Galena Council holds first meeting in new Village Hall

The Vil­lage of Galena held its first Coun­cil meet­ing in its new Vil­lage Hall, the for­mer Galena United Methodist Church at 109 Har­ri­son Street, on Mon­day, Octo­ber 22. The his­toric room fea­tures a pressed tin ceil­ing and stained glass win­dows. It also now fea­tures a new sound/recording sys­tem and a recon­fig­ured stage. Offices are being fin­ished and the Vil­lage hopes to move its offices to the new build­ing in November.

Coun­cil heard from Nancy Mur­phy, with Mur­phy and Asso­ciates Real Estate, about mar­ket­ing the cur­rent Vil­lage Munic­i­pal Build­ing at 9 West Colum­bus Street. Ads for bids are run­ning in local papers for the build­ing which is in a planned com­mer­cial dis­trict on the busy Vil­lage Square. Mur­phy is hold­ing open houses each Sat­ur­day from 1 to 2 p.m., and has devel­oped a web site at < www.9WestColumbusSt.com >. Sealed bids will be opened on Decem­ber 3.

Coun­cil heard an update on the Wal­nut Street recon­struc­tion project which is planned between High and Church streets. Del-Co Water has relo­cated water lines and Colum­bia Gas is cur­rently mov­ing their lines in from High Street down to Har­ri­son Street. Colum­bia Gas actu­ally has been work­ing north of High Street and destroyed brand new side­walks, but had not com­mu­ni­cated this to either the Vil­lage or its engi­neer­ing firm. Coun­cil dis­cussed safety con­cerns with side­walks and con­struc­tion. Side­walks in Phase 3 will be replaced with gravel pend­ing the road con­struc­tion next spring. Side­walks in Phase 4, south of Church Street, will be replaced with 4-foot side­walks in the cur­rent loca­tions. These could not be con­structed in their future planned loca­tions due to ele­va­tion dif­fer­ences from the cur­rent road to the future road location.

Fis­cal Offi­cer Marty Mazzie and Interim Vil­lage Admin­is­tra­tor Jeanna Bur­rell attended the pub­lic forum with AEP in Sun­bury. They reported that AEP reviewed var­i­ous main­te­nance plans, but the main issue for south­ern Sun­bury, Galena, and parts of Berk­shire and Tren­ton town­ships is that they are all on one of the largest cir­cuits in the area. AEP is study­ing the ben­e­fits of mov­ing part of that cir­cuit onto a Genoa cir­cuit. The study will take six to eight more months.

Coun­cil held a sec­ond read­ing on a res­o­lu­tion exer­cis­ing a fifth-year option with Big-O Refuse for munic­i­pal res­i­den­tial waste and curb­side recy­cling pickup. Prices would increase to $54.30/quarter for house­holds or $51.30/quarter for senior cit­i­zens. Big-O has also com­mit­ted to extend that price for a sixth year.

Coun­cil also had a sec­ond read­ing on a res­o­lu­tion estab­lish­ing a tobacco-free parks and recre­ation policy.

Coun­cil passed a res­o­lu­tion accept­ing the offi­cial cer­tifi­cate of esti­mated resources as set by the Bud­get Com­mis­sion of Delaware County for a total bud­get of $1,062,955 for 2013.

In her monthly report, Bur­rell explained that the Vil­lage was awarded $19,238.74 from the Preser­va­tion Parks Com­mu­nity Park Improve­ment Grant for 2013. The funds will assist in com­plet­ing Phase 4 on the Miller Park Train Play­ground, a spi­ral slide; stor­age tanks for the Ruffner Park irri­ga­tion sys­tem; and bike racks and pic­nic tables. She is also work­ing on signs for the Ohio to Erie Trail. She noted that Main­te­nance Super­vi­sor Jeff Stokes is on two weeks’ med­ical leave.

Galena’s Beggar’s Night is 6 to 7:15 p.m., Wednes­day, Octo­ber 31, fol­lowed by the annual Cos­tume Con­test at Ruffner Park, 170 Har­ri­son Street. Prizes will be awarded in the fol­low­ing cat­e­gories: 0–4 year-olds, 5–7 year-olds, 8–10 year-olds, 11 year-olds and up, and groups.

Under the BST&G Fire Board report, Vil­lage rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Bolan­der noted that the fire board pur­chased a new hydraulic res­cue cut­ter capa­ble of cut­ting through lighter, stronger met­als being used in newer cars. BST&G will con­duct Vil­lage hydrant flush­ing in Novem­ber. He also reminded res­i­dents to change their smoke detec­tor bat­ter­ies when the clocks change on Novem­ber 4.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.