An additional fee will be assessed for property taxpayers in the Tenmile Creek watershed next year, funding maintenance activities for creeks and ditches across much of Lucas County.
Owners of property outside Toledo, the city of Sylvania, and Ottawa Hills will pay an assessment based on each parcels’ acreage, land use, soil classification, ditch usage, and elevation relative to the creek.
County Engineer Mike Pniewski fielded questions during the final public hearing Tuesday, which lasted nearly two and a half hours at One Government Center. Mr. Pniewski said the condition of ditches in the watershed have deteriorated over the past decades, with log jams and sediment pile-ups compromising the flow of water.
“If we let this go for another 10, 20, 30 years and we continue to kick the can down the road, we’ll have streams that have no outlet and basically fail to run,” Mr. Pniewski said. “If we don’t do something to get a general maintenance program ... we will continue to see the consequences of our failure to act.”
The deteriorating condition of the ditches affects everyone in the watershed, he said, which is why the fees are being assessed widely.
Property owners affected by the assessment received a card in the mail in January, containing their first-year assessment and the date of the public hearing. For those in Toledo, Sylvania, and Ottawa Hills, the fees will be covered by the municipalities, which have their own work plans approved by the county’s engineer.
The six-year work plan will cost taxpayers $12 million total, and Mr. Pniewski said the assessments will decrease after the initial work of clearing jams and sediment has been completed.
John Meyers, who owns a farm in Swanton, said he maintains his own ditches to help protect his crops. He spoke in favor of the petition at the meeting.
“This money is so well spent,” Mr. Meyers said. “It’s not the commissioners we have today that you should be mad at, it’s the commissioners that we had 30, 40, 50 years ago.”
Others at the public hearing were more skeptical, with many saying they believed the assessments were a money grab and feared that the county would raze creek beds.
Mr. Pniewski said people that have done work to maintain ditches on their own property will be eligible to have those fees credited. Those applications will be available from the county engineer at a later date, and those looking to do work should inform the county engineer of their work plans.
“If you want to do the work yourself, and the goal is that you don’t want the county on your property: Great, we prefer that,” Mr. Pniewski said.
The Lucas County Common Pleas Court committee appointed residents Adam Hoff, David Bench, and Sandy Bihn to stand in for the three Lucas County commissioners who recused themselves because of conflicts of interest. All three of the Lucas County commissioners own property in the project area.
Ms. Bihn was not present for Tuesday’s public hearing, and Mr. Hoff and Mr. Bench both voted in favor of the assessment.
Mr. Hoff told the public he is a registered professional engineer with 35 years of experience, mostly in public works and flood risk reduction projects. Mr. Bench, a Jerusalem Township trustee, has helped the township navigate several ditch petitions and said he used to clean ditches for the county and on his own farm.
First Published March 11, 2025, 10:32 p.m.
