Village looks to cut back on employee health insurance
Ground should be broken on a new Dollar General location in West Liberty within the next couple of weeks following action taken Monday at a regular meeting of village council.
Council members passed on third reading an ordinance to rezone a parcel of land along County Road 189 from residential to business purposes so that the retail store may be constructed at that location.
The proposed store property is approximately 1.64 acres of land situated between the Kroger Northern Floral Center and West Liberty Lumber.
William and Gladys Hostetler owned that land previously until they sold it to GBT Realty Corporation — the Tennessee-based real estate development company that will build the Dollar General.
That property had previously been in Liberty Township. However, village council worked with GBT Realty throughout the winter to have that parcel annexed into the village so that the store could be built there.
Bob Gage, vice president of Net Lease Development for GBT Realty, said Monday the store will total about 9,100 square-feet.
“The retail floor will be about 7,300 square feet,” he said.
There is a mandatory 30-day appeals process that must pass before permits can be officially issued for the project.
“We figure about two weeks to pull a permit, and once we have that we can start putting shovels in the ground,” Mr. Gage told council.
The store itself will take about 120 days to build, he said. It will employ upward of 30 people. The store’s hours of operation will be from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
Council pressed Mr. Gage on store aesthetics, insisting on a brick storefront and additional landscaping, design modifications Mr. Gage said could be easily made.
Mr. Gage also said Monday that he has since spoken with Mike Ray, CEO of Green Hills Community, about petitioning the Ohio Department of Transportation to place signs along the road alerting motorists of the possibility of pedestrians attempting to cross U.S. Route 68 from Green Hills to get to the store.
Mr. Ray has spoken out against the Dollar General publicly, citing primarily a concern that Green Hills residents will endanger themselves and motorists trying to cross the highway.
“We have found these stores to be a positive impact in 85 to 90 percent of the places we’ve built,” Mr. Gage said. “That’s 500 stores across 27 states, and that’s what we have found these stores too are a positive impact that help keep money in the community.”
As for additional action taken Monday by council, an $868 bid was accepted from a private Illinois resident to purchase the village’s 2010 Dodge Charger, a former police cruiser that no longer runs and has been taken out of service.
Council’s finance committee meets at 6 p.m. Friday to discuss a number of topics, including its future salary schedule and benefits package for village employees. Council members have fielded complaints recently from some of their employees because pay increases for hourly workers were not afforded on a percentage basis. Traditionally, employees each were given a 3 percent annual raise.
This year, instead, hourly employees saw their wages raised by a fixed dollar amount per-hour, and that raise affected their salaries differently as a matter of percentage. The fact that raises weren’t the same as a matter of percentage has been a point of contention for some village employees, particularly those on the street and rubbish crews.
“Whether it was right, or wrong, that’s how we did it,” said councilwoman Jill McKelvey. “Rather than giving the 3 percent raise across the board, we went with a fixed dollar amount per hour for raises.”