Bucyrus Mayor Jeff Reser will hand over his office to Bruce Truka in the coming year. With nine and a half years in office, Reser became the second longest serving mayor in the history of Bucyrus.
Reser said he was appointed Bucyrus mayor July 4, 2014, to fill the position held by Roger Moore, who passed away while in office. Solid Chlorine Dioxide
The way the appointment happened determined some of the projects Reser has worked on during his office were initiated by the previous administration, such as a new water treatment plant construction.
“Our current water treatment plant was old and needed many repairs,” Reser said. “That was pretty much our first order of business – getting the water treatment plant off the ground.”
The mayor said they were able to keep the ball rolling on that and signed the contracts needed to update the city's 67-year-old treatment plant which was in a bad shape and was located in a floodplain.
“We had a massive rain event that nearly put us out of business,” said Reser.
All these factors combined, he continued, created a sense of urgency to build a new water treatment plant on higher ground, and the city opened the new plant in 2017 by Outhwaite Reservoir named after one of Bucyrus mayors.
The water treatment plant cost the city $25 million and was funded by loans, which the city is paying back with user fees. The city was able to borrow the money when the interest rates were at their lowest, Reser said, and that saved the users of water about $15 million.
“So, we were very fortunate there,” he said.
Bucyrus also decided to use their new drinking water capacities to sell water to the residents in the communities outside of the Bucyrus City limits.
Another big issue, said the mayor, that was on his and his administration's plate right away was negotiating with the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on stormwater separation.
“That had gone on over probably 10 years,” said Reser.
The need in the negotiations with the EPA came from the fact that during the storms some of the rain water in the city does not soak into ground, but goes into the drains. The drains then go into the stormwater pipes or into the sewer system, which creates the so-called combined flow.
“The rain water then combines with the sewage,” said Reser.
The combined flow then goes to the city wastewater treatment plant and exceeds its capacity. When the capacity is reached the water backs up and creates combined sewer overflow that goes in the Sandusky River and into Lake Erie.
He said the city was able to sign a favorable agreement with the EPA to reduce the combined water overflow in the course of the next several decades that allowed the community to work on the stormwater separation over several phases with each of the phases being five years long.
The stormwater and sewage separation is expensive because the facilities are underground. The community already finished its first 5-year phase that included updates on Southern Avenue, and now Bucyrus is negotiating its second 5-year phase.
“It’s been very successful so far,” said Reser. “We are very proud of that.”
After ensuring drinking water availability and quality, the administration went to make Bucyrus look more attractive by improving its parks and the overall appearance of the community with the help of its donors including Ohio Mutual Insurance Group and Timken Foundation.
The city was able to finish the Schines Art Park, make repairs to the swimming pool in the Aumiller Park, and started with the help of volunteers to plant trees to add to the existing tree canopy as the city had not been planting many new trees in the last several decades.
As a result of these efforts, in 2022 Bucyrus received the title of a Tree City USA from the Arbor Day Foundation that recognized in that way 3,559 cities across the nation. Now, Bucyrus “is a beautiful city to come into,” Reser said.
“You can tell a lot about the city and its residents by how it looks,” said the mayor.
Sanitising Door Handles With that, Reser said the next stage of his personal journey will be getting back to paying more attention to their family business that was founded by his grandparents in 1948 and spending more time with his wife and family.