MANSFIELD — Water rates. Water meters. Water seepage at the Clearfork Reservoir dam.
And on Nov. 7, it’s aging water mains.
Water is the news gift that keeps on giving to the City of Mansfield in 2023.
H2O will be back in the news on Election Day when city voters decide on a requested 1/4-percent income tax increase aimed at beginning the process of replacing 53 miles of aging, four-inch water mains.
City Council, without expressing support for the proposal put forth by Mansfield attorney Eric Miller, voted 7-1 in June to put the issue on the ballot.
‘Water is life’
“I understand people might feel tired of hearing about water. But whether you are a plant or an animal or any living thing, water is life,” Miller said Monday of the citizen-led petition.
“That fact will be especially clear to unfortunate residents who have a fire in their home and no way of getting out while they are waiting for the fire department to get water into their hoses to put it out,” he said.
“I am fired up about this proposal,” he said.
Miller and other supporters put together a website, MansfieldWaterMainInitiative.com, to get information out to voters, including a Q&A page and videos with detailed explanations.
He said an informational marketing campaign is planned in the weeks before the election, including speeches to organizations and clubs that would like more information.
“We are available to speak to any group that will have us,” Miller said. “Give us five minutes. We don’t need to be your entire program. We will set a timer at five minutes and stay within it.”
‘We’re going to go out and make our case to the public’
Miller, who helped create the “Pothole Haters Tax” in the city in 1984, told council members in June that the new tax would generate $17 to $18 million over its four-year life span.
“We’re going to go out and make our case to the public,” Miller said after the June 6 meeting, saying a lack of fire hydrant water pressure due to inadequate water lines affects 2,400 addresses in the city.
“That’s a lot of people. We just have to get the word out and hopefully people will recognize the need for fire safety,” Miller said.
Miller’s citizen-initiative proposal came just a few months after council approved adding a “readiness to serve” charge to local water bills in the hopes of generating enough money to maintain the water delivery system and begin the process of replacing lines.
That “readiness” charge is estimated to generate about $2.7 million annually. Mansfield city engineer Bob Bianchi said about $850,000 of that could go to water main replacement, about 1 percent of the city’s water lines annually.
Bianchi told council at the same meeting that it will cost between $70 and $80 million to replace all of the four-inch water mains in the city, some of which are more than a century old.
“So that means (it would take) 100 years to take care of 60 miles of water main that are a problem right now. That kind of gradualism … it just isn’t going to work,” Miller told council.
What will it cost?
Miller said retired residents living on Social Security or pension benefits will not pay more if the proposal is approved.
Organizers said 1/3 of income taxes in the city are paid by people who live outside the city, but work within it.
“If you make $40,000 a year, this plan will cost you $2 per week,” Miller said. “If you make $100,000, it will cost $5 per week.”
He said for those working part-time, “every time you make $20, it will cost you a nickel.”
The longtime local attorney said it’s impossible to determine the cost of a human life that may be lost in a fire when the MFD struggles with unreliable hydrants.
“If I tried to pass a law that said firefighters responding to an alarm must sit in their vehicles for three minutes before leaving the fire station, people would say I am crazy.
“There are 2,400 structures around the city that may just as well have that three-minute delay while firefighters find a way to get water at the scene of a fire,” Miller said.
Tired of hearing ‘the timing isn’t right’
When City Council approved putting the issue on the ballot, At-large Councilman Phil Scott, the longest-tenured local legislator, said he had no problems putting the issue on the ballot.
“We all know that Mr. Miller was behind the Pothole Haters Tax. And we know how successful that has been through the years. He and his colleagues look at that frequently to make sure that those funds are going for the paving of our streets. And I think Mansfield has some of the best streets around us,” Scott said.
“If we put this on the ballot and let the citizens decide if they want it, great. If they don’t, well, they’ve spoken. I’ve been an advocate that we need to do something for the water mains in this town for a long time because a lot of them are really old.
“The city of Mansfield has kicked the can down the road, down the road, down the road. I think it’s time that we step up and put this on the ballot and let the voters decide what they want to do,” Scott said.
During a City Council meeting in June, one of the residents urging support was local businessman Rick Taylor, a third-generation industrial entrepreneur and current owner of Hudson & Essex fine dining in downtown Mansfield.
“If you look around the city of Mansfield, you see the gas company. They’re working in every neighborhood, replacing all the gas lines. If you look at the electric utilities, you see Ohio Edison out putting up new lines all the time.
“If you look at the City of Mansfield, you see them plugging holes in the old pipes all the time,” Taylor said.
He said Hudson & Essex has been without water three times in the past two years. He said at his former company, Jay Plastics, the manufacturer would lose water service four times a year.
“It’s a real problem … if we want to look like a third-world country because we don’t want to invest in our infrastructure. You’re inheriting what everybody pushed back,” Taylor said.
“Nobody put money into this system for years and years and years and we’re all stuck with it. We have got do something. We cannot keep kicking that can down the road,” he said.
Miller agreed on Monday.
“I hear it a lot from people who say they support the proposal, but ‘the timing isn’t right.’ This work wasn’t done long ago because the timing has never been right.
“We have a big problem, but it’s buried underground and it doesn’t become urgent until your house or business is on fire or a broken old water main interrupts the water supply.
“We are forcing residents to play Russian Roulette with their water supply,” he said. “If people are tired of hearing about (water), it’s better to hear about it than have to go without it.”
“Anyone who is rational and gets informed will strongly be in favor of voting for this tax,” Miller said.