Fulton County Ohio Media

After briefly discussing at previous Council meetings and at the request of Mayor Toeppe, the Ohio Fire Chiefs Association (OFCA) submitted a proposal for an organizational evaluation study regarding the Swanton Fire & Rescue Department (SFRD). As the proposal outlines: All facets will be reviewed to determine operational and administrative efficiencies, internal division and community communication effectiveness, personnel development, compliance with local, state and federal law, and industry best practices. The study will determine the current level of service and future response needs of the community. All areas of review will include a focus on employee safety, safety of the public and risk management for the fire and rescue division and village.

Councilwoman Kathy Kreuz asked Mayor Toeppe to address the issue. “In looking at the fire service, the quality of the fire service employees, firefighters, EMTs, paramedics is excellent,” commented the Mayor. “The issue is, how do we look at ourselves going forward? Do we have the right amount of equipment, the right amount of training, the right policies in place, do we have the proper configuration of equipment, all those sorts of things? So, we asked the Fire Chiefs Association to take a look at the fire department’s policy operation and put together a plan or understanding of where we are and where we need to be going forward.” Mayor Toeppe said the study was similar to the one conducted several years ago by the Ohio Police Chiefs Association on the Swanton Police Department to make sure it was structured properly to prepare for the future.

Councilman Mike Rochelle then questioned what the study would look at with the possibility of the formation of a fire district that would include the fire departments of other municipalities. He said he was hesitant to spend $50,000 on a study with too many unknowns about the future status of local fire protection. “I’m a little hesitant. I think it’s a great idea to know understand where we are at today but I think there are a lot of things going on that I don’t know if that money is well spent,” said Mr. Rochelle. When it was explained to Mr. Rochelle that the cost of the study was $15,000 and not $50,000 he responded that his opinion did not change based on the dollars. “I don’t care if it’s $15 or $150 or $150,000,” he countered. “Do we know what our fire department is going to look like in five or ten years? If we do, then it’s money well spent.”

Mr. Rochelle asked Swanton Fire Chief Anthony Schaffer for his goals and objective for doing the study. “I’m not opposed to the study at all,” responded Chief Schaffer. “There was some conversation about doing a strategic plan that would be beneficial possibly versus this. This study may present itself as being the priority but if this study goes first the goals and objectives would be a different road map of what we’re missing or what the future would bring.” The discussion on the study continued without resolution and the Council agreed to table the issue until the next meeting.

In other news, the Council approved Emergency Ordinance 2021-01, authorizing the Village Administrator to enter into an agreement with Rupp Rosebrock to rebuild the Beard Pavilion at Memorial Park for $63,900. The Pavilion was destroyed by a falling oak tree in April of 2019. The selected bid was the lowest of eight bids submitted with the second lowest coming in at $81,500 and the highest at $135,000. Insurance is expected to cover this cost. The project is slated to begin this summer with an estimated completion date of late August.

Administrator Rosanna Hoelzle informed Council that the Village was unsuccessful in receiving Ohio Public Works Commission (OPWC) and Small Government funds for the Crestwood/Woodside Streets project. The hope was to receive funds to perform engineering in 2021 and construction in 2022. Ms. Hoelzle presented several “Plan B” options to the Public Service Committee, one of which was to split the project in two, Woodside and Crestwood. After some discussion, the Committee decided to split the project and selected the Woodside road repairs first. In 2019 the Woodside repairs were estimated at approximately $100,000. A new estimate will be requested. The Crestwood project was estimated at $706,000 in 2019. Another grant application to the OPWC will be submitted.

Council voted to vacate an alley between to Clark Street and Pennsylvania Avenue which is still a dedicated public way. Property owners at 105,.107,109,113 Pennsylvania and 210 Clark which abut the alley will be asked to file written consent if they do not dispute this action.

Fulton County Commissioners are looking to place a 4 Mil Fulton County EMS replacement levy on the May 2021 ballot. The intent would be for the subdivisions to still provide services and a lump sum is allocated for each subdivision.

The annual Swanton Fireworks Fest was tentatively scheduled for Saturday, July 3, 2021.

