It was the middle of July and 7 inches of rain had fallen in Coventry Township within 24 hours.
As the waters rose, streets, cars and houses were quickly flooded.
So was Tom Seese’s phone.
As a Coventry Township trustee — a part-time job that pays $11,318 — Seese was deluged with angry calls as rushing water cracked an apartment foundation, forcing an evacuation, and homeowners watched in horror as garages and basements filled.
It was the “100 Year Rain,” and Seese was expected to do something about it.
Welcome to the job of township trustee.
Scores of people in the Akron-Canton area are on Tuesday’s ballot seeking the job, and voters will decide whom they want most to handle the affairs of one of Ohio’s most basic governmental units.
The challenges — and expectations — are often surprising.
In rural Hiram, Steve Pancost, who makes $11,318 each year, said his job as a trustee is to work for the good of the community and to keep it moving forward.
Trustees hire and fire workers and worry about life-and-death response times for EMS, firefighters and police. Meanwhile, they fight snow and field calls about potholes.
Pancost and Seese say they do it because they receive satisfaction from helping people directly. Other trustees said the same.
They said that trustees are the middlemen between the citizens and higher levels of government.
Seese said that after the flood, he was on the phone to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to get funding to move the water out of the affected areas.
But moving water from one area raised the risk of creating floods elsewhere, Seese said. At each turn, there was another challenge. Now, Seese is looking into grants and federal money to help compensate the residents for damage the flood has caused.
Pancost said one of his biggest issues this year is citizen concern over Hiram College wanting the village to annex about 80 acres for development. That was a reason he ran for office, and he believes it is his responsibility to keep citizens aware of the project.
“I wanted to be on the front of that opposition. The community wants a say in what is going to happen to that piece of property,” he said.
Pancost, a life resident of Hiram, said he feels like he is making a difference in securing the township’s rural lifestyle.
“You want to see things stay the way they were when you were a kid,” he said.
Pancost was recently successful in securing almost $50,000 in grants through the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council that he hopes will help save on township energy costs. With that money, the township purchased a $10,000 thermal imaging camera for the fire department and performed about $35,000 worth of improvements to two township buildings.
Nancy Vines, a Shalersville Township trustee, said she is proud of her Portage County community, and that’s why she ran for trustee.
Vines said much of her work pertains to maintaining the 24 miles of township roads and working with the schools.
The township purchased a vacant Crestwood school building and transformed it into two separate entities.
“We have a Portage County school at one end and a day care at the other end, so by sharing utility costs, we were able to keep the school in our community rather than it being sold and used for something else,” Vines said.
The possibility that horizontal deep-well gas drilling, known as hydraulic fracking, will come to Shalersville is another issue, she said. There are residents for and against it.
The township, meanwhile, needs to protect the roads the heavy equipment would use and might require drillers to post bonds to protect the roads, she said.
Always on call
For trustees, work often continues after business hours. Trustees still answer email and phone calls at home. Most of them have their cell phone or home phone number available to the public.
Becky Corbett, a trustee from Bath, said that even when she is on vacation, she participates in the town meetings via Skype (a live Internet video messaging website) or by telephone.
Seese said he gets at least one call every week and most of these calls are complaints. He said the calls can fluctuate with the weather, too. Residents want to know when the snowplow is coming past their house.
Pancost feels it’s important to remain in contact with the people he serves. He frequently seeks feedback from citizens about community projects.
“I like to believe my phone is always available for anyone to call me for anything,” Pancost said. “I like to stay in tune with the people and talk with them to make sure they’re happy.”
Trustees are allowed to have some fun, too. Their jobs can’t be serious all the time.
Vines recalls taking her grandmother to the township-sponsored senior days. About seven or eight years ago, she brought this tradition back, and every second Monday of the month is seniors day, with dinner and bingo to follow.
“That’s one of my joys because seniors really have fun. They want to do it every week,” she said.
The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Canton Repository, Rubber City Radio, WYSU radio and the Youngstown Vindicator.
