Now that all of the provisional ballots have been tallied the measure passed by four votes or 374 in favor and 370 against. Unzicker said while the margin is miniscule it’s not enough to trigger a recount, so the result stands with a successful new five-year streets levy.
She said if there were only a three-vote difference a recount would have been required, “we were over what that threshold would have been for the automatic recount, narrowly, but over.”
There are 19 lane miles throughout the village to maintain and the new levy will collect about $91,000 annually, with the first installment arriving in February, according to the Butler County auditor.
Mayor Jewel Hensley was thrilled with the turnaround.
“As soon as the tax money starts coming in the street department will start working on the alleys and the roads,” she said. “Because that’s what that tax money was for.”
Before the election Street Department Head Jimmy Lakes told the Journal-News if the levy failed, “pothole patches is about all they’ll be able to get.” Now he said he plans to leverage some of the new revenue — using it for local match money —to get as many grants as possible.
“First I want to see how much I can use grant-wise,” he said. “I want to stretch this money as far as I can for the village. I want to do as many grants as I can, to try to get as much out of it as I can.”
There are a couple areas of the village he said he’ll target first for repairs, Seven Mile Avenue, Augsperger Road and Augspurger Avenue and the Cherokee Park neighborhood “is in bad, bad shape as far as the streets are just cracked to pieces, there’s really no maintaining them they’ve gone so far, so long they need replaced.”
Hensley has said repeatedly the city council is trying to make inroads in cleaning up the village and the successful street levy is a giant step in the right direction, “the only way that the village is going to survive is if we start getting revenue in here.”
“People come through here and automatically assume this is a trashy place with trashy people because some of the houses are real mess, the streets and alleys are a real mess,” she said. “Our overall vision and goal is to actually get it cleaned up and make it inviting for businesses to want to come in or maybe some new housing.”
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