My boss used to say that time is what keeps everything from happening at once. If that's true, then this week, time was turned off. Everything happened at once. So this post is going to be on one of what I consider the two most important topics during the April 18 Mantua Township Trustees meeting. In my opinion, those two topics were the school building--which we are increasingly, and against resistance on the part of at least one trustee, calling the Mantua Township Administrative Building, and new developments regarding the green at Center Road and S.R. 82.
[An addition on the day after posting this entry: The Green is going to have to get its own post; this one grew to more than I had anticipated. Each subject is pretty loaded, without putting them together.]
This post is about the building. Well, there is more on the building, but it came in public comment, and this post is going to be quite long enough.
Old Business: Jason announced that the public hearing for Moving Ohio Forward will be at 7 p.m. on April 25 (Monday) in the Township Hall. After that there will be a workshop about the paving bids for next year.
Sealed bids for equipment and culvert pipe were opened. There was one bid, which Jason opened and said, "It's from my father, Phil Carlton: $52.50 for the culvert pipe." Jason asked for the board's opinion. Vic recommended accepting the bid, and that was done. [Blogger: My notes have the amount as above, which I think is correct. As I keyboard this several days later, I suddenly wonder if the decimal point is correct, but I think so.]
Jason, continuing: The Center School display cases. Dottie Summerlin, President, Mantua Historical Society, [the historical society owns the cases] reported that people from Streetsboro had come and looked again. A mover they have spoken with wants to charge $500 to move the cases. Dottie said that she and Vic had talked about it and talked to Ronnie Kotkowski (who had expressed an interest in any cases that other historical societies did not take). Dottie: We thought maybe we could partner with him to drop off a couple of cases.
Center School: Vic reported that the permits (applications) are at the Portage County Building Department. They are in the review process.
John Festa: I was going through some old paperwork and found a report by RPR Architects from 2003. They described a process to help promote the school to the community so it could be put on the ballot. It is interesting and in an outline form and reminds me of how the veterans' memorial committee has been moving things along. I will do an outline on it for everyone to look at.
It states that the trustees should come up with a plan on the school and figure out what we are going to do with it and how much it is going to cost and how we are going to pay for it. I think we should put it back on the table and begin working on it diligently. This is starting to just drag on and drag on. [Blogger: So says the man who has blocked anything on the school at every turn since he was sworn in.]
We possibly could appoint a facilitator [? The kind of facilitator this would take under the circumstances would cost money.] or start a committee and get the community involved with meetings and what we want to do and get some professional people and residents and start moving it ahead.
I think as a trustee board we should get up and get this done. At the next meeting I plan to have an outline on how we can go about this and make a decision.
Jason: In order to get something on the ballot for November, they have to have three months' lead time.
John Festa: I don't know if that is doable for November. We have a lot of what we need. I don't think we need any consultants. [Blogger: This is how my notes read. I will check against a recording. Logically, John Festa's remarks before and after Jason's interpolation do not make sense together, if my notes are accurate.]
OK. Here is another piece to this week.
On Wednesday, I was the invited speaker at the Chamber of Commerce meeting as a representative of The Mantua Restoration Society, Inc. The purpose of the presentation was two-fold: to inform people even if briefly about the school and to ask that the Chamber consider a contribution to the restoration society to increase its ability to carry out renovations in the school building. (The Chamber did make a contribution.) I am not going to try to recount the presentation, but here are the key points:
That as can be expected, opinions are strong and feelings are high, as they are regarding the flagpole project in Ravenna. Given that, there is a lot of misinformation and disinformation being spread around.
That one of the most attention-getting pieces of disinformation is that renovating the building would cost $2,000,000.
That the $2,000,000 figure came from a 2002 report, as required by the Ohio School Facilities Commission [I believe that is the correct title; the purpose is the same whether or not I have the title right] to determine the cost of renovating older schools to bring them up to present code--the equivalent of building a new building in the shell of the older one.
That the code for school buildings is one of the most stringent (and therefore expensive to implement).
That two things have changed since 2002: the building is no longer a school, and therefore requirements have changed; the building is now in the second phase of nomination to The National Register of Historic Places, and therefore exempted from requirements on some items.
That one of the ideas being floated around the township is to demolish the building and put up a new one. That venture fails, first, to consider the cost of demolition and the many costs associated with that.
