City departments attained 2012 accomplishments, Homan reports

GARY BUDZAK

Staff Writer

The city of Delaware’s depart­ments achieved a num­ber of accom­plish­ments in 2012, City Man­ager Tom Homan told city coun­cil this week.

Those achieve­ments have been reflected by the num­ber of pos­i­tive com­ments from res­i­dents on the city’s Face­book page.

One of those com­ments was, “Thank you city of Delaware for all you do to make our com­mu­nity and a great place to live.”

Homan thanked the pub­lic for pas­sage of a 2010 levy, which has pro­vided the fire depart­ment with more per­son­nel and paid to build a new sta­tion and pur­chase a new lad­der truck. The pub­lic also was instru­men­tal in get­ting Grand­view Avenue resur­faced, he said.

City coun­cil­man Andrew Brush, 4th Ward, on Thurs­day echoed Homan’s comments.

“I think 2012 was a good year for the city of Delaware,” Brush said. “Despite the rel­a­tively mori­bund eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion else­where in Ohio, Delaware has actu­ally done very well rel­a­tive to the rest of the state. Our income tax receipts have been up pretty much each year, so we haven’t been in a posi­tion where we’ve had to make dras­tic cuts. We’ve been able to have sev­eral con­sec­u­tive bal­anced bud­gets and in addi­tion to that, add money to the reserve fund or rainy day fund.”

The city engi­neer­ing depart­ment was praised for the Glenn Park­way project, which “gives us a south­ern con­nec­tion to U.S. 23,” Homan said. “We’re also look­ing at a con­nec­tion from the north­ern end of Glenn Park­way up to Berlin Sta­tion Road.”

Homan said the city plan­ning department’s achieve­ments include the start of con­struc­tion of Delaware Place, new senior hous­ing at the site of the for­mer Delaware Hotel off South San­dusky Street. The city also received a grant to build a bicy­cle path on Houk Road and ini­ti­ated a down­town facade improve­ment program.

In 2012, improve­ments began at the water treat­ment plant, which is the largest pub­lic works project in city his­tory. Homan said the plant will include an inter­ac­tive dis­play to edu­cate cit­i­zens about where water comes from and how it’s treated.

Other city improve­ments in 2012 ranged from com­plet­ing the Penry Road raw water line and adding a 100-space park­ing lot in Smith Park, to imple­ment­ing an online income tax fil­ing system.

Some of the Face­book com­ments were con­struc­tive. One read, “We could use a few nice restau­rants in the area.” Homan said, “We’ve added a few more in the down­town. We hope to add more to the periph­ery of the city.”

Homan said coun­cil will hold a strate­gic plan­ning meet­ing Sat­ur­day, March 2, hold a retreat in April, and pre­pare a strate­gic plan. He said the city has sev­eral plans, but “we don’t have any­thing that really cap­tures all those in a strate­gic way.”

Posted by Staff Reports on Mar 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.