By Frank Lewis
While William “Junior” Williams has already been performing the job of mayor of New Boston, Tuesday night he was voted into the job for the first time. Williams, who had been on village council, began filling in for Mayor James Warren when Warren became ill, and was sworn in as the village’s mayor full time when Warren passed away in June. Williams was reflective as he saw the numbers come in Tuesday night.
“It’s a tough way to get in here following such a great man as Mayor Warren,” Williams told the Daily Times. “We’ve got many good candidates that are qualified, if they wanted to get on the ballot. Being unopposed is humbling and I’m ready to get started.”
The village has seen a busy couple of years dealing with the changeover from the Combined Sewer Overflow and preparing for the certification of the flood defense levee. Village Administrator Steve Hamilton announced last week the village had been notified it was to receive a $160,000 loan from the Ohio Water Development Authority (OWDA) to repair two pumps at their pump station. Because of principle forgiveness money and money from the U.S. Corps of Engineers, the village is able to complete the work on those projects without taking anymore funding from the citizens of the village
“I think it’s going real well,” Williams said. “When all is said and done, we’ve done the phase 1 and phase 2 of the sewer project and we have a phase 3 and phase 4 coming next year that totals close to $5 million in money that we’ve received. We have had a $1.2 million Roadway Improvement. We’ve done a $300,000 floodwall certification. We just recently received some flood pump money so we can repair the flood pumps. So there has been a lot of money flowing into the village with most of it being principle forgiveness money. The only thing we’ve done is put a $1.50 fee on the sewers to satisfy the Ohio and U.S. EPAs and that’s not a bad price for $6 million worth of work.”
Four seats were open on the village council, and three incumbents and a newcomer were the only four names on the ballot. Returned were Jon Mills, Dan Fetty and Mike Payton, while Johnnie Steele joins that group in January when the new council is seated.
Lana Loper was unopposed as clerk/treasurer.
Reach Frank Lewis at 740-353-3101, ext. 1928, or on Twitter @franklewis.
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