At the Swanton Sports Center, the Wauseon Lady Indians outscored the Delta Lady Panthers 2235-1802 in the final match of the season before the league tournament this weekend in Bryan.  Danielle Carr bowled games of 184 and 190 for a 374 series to lead Wauseon. Jayde Ramos had a 369 series and Rachel Carr added a 349 and Quinlynn Rohda had a 343. Ciarra Flickinger 168+174=342 series topped the Delta team and Maddie Johnston had a 279 series and Lexi Brown rolled a 260 series.

In the last NWOAL regular season bowling match of 2020-2021 at the Swanton Sports Center, the Delta Panther boys defeated the Wauseon Indians 2155-2046. Freshman Brody Waugh led the Panthers with a 210+208=418 series and was backed by Dylan Stricker and Gabe Syverson who both rolled a series of 336. The Indians were paced by Kage Little with a 338 series and Parker Black with a 332.  The league tournament will be held this weekend in Bryan.

Senior guard Noah Gomez led a balanced scoring attack with 11 points as the Archbold Blue Streaks traveled to Delta and defeated the Panthers 47-27. Backing up Gomez on the score sheet was Trey Theobald with nine points, Austin Roth with eight, Alex Roth with seven and Kenny Williams with six.

The young Delta squad managed to hang with the taller and more experienced Archbold team through most of the first quarter before the Blue Streaks began to pull away. The opening quarter ended with Archbold holding a five-point lead and they extended the advantage at the end of each subsequent period to 13, 18 and finally 20 to finish with the victory.

Sophomore Bryar Knapp led the Panthers with 10 points. Chase Stickney added six points and Nolan Risner had five. The win keeps the Streaks tied with the Wauseon Indians for the top spot in the NWOAL standings at 4-0 and gives them a 13-4 record overall. Delta drops to 0-4 in the league and 0-12 on the season.

Brooklyn Wymer (pictured) sank four crucial free throws in waning moments of the game, including two with 4.4 seconds remaining, to lift the Delta Lady Panthers to a 50-45 NWOAL win over the Lady Blue Streaks on Archbold’s home floor. The senior guard scored 9 of her 10 points in the fourth quarter to hold off the Streaks in a game both teams needed to stay in contention for the league title.

Archbold streaked out to a 12-5 lead halfway through the first quarter before Delta struck back with a 9-0 run to end first on top 14-12. The Panthers opened the second quarter with a 9-2 spurt and held a 23-16 advantage as both teams headed to the locker room.

The Streaks went on a run of their own to open the second half and took 27-26 lead with two minutes left in the third quarter. Brooklyn Green gave the lead back to Delta with consecutive three-pointers as they rebuilt their seven-point margin to end the third up 34-27.

The Delta lead grew to eight early on in the fourth before Addison Ziegler hit one from beyond the arc to cut the Archbold deficit to five. Late in the quarter the Lady Streaks were able to pull within three points at 43-40 but Wymer made five foul shots in five attempts to seal the victory for the Lady Panthers.

Brooklyn Green led Delta with 16 points and Reagan Rouleau scored 12. In addition to Brooklyn Wymer’s ten points, Braelyn Wymer had eight. Addison Ziegler tied Green for game-high scoring honors with 16 points for Archbold. Karsyn Hostetler had 12 while Kylie Sauder finished with eight.

With the win Delta improves to 3-1 in the league and 10-5 overall. Archbold drops to 1-2 in the league and 9-7 overall.

Wanting to be more involved in helping fellow Swanton businesses prosper, Joyce Berry, manager and fashion stylist of Younique Boutique located on North Main Street in downtown Swanton, has agreed to join the Swanton Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors to fill a recent vacancy. Younique Boutique, a women’s clothing store, will be celebrating it’s four-year anniversary this coming May and Joyce gives a great deal of credit for their success to the Swanton Chamber and it’s Executive Director, Neil Toeppe. “Neil was a blessing to us. He has really gone above and beyond,” commented Joyce. “Neil was in here at least once a month, checking on us, seeing how we were doing, seeing if we needed anything or could do anything for us.”

In fact, it was a presentation by the Chamber that convinced Younique Boutique to locate in Swanton. “It was really Neil’s doing that made us decide to take a risk on Swanton,” Joyce added. “Because we looked at property in several different communities and it was much of Neil’s doing that made us come here.

