Commissioners OK contract to repair tornado sirens, hold CDBG hearing

Richland County is hoping to move direct control of its tornado warning sirens to the state’s Multi Agency Radio Communications System (MARCS) by the end of summer. County commissioners took the first step Tuesday by approving a $40,880 contract with Vasu Communications to repair 29 of the 47 sirens around the county that are maintained by the county Emergency Management Agency.

EMA Director Rebecca Owens told the board that the work will involve replacing batteries and mountings and other recommendations that have been made over the last few years but have not happened.

“There are wires, ground connections and such that we want to make sure are safe and are not going to cause any problems down the road,” she said. “We want everything to be 100% before we start the conversion to MARCS.”

Owens said repairs should take six to eight weeks to complete. She also said Sheriff’s Office Operations Capt. Jim Sweat is putting together specifications for the MARCS conversion, which is estimated to cost $4,000 per siren or around $175,000 total. That work will take another six to eight weeks after the repairs are made.

The changeover to MARCS will allow the system to be moved off an analog repeater tower and save $4,000 per month rent in the process.

Residents advised not to rely solely on tornado sirens

Owens said the sirens are of particular importance to Richland County’s Amish population and underserved individuals who do not have access to modern types of notifications. She also pointed out that sirens will be more critical as the YMCA’s planned soccer complex in Bellville is developed and the number of local outdoor events continues to grow.

Owens also cautioned residents not to rely solely on the tornado sirens for alerts and said they should have other means such as signing up for the county’s RC Alerts or buying a NOAA weather radio.

“The intent of the sirens is to be heard outdoors,” she said. “They have about a mile radius, but if you’re sitting in your home and you’re five miles from the siren you’re not going to hear that.”

Owens told the board that the sirens were not set off during the April 1 storm that ripped through Madison Township because the National Weather Service saw no indications of severe conditions. She said no warning was issued during a storm last June because NWS officials said conditions came and went too quickly.

Commissioners hold CDBG hearing

Commissioners also held the first of two public hearings on the county’s program year 2023 Community Development Block Grant program. Regional Planning Director Jotika Shetty said the county has been allocated $288,000 through the Ohio Development Services Agency, although the money can go to just two projects instead of four that had been allowed in the past.

“That means we can probably do one public service project and another infrastructure project,” Shetty said.

In addition to the formula allocation, Shetty told the board Richland County will be eligible to apply for some competitive programs, including neighborhood rehabilitation, critical infrastructure and residential infrastructure programs. As in the past, all CDBG projects must serve 51% low-to-moderate income populations as determined by census tracts and data or an income survey.

Grants also can be used to eliminate slums and blight, help economic development or deal with street, water supply and drainage.

Regional planning will hold a workshop Friday to help with the application process and to make sure there is a list of projects that can be put on file for a future year or if competitive funds become available if they are not funded this year. Applications are due by 4 p.m. on May 24 at Regional Planning. The second public hearing will be held June 6 when commissioners will decide which projects will be submitted to the state.

New housing study completed to help with future planning

Commissioners also heard a followup report from Jessica Gribben, an economic development manager for Mansfield-Richland Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development, on a recently completed countywide housing study.

Gribben said one of the main things that has been done is to share the results with interested parties including those who helped fund it, Mansfield, Lexington, Bellville, Shelby, the local homeless coalition, Mansfield Metro Housing and, later this month, local labor unions. She noted that the goal of the study was to gather information to support what officials anecdotally know about the need for additional housing in Richland County, the kind needed and where it’s needed and to determine how to take the information and apply it to strategies to make the county friendly for developers and to make sure the area gets the kind of housing that is needed.

“It’s going to be a long game. We’re not going to fix everything overnight, but the steering committee that came to you for that (ARPA) funding has agreed to stick with the process and take the study and strategies that we’ve got and move them forward,” Gribben said.

Gribben told the board that she and Shetty have met with “a couple” of developers who are interested in doing affordable housing in the county, have a track record in doing it elsewhere and are ready to do it in Richland County. She said the Build Richland group that is co-chaired by Commissioner Cliff Mears is working on the perceptions and realities of zoning and permitting and how that process can be simplified.

“That group is meeting with some pretty clear goals of looking at those processes as they exist across the county and each municipality and how to make those simple so that a developer can walk in and develop something in Ontario and then have a really similar experience in Lexington and have both of those experiences be positive,” Gribben explained.

Mears said he received a telephone call this week from Nathan Whittaker, a Florida based developer who unsuccessfully sought a rezoning for the former Dawson Ridge Golf Course in order to build 300 to 400 manufactured homes. He said Whittaker provided suggestions as to how Build Richland can move forward and how the permitting and zoning process did not work well.

“He shared a lot of data of communities where it does work well, so I think we have some best practices we can look at with these developers,” Mears said.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Commissioners OK tornado siren repair contract, hold CDBG hearing