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 Members of the Wapakoneta Middle School Student Council pose for photo outside the classroom earlier this year. To date, the group has raised nearly $2,300 in which they have donated to various local and area organizations throughout the 2009-2010 school year. Photo provided By KRISTA HAYES
Staff Writer
With the end of the school year nearing, Wapakoneta Middle School Student Council members are hoping to end their term on a positive note.
During the school year, the school government raised nearly $2,300 for various local and area organizations.
“Each year, we try and raise as much money as we can for various clubs and organizations that we vote on and decide to help support at the beginning of the school year,” Wapakoneta Middle School Student Council President Neal Maxson said.
Elected a Student Council representative of his homeroom, Maxson, a seventh-grade student, said this is his second year serving on the council. This year as president, his main responsibility is to set forth an agenda and preside over the group’s monthly meetings which are held the first and third Thursday of each month.
“I joined the Student Council because I was looking for a new activity to do and thought it’d be challenging experience,” Maxson said. “Politics have always been one of the things to stick out in my head and when I grow up, I want to be a lawyer.
“Overall, as president I think I have done a pretty good job,” he said. “Being president is a lot harder than what I thought it would be since I have to make the agendas, run the meetings, and keep the advisers in the loop. I have the whole weight of the council on my shoulders, and at times it can get frustrating, but I would recommend it to all the kids coming to the middle school next year because it’s a fun activity to be involved in.”
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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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