Hillsboro City Council approves 10% sewer rate increase; OKs new city policies for sick leave, naming rights

Hillsboro City Council members approved a 10-percent increase to sanitary sewer rates as an emergency measure during their Thursday, May 14 meeting.

The ordinance authorizing an increase to sewer rates, with a 10-percent increase on both the cubic feet and minimum usage rates, passed by a 6-0 vote on its first reading, following suspension of the three-reading rule.

The vote came three months after council approved an emergency resolution authorizing the mayor to apply for, accept and enter into a cooperative agreement for design of the 2026 Sanitary Sewer Rehabilitation Project between the City of Hillsboro and the Ohio Water Development Authority. As discussed in February, the city is seeking this loan for the first of what will be multiple phases to address the city’s I&I (inflow and infiltration) issues.   

According to the legislation approved Thursday, “the City of Hillsboro has been notified that OWDA will not loan the city any monies for sanitary sewer system improvements due to projected deficits in the sewer department.An increase in rates will be necessary in order for the City of Hillsboro [to acquire] a design review loan which is required for any grant applications the City desires to submit to improve the sanitary sewer system of the City.”

Utilities committee chair Mary Stanforth said that her committee, along with several city administrators, met April 26 to review the proposal for a rate increase.
 
“I asked Shawn [Adkins, safety and service director] to explain the current sewer situation,” Stanforth said. “The OWDA is recommending not to loan the city money because of the projected deficits in the sewer department. The sewer plant is 16 to 18 years old, and the lines are over 100 years old. There have been no sewer rate increases since 2016 when the former mayor suspended the three-percent yearly increase. 

“An increase in rates is necessary in order to receive a design review loan, which is necessary in order to apply for grants. A suggested 10-percent increase in the sewer rates on both cubic feet and minimum usage customers is recommended.”

Stanforth said the utilities committee recommended the 10-percent increase and the suspension of the three-reading rule for its passage. She added that residents will be notified of the increases through communications from the Utilities Department, while “a sanitary sewer rate study is being done by Waterworth” for future recommendations.

Adkins told council that the city will now qualify for the design engineering loan if the ordinance was approved. 

“After the meeting, I forwarded [Stanforth’s] minutes to OWDA,” Adkins said. “Friday, we got notification they're going to approve our loan as long as we go through with our legislation tonight, and Dawson [Barreras, city auditor] has legislation to appropriate money tonight.”

Adkins also explained the legislation prior to council’s vote.

“With the ever-growing cost for maintenance and repairs, along with our I&I [inflow and infiltration] issues throughout the city, we need to increase rates 10 percent per OWDA's recommendation, so we can secure a design loan for the I&I issues,” Adkins said. “This will increase a minimum bill from $31.07 to $34.18 for the first 133 cubic feet and a 10-percent increase from $8.33 to $9.16 for each additional 100 cubic feet above the first 133 cubic feet.” 

As they discussed in February, Adkins and Lewis reiterated that the city’s previous wastewater treatment plant upgrades cost $23 million and “did not fix any of the problems” with overflows.

“We still have the same issues,” Adkins said. “We still have overflows. We have to spend the money on the collection system.

“I don't want to spend good money after bad money, and we have done it in the past. I'd like to stop that.”

Lewis agreed, saying that when the new plant was done, “We were practically right at the limit where we should be brand new, and that was 16 years ago.” Adkins confirmed that they were “already at over 85 percent of our capacity” 16 years ago, and “it’s only gotten worse. 

“Around 75 percent of our collection system is over 100 years old,” Adkins said. “The life expectancy to see of those pipes and manholes are 50 years, so they have outlived their life expectancy twice. Our plant design is 1.5 million gallons a day. We currently average over 1.51 million gallons last year. At any point, the EPA can step in, require us to do a plant expansion, because this is the fastest way to eliminate our sewer overflows, and we do have a notice of violation for overflows. 

“We only send out 850,000 gallons of potable water a day from our water plant. In a perfect world, our intake should be a little bit less than how much we send out, because we have irrigation meters which do not move into our sewer. This shows you how much I&I we have in our city.”

As noted by Stanforth, Adkins said that rates have not increased since 2016. After council voted to place a moratorium on water and sewer rates for several months in a row to end the year, council voted in January 2017 legislation providing for automatic increases in water and sewer rates.

“If we would have left it on, we were going to be at three percent every year for a cost-of-living raise,” Adkins said. “It’s been 10 years, so that would have been 30 percent. That's actually what OWDA wants us to be at. They wanted us 10 percent this year, 10 percent next year, 10 percent the following year. 

“We have already started our sewer study. I hate to tell you guys, it's going to be more than 10 percent next year, just because what we have to repair is going to take five phases, and the cost estimate on all five phases is over $4 million apiece.”

