Civil Municipal Magazine Aug 2023

147 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 8 LONDON, OHIO 227 homes. Plus, Pulte Homes is hoping to put in 235 homes in the London area, as Closser noted. “You need a healthy mix of housing,” said the mayor. “You’re going to pull people from the outside, also you’ll pull people from London. Someone that’s in a starter home is going to go build a forever home, which opens up another home that’s going to be a little bit cheaper and a starter home for someone else. It’s cyclical.” Regarding infrastructure, Closser noted that it’s better to be active, not reactive. The City has received millions of dollars in grant monies for storm sewers, roads, bridges, and more. The City recently earned a community development block grant (or CDBG) for $750,000 for infrastructural work in south London. And there’s an ongoing $17 million sewer-line expansion project to improve sewer capacity. “We have two water treatment plants and two, 1 million-gallon water towers totaling 2 million gallons of water,” said Closser. “We had a little bit of an issue when they built the second water- treatment plant. We seem to have that remedied, so the water-treatment plant will be going online very soon. We can have two million gallons of water in the air with two active treatment plants to keep that going. And as for our sewer plant, we are only at about 50 percent capacity. It was built larger so that we would be able to handle the growth that is coming our way.” More about London It has become common knowledge that Ohio is often called the land of presidents, due to how many it has produced. And it’s also produced its