City of Springdale History On-Line

After village solicitor Paul Weber perused the tax duplicates for 1961, he sent a congratulatory note to Max Sanks, Jr., who had headed the committee investigating incorporation. The figures more than justified the judgment made by Sanks when he recommended incorporation. Tri-County, Inc. had fulfilled expectations and Weber anticipated that within two years another $8 to $10 million would be added to the duplicate. "Beyond that, nobody knows, but it is obvious that the Village of Springdale is going to be a very prosperous one." The tax evaluation, approximately $3.5 million at the time of incorporation, reached $17,809,960 by the end of fiscal year 1961. Mayor Neuss, in his final annual report, suggested that "tax receipts were higher than anticipated in 1961. There is no need for any further taxes for operating expenses beyond the existing three-mil levy." Neuss could be the master of understatement. Few villages have experienced such phenomenal growth in a mere eighteen months and the end was not in sight.

When Charles Lindner took office on May 23, 1962 he had good reason to be confident of Springdale's future. Lindner, who worked closely with Neuss as a council member, vice-mayor and chair of the planning commission, had been instrumental in this growth. He planned to continue to steer the village in the same direction during his own administration.

Members of the official family included Robert Seifert, Clerk, council members Edna Underwood, Horace Dimond and Virgil Fath. Raymond Norrish, the first treasurer, who found his position eliminated when council combined it with that of clerk, won a council seat in November 1961. James Redden was also a new face. Dimond resigned his two-year term to accept appointment to serve out the remainder of Lindner's four-year term. Council then selected Warren W. Champion, an executive with the Realistic Company, to Dimond's unfinished term. Champion was also a veteran of the incorporation campaign.

One of council's challenges during the next two years involved controlling a somewhat natural urge to spend revenues clearly on the horizon before they actually became available. Already the village owed more than thirty thousand dollars on the firehouse renovation and twenty thousand on a new fire truck. After considerable controversy council voted unanimously to reduce the first debt to twenty-one thousand and the second to nineteen thousand dollars. As a result, in 1963 the village operated with a budget deficit of slightly more than one thousand dollars. Although the future appeared very bright, building a complete infrastructure strapped the village.

The village government improved its financial standing when it established Springdale as a separate township. On September 26, 1962 council voted to petition the Hamilton County Commissioners for the change. The move exempted the village from paying an .08-mil tax levy to Springfield Township which no longer provided services other than the two hundred dollars it contributed toward annual election expenses. Township status also gave the village council the choice of retaining the thirty-two hundred dollars anticipated from the levy in 1963 for the general fund or to reduce taxes.

Council chose to resurface many of the village's roads rather than to reduce taxes. Indeed, Springdale's potholed streets threatened to earn the village an unwelcome notoriety. Some holes could be patched but many streets, particularly in the older section of town, needed total reconstruction. After being confronted by irate residents from Smiley Avenue, Lindner reminded council on March 13 that the village still had to deal with the substandard streets built before incorporation by developers unrestricted by any type of regulations. Certainly the 150-year-old streets in the Baldwin subdivision could not be expected to withstand mid-twentieth century traffic. Lindner promised to make rebuilding antiquated roads a top priority as time and funds came available. To that end, the mayor appointed Herbert Edgecomb as the village street commissioner.

In the meantime, the county opened a section of the Springdale By-Pass (Northland Boulevard) that ran through the village. A special Hamilton County tax paid for this route. The next stretch that extended to Winton road depended on the approval and funds from the newly incorporated village of Forest Park. Another six-mile stretch of the Circle Freeway (I-275) opened in September 1962. Donald Rolf, Chairman of the Circle Freeway Committee of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, estimated that the freeway had already resulted in some $80 million dollars in new business investment for the area.

As the previous two examples illustrated, while Springdale depended on an efficient network of roads for its economic lifeblood, in many instances building and maintaining those roads required the cooperation of other governing bodies. In no area would this be more obvious and more troublesome than Crescentville Road. Crescentville Road linked Rt. 4 and Rt. 747 in the very heart of Springdale's light industrial district. The road needed to be reconstructed and widened to four lanes in order to lure industrial development. As a secondary highway the reconstruction of Crescentville Road qualified for 50 percent federal funds. A request for such funds, however, had to originate with the county government which then petitioned the state to apply to Washington. To complicate matters, one side of Crescentville Road was in Hamilton County and another in Butler. So, the Springdale council requested that both sets of commissioners ask the State of Ohio to apply to the United States government for assistance in the rebuilding of Crescentville Road! Springdale would soon learn that subsidies came gift-wrapped in multiple layers of red-tape.