Council voted 6-0 to suspend the three-reading rule and 6-0 to approve and adopt the ordinance for the sewer rate increase. 

“With the design loan, here's what's going to happen,” Adkins said. “We have no payment until July of 2027, so if we get these grants, our plan is to roll over this design loan, where we have no money.

“We're going after more than just this one loan, so my hope is, we get all of these grants, and we can move forward with maybe phase two.”

In related action, council approved the $262,516 appropriation to the engineering line item mentioned by Adkins, in order to receive and allocate funds received from the OWDA loan upon its release.

In other approvals, council voted 6-0 to suspend the three-reading rule and to approve and adopt an ordinance to establish a sick leave bank donation policy for the employees for the city.

According to the legislation, “the proposal would serve as a general donation pool for donation of accrued and unused sick leave for use by eligible employees who apply pursuant to a sick leave donation policy.”

“The policy allows eligible city employees to voluntarily donate accrued sick leave to coworkers who are experiencing serious illness, injury or medical hazard hardship and have exhausted their own available leave,” Adkins said. “That means vacation, personal, sick, comp time if they have it. The ordinance outlines eligibility requirements, administration procedures and guidelines for the transfer and use of the donated leave.”

Civil service and employee relations committee chair Heith Brown reported that his committee met May 8 to review the proposal, as they voted to recommend its review by full council.

“Mr. Adkins introduced this as a way to donate for extenuating circumstances for certain employees who either don't have enough sick time, or maybe they haven't rated sick time yet,” Brown said. “He also made it clear that it would take the mayor, himself and the law director to approve for the sick pool to be used for employees, and they would have to request through an application.”

At the start of the meeting, Adkins asked council president Tom Eichinger to include a Hillsboro police officer in his opening prayer, as he said the officer suffered a heart attack Thursday. He referred to the matter again when council discussed this legislation.

“Seeing how we have an issue with a police officer, I was not bringing this as an emergency, but I would really like the council to think about passing this as an emergency tonight,” Adkins said.                

Also approved, upon suspension of the three-reading rule, was a resolution authorizing and establishing a naming rights policy for the City of Hillsboro.

“The policy provides guidelines and procedures for the naming or renaming of city-owned facilities, parks, programs and public spaces throughout sponsorships, donations, commemorative recognition or partnership agreements,” Adkins said. “This resolution is intended to create a constant and transparent process for evaluating naming rights opportunities while protecting the public interest, preserving community values and generating potential revenue in support of the city services and facilities.”

According to the legislation, the naming rights committee will include the mayor, safety and service director, council president, parks director and law director, who will “receive and review applications for naming opportunities.” The policy allows for naming rights to “be granted by the City of Hillsboro as a form of recognition and/or sponsorship for exceptional contributions that enhance community assets.”

Applications may include posthumous recognition of individuals who “made a significant and lasting contribution to the city” in public service, civic leadership, historic significance and/or community development. 

Sponsorship opportunities are also available for a “business, nonprofit organization or individual that makes an application to make a financial contribution to the cost of modifications, construction or improvement to the facility, structure or amenity to be named.”

According to the legislation, “naming rights shall be granted for a term of no less than five years and no more than 20 years,” after which the committee can choose to “renew the naming agreement, offer the naming opportunity to a new donor or revert to a generic name.”

Adkins asked council to consider suspending the three-reading rule in order to “meet deadlines for our Crossroads Park project.

“We are working on signage bids as we speak,” he said. “This will allow us to go ahead and have this stuff while we get our bids, so we can go ahead and put names on it.”

A resolution authorizing the city auditor to transfer money from the General Fund to the Miscellaneous Government-Pro Services Department, pursuant to ORC 5705.14(E), also passed unanimously following its third reading and comments from Barreras and council member Gary Lewis. 

The legislation was introduced as an emergency in March, but no vote was taken after a motion to suspend the three-reading rule failed to pass. It involves moving the money for the payment of the law director, as the city is currently contracting with Hannah Bivens, following the resignation of former director Randalyn Worley, who was in an elected position.

At council’s April meeting, Barreras asked council not to take any action until he could confirm from the state whether legislation was necessary or if they could “just move this money into the law director Pro Services line instead of Miscellaneous Government.” The auditor told council Thursday that the state verified that the action required council approval.

“After talking with Mr. Lewis and Shawn, we were thinking that we would maybe be able to do this transfer without council approval,” Barreras said. “I did get word from our auditors from the state of Ohio saying that we will need to have council legislation, and I asked them verbatim, ‘if I make this transfer without council approval, will I be hit on an audit?’ And they said, ‘you absolutely will be.’”

