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We would like to thank everyone for practicing Social Distancing! We have seen lots of people out walking, riding bikes, and visiting with their neighbors from across the street this weekend. Good Job. We are all in this together!
Some fun ideas have been popping up to entertain the kids while still being apart. Putting hearts in the windows (Heart Hunters on Facebook) or even Easter eggs for the kids to look for as they walk/drive by. If you have an elderly or home-bound neighbor, a green piece of paper if they are okay, yellow if they need something, and red if it is an emergency would be an idea. We continue to provide services around the Village. The Office and Municipal building remain closed to the public to protect our essential staff. The office staff is here for limited hours to keep business running. Street Water and Sewer Departments remain fully staffed at this time. Please call (937) 834-3187 if you need assistance and leave a message on extension 3 someone will get back to you. Businesses and restaurants remain open for carry out around the Village. Please patronize our local businesses! Oasis of Mercy will have regular food pick ups on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month at St. Michael’s, 40 Walnut St, 614-747-0882. Starting this week, Second Harvest will be at 4 locations in Mechanicsburg, Mon-Fri for 9-11am passing out food for students. You can call the school for locations. Our Police, Fire and EMS are following all protocols to remain safe and healthy. They are covering the Village with 24/7 shifts. Here are the latest statistics from the Champaign County Health Department: Cases in Ohio 1,653 confirmed cases in 3 confirmed cases in Champaign County 139 ICU admissions 403 hospitalizations 29 deaths https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/ Here are some helpful links: Crisis Hotline
How to apply for Ohio Unemployment http://jfs.ohio.gov/ouio/CoronavirusAndUI.stm. How to apply for absentee ballot before April 27th deadline: https://www.boe.ohio.gov/champaign/ Please be kind to one another, wash your hands, stay 6ft away, stay home if you are sick, and just know that we are all in this together to flatten the curve. Ohio has an A rating for being on top of this. Let’s keep this going. We are lucky to have Governor DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton in charge! Tune in at 2pm every day for updates with DeWine! https://ohiochannel.org/
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Please know that the Village of Mechanicsburg is providing full services to the Village. We are working staggered shifts to ensure that our employees and their families remain safe. The office is closed to the public and will have minimal hours to ensure that all business is taken care of on a regular basis. If you need assistance, please call (937) 834-3187 and leave a message for the department that is appropriate for your need.
The Village of Mechanicsburg is suspending disconnection of utility services, late fees and penalties for non-payment from March 23rd through April 25th. The temporary suspension should not be considered a reason to not pay your utility bill. Customers may use the night deposit box to pay utility bills. We have provided envelopes for your convenience. After April 25th, delinquent utility accounts will be reviewed and the need for service disconnections will be determined by the office on a case by case basis to ensure that delinquent balances do not become so excessive that they cannot be brought current within a reasonable time. To initiate new service, the application can be found on the website here. Please drop application off along with copy of your driver’s license, $100 deposit and all necessary signatures and we will schedule your water to be turned on. Police, Fire and EMS services remain fully staffed at this time. Please call 911 for any emergency as usual. All other non-emergency calls may be made to (937) 834-3187 and appropriate extension. Right now, we are supplied with PPE equipment but that could change at any time. Please be kind to all our First Responders. Our Water/Wastewater and Street Maintenance department employees are continuing to work on limited schedules and are on call 24/7. There are many volunteers distributing food during this crisis. Oasis of Mercy Food Pantry distributes food boxes on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays at St. Michael's Church, located at 40 Walnut St, open to anyone in need. They will bring boxes out to your car. On the 4th Thursday Mobile Food Truck is at St. Michael's with both dry good and fresh/frozen boxes available. Mechanicsburg Schools is giving breakfast and lunch bags free to all students. Please visit their website for details. Church of Our Savior will have their Community Meal for carry out only on Wednesday March 25 from 5-6:30pm. Check out Mechanicsburg Free Community Meal on their Facebook page for further details. Food is also available at Mechanicsburg Ohio Blessing Box. See their Facebook page for details. While our resources are limited, we may be able to help you find needed items. During this time we all should be practicing kindness. Please check in on your neighbors. If you are going out for groceries, see if you can pick something up for them, drop off a puzzle, Facetime your friends to stay in touch. Please practice social distancing, wash your hands, stay home if you are sick, and follow all the CDC recommendations until this is over. Links for information: http://www.champaignhd.com/ https://www.cdc.gov/ https://governor.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/governor/ The Village of Mechanicsburg is monitoring updates from the Champaign County Health District to help minimize the community spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19). For factual information please refer to the Champaign County Health District website: http://www.champaignhd.com/, Facebook, and Twitter. Their site and social media are updated throughout the day. As of yesterday there were no known cases in our area.
