• The Future of Galion

    A regular look at news and developments impacting the future of our community.

    Rate Reductions on the Horizon

    by  • May 7, 2010 • Life in Galion, News & Views, The Future of Galion • 15 Comments

    Attendees to this morning’s Galion City Council Finance Committee meeting were treated to a complex discussion with repeated references to fund balances, accounting principles and local governmental responsibilities. The real “meat” of the meeting, however, was a revelation that provided the first real hope of reducing the city’s unpopular and unwieldy utility rate increases.

    All three members of the Committee were present for the meeting – Chairperson Walter Keib, Councilman Gail Baldinger and Councilwoman Roberta Wade. The meeting began with Keib laying out a general background of the increase, noting that for many years, accounting principles have led to a situation where fund balances in the general operations and enterprise (utilities) funds project an illusion of surplus and shortage that may have limited relationship to reality. In the operating fund, … Read the rest

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    Poll of the Week

    by  • May 1, 2010 • Life in Galion, News & Views, The Future of Galion • 9 Comments

    These are the results of this week’s GalionLive poll. We asked the following question on both GalionLive and our Facebook Page:

    What do you think of City Council’s vote to hire Gene Toy as City Manager?

    When considering the results of this poll, here are a few facts:

    1. Over 75 individuals participated in the voting process. Each poll was conducted so that no person could vote more than once.

    2. On both sites, no single vote was traceable at any time. No one, including the site owner/administrator, knows who voted in what manner.

    3. Of course, this poll was not conducted in a scientific manner. The results, therefore, can be left to the person making the interpretation. That shared, it is interesting to note that the readership on each … Read the rest

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    Fiber-Optics

    by  • April 27, 2010 • News & Views, The Future of Galion • 1 Comment

    Galion and Google – has a ring to it, doesn’t it? The city is one of hundreds nationally vying for a unique connection with the huge Internet company.

    In 2003, the City of Galion completed some work on installation of a fiber-optic ring, according to the website of the Galion Area Chamber of Commerce (see here). The ring is designed to provide the community with the highest-possible speeds in Internet service at low cost, thereby not only enhancing the local quality of life, but also serving as an incentive for business investment.

    With the recent sale of PECO II to Lineage Power Holdings, Inc., one of the last surviving elements of the city’s former telecommunications industry has an uncertain future. While company leaders recently shared optimistic words with local … Read the rest

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    The Ups and Downs of Uptowne Galion

    by  • April 22, 2010 • Life in Galion, News & Views, The Future of Galion • 1 Comment

    The economic cycles of the last twenty years have seen the fortunes of Uptowne Galion ebb and flow, and the changing rates of storefront vacancies are a highly-visible indicator of those cycles. Nevertheless, Galion’s central business district appears to be faring as well as might be expected given the current economy, at least when compared with several other Ohio communities.

    Across Ohio, communities are facing a higher-than-usual rate of empty downtown storefronts. Recent news stories have highlighted the issue of vacancies in communities such as Mentor (click here) and Lancaster (click here). A recent trip through Downtown Delaware, for instance, reveals a startling change. Five years ago, retail storefronts were at a premium there, buoyed by a local economy that enjoyed record low unemployment rates. Now, several vacancies … Read the rest

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