New Lexington Village Council March meeting summary

NEW LEXINGTON — The New Lexington Village Council has held its two March meetings, dealing with one new ordinance and no new resolutions.

The new ordinance, 24-2, made permanent appropriations for New Lexington’s current expenses for the 2024 fiscal year. This went over their current spending for expenditures and is available to view at the newlexingtonohio.gov website. It was also declared as an emergency measure.

In sad news for the Village of New Lexington, Jeff Danison, councilmember, community servant, and ex-firefighter, passed away on March 7, 2024. Danison served the village for 12 years as a council member. The flag at City Hall was flown at half-staff in honor of his passing. A memorial comment posted on the New Lexington website stated, “Jeff served our town with unwavering dedication, passion, and commitment. His contributions to our town were invaluable, and his loss will be deeply felt by all who had the privilege of working with him.”

During the month council learned that Mayor Trent Thompson had met with the CEO and Chairman of Mount Aloysius, Bill Shimp. They talked about the fireworks display, which the village puts on, and Mount Aloysius contributes to, and they decided to continue their partnership in the matter. Thompson had taken a tour of the park with Shimp and had mentioned a desire to place a plaque in memory of Justin Gall and the rest of the men from Mount Aloysius, where they would usually sit for the fireworks display, as well as also potentially renaming the path nearby.

Village Administrator Eric Emmert noted that work needs to be done on deciding how to handle pool passes for 2024. The village would decide this in the next meetings while working to get the pool ready for the season.

Emmert also reported at the time that the New Lexington Building Trades class of Coleman McCoy is working on a new shelter house at the New Lexington Reservoir, which has since been completed. This project came out of the New Lexington Workforce Development Center.

As an update, Emmert also reported that the Safe Routes to School project was to officially start around March 25, 2024. This project has been in the works and will make major improvements to the infrastructure leading to the New Lexington Schools. For now, on Panther Drive, trees have been cleared for the sidewalk, and dirt will be moved in the next few weeks in preparation for concrete shortly after that.

There was also talk about an EPA Community Change grant, which could cut down bills at the Wastewater Treatment Plant, Water Treatment Plant and Public Service Department. Emmert initially brought this up in council’s first meeting for the month, but Eric Peterson, on behalf of Rural Action, appeared in the second meeting to describe it to the council.

Lastly, Emmert also discussed two new projects going on at the Water Treatment Plant. At the plant, during the weeks of the meetings, the filter would be replaced, and later, the C02 tank would be replaced.

Moving onto Police Chief Gill, he reported that in February, there were 678 calls for service, 12 thefts, 23 arrests, 15 accidents, and 67 traffic stops.

On the topic of training, Gill said Commander Biggers had completed car seat safety training, which allows her to check the installation and safety of car seats. She is now one of three persons in the county qualified to do so. She will now be able to check installations by appointment. In other training news, Sergeant Dodd hosted a K9 first aid training event for officers, handlers, EMS, and more.

Gill also noted that the police and ire basketball fundraiser “was a great success.” The benefit raised $7,275, which will go toward the purchase of a new drone. It was said that the purchase of the drone would be discussed again at a future meeting.

On the fire & EMS side of things, Fire Chief Jim Fain reported that the department had 45 fire runs and 163 EMS runs with 93 transports in February. He also talked about the police and fire basketball fundraiser and thanked specifically Police Operations Manager Katelyn Crane for her contributions and work on it.

As guests to one of the meetings, Marilyn Gallahard and Amanda Allen visited the council members and talked about the Elks awarding them money to add flowers to the Veteran’s Memorial Park. The amount awarded was $1,500, and it would all go towards flowers for the park to “add some color.” Mayor Thompson also thanked the Elks for their contribution.

Another guest was the Director of Municipal and Government Sales for Win-Waste Innovations, Sarah Matthews. She went over fees with the village for their services primarily. One topic of interest from this discussion was whether the company could help with the New Lexington swimming pool, to which Matthews said to email her and she’d see what she could find.

A significant discussion between the two meetings related to zoning. An individual bought a property and wanted to turn it into a duplex. However, due to the area’s zoning, it was not in the allowed area for a duplex, as it was an area for single-family residences. There was also nothing to support a variance for the property.

There was heavy discussion about the zoning and its purpose within the village. There was talk for and against allowing the property to be a duplex. The problem was the property owner had already done significant work to the property and was reportedly misled (by a realtor, not by the village council) into thinking he’d be allowed to go ahead with it, so it wasn’t an easy decision.

Following the discussions, the respective council members involved with the zoning held two meetings about it. The first idea was to revise the zoning book, which they agreed needed to be done. The property was also apparently going to be allowed to be a duplex. While there was more discussion about this, that was a summary of the information available as of now.

As a side note, during these discussions, the council noted they were getting a database of the abandoned homes within New Lexington, which number around 12-20.

Lastly, there were several executive sessions for the meetings. However, no decisions were made during these executive session meetings.

The New Lexington Council meets at City Hall on the first and third Monday of every month at 5:30 p.m. The meetings are open to the public and can be watched online via Zoom.