“To sum up the last two weeks since last we saw all of you, it’s been interesting,” said Wooster Mayor Bob Breneman during his opening remarks at the March 7 city council meeting, adding, “we’ve had two major snowstorms, a flood, and a strong rain event.

“Our safety forces, our public properties maintenance crews, our utility crews did an outstanding job as far as my personal opinion goes. Hopefully you are hearing that in the community also. They worked very hard to rise to the occasion and take care of things.

“They really pulled together with the flood, probably the worst we’ve seen in the area since 1969 when a major flood happened,” said Breneman. “Hopefully that will be the last one of those we have for another 30 or 40 years.

“To my knowledge there were no injuries or fatalities involved with the flooding so we’re surely thankful for that,” Breneman noted.

There was some damage to city property, Breneman said, mainly in the “water pollution control plant, which suffered some flooding in one building. We have gotten that taken care of and we’re back in operation.”

The mayor noted that a number of motors in the pumps in the water pollution control plant were damaged by the water but that none of the pumps were lost, which would have resulted in a significant expense to the city.

The motors were dried and reconditioned “by a local company within a day’s time and all of those motors are back in operation at this point in time,” said Breneman.

When asked whether council could expect to see an additional appropriation request for damages due to the flooding event, Breneman said he believed the costs were sufficiently low that they should be able to be covered under the existing operation and maintenance budgets.

The flooding did cause additional expense to the city in terms of personnel costs.

“We did have a lot of overtime in our maintenance world and our safety forces,” said Breneman.

“We are tracking that with the county. If it were to reach a level that there could be FEMA monies involved, then we would have those all accounted for if we were to apply for those FEMA funds, but at this point I do not believe that we are going to reach that level,” Breneman noted.

One councilman expressed his relief that the damage wasn’t far worse.

“When you see the degree of damage done throughout the state and throughout our county, I’m personally very thankful that we didn’t get hit any harder than we did, although certainly many people had water damage,” said Councilman Jon Ulbright.

He also expressed his appreciation to the city employees who responded to all three major weather events.

“I want to commend our crews that are out there battling the elements and doing a great job. Hats off to them,” said Ulbright.

“I think our city forces did a phenomenal job helping people out with the bad weather,” added council representative Barbara Knapic.

“It was just amazing what our city folks did and what the general public did helping each other out,” said Knapic. “I think that is something that is very commendable about our community.

“We have our city workers and the general public out there helping their neighbors. That’s extremely commendable. It’s just one more reason why it’s great to live here,” said Knapic.