Village on solid footing, mayor says

Sheffield Village Mayor John D. Hunter said June 3 the heart of Lorain County is moving forward despite some setbacks from the novel coronavirus pandemic.

In a presentation to Lorain County commissioners via videoconference, Hunter said while the village experienced revenue losses in May, projects are continuing.

“Sheffield Village is doing great,” he said. “As all municipalities, we have problems and reduced income coming into the village because nobody’s working.”

In May, Sheffield Village lost over $400,000 in revenue, but the municipality remains on solid footing due to taking steps over the years to build up a fund to fall back on in the event of an economic downturn, Hunter said.

“We’ve made adjustments,” he said. “We’re not doing any hiring, we’re not replacing people that have retired, but we’re moving ahead with all of our projects, and I appreciate the cooperation of the commissioners in those projects.”

Sheffield Village currently has construction projects ongoing.

Detroit Road between Abbe Road and Interstate 90 is being widened to add left turn lanes in addition to crews installing new stop lights and a barrier in order to make that area safer, Hunter said.

Colorado Road near the intersection with Abbe Road, is getting resurfaced and is expected to be completed by the end of June.

“Our employees are doing a great job,” Hunter said. “All of our services are available to our residents and to others.

“We asked everybody to be safe, and we asked everybody to continue to respect everybody’s rights and their rights to express their views. We don’t have to agree with those views, but we have to listen and take appropriate action.”

With business, Hunter said the village recently welcomed a new Chipotle restaurant with two more enterprises on track to open soon.

Alluding to the wave of protests across the nation in response to the death of George Floyd, Hunter also encouraged the continued countywide collaboration to take concrete steps to address the issues at hand.

“My hat’s off to the major cities in Lorain County as a whole, because of all the things that have been going on, how things have been handled by the mayors, by the commissioners and by our respective police departments throughout the county, have been very peaceful and went very well and congratulations to everybody,” he said. “We just really need to listen to what the people are saying and take some action, not just words, to correct those issues and work on them.

“And we can all do it together.”

Hunter