PLYMOUTH — Plymouth residents may be able to cross that bridge again when they come to it.
Richland County commissioners on Thursday approved an “inter-governmental agreement” with Huron County that could lead to a long-awaited $3.3 million replacement of a railroad bridge that has been closed for more than three years.
“This agreement is good news for the residents of the the village of Plymouth,” Richland County administrator Andrew Keller said.
The bridge at West Broadway Street and Baseline Road, built in 1950, has been closed for more than three years. Ashland Railway closed the bridge in July 2022 due to safety concerns in the village of about 1,700 residents.
Keller said the State of Ohio has agreed to fund $3 million for the project through various funds, leaving the need for $308,000 from local sources.
The village is funding $92,000, according to Keller, and the two counties will split the $210,000 remaining difference between each county’s Board of Commissioners and county engineers’ offices.
Richland County commissioners and county Engineer Adam Gove committed to assisting in the financing in January on the project that straddles the line between the two counties.
He said Huron County commissioners are expected to vote on the agreement on Tuesday.
Keller said the agreement guarantees each county to allocate up to $250,000 if final costs for the project rise above estimates.
“It’s really a success of collaboration between the local governments. Most importantly, the big winners here are the residents of Plymouth, as well as folks traveling through,” Keller said.
The administrator said working out details with Huron County since January has “been a long, deliberative process.”
“Frankly, this agreement had to drafted to allocate financial responsibility. I think (any delay) has mainly been a product of regularly scheduled meeting times for the different local units of government,” Keller said.
The village of Plymouth, working with the Ohio Department of Transportation, will seek bids for the project.
“I believe the goal is to get (the project) done this year,” Keller said.
County building department seeks software proposals
Commissioners on Thursday also approved a request from Richland County Building Department Director Steve Risser to seek proposals for new permitting software for his department.
Risser said the software would “modernize our operations, provide some additional customer service, provide some availability of online services, streamline some workflows and help help balance some of the staff that we’ve lost here.”
Risser said the department in the last couple of years has lost a full-time building official, a full-time clerk and a part-time clerk’s position.
“Going farther back, from before my tenure back, in starting in January 2024, there was another full-time plans examiner position, which was a professional level position, as well, an architect’s position that was not backfilled, either,” he said.
“We’ve developed some budgetary costs, typically with these these scenarios, there’s an implementation cost, a setup cost and then there is an annual maintenance cost for software,” he said.
He said it would be a cloud-based system that would be accessible through the internet,
“You can access it from anywhere, which also helps our IT staff, as well,” Risser said.
“We’ve asked for an initial three-year contract with the option to renew after two years,” he said. “That seems pretty standard.”
Commissioner Cliff Mears said the software would be an optimization of customer service in the county.
“It factors in the growth that we’re experiencing now and we’re going to experience (in the future). I think it’s really going to set us up for the coming years to optimize the operations in the building department,” Mears said.
Risser said the RFP will be posted to the county’s bids/RFPs page at https://www.richlandcountyoh.gov/bids on Monday. He hopes to have a bid selected by May 19.
(Below is a PDF from the Richland County Building Department seeking proposals for new permitting software. The RFP was approved by county commissioners on Thursday.)
