EATON — The Eaton City Council met on Monday, June 15, and passed Resolution 20-11 to authorize an application for the city’s share of the Coronavirus Relief Distribution Fund.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act was signed into law on March 27, 2020, for the purpose of providing economic relief from the impact of COVID-19.

“The [CARES] Act requires each subdivision receiving funds to pass a resolution affirming that the funds will be used as required,” City Manager Brad Collins said. “We’re asking the council to authorize this application so we can request our share of the funds from the county’s care fund. Similar to the local government funds, where it comes from the state, the county distributes to the other subdivisions.”

The Ohio General Assembly established a process for distributing the funds provided by the CARES Act in Ohio Senate Bill 310.

Resolution 20-11 affirmed that, in accordance with S.B. 310, all funds received from the County Coronavirus Relief Distribution Find would only be expended to cover costs that were necessary expenditures due to the public health emergency, not accounted for in the city of Eaton’s most recently approved budget on March 27, and were incurred between March 1, 2020, and Dec. 30, 2020.

“We may have $100,000 of authorized funding if we actually show the need for unbudgeted, direct expenditures towards COVID-19,” Collins said. “But if the city only actually expended $10,000 towards those events, then we would only get the $10,000. The $90,000 would go back through the county, to reuse through the county or back to the state to be reused through the state.”

The City of Eaton must pay any uncumbered money from their coronavirus relief fund to the County Treasurer by Oct. 15, 2020, and any balance of money must be returned to the state treasury by December 28, 2020.

Additionally, the council passed Resolution 20-12 to establish a Coronavirus Relief Distribution Fund for related revenues and expenditures in anticipation of receiving funds from the State of Ohio’s Coronavirus Relief Distribution Fund.

In other business:

• Council discussed the potential closing of the railroad crossing between Vine St. and Nation Ave. near Red Mule Inn during a public hearing.

”The State Railroad Development Commission requested council consideration of several railroad crossing closures in the city of Eaton,” Mayor Gary Wagner said. “It is the city of Eaton City Council determination not to close any proposed street railroad crossings, but would consider this alleyway closure.”

However, after hearing from a member of the public who opposed the closing and reviewing the 10 surveys received from residents that live near the crossing, the position of the council and said residents was made clear.

“All the comments that we received, I didn’t hear a positive thing about it. I think it’s kind of straightforward,” Wagner said. “We’re not acting on it tonight, so if we don’t have a positive feeling from the neighborhood, then I’d say we’ll probably not go any further with this.”

• Mayor Wagner thanked the Eaton Police Department and Sheriff’s Office for their handling of the George Floyd protest on June 4. “I want to thank the police department for how they handled the protest, keeping it low-key,” Wagner said. “It went well. I expected that to be the case but you never know, so I just wanted to thank you guys.”

• Eaton Community Schools Superintendent Jeff Parker attended the meeting to publicly thank the City of Eaton for their support of Eaton’s Class of 2020 celebration earlier this month. “We just wanted to publicly thank the City of Eaton. Mr. [Brad] Collins, Chief [Steve] Hurd, Chief [Brian] Smith, Mr. [Daniel] Gray, lots of people that aren’t even here, for everything that the city did and the fire department, the police department to make the Class of 2020 graduation celebration extra special given the COVID-19 stuff that we went through,” Parker said. “Just was a reinforcement of how important community is and how much the community cares about its kids and its schools. Last Monday at the regular June board meeting…the Eaton County Schools board passed a resolution expressing their sincere and deepest appreciation for everything that the city did. We know you know spend some time with that. I learned a lot about fireworks thank to Chief Smith. Eaton Police Department was there with traffic and anything that we needed. So, just wanted to publicly thank City Council for your support and thank those individuals in those departments.”

• Council passed Resolution 20-10 which approved the city of Eaton’s 2021 tax budget for the fiscal year beginning Jan. 1, 2021.

• The Eaton Planning, Zoning and Building Board approved a conditional use application for a craft brewery that would be located at 211 N. Barron St.

• The City of Eaton Fire and EMS Division released their May 2020 Activity Report. There was a combined response of 150 calls, consisting of 102 EMS responses, 48 fire/rescue responses, four second Medic responses and two general alarms.

The next Eaton City Council meeting will be held on July 20, at 6 p.m. in the City Building.