For now the best practices are wash your hands, stay home if you are sick, cover your cough, social distancing, and avoid large crowds. Be safe out there. We will update you with any future cancellations as they happen. We would like to thank the community for supporting the Street Levy. While we know that everyone is concerned that they are not seeing immediate improvements it is important for you to know how these projects are put together.
On Thursday July 11 our Administrator, April Huggins Davis and myself delivered our Ohio Public Works Commission (OPWC) application for street repair funding to the Champaign County Engineers Office. All 21 pages of it. We have put a lot of time, effort and thought into our application. We want to get the best bang for our buck, while at the same time presenting it in a way to increase our chances of approval. Our plan is to seek funding for the repaving of 4 streets, Sceva, Pleasant, South Locust, and the west end of Prospect St., from Park to Western. The total project cost is estimated at $299,631. The application shows a grant request for $86,893, a loan request for $89,889, with a village match of $122,849. The loan would be at 0 % interest for 15 years. This will keep our yearly loan payment under $6000. This is affordable with our current revenue stream. One of your questions probably will be WHY so much local match funds? $122,000? It is a complicated scoring system. One of the considerations is that the more matching funds, the greater the possibility of approval. We are putting up as much as we believe we can afford in order to increase that possibility. Each year there are 50-60 applications in district 7 with only about 50% getting approved, so increasing our chances for approval is important. We believe this will put us in position for future projects with OPWC including complete street rehabilitation, storm sewer repair, water line and sanitary sewer replacement. If approved this repaving will be done next year. Also for your information the pavement patching of Sandusky street will commence this week. Spring and early summer rains really put a damper on construction schedules, and they are just now starting to catch up. We want to thank you for visiting the first official Mechanicsburg Website. A lot of time, work and thought has gone into the creation of this website. We have endeavored to create a website that is user friendly, that will improve communication between the village government and residents, provide you with updates on village happenings and explain the processes, procedures and restrictions by which we must function, so you have a better understanding of who, what, why, and how we operate. There are many issues… Fire, EMS, Law Enforcement, Finance, Water and sewer, Storm water, Safety, and Street. All of these are important and very fluid issues. I will periodically provide in this section discussions on these many issues.
Currently the major concern is the streets. This is not an issue unique to Mechanicsburg. A recent Urbana Citizen article stated that it could take 24 years for Urbana to address all of their street issues, and they are considering increasing their permissive tax the help subsidize their street fund. We could do the same, but we do not want to increase the financial burden on residents unless absolutely necessary. It is impractical and unrealistic to even think that in Mechanicsburg with 1644 residents and approximately 600 taxed properties, that enough money can be raised to address all of the issues So we must prioritize. We know we have street issues and that you want shiny, black, smooth avenues of transportation. We sincerely thank you for approving the 5 mil Street Levy last fall. This levy will bring us about $90,000 per year. So far this year we have received only about $45,000 in revenue. The new additional State gas tax is estimated to bring us $37,000 per year in additional street revenue. We are very grateful for this however we ask that you consider the actual cost of repair and rebuilding. We can, and will cover some streets with a blacktop coating this year. But you must realize this is only a temporary fix. We can continue to “Paint the Pig” but our primary issue is ground water and drainage, and these must be addressed first. If you build a house with an unstable foundation you are eventually going to have issues. The same applies to the streets. Our storm water drainage is not, and never has been, adequate. nor efficient. This last years’ rainfall has only exposed it even more. Unfortunately, storm water systems are payed for with street funds. We recently spent $30,000 to replace over 600 feet of 24” storm tile on East Sandusky, that had collapsed with a 10 ‘deep sink hole that threatened a resident’s foundation. In addition, we discovered a potential storm water culvert issue under Sandusky Street. And according to the State there might possibly be some “Historical” issues to deal with on this culvert. We are having this evaluated, as well as other storm drain failures system failures within the village. You know the water issues, with water in basements, sump pumps, springs and aging systems. The primary funding avenue for streets, water, sewer and Storm water systems is the Ohio Public Works Commission (OPWC), and they work through a combination of Grants, Loans, and Matching (local) Funds. It is a complicated and competitive process. Each year in District 7, which we are in, there are about 50-60 applications for funding, with only about 25-30 getting approved. In addition, our county has an unwritten policy of sharing the “wealth” when it comes to OPWC funding by designating that certain years are reserved for villages, certain years for townships, certain years for cities and certain years for the county. Getting outside funding is a tough and competitive process at best and there is no guarantee. We have obtained engineering cost estimates for different repair scenarios for several streets in town. As an example, the estimate for Race Street, from Church to Walnut (one block), with street reconstruction, storm tile, water lines, sewer lines, sidewalks, and curb and gutters is $700,000. We are trying to pare this down and do work in stages as money allows, with some temporary repairs, using OPWC funding to leverage your tax dollars. We are working to develop a plan, but it is slow and expensive. So Please bear with us. We want the same thing you do. Greg Kimball, Mayor |
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July 2020
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