PERRYSBURG — The city’s road repair budget was effectively doubled last week as city council approved an
additional $960,000 that was headed for a reserve fund.
Requested by Mayor Mike Olmstead, the funds will be diverted via a budget amendment from a planned
deposit to the city’s reserve fund, leaving city council and administrators the rest of the year to find
areas to cut in order to make a reserve deposit. The amendment received a first-reading at city
council’s March 4 meeting and will supplement the $940,000 originally earmarked for road repairs.
City Administrator Bridgette Kabat said there was already a list of problem areas prior to this winter,
which will be bolstered when additional road surveys come back with new trouble spots affected by snow
and ice. Areas will be prioritized once that list is updated, she said.
Before unanimously approving the measure, several councilors expressed support for continued reserve
funding and said diverting that money should be rare.
The reserve fund has a balance of about $1.7 million and will not be reduced to supplement road funds.
The fund was touted as one reason the city received a boost to its credit rating in December.
After reading aloud a similar message delivered to councilors by former member Sara Weisenburger, council
member Todd Grayson suggested the budget be trimmed by about two percent throughout the year to make up
for the rerouted reserve deposit.
“It sounds like a ton of money, and in effect it really is, but I think there’s an important point to
note that this is only a few percentage points of our budget, and if this were a home or a business, we
would do our darndest to find a few points that we could cut out of our budget as the year progressed,”
Grayson said.
Asked by council member Rick Rettig what a comfortable level for the reserve fund would be, Grayson
touched on an earlier discussion on whether to fund it to about $4 million, or if there should be
separate accounts for a general reserve and a capital reserve meant for large, unexpected projects.
“If we can make $1.8 million disappear like nothing on our roads, I think we might need more,” Grayson
said.
Council member Tim McCarthy agreed on selective use of the funds, but said road repair qualified as an
unexpected need.
“I think the purpose of such a fund is to deal with extraordinary expenses and circumstances,” McCarthy
said.
“This winter … there is kind of an extraordinary need.