Reversal: Mansfield City Council puts Water Main Initiative on March ballot

MANSFIELD — Long-time Mansfield business owner Rick Taylor didn’t mince words Tuesday night in successfully urging City Council to change its mind on the Water Main Initiative.

“If you don’t put this (0.25-percent income tax) issue on the March ballot, what is your alternate plan?” he asked.

“As a legislative body, you’re responsible for providing water to the residents of Mansfield, not only for their everyday use, but for their safety,” said Taylor, the former president of Jay Industries and member of the North Central Ohio Industrial Museum’s Champions of Industry Hall of Fame.

The four-year income tax, if approved by voters, would generate $17 to $18 million over its lifespan and would help the city begin the process of replacing 53 miles of aging, four-inch water lines in the community.

The push for local lawmakers to reconsider came just two weeks after council voted 6-1 not to put the issue back before voters. 1st Ward Councilwoman Laura Burns did not attend the Nov. 22 meeting.

“Opposing the plan proposed by the Water Main Initiative (group) is not a plan. I’m anxious to hear what your plan is. Do you have one? If not, please vote to allow the Mansfield Water Main initiative on the (March) ballot,” said Taylor, a third-generation local entrepreneur.

“I think a ‘no’ vote sends a message that you do not care about our water infrastructure. It shows you do not care about our safety and it shows you do not care about the city of Mansfield. That’s my thought,” said Taylor, who owns the Hudson & Essex in downtown Mansfield.

Speaking during a public utilities committee meeting, Taylor was one of several people who asked council to reconsider putting the issue back on the ballot after it failed in November, despite a campaign that showed there are 385 hydrants in the city that cannot function properly due to small water lines, some of which are a century old.

Those hydrants affect 2,400 addresses in Mansfield, according to city engineer Bob Bianchi.

During its legislative session, six of eight council members ultimately agreed, giving local attorney Eric Miller and his team another chance on the March 19 primary ballot.

Miller had said last week his committee didn’t have time to collect an estimated 1,200 voter signatures by the Dec. 20 deadline to get the issue on the ballot themselves, a fact he pointed out to council on Tuesday.

Third Ward Councilman Rev. El Akuchie was one of four lawmakers who changed his mind from two weeks ago.

“I believe that all of us here want to see the water mains replaced. Nobody wants to see people burn down or anything terrible happen in our city. I think what we’re discussing now is how do we get to that point? What do we do? And I don’t think we have any other option right now,” he said.

“We’re just sending it back (to voters) and saying, ‘Make your decision.’ And it’s still with the people to make that decision.

“We’re not imposing our will on anybody. They still have the choice. It’s their prerogative to make that final decision. I don’t want to see us kicking the can down the road for more years come. It will be a ticking bomb that when it explodes, then it’ll be too late,” Akuchie said.

At-large Councilman Phil Scott, another of the five who changed his mind from Nov. 22, said he has gone “back and forth” on the issue.

“Back in 2007, when I first ran for council president, one of the things I brought up was that the city needs to look at the water infrastructure of this town because some of those pipes down there, as we’ve heard over the last several years, they’re 100 years old and we need to look at (replacing) them,” he said.

Scott said continued population growth in Columbus and central Ohio will lead to potential growth in Mansfield.

“But who is going to want to come to Mansfield if half of our water mains and fire hydrants don’t work?

“When school levies fail, they put it back on the ballot. We can argue about the logistics. Should it be a signature initiative? Should it be the City Council putting it on?

“But the bottom line is, it needs to be put on and hopefully we can promote it and it can get passed,” Scott said.

Fifth Ward Councilman Aurelio Diaz, who cast the only “yes” vote on Nov. 22, said he believes all council members care about the residents in the city.

“They have family members here. They work here, they’ve invested here. So I do want to reiterate that. I do respect how they voted even though we didn’t vote the same way.

“Although I’m elected in Ward Five, this is a city-wide issue. And since we’ve been talking about this matter for this whole year, it seems the majority of people who reach out to me face-to-face, through email, through calls, 90 percent of those people have been in favor of the issue,” Diaz said.

At-large Councilwoman Stephanie Zader and 4th Ward Councilman Alomar Davenport against voted against putting the issue on the primary ballot.

Zader, who said Nov. 22 it seemed “disrespectful” to put the initiative on the ballot again after voters rejected it, said she supports improving the city’s water infrastructure.

She bristled, however, at Taylor’s comments on Tuesday evening and said the reversal by council was a “knee-jerk reaction, which is a lot of what we do. We respond very quickly, rather than thinking things through and planning ahead.”

“I live in a home that was built in 1930. It’s a wood home. If you know anything about older homes, if they go up in flames, they’re going to go up very quickly. I don’t see any of our fire chiefs here (tonight), but if they were here, I’m sure they would agree with me.

“The fire hydrant by my home is tagged out. So don’t think I don’t understand the necessity for this.

“To say that, to make the remarks that have been made tonight, about it being disrespectful or us not caring is absolutely false. I care about my children’s safety. I care about the safety of every person in this community,” Zader said.

“We absolutely do (care),” said Zader, who told Miller he had not asked for help in circulating petitions to place the issue on the ballot.

“You could have started getting these signatures back when you first put this out there. If you really were as passionate about this as you say, you could have started that.

“I happen to know that there’s a member of council who offered to help you get signatures. I’ve got thousands of signatures on petitions for a number of different things. I’d be happy to help you go get signatures, but I haven’t been asked,” Zader said.

“So to say that we’re expecting you to do all of the work and we’re not willing to put our time where our mouth goes is false. You haven’t asked for our help and you’ve turned down help when it has been offered to you,” she said.

Davenport said he opposed putting it back on the ballot because residents in his ward opposed a tax increase.

“My vote does not belong to me. It belongs to the people of the 4th Ward. I have a fundamental belief that as an elected official, my job is to echo what my community wants me to echo,” he said.

Davenport said he personally voted for the issue in November when he went to the polls.

“When I go to the polls, I’m not a council person. I am simply Alomar Davenport. So I am able to use my life, use what I want to do, and vote. However, when I am sitting in this (council) seat, I have to reflect what my community wants me to reflect,” he said.

“If I lived in the 1st Ward, if I lived in the 2nd Ward, if I was a council person of the 1st Ward or the 2nd Ward, I would have a different opinion.

“The people of the 1st Ward, 2nd Ward, 3rd Ward have different priorities. I live in a world where most people live paycheck to paycheck. So if you ask them to pay a tax, overwhelmingly, we voted against it because we have a different set of priorities,” Davenport said.

After the meeting, Miller said his group will again work to educate voters on the need for the tax issue.

“We’ll do more door-to-door and we’ll put more emphasis on social media. Everyone who was originally involved in the campaign was in their 70s and none of us had a Facebook page. We didn’t know what Instagram or TikTok was.

“And so this time around, we’re going to make use of that media and just do more door-to-door and then just generally keep up the educational process,” Miller said.