ASHLAND — After nearly two years of meeting in the Ashland City Schools’ Administrative Offices Building, City Council returned Tuesday night to its newly renovated meeting room at City Hall on Claremont Avenue.
Previously, the room had been a converted courtroom accompanied with plaster falling from the seating, dreary lighting, pew seating and a judge’s bench stationed behind council. All of the old fixtures and pews were gathered by the Historical Society with the intention of utilizing them for a mock courtroom in the future.
The room comes fully equipped with modernized technological advances including a projection system, iPads at every councilman’s desk and, of course, the City of Ashland’s “A” logo on the wall shadowing the council.
Mayor Matt Miller acknowledged all of those involved in the renovation project, including B.J. Ritter and Jeff Boyer. The project acted as Boyer’s swan song, as he retired following the completion of the new meeting room.
The first topic discussed during the meeting was updating the city’s online tax filing system software. The Civica software will modernize the ability of Ashland residents to submit tax returns. It also provides an increasingly automated system for online collection of payments.
Plans are to implement the new system in June of 2020. It will offer more information, increase efficiency and also include a remote backup system in the unlikely circumstance that data cannot be accessed. Those who do not like using a computer to submit their tax returns can still submit a return in person.
The council approved going to bid for the exterior renovation of the 16 East Main Street Building.
“This would include a complete renovation of the front side that faces Main Street,” Miller said. “It will also include a renovation of the east side that stands prominently over Whitaker Myers and where we are seeing some of the plaster material fall off of the side.”
Additionally, the back side of the building will be restored. The city received a $225,000 grant to put towards the renovation.
There have been discussions regarding the building’s future usage for Ashland city governmental entities, but nothing is set in stone.
“It’s no different than the Pump House mess; it sat there for decades because people didn’t want to take the risk and make the proper decisions to deal with it,” Miller said. “But the problem is, when you don’t deal with these buildings, it drops the value of all of the downtown and all of the neighboring buildings, and who knows what economic development projects it keeps from coming here?”
The council also confirmed rumors of a potential roundabout at the intersection of Faultess Drive, Cottage Street and US 250. Council approved entering discussions with ODOT to move forward and design a modern improvement to the intersection.
“This is an ongoing discussion that has occurred for decades on how to make that intersection safer,” Miller said. “Over the years, traffic studies have been done and each time the professional traffic studies came back they determined that it did not warrant a traffic signal, so the city can’t just go out and put up a traffic signal in this location.”
Without a signal, a roundabout would statistically make this particular significantly safer, he concluded. ODOT will provide approximately $2 million to make this location safer.
The roundabout will be designed to handle 60 foot-plus tractor trailers. It will also be a single lane.
The city is expected to pay 10 percent of the preliminary and environmental costs for this project.
“This is moving the city forward for sure,” said councilman Steve Workman.
The project is expected to begin and finish construction in the year 2022.
