MADISON TOWNSHIP — Madison Township trustees approved the 2023 final budget at nearly $4 million on Monday evening.
Compared to the 2023 temporary budget, fiscal officer Leanna Rhodes said she made few changes.
“Anything I did was minimal, we just had to increase our costs for Medicare taxes with the recent salary raises,” she said.
The exact final appropriations rang in at $3,979,949.80 — about $337,000 above the estimated budget of $3.6 million. Rhodes said, in addition to salary increases, maintenance and machinery costs increased more than expected for 2023.
The final budget was about 18% over total estimated revenue.
Trustee Tom Craft said he wasn’t too concerned about final appropriations, noting he and Rhodes have been talking with the state auditor’s office about how to get out of fiscal caution.
“All we can do is watch it,” he said. “If we need to make an adjustment, we’ll do that. If we don’t, we won’t.”
The township has appropriated $418,807 of its $900,000 unused ARPA funds for use this year. ARPA funds must be spent by the end of 2024.
Craft said he wants to issue a bid for road repairs this spring. Each of the three trustees drove a portion of the township roads and reported to each other the roads they thought needed paved, chip-and-seal work or blade patched.
“Some of the roads that get a lot of traffic are in sad shape,” Craft said. “Blade patching doesn’t hold up in those areas when it’s too wet.”
Between the three lists of roads that need repairs, trustees estimated it would cost the township $504,000, more than twice their allotted budget of $235,000 for the year.
“Now we’ll rank the roads one through 10; a five would be passable but needs done in the next year,” Craft said. “We’ll have to cut about half these roads off the list.”
Before trustees can put out a bid package for summer road paving, they will narrow down a list of roads that need repair work in a special meeting and vote to approve that list during a regular meeting in the future.
Also in Monday’s meeting:
— Swank announced the township sold its old Gradall for $1,888.
— Fire Chief Ken Justus said Medic 71 is being lettered and expected to be ready for use next week.
— Justus said the fire department expects a new tanker in April.
— The fire department is considering marking water hydrants in partnership with the City of Mansfield so firefighters can see from a distance how much water is available and what connection sizes hydrants need.
— Justus said he wants to launch a local ROPER lock box program to help firefighters enter homes in emergencies for people who can’t easily answer their own doors. He said these boxes would be paid for by homeowners and installed by the fire department, helping elderly people or residents with disabilities have peace of mind and not have to replace a door after an emergency.
