Members of the Toledo City Council convened on Monday, Sept. 15, for their second regular meeting of the month.
During the meeting, discussion was held concerning a looming vacancy on the council itself.
Also, Toledo resident Darren Frye asked the council to work with Lewis County officials to get Jersey barriers placed on the north end of Pacific Road.
Barriers already exist on the south end, but according to Frye, many delivery drivers in their large trucks are still led down Pacific Road by their navigation systems.
“If you’re not a local, you wouldn’t know that (the barriers are there). I see it all the time, people trying to do a 10-point turn around down there. Delivery drivers trying to do a 10-point turn around,” Frye said. “It’s incredibly dangerous for people that walk that, ride their bikes, walk their dogs, all that stuff.”
According to Toledo Mayor Cherie Devore, the Jersey barriers already set up are on city property on Pacific Road. But Lewis County owns the plot of land Frye is asking to have Jersey barriers installed at the road’s northern intersection with state Route 505.
Devore added she had already reached out to Lewis County officials about the issue.
“If I do not hear back from them by Wednesday, I will be taking a trip up to the county literally myself,” Devore said. “There’s not much we can do, but it needs to be rectified, cause people come down and there’s nowhere for them to go, they can’t turn around.”
Frye added there are dead end signs on the road as well, but their location and visibility is suboptimal.
“If you’re going 25 or 30 (mph), or you’re driving at night time, you will not see them, because it’s pitch black down there,” Frye said.
During public comment in the meeting, Toledo resident Lance Calstoy told the council recently the smell coming from the city’s wastewater treatment plant has been getting a lot worse.
“I’ve lived there for about three years … occasionally, before, you would get a whiff of it once in a while. But now you’ll have steady windows of hours of it really smelling bad. The other day it was early in the morning, like 4:30, and it was really sulfuric and strong, and it’s getting in the house,” Calstoy said. “I just wanted to bring it up so we could maybe look at a way of identifying it and addressing it.”
Toledo City Councilor Jamie Scalise concurred with Calstoy.
“I wondered if we had a processing plant move in, because the smell has gotten really offensive on a regular basis,” Scalise said.
Devore told Calstoy she would talk with Toledo Public Works Director Jon Cravens to see if they could find the cause of the worsening smells and hopefully find a fix.
During the meeting, Scalise also had questions concerning a looming vacancy on the council. Toledo City Councilor Tawni Shepherd is coming to the end of her term and did not file to run for re-election.
However, nobody else filed to run for it either, meaning as of the new year, Shepherd’s position on the council will automatically become vacant.
According to Devore, while they know the vacancy is looming, they can’t do anything about it until it actually happens. Once the vacancy is official, the city council will have 90 days to appoint someone to fill the seat before Lewis County officials will be required to select a qualified appointee.
Though if a write-in candidate mounts a successful campaign between now and November’s general election, the council won’t have to worry about appointing someone to fill Shepherd’s seat.
Per state law, to become a write-in candidate, one must file a declaration of write-in candidacy form with the appropriate election office — the Lewis County Auditor’s Office in this case — by 8 p.m. on election day.
Write-in candidates must also meet the local requirements for the office they seek. For the Toledo City Council, candidates must have legally resided within city limits for at least one year and be registered voters.
For more information on the write-in candidate process and how to fill out declaration of write-in candidacy forms, visit the state’s website at https://tinyurl.com/ym8xf8a5.