Second, new commercial construction runs somewhere between $170 and $190 per square foot. The 1914 section of the building is 12,000 square feet, and using the middle number of $180 per square foot to replace the square footage of the building (the building itself cannot be duplicated for that), a new building would cost [wait for it] about $2,000,000--so it's a wash.
[Of course, it may not be necessary to build another 12,000 square foot building, but one at half that area still costs a million--and that is only for the building, no furnishings.]
Blogger, continuing: Since he was elected, John Festa has been referring to the 2002 report on the school, and I have regularly criticized him for it. Having read the report and talked with Carol Corbett about how and why it was written, I am even more critical of John Festa's clinging to it. One way of defeating a project is to "prove" that it is too expensive or that the building is too far gone. When the building was vacated in 2004, it had been in continuous use as a school for 90 years--safely.
It is very interesting indeed that 36 hours after I made a public statement about the inaccuracy of the 2002 report, John Festa has now found another one, a whole year newer--but proposing something that the trustees rejected, terminating their relationship with the authoring firm. (Was there a cause-effect relationship between the two? I have no idea--but it certainly is interesting.)
The reason the trustees rejected the proposal? They did not want to impose an additional tax burden on the residents, but were confident that they would be able to carry out the project with the resources that would be available. Subsequently, their caution was justified when the economy tanked.
A subsequent post will give more information about the RP report.
About This Blog
The purpose of this blog is to give an accurate account of what is said during Public Comment at Mantua Township Trustees meetings.
Trustees' decisions are in the official minutes, available on request from the Mantua Township Fiscal Officer, Jodi Thompson, at 330-274-8443. The Township charges 10 cents per page. FAX, 330-274-8447. E-mail, fiscalofficer@mantuatownshipohio.gov. The minutes are also posted on the website after they have been approved. That means that there is usually a two-week lag between a given meeting and the minutes being available to read on the website.
Since meetings are the first and third Thursdays of the month, there is a three-week wait during months with five Thursdays.
Other items of interest or the writer's opinions will be included from time to time, clearly identified.
This is not a forum or chat room, but a source of information, so it is closed to outside input.
During the time I have been doing the blog, the posts have expanded to become very detailed accounts of the meetings. Doing that is time consuming, to say the least, and I am going to try to return to the public comment focus, with background and perspective (and the occasional pointed editorial comment). Such additions are usually enclosed in brackets. However, since some extended accounts of the meetings reveal significant things--and character--better than I could by commenting, there will probably still be a fair amount of semi-transcript. (Sigh.)
My thanks to the readers who have found the blog, and to the ones who from time to time tell me that they value it. You have encouraged me when the tedious work of keyboarding has made me wonder why I am doing this. Then you have reminded me, and I am grateful.
Trustees' decisions are in the official minutes, available on request from the Mantua Township Fiscal Officer, Jodi Thompson, at 330-274-8443. The Township charges 10 cents per page. FAX, 330-274-8447. E-mail, fiscalofficer@mantuatownshipohio.gov. The minutes are also posted on the website after they have been approved. That means that there is usually a two-week lag between a given meeting and the minutes being available to read on the website.
Since meetings are the first and third Thursdays of the month, there is a three-week wait during months with five Thursdays.
Other items of interest or the writer's opinions will be included from time to time, clearly identified.
This is not a forum or chat room, but a source of information, so it is closed to outside input.
During the time I have been doing the blog, the posts have expanded to become very detailed accounts of the meetings. Doing that is time consuming, to say the least, and I am going to try to return to the public comment focus, with background and perspective (and the occasional pointed editorial comment). Such additions are usually enclosed in brackets. However, since some extended accounts of the meetings reveal significant things--and character--better than I could by commenting, there will probably still be a fair amount of semi-transcript. (Sigh.)
My thanks to the readers who have found the blog, and to the ones who from time to time tell me that they value it. You have encouraged me when the tedious work of keyboarding has made me wonder why I am doing this. Then you have reminded me, and I am grateful.
Principles
Two ideas guide and support me:
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
______Attributed to Edmund Burke
GOOD PREVAILS.
Those ideas are also the reason I have been doing the blog since late February 2011.
I have discovered that a transcript is almost impossible to do and that verbatim accounts are usually not absolutely necessary. When in doubt, I check against a recording.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
______Attributed to Edmund Burke
GOOD PREVAILS.
Those ideas are also the reason I have been doing the blog since late February 2011.
I have discovered that a transcript is almost impossible to do and that verbatim accounts are usually not absolutely necessary. When in doubt, I check against a recording.
