CIRCLEVILLE – Talk of shortfalls in the budget became a key talking point in this weeks Safety committee meeting in Circleville. Mayor Mcllroy spoke up during the meeting saying, “the city has only talked about expenses and not about revenue that we are missing. Finding people who will operate the GE and Thompson Building sites is a key to creating more revenue for the city. These are two of the biggest assets the city has, its great to get new restaurants but that won’t solve our revenue stream like these two big opportunities we have will.”
Mcllroy said that these properties are on Columbus2020 radar screen, “that he thinks they are the very top 20 sites they have, and discussions with Congressmen Steve Stivers to get the ball rolling on the mothballed GE plant is needed in our community.”
Lt. Governor Jon Husted told Sciotopost, “I believe towns like Circleville have a great future ahead of them, but they have to work to evolve, times change so we have to change with them. It helps when you have growth in your county, that helps every community. Companies view areas by access to the things they need like infrastructure and workforce. Continuing to support our communities with infrastructre with the transportation budget is really important.”
Mcllroy said that Circleville isn’t a retirement or bedroom community with Sofidel planning its expansion earlier than expected and Dupont’s 220 Million reinvestment into the Pickaway Community. “We want people who live here to work here,” Mcllroy said. We have 3 or 4 developers wanting to do things here and those are things we need to do to get these empty buildings filled.”
Councilman Tom Spring talked about a joint fire district, a combination of fire departments from townships and municipalities. Circleville’s new fire Chief Brian Thompson talked about in Circleville’s history we had a similar situation with Circleville EMS which was stationed in the Pickaway Information Center in downtown Circleville and did all of the EMS medical runs independently and the fire departments did all the rescue and fire runs. Thompson was the EMS chief for the Circleville unit until it was broken up in 2002. Thompson who has worked for Pickaway Township and Harrison Township in the past said the key would be having good mutual aid with the other departments in the area. He said that, “you have to give to get and having such a great relationship with most of the surrounding fire departments Circleville would not be a island anymore under his leadership.”
Chief Thompson also discussed two ordinances for city council to vote on in the next council meeting one to adopt the 2017 fire code and one to adopt the 2108 International property code.