Springdale's yearning to add land zoned for heavy industry, which it did not have, and its desire to control Crescentville Road figured in the village's move to annex 328 acres of Union Township which lay across Crescentville in Butler County. Robson-Middendorff, Inc., a development company already interested in building a thirty-one-acre plant and developing another 192 acres of the site, definitely added to the allure. Robson-Middendorff, however, wavered when the Butler County commissioners could not guarantee to supply the area with water and sewers. If Springdale could guarantee these services with annexation the entire area would reap the economic benefits. At the same time, Springdale solicitor Paul Weber represented the residents of the area in question, seventy-five of whom signed a petition requesting permission from the Butler county commissioners to annex to Springdale. Springdale filed annexation papers on April 23. While the Butler County Planning Commission approved the annexation, the Hamilton County commissioners deferred action on the petition until October 7 at which time they unanimously rejected the bid.

Efforts to secure a regional hospital for Springdale also proved unsuccessful. Lindner appointed a Citizen's Hospital Committee in January 1963 to assist groups or agencies who might be persuaded to establish a hospital in the Springdale vicinity. The committee prepared a descriptive pamphlet on the village which was mailed to the administrators of area hospitals. In 1964 Springdale attempted to capitalize on difficulties St. George's Hospital was experiencing in obtaining an expansion permit from the City of Cincinnati. That effort collapsed when the city issued the desired building permit. Despite these efforts, building began in 1967 on Bethesda North in Montgomery and Providence Hospital in Mt. Airy to serve those in the northeastern and northwestern sections of Hamilton County.

In most other ways, however, Springdale continued its expansion. On April 29 Ditto, Inc., a subsidiary of Bell and Howell, announced plans to build a $1-million-dollar plant on an eight-acre tract in the Lodge and Shipley industrial area. "Another for Springdale" trumpeted the Post and Times Star with a planned completion in early 1965.

Springdale's population kept pace with its economic growth, and it seemed certain that by 1970 Springdale would have the five thousand people necessary to qualify for city status. In fact, Ohio law required a city form of government once the population of a village reached five thousand. The statute made no further distinction based on size, which forced a small city to have officers it neither needed nor could afford. The Springdale Civic League, anticipating some of these problems, again took the initiative. On December 12, 1962 the League requested that council place a proposal for charter government before the electorate. Ohio law permitted "home rule," if a majority of a community's citizens established their own charter.

On February 7, 1963 Mayor Lindner appointed Horace Dimond and George McNeal to the newly formed Charter Investigation Committee. After several months of study the committee recommended that the issue be placed on the ballot. McNeal, chairman of the committee, pointed out that charter government offered Springdale advantages over village government even before it officially became a city. The Ohio General Assembly had drawn up the laws regulating village government in 1852. Outdated and inflexible, these laws failed to reflect the needs of contemporary society, nor did they adequately define the extent and limitation of the powers of village officials. Yet to revise any of these laws required an act of the state assembly. Persuaded by these arguments, council directed Weber to draw up an ordinance that authorized placing the charter question on the November ballot. On July 10, council approved this ordinance four to one, with Raymond Norrish casting the sole dissenting vote.

On November 5 the Springdale voted "yes" on the charter question. At the same time the voters chose fifteen individuals to serve on the charter commission. The commission had one year to study and prepare a proposal to be submitted to the electorate.

While Springdale pondered the charter question and the type of government it wanted for the future, Charles Lindner's surprise resignation on July 24 instigated more immediate changes. Lindner resigned, effective August 1, to become Chief Deputy in the Hamilton County Engineer's Office. Raymond Norrish, the vice-mayor, was sworn in at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, July 31, 1963. Springdale had its third mayor and the second appointed mayor in three years.

Norrish's political future depended on the approval of the voters in the November mayoral election. When Lindner resigned, council selected Max Sanks, Jr., one of six candidates for the seat and an announced candidate for mayor, to fill Norrish's unexpired term. If Sanks failed in his bid to become mayor, he would still remain on council, but if Norrish lost, he was completely out of the picture. Yet Norrish was elected mayor. It was an inauspicious beginning for a man who would become an adept politician and Springdale's longest serving mayor.