If live meetings are not on horizon, officials could table measure
Marysville City Council is expected to consider increasing the fee for residents to register their vehicles.
In December, the city’s finance committee began exploring the option of adding a pair of $5 fees to be paid annually on license plate registrations.
City officials have discussed spacing the increases over two years — a single $5 increase for 2021 with the second increase becoming effective in 2022.
To become effective for 2021, however, the increase would need approved before July 1, meaning council needs to begin the process soon.
Mayor Henk Berbee explained the legislation first appeared on the agenda last month, but was pushed to Monday’s meeting, the last possible opportunity to meet the schedule.
Emery said there was a hope that, “by now we would be back to meeting in person.”
Berbee, who sets the agenda, said he would like to move forward, but only one step at a time. Berbee explained that legislation is introduced at a first reading and the public is given the opportunity to speak about it at a second reading.
“The thing that I hate the most is not to get public input,” Berbee said.
He said that he is comfortable introducing the legislation at a remote meeting, but wants to have public comment in person.
“If we feel like in two weeks we are not going to be able to meet in person and have the public at the meeting to comment, I would request council members to consider to move it to next year,” Berbee said.
He added, “If we don’t hear from the public, I don’t feel like we did what we are supposed to do.”
City Manager Terry Emery said he would be “very comfortable” with council tabling the matter for a year.
“With everything else we are dealing with, with everything else people are dealing with, even though it is important, it doesn’t quite fall into the priority category that it did pre-COVID.”
According to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, for December, Marysville has 23,078 registered vehicles. City officials said that based on those numbers, if the city raised the license fee by $5 per vehicles, the increase would generate about $115,000 annually for the city.
The money would be allocated strictly to street maintenance or paving streets, city officials said.
“It would be extremely helpful to have additional funds for the street and road projects, but I would completely understand if council decided to hold off on this for a year,” Emery said.
The city manager said that while the matter is on the council agenda, “it will be up to council whether or not they want to proceed with the legislation that night.”
Regardless of whether the measure moves forward this year or next, Berbee said the money is needed.
Berbee has said that since he came onto council, the city has added many more miles of roads, but not increased staff size to care for those roads.
He said streets often get only the money that is “left over.” He added that as Marysville residents get older, more money will be needed to care for the aging population, making less available for streets.
“As we have less general funds available because we are using it for safety services, that’s why we need to increase the license tax,” Berbee said, adding that a license fee increase taxes people that use the roads.
City officials also fear that if they do not increase the fee, the county will.
In November, Union County passed legislation to add three, additional $5 fees, totaling $15 per vehicle, to vehicle registration. The city will receive about $58,000 because of the county’s increase.
If the city doesn’t enact the fees, the county could take at least one of them.
Berbee said that while the current commissioners have said they do not intend to increase the fees again, a different group of commissioners could change their mind.