FR works toward paving

Fort Recovery is moving closer to seeing its street overlay project begin.
Village administrator Randy Diller told village council an employee from Wagner Paving will visit soon to look at the streets involved and discuss a timeline for the project.
First, Railroad, Boundary, Broadway, Oak, Third, High and Wagner streets will be repaved between now and September.
Wagner Paving bid $227,769.25 on the project, coming in lower than the engineer’s estimate and the two other bids the village received.
Council members Rob Thobe, Dave Garman, Dave Kaup, Dave Bretz, Allen Post and Cliff Wendel unanimously voted to transfer $220,000 from the general fund to the street fund to pay for the project.
Council also decided to purchase two Ford pickup trucks, one for the utility department and one for the street department, from Les Wenning Motors. The cost per truck is $21,550, which comes in above the state bid of $20,693.
However, purchasing the state bid trucks would require traveling to a dealership near Cleveland. Those trucks would be General Motors, and the village’s trucks are all Fords now.
Wendel asked what the village had done in the past.
“Wennings has always been able to match,” Thobe said. “In the past the state bid has always been a Ford truck. This is the first year that it’s not been a Ford truck that I can recall.”
Mayor Roger Broerman said he’d rather buy locally and keep the fleet uniform, and council unanimously agreed to buy from Wenning.
In other business, council:
•Heard income tax revenue for the year so far is $682,484, down from last year’s total of $734,205 last year at this time, but close to 2013’s total at the end of June.
•Heard Diller has received a $32,500 bid from Tom’s Construction in St. Henry, Ohio, for lagoon improvements. Changes in hydraulics will allow the lagoon to operate more effectively, Diller said. Currently sewage enters in the middle and does not pass through the entire lagoon before exiting.