Erie County Commissioner Matt Old speaks to the Vermilion Township Trustees during their March 4 meeting.
VERMILION Twp — Erie County Commissioner Matt Old said regional discussions involving Vermilion’s wastewater system are underway as local leaders explore whether combining water and sewer infrastructure across multiple communities could help control rising costs.
Old made the comments during public participation at the March 4 Vermilion Township trustees meeting while providing an update on county initiatives related to taxes, infrastructure and cooperation among local governments.
Old said leaders from several communities are expected to participate in the discussions, including Vermilion Mayor Russ Owens, the city manager of Huron, the city manager of Sandusky and the village administrator of Milan.
“We’re going to sit down and have our first conversation about looking at regional water and sewer,” Old told trustees. “All of us have these little systems that we built out over the last hundred years, and rates keep going up and up.”
Old said the goal of the conversations is to explore whether communities could work together to reduce costs through shared infrastructure and economies of scale.
“My proposal was let’s get together and see if we can regionalize these water and sewer systems in an effort to stop the rate increases and potentially lower rates,” Old said.
The discussions come as Vermilion and other communities continue to face growing costs related to water and wastewater infrastructure.
Old also discussed the work of the county’s Blue Ribbon Commission, which was created to study government spending and identify ways local governments could operate more efficiently.
The group examined spending across Erie County’s various taxing jurisdictions, including townships, cities, villages and school districts.
Old said the combined budgets for those entities total roughly $750 million annually.
“Somewhere in that three-quarters of a billion dollars, there’s got to be a little bit of redundancy, a little bit of waste, a little bit of things we can do better,” Old said.
The Blue Ribbon Commission spent six months meeting with local officials, including fire chiefs, police chiefs, school leaders and township trustees, before issuing a report with recommendations aimed at encouraging greater cooperation between governments.
Old said those conversations are already beginning to take shape across the county.
“We’re on the cusp of the next iteration of local government,” Old said. “We don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like yet, but things are costing more money and we have to start thinking about how we work together.”
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