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Mayor urges voters to back road-and-bridge levy as city maps 2025 paving projects
Summary
Tiffin’s mayor outlined plans for street paving, the Court Street streetscape and road maintenance funded in part by a May 6 road-and-bridge levy and state grants administered through OPWC.
Mayor (name not specified) told attendees the city has a multi-year streets and bridges program, and he urged support for the May 6 road-and-bridge levy that helps secure matching state and federal funds for local projects.
The mayor said the levy, listed as “Road and Bridge Levy, Ohio Issue 2” on the May 6 ballot, brings in roughly $1.1 million to $1.5 million annually and has helped the city secure substantial state and federal grant funding since 2018. He said that leveraging local levy dollars makes the city more competitive for outside funds because applicants must show local contribution to be awarded grants.
City engineering has a mapped 2025 paving program, the mayor said, and that the Court Street streetscape project is already underway. He described measures to extend pavement life — including applying a rejuvenator on recently paved streets — and said the 2024 paving work will be covered mostly by grants (the mayor cited up to $335,000 at an 80% grant rate for a 2024 paving project).
The mayor credited the Ohio Public Works Commission (OPWC) and other programs for funding and noted that the levy itself does not increase statewide taxes; rather, it provides local matching capacity to attract grants. He encouraged residents to review the publicly available engineering maps to see scheduled work on specific streets.
The mayor also thanked Public Works staff for in-house work that saved the city money on prior projects, including backflow preventer work done by city crews that the mayor said cost about $92,800 versus a previous projection near $1,590,000.
No formal council vote on the levy was recorded in the speech; the mayor’s remarks were a public explanation of the levy’s role and the engineering department’s project planning.
