Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Oregon mayor Steven Salander issued a proclamation regarding future land use to highlight the latest city council meeting on July 13.
His proclamation declared that the city will follow the Oregon Master Plan’s Future Land Use Map, which “emphasizes the need to protect agricultural lands and natural areas, ensuring development enhances, rather than diminishes, the community’s identity and growth.”
In doing so, the city is designating the land east of Wynn Road and north of Corduroy Road as land for a “suburban cluster” to be used for attached and detached single-family and multi-family homes.
“There has been talk over the last roughly year or so since the spring of last year with the election cycle going on of a potential second data center across in the land that I'm speaking of here,” Salander said. “During that time, for a little over a year, we had ourselves a committee of city people, citizens, stakeholders in Oregon come together to work on that master plan and how we as a community, not we as a government, want our city to be and how we want it to be developed. This is simply a promise that I will follow the way the community has decided in that work on the master plan how the community wants to see Oregon. I know I've said it in the past, but I wanted to do it in a way that was a little bit more official.”
In unrelated news, Salander announced the resignations of a maintenance worker in the water department, a police officer and a firefighter EMT. Council also approved the hirings of nine new part-time firefighters.
Salander’s mayor’s report also included news that, along with city administrator Brody Walters, he met with state representative Elgin Rogers in an effort for all parties to better get to know each other.
“It was a nice conversation, but it's just good to have those relations with the state because we do have needs that we want to get their ear and see if we can't get up this way,” Salander said.
Following that, Salander said he received an email from Will Turner of Capacity LLC, and they have tentatively set a date of July 28 to have a conversation and hopefully have the end user for the potential data center named.
“I don't yet know who the end user is,” Salander said. “But as soon as I know, I'll make sure that you know. That's where I'm at, and we'll be getting the community advisory board together here very shortly as well.”
On the topic of data centers, prominent city data council detractors — Jim Davis, Laura Davis and Connie Trudell — all spoke during the resident portion of the meeting. Trudell had several questions, which were answered by the mayor.
Salander said he believes the developers are still doing environmental tests at the site, but that the city hasn’t done anything further with the data center since the initial six-month extension was issued.
“As far as the extension. I have not heard of any talk of any further extension,” he said. “I have stated before also that I am completely opposed to any other extensions.”
Salander said he isn’t aware of any connection with the developer and a potential data center in Genoa, as well.
Meanwhile, Ruth Schuffenecker Price of Seaman Road spoke during the resident portion, stating that her family’s name is being dragged through the mud, with people claiming that her family is responsible for the data center because her distant family dating back to the 1800s brought heavy industry to Oregon.
“This person that has defamed by name, my parents’ name, my great grandfather’s name, my grandfather’s name is very childish, very rude,” she said. “We’ve gotten way off the track with this.”
Another resident, Brian Sniegocki of Eagles Landing Drive, said that there is “so much misunderstanding” about the data center topic.
“When you start talking about gas turbines and things like that, like we're running (at) Oregon Clean Energy, I'm about a mile and a half from the Oregon Clean Energy plant,” he said. “I was sitting on my back porch last night. That plant was running, and I was watching the Meyer brothers harvest their straw bales. And they're a half a mile away, and I can hear their equipment, but I can't hear the turbines running at Oregon Clean Energy. So when they're talking about 80 and 100 decibels of noise, I don't know where it's coming from. Why can Oregon Clean Energy run so quiet, yet the electric generation at the data centers is going to be so noisy? I don't understand how that's going to happen.”
St. Jude Dream Home
Nick Aubrey and his business partner, Lucy Sedlak, were also in attendance. The pair recently opened up Infinity Real Estate School on Navarre Avenue, and they were there to discuss the St. Jude Dream Home being in Oregon this year.
“It's an outstanding cause,” Aubrey said. “St. Jude Children's Research Hospital provides all of the treatment, food, care, everything that the families and kids need as they're going through this terrible time in their life. These families owe absolutely nothing. St. Jude's takes care of absolutely all of that. The nice thing about the St. Jude Dream Home is it provides for the St. Jude Children's Hospital.
“It's an absolute zero-cost build, so all the materials, the roofing, the lumber, everything is donated. All the labor is donated. The only thing as a community that we need to do is to rally around it and buy St. Jude Dream Home tickets as they raffle off the house. It's $100 a ticket, and 100 percent of that goes to St. Jude.”
The home is at 5922 Kacy Lane in Oregon’s Bay Meadows Subdivision, and the duo would like to see the city help support the sale of the raffle tickets, of which 22,500 will be sold. Sedlak said that 14,600 tickets were sold as of the city council session and that the following three weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, will feature open houses to the public. At those open houses, residents can purchase raffle tickets to potentially win the home, or they can secure a free raffle ticket just for attending in which the grand prize is a $10,000 gift card.
Sedlak also said they had 1,000 visitors at the previous open house, but that there is currently no advertising in the city. She said they heard that St. Jude’s was denied the opportunity to put a secondary billboard on Navarre, although they admitted that was told to them through a third party, so they weren’t 100 percent sure of its validity.
“That’s kind of a disservice when you have that much traffic passing through and people sitting at traffic lights when they could have been purchasing a ticket off of their cell phones,” she said. “All of the money again goes to these sick kids. What this does, though, is it brings so much publicity to the community. This is free advertisement to Oregon, Ohio. With that being said, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to welcome St. Jude's Dream Home. It's never been on this side of the town. Perrysburg, Sylvania, Waterville. Never Oregon, Ohio.”
Thus, Sedlak encouraged council members to attend an upcoming open house, which will take place July 18-19, July 25-26 and Aug. 1-2. They will be 9 a.m to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and noon to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
“This is a huge opportunity for this community,” she said. “Please, we're just asking that everybody rally around it.”
Salander said if there’s anything council can do, they will. Council member Dennis Walendzak said he owns a commercial property on Navarre, and he can help assist with a sign. Other council members also expressed support, and some said they weren’t able to attend the first open house because of the flooding in the area that provided a need for cleanup.
Senior center levy
Oregon’s finance director Nick Roman discussed how the city will have a senior services and facilities levy on the ballot this November, which would be a half-mill and support the senior center. It equates to $18 for each $100,000 of the county auditor’s market value. It is estimated to generate $376,000 per year if it passes.
Roman said quite a few seniors were in attendance to show their support, including senior center director Paula Benton.
“I do want to thank all my seniors for being here tonight in support of the levy,” Benton said. “It's a very vital, important thing for the elderly in Oregon, so I'm pleased with people that show up to show their support.”
Other topics
Council also discussed an application for a Nature Works grant to provide accessibility improvements at South Shore Veterans Park, which would include rubberized surfaces.
Another topic focused on changes in the law regarding the necessity of roundabouts in relation to the number of accidents at a particular intersection. Council said they need to further evaluate the new regulations when potentially evaluating between a roundabout and a four-way stop.
