Fairfield Mayor Steve Miller, who made a campaign promise in the November 2013 election to resume the committee, doesn’t know why the councils stopped meeting.
“We should be working together to the benefit of residents in both communities,” said Miller, who served on the former committee for 10 years during his prior stint on Fairfield City Council.
Two of the marquee projects that were accomplished with the initial group of council members involved Joyce Park, a park that sits within both cities. The group talked about the St. Clair extension, which solved an accident-laden intersection and created a back entrance to Joyce Park, and renaming Forest Lake Lane to Joe Nuxhall Way.
A significant business practice was incorporated because of the committee, Miller said. Residents on the borders who were serviced with water from the other city were billed surcharges because they lived outside of the service city’s boundaries. Miller said the advisory committee helped put a stop to that practice because “it was the right thing to do,” he said.
“The real focus of this committee was to have open communication between the two cities,” Miller said.
Miller and Hamilton Mayor Pat Moeller don’t know why the animosity existed for decades between the two cites, but Miller suspected it had something to do with the attempted annexation in the 1950s of about half of Fairfield Twp. That portion incorporated into the village of Fairfield in order to block that attempt. Fairfield became a city in September 1955.
Moeller said reviving the committee can only benefit the residents of both communities. This partnership is the definition of regional cooperation, he said.
“Regionalism makes so much more sense when you have neighbors working together,” Moeller said. “It just makes sense that we plan things together.”
Other projects in Joyce Park could be a topic the advisory committee could take up, as well as joint purchasing, infrastructure projects and projects that connect the two cities.
“Why not stretch tax dollars,” said Moeller. “We’re all smart people, we’re all public servants, and I think the expectations (of residents) is to work with other cities and stretch those tax dollars.”
One of the last results of the committee was honoring Reds baseball legend Joe Nuxhall by naming a street for him that crosses the Hamilton and Fairfield borders. That happened on Oct. 15, 2007, a month to the day a month before Nuxhall died.
At a joint meeting at the Fairfield Community Arts Center, the two city councils held a joint meeting to rename the street. Nuxhall, a Hamilton native and longtime Fairfield resident, said he was more proud of the fact that the councils of the cities he loved could work together after years of animosity that had divided them.
“If we do more things in the spirit of Joe Nuxhall, think of how much of a better community we would all be,” said Moeller.
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