BLANCHESTER, Ohio — Several ordinances were introduced at a recent Blanchester Village Council meeting by Mayor John Carman and the council members. Of the new ordinances, three were ordinances being pushed through on an emergency reading to meet deadlines with state officials as well as other deadlines.
Discussed the night of the meeting were also ordinances removed from the village council website that hadn’t yet been enforced, according to Carman.
An ordinance intended to rezone sections of the village, Ordinance 2024-11, which was recently removed from the Blanchester Village Council website, was read for its third and final reading. The ordinance which initiates an amendment to the village’s zoning map, moves to rezone a section of Broadway between Center Street and Baldwin from B4 to B1, allowing for residential use within the zone.
“We’re moving it from B-4 to B-1,” said Carman. “Before it was zoned as a business district, now residents are zoned to live there.”
The second ordinance initially removed from the website, Ordinance 2024-013, was read for its second reading. The new ordinance amends Ordinance 2021.013, titled “An Ordinance to Establish Benefits for the Safety and Security of Citizens of the Village of Blanchester.” This is an ordinance that sought to pay Blanchester Police with longevity pay and reimburse all officers employed for a full-time or part-time capacity for 24 straight months of up to $3,500 of tuition costs and training.
Of the amended section of the prior ordinance, Carman explained through a phone conversation how they moved both sections of the longevity period which were staggered at two years and three years for $1,500 in payment and $3,500 in tuition reimbursement.
“So in that ordinance in the original, we have a 36-month longevity period for police officers,” said Carman. “So if an officer joins the force, sticks with the village for three years, they get a longevity payment of $1,500. And then section two of that ordinance was a tuition reimbursement.”
He continued, “So if an officer was hired and then they stuck for two years, then at the end of the two years they would receive tuition reimbursement up to $3,500 of whatever their tuition was to go through the academy. We changed that. We amended that for three years so that they mirrored each other so there’d be one payment, and it’s not so much of a physical nightmare trying to pay people in two years and pay people in three years.
Four new ordinances were submitted at the village council meeting, including three that were declared an emergency per Section 3 of the ordinance–meaning that they didn’t require three readings and instead could go into effect after a three-fourths vote of all members elected or appointed to the legislative authority after a single reading.
The reason for several emergency ordinances, as stated by Carman, was in response to the auditor requiring responses on submissions of the amounts and rates to the village, and also due to grant fund deadlines.
Of the ordinances introduced per section three, Ordinance 2024–15, entitled “An Ordinance Authorizing Fund Level Transfers,” authorizes the purchase of two police cruisers for $29,497.20 from the Legacy Grant, a $10 million fund established through the sale of Clinton Memorial Hospital.
The other two emergency ordinances, 2024-016 and 2024-117, accepted amounts and rates turned in by the budget commission authorized tax laws certifying them for carry orders of permanent emergency, and authorized the fund transfer of two police vehicles in the amount of $70,502.80 from the police operating fund, respectively.
