Village to grant easement for power lines
MINSTER — Village councilors passed a motion on Tuesday night to grant various easements to Dayton Power and Light for construction of a transmission line.
“They want to improve our reliability,” said Village Administrator Don Harrod.
There are two electrical feeds that run into town, one from Covington and one from the Amsterdam substation in New Bremen.
“Both of those lines run parallel along one set of poles there out in front of our utilities building on Ohio Street,” said Harrod. “If one or two of those poles go down, we’re going to lose both feeds, which means the whole town is going to be out for X amount of time before they can get the power back on.”
Harrod said DP&L would like to reroute one of those circuits off of those poles so that there is only one set of wires on that set of poles and the feed would come in from another direction.
There would be four steel poles set. One would be set at the north side of Seventh Street near the entrance of Four Seasons Park.
“There would be three poles set along the west side of the compost area,” said Harrod. “They’re asking for us to grant an easement across our property for them to do that. There’s six or seven easements because the properties are all on different parcels. They’re looking for a 50-foot easement so they can construct that line and tie it back into the north substation.”
Harrod said they are going to upgrade the line as part of the project and that this is the first state which DP&L aims to do in 2022.
“Toward the end of 2023, they have some work to do in Russia, which will separate the Covington line and then they want to upgrade that line,” said Harrod. “That’s probably in 2024 or 2025.”
Councilor Nicole Clune asked if having the two feeds running parallel along one set of poles has been a problem.
“It hasn’t been a problem, but the potential is there to be a problem,” said Harrod. “If someone takes one of those poles out, then we would lose both feeds to town.”
Also Tuesday, council discussed and motioned to purchase a new police cruiser for the police department.
“Last year in the budget, [police chief] Dave [Friend] put in to buy a police cruiser. We set to hold off to 2022,” said Harrod. “Dave has found out we
can save a couple thousand dollars if we do a P.O. in 2021 and get it submitted to them. We would still pay for it in 2022.”
The vehicle is a 2022 Ford Explorer and it would cost $46,269.
In other business:
• Council passed a resolution authorizing the village administrator to enter into a contract with American Municipal Power to participate in the EcoSmart Choice Program. The program is a renewable energy program that the village can offer to its customers through AMP where they pay a premium for the ability to get renewable energy to service their homes.
• Council passed an ordinance to enter into a contract for emergency medical services with the Minster Area Life Squad. The contract is for three years and is $96,500 per year.
• Council passed an ordinance to designate lands under the Ohio Revised Code 1724.10 and selling the land. “We talked about selling a 0.75 acre parcel out at the state Route 66 industrial park, just west of Fox Supply,” said Harrod. “Fox Supply wants to buy our property. They want to expand their business. They currently have eight employees and they’re going to add five more.” The price per acre is $20,000 so the price of the 0.75 acre would be $15,000.
• Council suspended the rules and passed an ordinance adopting interim appropriations for 2022. “We’ll finalize the total budget for 2022. We do need to determine interim appropriations which amount to about a quarter of what we expect to pay for our total budget for 2022,” said Harrod. The total amount for the interim appropriations is $4,725,500. To go along with that, council passed a resolution increasing the appropriations for designated funds in the 2021 budget.
• Harrod announced that leaf pickup will officially end at the end of this week with crews last two days being Thursday and Friday.
• Harrod said that electrical crews and J-Crane have set the steel pole for the transmission line next to Progress Tool. Vaughn Electric and the village’s electrical department will begin to switch everything over this week.
• Harrod said Moody’s will be in the village today to conduct a 24-hour pump test on Well No. 4.
• The village met with CDM Smith to go over plans for the new water tower which are 60% designed. They will continue to finalize the plans and should be complete after the first of the year.
• Harrod said the village has an opportunity to receive a $550,000 zerointerest for 20 years from the Ohio Public Works Commission to complete the reconstruction of 7th Street and Paris Street.
He said that the finance committee met and agreed the village should pursue the loan. Harrod said he would submit additional paperwork into the OPWC for funds.
• Village shelter houses at the two parks have been closed for the winter expect Shelter House No. 2 at Four Seasons Park, which has a fire pit.
• Rumpke Waste and Recycling will operate on same trash collection schedule for the holidays, but residents are urged to get trash out earlier on those days.
• Village offices will be closed on Dec. 24 and Dec. 27 for Christmas as well on Dec. 31 for New Year’s.