NEWS RELEASE

Thursday, March 16, 2017

 

The Board of Defiance County Commissioners met in regular session at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 16, 2017 in the in the Second Floor Conference Room of the Commissioners’ Session Room at 500 Court Street, Defiance, Ohio 43512 Commissioner Ryan Mack called the meeting to order.  Also present were Commissioners Gary Plotts and Mick Pocratsky, Sherry Carnahan, Finance Manager/Administrator, and Stephanie Metz, Clerk.

 

The Commissioners met in General Session and approved and signed various resolutions, contracts and documents. The Commissioners also reviewed the calendar of events and discussed upcoming meetings.

 

The Commissioners’ Office received a notification from the Ohio History Connection stating the Defiance County is receiving $50,000.00 as a result of the proposed construction of the Rover Pipeline. This is a one-time opportunity for the County to bolster the history of the County without expense to the budget and without any on-going obligations. Because the Rover Pipeline will be an interstate pipeline, the company proposing to build it must have a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In addition, because the pipeline has the potential to impact historic properties, FERC and Rover Pipeline LLC have consulted with the Ohio's State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) according to Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. (Ohio's SHPO is housed within the Ohio History Connection, a not-for-profit organization with a long-term partnership with the State of Ohio.) Under this provision, the SHPO's role is to provide comments on infrastructure improvement projects which may affect historic and archaeological properties in Ohio. During this process, a historic property was unexpectedly demolished by Rover Pipeline resulting in an adjustment to originally proposed mitigation. Following the Section 106 process, the SHPO and Rover Pipeline LLC entered into a mitigation agreement to address the impacts of the project on historic and archaeological properties. Terms of the mitigation agreement are in part as follows: As part of the Project Commitments, Rover Pipeline established a Community Historic Preservation Fund as mitigation in the amount of $1,000,000, to be administered by the Ohio History Connection Foundation. This fund will be used for historic preservation in the 18 counties crossed by the Project. These counties include; Noble, Monroe, Belmont, Harrison, Jefferson, Carroll, Tuscarawas, Stark, Wayne, Ashland, Richland, Crawford, Seneca, Hancock, Wood, Henry, Defiance and Fulton Counties. The Community Historic Preservation Fund may be used for any of the following purposes:

  1. Preserve or rehabilitate existing cultural resources (historic properties);
  2. Establish or support education programs to raise awareness of the benefits of historic preservation; or
  3. Conduct other historic preservation-related activities as requested by the communities or proposed by the Ohio SHPO given the purpose of the Community Historic Preservation Fund as outlined above. In this regard, it is Rover's preference that the Community Historic Preservation Fund support efforts that provide a public benefit and further education concerning historic preservation; however, the approval for each such activity is solely at the discretion of the Ohio SHPO. The Community Historic Preservation Fund may also be used, at the discretion of the Ohio SHPO, in association with other funds, grants, or projects as a matching funds program.

Since the Commissioners just received notice of this, they are still researching possible projects to utilize this funding.

 

Randy Vogel, Defiance County Dog Warden, provided the Board with a monthly update. Randy reported investigating 96 calls in February, which resulted in 16 dogs taken to the shelter, 23 citations written and 11 warnings written. There were 2,835 miles driven and $250.00 received in Municipal Court fines.

 

Tina Hiler, Defiance County Senior Services’ Director, met with the Commissioners to provide a monthly update. Tina reported that the Defiance County Senior Services’ Auxiliary has the following events scheduled for 2017:

·       Bus trip to Holland Tulip Festival – May 8th

·       Shred-a-Thon, coordinated with AARP, for the community to have documents confidentially shredded – September 9th

·       Ribfest – sole provider of pop and water – September

·       Craft Fair – October.

 

Mike Jay, RGP Northwest Ohio, and Nick D’Angelo, JobsOhio Director of Governmental Affairs, met with the Commissioners to review the services provided for Economic Development.

 

The Commissioners attended the Defiance County CIC Annual Meeting.

 

 

 

Release Approved:          ____________________________________________________         

                                         Ryan Mack, Defiance County Commissioner