By JANET ROMAKER
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Article published Thursday, July 27, 2006
If residents in Sylvania and Sylvania Township are interested in putting a merger question on the November ballot, the Aug. 24 filing deadline is fast approaching.
Some officials are predicting that the issue likely will remain off the ballot for at least another year. Meanwhile, a merger study is moving ahead and another study has been put on hold.
The urban affairs center at the University of Toledo is conducting a study on the possibility of creating one Sylvania community. Cost for the study is $25,000. The urban affairs center is contributing $9,000 toward the expense; donations will cover the balance.
As of last week, just over $1,000 was still needed in donations, said Frank Kozak, president of the Sylvania Area Community Improvement Corporation that is the facilitator for the merger study. It's expected that the study could be completed by mid-September, he said.
Sylvania Township Trustee Dee Dee Liedel, who is concerned that the study's lists of advantages and disadvantages could be biased, recently contacted a Columbus law firm that has experience with the merger process. In a letter to Mrs. Liedel, attorney John Albers stated that a thorough merger analysis would cost between $10,000 and $25,000.
A member of the feasibility study committee, Mrs. Liedel said that trustees discussed Mr. Albers proposal, but took no action on it. She wants to wait and see whether residents put the merger issue on the ballot before trustees spend money on a study.
"The merger process is driven by grassroots politics. It is driven by people who circulate a petition to put the merger on the ballot," she said.
Besides gathering names on the petition, residents would need to get at least 10 people - five each from the city and township - who would be willing to serve on a merger commission.
The merger issue could go before voters in a general election; if voters approve the formation of the merger commission, the members would be charged with negotiating how the two entities would be combined, and they would have to deal with issues ranging from tax structure to road improvements for the combined community, she said.
A year after the merger commission is formed, the merger question would go back in front of the voters, and the majority of voters from both the city and township would have to approve the issue in order for the merger to occur, Mrs. Liedel said.
"It really is a grass-roots thing. It is not about elected officials, although I feel obligated to become involved and be informed" as a trustee," she said.
Sylvania Councilman Doug Haynam, a feasibility study committee member, said he isn't hearing any talk in the community about petition efforts or about people volunteering to serve on a merger commission. "
I think it is a monumental task to find five people from both the city and the township willing to take on the tasks associated with a merger commission," he said.
There might not be any rush to put the merger question on the ballot because a lot of Sylvania area residents "are surprised to learn that we are not a merged community," Mr. Haynam said.
He pointed out that when he ran for Sylvania City Council, a number of township residents told him that they wanted to vote for him, but his name wasn't on their ballots.
"I had to explain the difference" between the township and the city, he said. "I think a lot of people consider us to be one community. We do a lot of things well together. We have a premier school district, a first-class recreation district, and a shared fire department. We get a lot of things done. We have the Olander Park System. When you think about those things, you can understand why people think we're a single community."
However, the city and the township are "two very separate" entities, each with its own distinctive form of government, he said.
A fair amount of work still needs done to answer questions about "how we would put together a new city of Sylvania," Mr. Haynam said. Conducting a feasibility study, he said, "is exactly where we ought to be" at this point in the merger discussions.
"I am pretty open to the need to look at this in a critical way," he said, adding that he wants to be able to make a presentation to residents that is thorough and well-reasoned
Then, he said, residents could make intelligent decisions about the future of the community.
The merger issue, he said, "is neither a township or a city issue. It is a community issue." And the study, he noted, will be a community-funded study, not one funded by either governmental units.