By DAVE SCHULTZ
The city is getting another pinch in its collective wallet due to its growth, as Bluffton’s water treatment facility must test more often — and explain those tests to the public.
The city has been adjusting to a number of things because it has crossed the 10,000-person population threshold. Jon Oman, the city’s utilities director, told the Board of Public Works and Safety Tuesday that the city is now required to test its water quality more often. Also, its annual water quality mailing now has to be more detailed and will cost more to mail.
The city has been sending out the water quality reports as a single-page mailing to its utility customer, as required by state law. The new reports, he said, must be more extensive and will require two sheets to be stuffed in an envelope.
“No more one-page mailing,” Oman told the board.
The mailing requirement means that the cost will be somewhere between $1,700 and $1,800, he said.
There was no action for the three board members — Mayor John Whicker, Scott Mentzer, and Josh Hunt — to take. That doesn’t mean they were happy about it.
“This is a mandate with no funds to cover it?” Hunt asked, rhetorically. Oman said that was the case.
Whicker is also pushing for live streaming of city meetings — Common Council, Board of Works, and the board of the Parks and Recreation Department — to be live-streamed, probably on YouTube.
He said the state is requiring that to happen by 2025. He was at a mayors’ roundtable recently and almost all of their cities are making their meetings available online. He said most of them started that during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued after public meetings resumed.
Bluffton is fortunate, however, because the Council Chambers is set up for the broadcasts. Also, council member Rick Elwell is a professional in that kind of work and Mentzer has been involved with Wells County Voice.
In other business:
• A potential vacation of an alley will be placed on the agenda for next Tuesday night’s Common Council meeting.
• The base of a sign on State Street is not in the city’s right of way but the overhang is. The matter will come before the Wells County Area Plan Commission, but the board indicated it had no opposition to the status quo.
daves@news-banner.com