Like all small businesses in Swanton and the rest of the country for that matter, the pandemic has had a major negative impact on sales. “Up until COVID things were going very well. You don’t sustain four years in a small business without doing well and being successful,” said Joyce. “The first year we were very dependent on the Swanton ladies and local business. Over the past three years we have expanded to outreaching communities. We now have customers from Maumee, Perrysburg, Sylvania, Wauseon, Delta and Rossford. I even have customers from lower Michigan.”

As a testament to the success of Younique Boutique, readers of the City Paper of Toledo voted the store the “Best of locally owned women’s boutiques” in the area in 2019 which attracted even more customers from outside the Swanton community. And bringing customers from the outside to patronize Swanton businesses will be one of the tasks Joyce and her fellow Chamber Directors will be faced with. “We don’t have a lot of foot traffic in (downtown) Swanton, but we’re working on it,” she said. Joyce has approximately one year remaining on the vacated term but will be eligible to run for another three-year term after that.

Rebounding from a late game-ending injury last Thursday, Aricka Lutz poured in 20 points and her sister Averie scored 16 as the Swanton Lady Bulldogs survived a horrendous start to get past the Defiance Lady Bulldogs 46-40 in a non-league home game Tuesday night. After the visiting Bulldogs raced out to a 14-2 lead halfway through the first quarter, the home town Bulldogs regrouped and scored the final seven points of the quarter to pull within 14-9

The Swanton scoring barrage continued into the second quarter and the defense rose up to hold the visitors to only five points while scoring 16 and the half ended with the home team on top 25-19. Defiance rallied in the third quarter and took a 34-33 lead into the final frame. Swanton was able to regain the lead early in the fourth and then were given a little breathing room when Aricka Lutz drove to the basket, was knocked to the floor by two defenders and still managed to lay the ball in the hoop for the score and the foul. Lutz drained the free throw to complete the three point play and Swanton never trailed again. Defiance hit a triple to draw back within one but two clutch foul shots by Maddie Peluso helped seal the win.

The Lutz twins combined to score 36 of Swanton’s 46 points including 12 of 14 from the free throw line. Olivia Moats and Kinley Maynard each had 11 points to pace Defiance. With the win, Swanton moves to 12-5 on the season.

We are fortunate to live in a democratic country where we, the people, elect our leaders and decide how we are to be governed. This system is applied from our nation’s top elected office to our lowest at any local level. However, there are times, more often at the local level, where an elected position suddenly becomes vacant and the replacement is chosen by the governing body, not the voters, to finish out the term. This practice allows the vacancy to filled relatively quickly and at very little cost. Unfortunately, it places an individual into an important leadership position with the constituency knowing little of their background or their stand on the issues.

Another common way to be easily placed into a seat of political control at the local level is to run for office without opposition. This occurs frequently in lowly populated municipalities when there are a relatively large number of seats up for election. Many small communities have a difficult time finding enough eligible people willing to step into a role of leadership for a variety of reasons. These reasons, some of them valid, will always not only shrink the number of candidates but diminish the overall quality of the pool as well. In effect, voters become insignificant when candidates run unopposed and they get what they get.

The Village of Swanton has six members on their council. Of these six, five (Craig Rose, Michael Rochelle, Kathy Kreuz, Dianne Westhoven and Dave Pilliod) gained their seat while running unopposed and one (Tony Stuart) was appointed to fill a vacancy. Are these the best six individuals the residents of Swanton want running their town, deciding how much to pay for utilities or in taxes or who should collect their garbage or a host of other quality of Village life decisions? As the Swanton Village Council is currently seated, it does not matter. The elections came down not to good or bad choices for the voters but rather having no choice at all.

We can take Mr. Rose’s time on the Council as an example of how we get to the current situation. Craig Rose was first appointed to the Swanton Village Council in 2014 to serve the remainder of Councilman Dave Pilliod’s term after Mr. Pilliod stepped down to serve as a Fulton Township Trustee. With two open Council seats available in the November 2015 election, Mr. Rose ran and was defeated. In 2017 Tamara Haselman resigned her seat and Mr. Rose was again appointed to serve the rest of her term. In the November election of that year, with four Council seats open, he ran again, unopposed with three others and received the lowest vote total of the four, not that it really mattered. Perhaps, if only three seats up for grabs, we would not be having this conversation. But here we are.

