dwellings or buildings.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 23 April 2009 )
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