Although Lewis agreed with comments from Adkins — who said he would “back our auditor 100 percent because I don’t think anybody wants to be liable for that kind of money” — the former city auditor Lewis asked to go “on a soapbox” with comments against the state.

“This absolutely irritates me,” Lewis said. “This council passed a budget last year for this year, and we did it by department, and this money is within the department that we approved the money for. All it is is just moving it from one line down to another line. It should be as simple as that. 

“We’re called home rule for a reason. If we're not breaking any federal or state laws, we should be able to do what we want to do. Council passed on that level where that money is. It shouldn't matter which line item that it is in, but the state legislature, in all their infinite wisdom, does not trust us hicks down here to be able to run our own budgets.”

Lewis added that it is “just absolutely irritating that we have to go through all of  this bureaucratic mishegoss.”

In addition to the appropriations related to the OWDA loan, council also approved several other appropriations ordinances. 

The first was a $34,281.83 transfer to the Pro Services line item “to allocate funds that we received for being a host community per Senate Bill 56, which is the tax we receive off of cannabis sales within the city limits,” according to Barreras.

Next, council approved a $9,000 donation from the Cassner Foundation to the Hillsboro Police Department, which was appropriated in the Small Tools-Donations line item.

Finally, council authorized a $79,000 appropriation to the Pro Services line item to appropriate funds received from an insurance claim for the sewer plant.

“Our sewer plant did flood, I think it was in 2024, because of the high rising of water that we have at our sewer plant, and a lot of our pumps and electronic devices got fried in the process,” Barreras said. “This is an insurance claim that we put in, and this will pay for our damages that we incurred during that time.”

An ordinance authorizing the mayor to accept the transfer of real property located at 147 West Main Street and 149 West Main Street from the Hillsboro Community Improvement Corporation had its second reading, with no discussion or action taken.

In other discussion:

• In the safety and service director’s report, Adkins said that progress is being made on the multimillion-dollar Crossroads Park upgrades as well as the Rails to Trails project, both of which are funded by grants.

“They’ve poured footers and walls on the amphitheater,” Adkins said. “They've got more to pour. They have started pouring footers on the event center. The Rails to Trails crew has begun clearing and grubbing.”

In addition, the Ohio Department of Transportation is wrapping up the bridge repair project on U.S. 62 with “punch list” items in the coming weeks, according to Adkins.

For an update on the Marriott Hotel project, Adkins said that “the bonds are still out for sale,” as council voted to extend its promissory note to the end of May.

“They working on the wording, or whatever it takes, for the legal part of it still,” Adkins said. “I'm assuming probably the county's issue has held it up a little bit. 

“We've got till the 31st, so we'll see what happens on the 31st.”

Despite hosting the annual “Burgers in the Boro” event on a day that turned out cloudy and rainy, Adkins said the uptown cookout was a success.

“We served over 350 hamburgers and 350 hot dogs — more than that, because we ran out,” he said. “It was an unreal day.” 

Adkins also reported that the city building department issued 19 permits, including 10 residential and nine commercial, in April, while he said the Hillsboro Planning Commission “approved one expansion of a non-conforming use application” at its most recent meeting.  

• Although the community enhancement committee did not meet in the past month, Brown asked for an update on the city’s plans to join the Ohio Lighted Trail with a holiday lights display at the Highland County Fairgrounds. 

In April, council members passed legislation to take the first steps toward the proposal, allowing for bids up to $150,000 for the purchase of equipment.

Community enhancement committee chair Cody Mathews said Thursday they are “waiting to hear back from our one potential vendor” for a quote, as Adkins said the city received no bids for the project.

“I have tried to make contact, Cody has tried to make contact,” Adkins said. “We did get someone to make contact after the bid timeline. Seeing how no one made the bid, we can actually go after it without putting it back out.

“We do have a potential company that wants to do it, and we did sign an agreement with the Fair Board this week.”

• During the citizens’ comments portion of the meeting, council heard from Arlene Cole, who attended on behalf of the Wayman Chapel AME Church.

Cole asked council to consider waiving a portion of their water and sewer bill, as she said they are a “small church” that received a $633.95 bill for supposed running water. She said that a plumber replaced the washers in a faucet since then, and both a plumber and a member of the city’s water department verified that there is no longer an issue.

“I'm just asking if there's any way you could help us, because this is an expense for our church that is so small,” Cole said.

Adkins said that the city can waive the sewer bill “if it was a water leak that didn’t go into the sewer,” but the city cannot waive the water bill and advised that “council should not” either. He asked Cole to meet with him Friday so they could discuss the matter further.

On another note, Cole invited the community to attend the church’s 200th anniversary celebration Aug. 16 at 144 West Pleasant Street.  

• Council voted 6-0 to excuse the absence of council member Logan Kelly. Mayor Justin Harsha was also absent.

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