The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Mayor sees bright future, looks to 2018
“I think the future is bright. I’m excited about the schools being built and that North High School went to the playoffs. I’m looking forward to the future. We will have a lot to do this coming year.” — Willowick Mayor Rich Regovich.
The News-Herald is looking at how communities fared in 2017 and what some of their plans are for 2018.
Willowick has seen some improvements in 2017, starting with the repaving of Lake Shore Boulevard from Euclid Avenue to Vine Street.
Although it’s not quite finished yet, Ward 2 Councilwoman Ann Turk sees it as a nice improvement.
So does Mayor Rich Regovich.
“It was really bad, so, it was a big deal to have it done when the (Route) 91 interchange was being done,” Regovich said. At times we had the city pretty closed up, but I was happy we didn’t have any accidents.”
Turk said she thought the project, which took from July through October, was completed pretty quickly.
Additional city improvements included grant funding for the fire department to put in the exhaust system for the trucks, which Regovich stated was essential in keeping their firefighters safe.
“We were able to get some sewer work done on our sewer project on (East) 329th,” Regovich said. “It’s almost getting near the completion where we can test and see how effective that is and next year we are going to do 327th with a similar project, where we replace the laterals or fix the laterals where needed and slip line what we need to.”
The mayor said he believes the city has some funding from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency to complete the project, so they won’t have to use levy funds and should be able to do another street or two next year. The city is trying to maintain its road program, which will be helped by the levy renewal which recently passed.
When discussing the budget, the mayor feels it’s going to come in just as they anticipated
“Revenue is a challenge right now and we are going to have to look at it closely this year,” Turk said.
Although he believes 2018 is going to be tough on the budget, Regovich doesn’t see any major challenges with it.
“It’s been good,” Turk said. “We really look at that budget close.”
“Actually I was pretty impressed with the budget last year, we came in right where we anticipated, so there were no big surprises there,” Regovich said.
The mayor noted that the city did not experience any big layoffs but, did get a new police chief, Brian Turner, because of the retirement of the former Chief Michael Lazor, and they also had a lot of people moving up in the Police Department.
In the Fire Department, there were a lot of new hires, including a captain and couple of lieutenants, Regovich said.
“We’ve been safe, all which was good, we did had some major police chases where nobody got hurt,” Regovich said. “We did lose a police car, but that’s better than a person.”
The mayor feels that the first Bob Golic Rib Burnoff was a success and looks forward to planning it as an annual event.
The city also welcomed Ace Hardware as a new business in Shoregate Plaza.
“They have been a great asset and they are even helping out with Hearts and Hammers with donations,” Turk said.
When it comes to challenges in 2017, the mayor noted that nothing happened that wasn’t really anticipated.
“I believe there is nothing that really surprised me throughout the year where I said, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe that happened,” he said. The city’s administration is now looking ahead to some big things in 2018.
The mayor applied for grant money to help with lakefront development and the city’s master plan. He is hoping to hear in early spring whether the grant is approved.
“That would be a great start to something where we can go out and get the funds to have a master plan to move forward,” Regovich said. “I have been meeting with mayor of Eastlake (Dennis Morley) and the new mayor of Willoughby (Robert Fiala) and we have the Vine Street corridor we are working on.”
Regovich believes that if they have this corridor done, it will provide a connectivity between the cities where people can shop, go eat, and go the grocery store in convenience.
Regovich is also hoping to put in a community reinvestment area into Willowick and modernize the housing stock in the area.
Over 200 homes sold in Willowick in 2017, according to Turk.
“I think 2017 went as planned, 2018 is going to be a planning year,” Regovich said. “I think the future is bright. I’m excited about the schools being built and that North High School went to the playoffs. I’m looking forward to the future. We will have a lot to do this coming year.”