Flood issue challenges Columbiana council
COLUMBIANA — City officials will try to come up with the engineering costs that could indicate what city residents would have to pay monthly to eliminate decades of storm flooding.
Council on Tuesday heard comments from the public on the problem but made no decision.
Fees of $3, $5 or $10 dollars a month have been discussed.
But when Keith Chamberlin, the city manager, was asked what people would be willing to pay, he said: “People would vote for the lowest rate.”
Daniel Blasdell, the municipal attorney, said, “It would not bode well if you put it on the ballot.”
Councilman Bob Bieshelt said, “We do have people in Columbiana who live off Social Security. We have people with two or three kids and have no job.”
Mayor David Spatholt said council is trying to determine if it has enough revenue, and that was hard to do.
The city does know it has 2,754 residential accounts, 43 commercial accounts and 23 industrial accounts. he city has an opportunity to get up to 75 percent of $10 million funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stop flooding.
To pay for the remaining 25 percent, $2.5 million, city officials are considering the monthly fee.
Alex Snyder, who was a councilman in Columbiana in the 1980s, said that council had grappled with the flooding problem then and couldn’t fix it. City officials have said the city has plans going back to the 1960s to try to solve the problem.
One woman told council, “People are being flooded time after time after time, and year after year after year.”
A city resident told council that the only certainty in the next five years was more taxes and rain.