Council Hears Presentation for Water Improvement Plan
Public Works Director Jeff Baumann and Marvin Gnagy, owner of PMG Consulting Inc., presented Council with a General Plan of Improvements for the Water Treatment Plan. PMG Consulting was given a $132,000 contract on July 1, 2025 to produce the plan, which is 256 pages long and includes roughly 800 pages of appendices. The broad goal of the plan was to identify gaps between the current wastewater treatment plant, which was built in 1960, and current and future standards and regulation for water processing.
The plan reviewed a series of options for the City going forward, including buying water from neighboring municipalities. After going through the process of how the City and PMG produced the plan, Gnagy listed the recommendations for improvement. The smaller capital improvement recommendations were lengthy and ran the gamut from interior painting to replacing filter media. Gnagy also recommended the installation of a reverse osmosis membrane treatment, a more efficient system that would also help future-proof the plant. If Council votes in the future to enact the plan, the combined estimated costs are $11.4 million. The plan estimates this installation to increase water rates by 28 percent and to increase residents’ costs from $51.40 a month to $65.80 a month. Gnagy pointed out that this would still be less than the projected cost of purchasing water from neighboring municipalities. The plan estimates that the cost of purchasing water from Elyria or the Rural Lorain County Water Authority would be $74 or $96.93 a month, respectively. If Council approves the plan, Gnagy said the entire process until completion of the improvements could potentially take five years.
Council Passes Two Motions to Procure New Garbage Truck
Council unanimously approved two motions to take immediate effect this past Monday to dispose and replace one of the City’s five garbage trucks. Baumann reported to Council that one of the trucks, a 2014 Crane Carrier LET2-44 with Heil PowerTrak Work Body, is out of service, and recommended authorizing its disposal. Later in the meeting, he recommended that Council authorize the City Manager to contract Indianapolis-based Best Equipment Company Inc. to purchase a new commercial rear-load refuse collection vehicle. The new truck is expected to cost the City $391,000. Baumann estimated that the new truck will be in the City’s hands in 8–9 months.
Council Postpones Final Vote on Ordinance For Police Department Video Retrieval Policy
After hearing a proposal to adopt a policy on the production and retrieval of video records of Oberlin’s Police Department and Prosecutor’s Office for the third time, City Council voted unanimously to postpone voting on the proposal. The new policy would establish guidelines based on the similar Ohio House Bill 315 requiring individuals to pay a fee to access video records. The policy also provisions that the fee be waived automatically for anyone victimized by events in a requested video.
“There are some outstanding questions that I’m not entirely sure of, and I’m not comfortable moving ahead with this until some of the questions can be answered,” Law Director Jon D. Clark said, requesting that Council postpone.
Among these questions was whether the fee would be for the initial work of preparing the records, or if it would be for anyone who wished to access the records, even if they had already been made. Clark noted that it didn’t make much sense if only the first requester had to pay for a section of video. He also said that a formula still had to be figured out for how the City would accommodate the labor costs of actually producing the records. Council voted to postpone the vote to give Clark time to look into the questions and report back to Council. After the vote, Council President Eboni A. Johnson, OC ’97, thanked Clark for his diligence.
Council Accepts Bid To Improve Depot Bike Path and Parking Lot
Council voted to immediately put into effect an ordinance accepting RMH Concrete and Foundation Co.’s bid to improve a section of the North Coast Inland Trail between South Professor Street and South Main Street, as well as the nearby Oberlin Depot parking lot. In 2025, Council budgeted $90,000 to repair that bricked section of the bike path, which is currently in various states of disrepair. After inspecting the site in spring of that year and meeting with the owners of the Oberlin Depot, the Nord Family Foundation, City Engineer Randall Roberts and Baumann suggested the bike path improvement project be expanded to include the Depot parking lot and driveway.
“We may achieve a modest economy of scale in the design phase, in construction and in the cost of inspection services,” Baumann said in the report. Both the bike path and the parking lot will require asphalt work. The contractors will take half an inch off the parking lot surface before repaving it, mark two new accessible parking spaces, and improve the access ramp. Most of the bike path section will be paved in asphalt, except the parts of the path directly in front and to the sides of the building staying bricked. Baumann made special note that some of the historical bricks on the path were to be reused for the project, which Council President Johnson called “really cool.” The cost of the project was estimated by Roberts to be $131,681.51, of which the Nord Family Foundation is estimated to contribute $30,000–35,000.
