Brunswick finance director outlines capital projects in 2025 budget

BRUNSWICK, Ohio — City Council has approved its $91 million 2025 operating budget.

At council’s meeting Monday (Dec. 9), Finance Director Todd Fischer said the budget is representative of the city’s ongoing plan for positive financial practices.

Fischer said there are no proposed full-time staffing increases. There is a 4 percent increase in overall operational costs.

On the capital projects front, he said creation of the city’s Fund Balance Reserve in 2012 has allowed Brunswick to use interest generated from the fund, along with state and federal grant dollars, to focus on road and stormwater improvements, signalization upgrades, building repairs and creation of trails and playgrounds throughout the city.

“2023 and 2024 are the first years … in which the city earned more than $1 million in investment earnings,” Fischer said in his budget summary.

“2024 is currently on pace to blow that record out of the water and easily exceed the $3 million threshold.

“If the 2024 general fund interest revenues were to come in exactly as estimated, it would be just north of $3,385,000.”

By comparison, Fischer said, general fund interest revenues in 2010, before the establishment of the Fund Balance Reserve, were $15,708.

“From a financial standpoint, I would use the illustration of a lake with a dam,” he said.

“You fill the lake with operational costs and you can have controlled overflow (for capital projects), or somebody could put in a drain and let (operational costs) water out of the lake.

“It took us five to seven years to even have enough to fill the lake. Before 2010, it was empty at the start of every year.”

Fischer said highlights of the 2025 budget include plans for $2.2 million in neighborhood road improvements, funded in part by gas tax revenues and the city’s road levy.

He added that a $156,000 Community Development Block Grant will also partially fund an additional $500,000 in neighborhood road repairs, bringing the city’s total neighborhood road repair investment in 2025 to almost $3 million.

He also pointed to a grant from Cleveland Water to fund the replacement of roadway between Garfield Avenue and 400 feet west of Troon Avenue following the repair of Cleveland Water-owned waterlines in that area.

While the utility owns and is responsible for repairing the lines, he said, the city is responsible for the repair of the roadway afterward.

“There are a lot more places where there are breaks, but that is what Cleveland Water was willing to go for,” Fischer said.

He also pointed to design work for a proposed $1.6 million project at the Laurel Road-Maxwell Boulevard intersection, anticipated to be funded in part by a $720,000 Ohio Public Works Commission (OPWC) grant.

The proposed intersection improvements are expected to begin in 2026, he said.

They include plans for a roundabout, after several requests by the city for a traffic light at the intersection were denied federal funding.

Fischer added that other 2025 projects include:

• The dredging of the lake at North Park, expected to begin in January, with the park possibly reopening by spring

• A new stormwater pipe lining project — a process by which sections of damaged sewer pipe can be repaired by relining the pipe interior with a polymer material to “greatly reduce or eliminate future sinkholes” and without requiring roadways to be dug up to reach the pipes

• $40,000 in outdoor lighting improvements at the City Hall property.

“Clearly, our number one project is the new fire station,” Fischer said.

Construction of the new $15.7 million centralized fire station at 1094 Hadcock Road is anticipated to be completed before the end of 2025.

Council also approved:

• Three ordinance amendments related to passage of the 2025 operating budget, including a revised allocation of municipal income tax receipts in 2025, amending the Fund Balance Reserve policy and creating an OPWC Laurel-Maxwell Intersection Improvement Fund

• A three-year renewal of the city’s police and fire dispatching agreement with Brunswick Hills Township, including a 3 percent annual increase from the previous contract for administrative costs.

The township will pay the city $81,418 in year one, $83,861 in year two and $86,377 in year three

• A $35,944 contract with TAC Computers for maintenance of various software in the divisions of police and fire

• A resolution supporting the Ohio Commission of the United States Semiquincentennial, known as America 250-OH, in 2026 and authorizing the city to apply for a $5,000 grant to support local activities related to the celebration.

Also at the meeting, City Manager Carl DeForest reminded residents of the city’s snow-event parking ban, which prohibits street parking when snow exceeds 2 inches on roadways in order to allow snow plows access to the roads.

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