Toledo City Council agreed Tuesday to spend more than $3 million – money that was previously tucked into one city fund until it was moved back into the pot of money used for permanent improvements – to improve parks, pools, and streets.
Council voted 11-1 to approve an ordinance, one that resembled a spending bill, authorizing the city to spend $3,350,000. The plan includes spending $400,000 on Friendship Park; $600,000 on Wilson Park; $450,000 on Navarre Pool; $450,000 on Willys Pool; $350,000 on the parking lot and sidewalks at Bowman Park; $100,000 on Monroe Street curb cuts for new on-street parking; $100,000 for microsurfacing the public walkway at The Docks restaurant complex, and $900,000 for six separate roadway projects.
“These projects have been in the works for a long time, some as much as 10 years and any plan created would likely include them,” said Councilman Lindsay Webb, who wrote the ordinance. “We need to invest in our neighborhoods now. This plan does that.”
Ms. Webb called her ordinance an “omnibus spending bill.”
Councilman Peter Ujvagi tried unsuccessfully to table the spending plan before he voted against the ordinance.
“It is very seldom I take a position where I stand alone but I feel absolutely that this is not the way we should be going forward,” Mr. Ujvagi said.
The Hicks-Hudson administration left $3 million in the city's general fund at the end of 2016 hoping it would help the city get a better bond rating and save money with lower interest rates, the city's law director told city council in a written statement.
Council President Steven Steel discovered the idle money and asked about it. Some councilmen were seemingly unaware of its existence. Council voted 12- 0 in September to move the $3 million from the city's general fund back to the capital improvement fund.
Councilman Tom Waniewski said he wanted to fund extra parking on Monroe Street west of Bowen Road to help businesses on the roadway, including Jo-Jo's Original Pizzeria.
The roadways projects, which will be added to the city's street repaving program, would reconstruct or repave Midlawn Drive; Southlawn Drive; Waverly Avenue from Avondale Avenue to Dorr Street; the 900 block of Oakwood Avenue; the 1300 and 1400 blocks of Elmwood Avenue, and Oakwood from Shenandoah Road to Upton Avenue.
The 2.4-acre Wilson Park, at 298 Streicher Rd., is surrounded by a densely populated residential area, including Woodward High School. The proposed project includes a new asphalt loop path, reconstructing existing shelter parking, installing wooden bollards around the park's perimeter, new trees and perennial plants, and air conditioning for the shelter house.
The 10.6-acre Friendship Park, on 131st Street in Point Place, would get a new perimeter asphalt loop path, basketball court improvements, trees and perennial plants, and a new parking lot.
The two named pools need extensive work or they will have to be shut down permanently, Ms. Webb said.
Council Tuesday also agreed to accept $300,000 in state grant money on behalf of the Historic South Initiative.
The Environmental Health and Radiation Protection Program grant from the Ohio Department of Health, together with matching money from Historic South Initiative, will fund $600,000 in renovations for about 80 homes in the Old South End, including work to make the properties lead-safe. The group identified houses in the area of the 300 and 400 blocks of Crittenden Avenue for the work.
In other business, council voted 12-0 to appoint Sue Postal, who was owner and director of the now-closed Center for Choice abortion clinic, to the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department board of health. Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson asked council to confirm the appointment to replace Darlene Chaplin, who resigned from the health board in August.
Contact Ignazio Messina at: imessina@theblade.com, 419-724-6171, or on Twitter @IgnazioMessina.
First Published October 31, 2017, 8:48 p.m.
