By DAVE SCHULTZ
The city’s infrastructure standards came under scrutiny Tuesday afternoon during the meeting of the Bluffton Board of Public Works and Safety.
The questions from Board of Works members Roger Thornton and Scott Mentzer, both of whom are also members of the Bluffton Common Council, stemmed in part from the comments of a couple of developers during the last council meeting of 2021. At that time, Jeff Thomas — who is working on the Parlor Bluff development on the city’s north side — and Jeff Stringer both said that Bluffton’s development standards are not what they are elsewhere. Those other city’s standards are good enough for them, they said, and Bluffton is taking itself out of the running for other developments and contractors.
Thornton indicated during the Board of Works meeting Tuesday that he did not want to be seen as critical of what has been done, but he was getting impatient as the standards were tweaked and being put into place.
“I can’t think of an area where the elected officials in the city have been more challenged than the (city) standards,” he said. “I think we as a council have waited as long as we have.”
What Thornton wanted to know, responding to the “how it’s done elsewhere” statements they heard at the Dec. 22 council meeting, is what other nearby cities — Decatur, Huntington, and so forth — demand in terms of pipes, casings, street classifications and so forth.
“One developer has said to me, I won’t be developing things (here) under these standards,” Thornton said.
Jon Oman, the city’s operations manager, said the city standards have been a work in progress, saying there were topics that needed to be dug into a little deeper. Mentzer wanted to know what the process was for getting that done.
Doug Sundling replied that the “tweaking” of the standards has been held up by several things, with one of them being the fact that the company helping with the project, Butler Fairman Seifert, is in one place and Bluffton is in another. Once the company assigned one particular individual to the work last year, things began to move forward.
Sundling said the city staffers’ goal throughout the process has been “what’s best for the city.”
“The department heads’ perspective is, ‘What has worked for us?’” Oman said.
What it boiled down to is that contractors have a profit margin and the city has its standards, “and you guys are stuck in the middle,” Oman said. “I get that.”
Mayor John Whicker said he had another reason for settling the standards questions.
“I’m getting tired of city-bashing in public meetings,” he said.
daves@news-banner.com