At the beginning of 2020, Neil Toeppe was sworn in as Swanton’s Mayor, having defeated incumbent Ann Roth in November. Mr. Rose was then elected as President Pro Tempore or President of the Council by the rest of the Council members, giving him new-found authority. What developed over the next 12 months was a contentious relationship between Mayor Toeppe and Councilman Rose when discussing initiatives proposed by the Mayor. The initiatives concerned economic development during the pandemic, giving residents greater access to Council meetings and better cooperation with Swanton Local Schools in managing the Village’s youth sports program. These initiatives and several others were summarily rejected by Mr. Rose on several occasions with strong support from Councilman Rochelle.

In the first Council meeting of 2021, Mr. Rose was re-elected as President Pro Tempore and proceeded to make significant changes the Rules of Council. He made it clear that he, as President of the Council had to approve all meeting agenda items or agenda amendments and started by removing the Mayor’s Report from the meeting agenda. Mr. Rose also had the Mayor removed from his position as an ex officio, or a non-voting member, of all Village committees so he would not be allowed to participate in committee discussions. This included the Public Safety Committee which is comprised of the Police and Fire departments, both of which report to the Mayor. The Council approved these changes by a vote of 5-1 with Mr. Pilliod voting against and, for all intent and purpose, handed control of the Village of Swanton over to Mr. Rose and literally silenced the Mayor when conducting Village business.

The solution to counter this type of influence and control is for the citizens of Swanton to be more active in their politics, more interested in the decisions being made on “their behalf” and more willing to step into leadership roles when the direction of the Village is headed down the wrong path. They need to care more about how local government is affecting their lives and stop believing there is nothing that can be done. The alternative is too costly. Swanton chose a new mayor in 2019 because they wanted a new direction that would make the Village a better place to live and raise a family. But the Council is the legislative authority and those six members that currently sit at that table, who may all not be there if the citizens were more involved in their government, will decide what kind of Village we will live and or work in, whether we like it or not.

Four Council members, Kreuz, Rochelle, Rose and Stuart, have terms that will expire at the end of this year on the 31st of December. Hopefully, Swanton will have several civic minded individuals who will be willing to step up and and challenge any Council member that decides to run for re-election or run to fill any potential vacancy. The Village is desperate for new leadership.

Photo: Swanton Village Council President Pro Tempore Craig Rose

Connar Penrod (pictured) sank three shots from behind the arc and scored all 11 of Wauseon’s first quarter points as the Indians defeated the Swanton Bulldogs 52-39. Penrod’s early outburst gave the Indians a two-point lead after one and they outscored the Bulldogs in each of the remaining three quarters to capture a key league victory on their home floor. The senior, a baseball commit to Bowling Green State University, finished with 17 points, tying Jonas Tester for team high scoring honors. Kolton DeGroff added nine points. Swanton’s Andrew Thornton lead all scorers with 18 points while Bulldog teammate Josh Vance had 12.

With the win, Wauseon remains undefeated in the NWOAL at 3-0 and moves to 12-2 overall. The loss drops Swanton to 2-1 in the league and 7-6 overall on the season.

With the score knotted at 37 and just over 20 seconds remaining in the game, Averie Lutz launched a shot from well beyond the arc that found nothing but net and the Swanton Lady Bulldogs hung on to defeat the Wauseon Lady Indians 40-37. After Swanton lost leading scorer Aricka Lutz for the rest of the game early in the fourth quarter, Wauseon rallied from an eight-point deficit to tie the contest. Only Averie’s two scoring drives to the basket kept the Bulldogs from falling behind. The three-point bomb gave Averie all of Swanton’s seven fourth quarter points and a game-high 21 in the win. Her twin sister Aricka had 10 points before the injury and Katie Floyd added five for the Bulldogs. Marisa Seiler led the Indians with 14 points, Autumn Pelok had 12 and Hayley scored seven. With the victory Swanton moves to 3-1 in the league and 11-6 overall. Wauseon falls to 2-2 in the league and 9-4 on the season.