FLUSHING — Village Council kicked off the new year with new Mayor Preston Eberhart presiding over a busy meeting in which water and sewer rates were increased and the search for a new village solicitor was initiated.

It seemed as though a game of musical chairs had taken place prior to the Jan. 11 meeting, with regular meeting attendee Chuck Nucci and former mayor Tom Bober filling the council seats once held by now-Mayor Eberhart and Thomas Spano, who won his bid to be Flushing Township trustee in November.

Nucci ran unopposed during the Nov. 7 election while Bober, who had decided not to run for reelection as mayor, won the other seat with a successful write-in campaign that garnered 18 votes to remain a part of the village’s governing body.

During the meeting, Nucci was elected president pro tem of council and Eberhart’s initial committee assignments were discussed. Nucci said he felt he should be assigned to the Finance Committee due to his background in that field, and that he felt members would get more done if they had some say in what committees they were on.

After some discussion Councilman Dave Coe was swapped from the Finance Committee to Nucci’s spot on the Street and Alley Committee.

Eberhart said he was open to “tweaking” the assignments, but he asked that no other changes be discussed at the time since Councilman Chad Sutton was not present.

Only minor changes were made during the yearly reorganization of village guidelines.

It was decided to increase the amount paid to Mindy Wilson from $20 to $30 per meeting to take and type the minutes should Fiscal Officer Jeryl McGaffick be absent, and the official village announcement posting locations were designated to be the Municipal Building, Convenient Food Mart, Huff Insurance, Shutway’s Hardware aka Furniture Rescue, Carpenter’s Pizza and the Flushing Senior Center.

After some discussion, council voted to increase water and sewer rates in the village by $1 each per month as allowed by an ordinance passed several years ago.

McGaffick noted that there were a number of system repairs planned for this year along with the increased cost of materials needed to make those repairs, and that the price the village would be paying Belmont County for water is set to increase again, although the percentage of that increase was not known at the time.

After the resignation of Village Solicitor Chris Gagin was read and accepted, council discussed the matter before voting to advertise for a part-time solicitor who would work for the village on an “as needed” basis.

Eberhart updated council concerning efforts to monitor and protect the endangered little brown and tri-color bats that live in the village’s old railroad tunnel.

“The University of Cincinnati is doing studies and they have cameras in there, but they want to gate that tunnel off so people can’t get in there,” he said, adding that one end of the tunnel is collapsed and having the gate on the other end will benefit the village in that it will eliminate a potential safety issue.

“It will be (the Ohio Department of Transportation’s) gate, but (the Ohio Department of Natural Resources) will be assembling it. They can’t start building it until May and it has to be completed by August,” he said, later noting that he had been told the tunnel is home to the second largest hibernaculum for those bats in Ohio.

Council voted to permit the building of the gate.

In his monthly report, Village Administrator Kris Chini said the recently repaired sewage lift station check valves had been operating properly despite the recent heavy rains and that culverts by Flushing Alliance Church and on Circle Drive had been fixed.

He said crews had been performing various sewer system repairs while cleaning up and performing maintenance at the sewer plant. He also said that the village’s backhoe had been operating properly after being repaired.

Council approved paying $408 for the rental of a mini excavator that originally had been rented by a resident before it was discovered that the private line he was attempting to access had been crushed by a village storm sewer and that Chini had operated the excavator to repair the village’s part of the project.

Following up on a discussion from a previous meeting, Councilman Eric McCort suggested using Larrol Supply in Bethesda for office supplies, with McGaffick saying she would check into doing so.

Nucci also asked whether the village still needed its post office box located in Holloway, with McGaffick saying she had attempted a number of times over the years to get water customers and vendors to use the municipal building’s address with very little success. She noted that the village pays $120 per year for the box.

Council also heard and approved the renewal of the contract between the village and the Flushing Fire Department, which operates as an independent entity. Nucci requested that changes be made to the contract language to reflect the actual timetable of when the village releases levy funds to the department.

Flushing Village Council meets again at 6 p.m. Thursday in the village offices on High Street.