State of the City of Bucyrus
For the year 2009

        The past year found Bucyrus, as other cities, counties and states working extra hard to continue to provide the services that our citizens expect, while working with less income.

        Because of the good hard working supervisory staff and equally good employees, we have been able to do that.

        Our City continues to look beyond this economic recession.  Our largest project to move us ahead began with a groundbreaking on August 3, 2009, with assistance from Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher.  This was the beginning of our Downtown Revitalization.

        This project is moving along rather well because we have received good cooperation and patience from the downtown business owners.

        The beginning of this project is also part of our Storm Water separation project for this year.  With this Storm Water project we have about 30% of the city storm water removed from the sanitary sewers.

        Our Long Term Control Plan should see its completion in 2010.  This plan will give us the priorities and timeline for completing the rest of the city.

        Some not so popular subjects are the ending of garden hose production in December at Swan Tekni-Plex.  The company though, still operates the reclaim operation at this plant.

        The City also received notice that during 2010, the Timken Distribution Center will be relocated to South Carolina.

        Both of these companies have a long history in this community.

        On the upside, our General Electric Plant, which has a long history here, is bringing production from other areas and added approximately 20 jobs here in Bucyrus this past December.  With the help of the State of Ohio and the City of Bucyrus they will be investing approximately $93 million and adding another 100 jobs.

        We are continuing the purchase and tear down of homes on Lane St., Water St., Clinton St. and Russell Ave.  This has been a long process that began with the 2003 flood and increased in size with the 2007 flood.  The application for FEMA funds, supplemented locally with our CDBG funds, has allowed us to help our citizens to move out of the flood zones to better living conditions.

        As I said earlier this has been a lengthy process that has been handled though the Service-Safety Director’s office, but has been good for many of our citizens.  This should be completed in early 2010.

        Another project accomplished this year which has made a big improvement educating our students in the community was completion of the school renovations.

        This was the remodeling of our High School to a High/Middle School and remodeling of the former Middle School to a PK–5 school.  Both of these projects came out extremely well.

        The City was involved in the High/Middle School by constructing a new street, Redmen Way, on the east side of the High School and purchasing land and extending Hill St. to intersect with Redmen Way.  This provided an additional outlet for traffic away from the High School.   This project also included additional storm water separation in that area.

        Because our Downtown Revitalization ended up being funded by stimulus funds, some of our street funds were freed up to be used in various neighborhoods for our mill and pave projects for 2009.  This change of funding allowed us to keep up with street maintenance.

        Our city continued to have business openings even though some people are saying times are tough.  Ribbon Cuttings in 2009 included:

        We must also thank our Bucyrus Public Library Board and Staff on completion of a large addition and remodeling project.  Their dedication was held on March 15th.  The completed project is a nice addition to the downtown area.

        Our Tourism and Visitors Bureau continues to draw visitors to our community.  The Bureau hosted 96 tours during 2009 with estimated spending at $61,812.00.  This is again an increase over the previous year.

        Funds available from a grant called Neighborhood Stabilization Program, is allowing us to move forward with the teardown of the apartments on Lutz Drive.  These were damaged in the flood of 2007. 

        The year 2009 has been a positive year even with tight finances.  That is because we are constantly looking for grants, low interest loans or even 0% loans to supplement our city resources. 

        Since January 1, 2004, this city has made use of the above mentioned funds and others such as CDBG and CHIP funds to assist homeowners.  The running total since the above date now amounts to over $12 million.

        The workings of the City to serve the citizens, centers mostly on the Service-Safety Director’s office which in turn directs the Department Heads, who then manage the various departments.  Whether they are police, fire, street, office staff, engineering, zoning, water, sewer or parks department, every employee is an important player in making our city work.  We, as Mayor, City Council, Law Director and Auditor need to say thanks to these hard working employees.

        This is a good community which we can be proud of.  We must work hard together to move ahead and recover from the financial issues we have.  I believe 2010 will be positive for us.

        Thanks to all in the community who are working to make our city a little bit better than we found it.