Nancy Roof, left to right, Joe Thompson, David Roth, Jerica Drapp, and James Roth, members of the new Commissioners Committee on the Fire Training Facility, meet for the committee’s first meeting at the Fort Piqua Plaza on North Main Street on Thursday, April 11.
Eamon Baird | Miami Valley Today
By Eamon Baird
PIQUA — The Commissioners Committee on the Fire Training Facility held its inaugural meeting on Thursday, April 11, at Fort Piqua Plaza on North Main Street.
This special committee was established by a resolution by the Piqua Commission on Feb. 6 to create a report detailing events that occurred between 2017 and 2023 at the Fire Training Facility. During that time the site was occupied by the Energy Safety Response Group (ESRG) which burned lithium-ion batteries. In September of 2023, ESRG was required to shut down operations by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The meeting was held in a fourth-floor boardroom which featured a long conference table and a small number of seats for members of the public.
James Roth, Jerica Drapp, David Roth, Joe Thompson, and Nancy Roof were selected by the Piqua Commissioners to serve on the committee.
Frank Patrizio, law director for Piqua, and Ward Four Commissioner Thomas Hohman attended the meeting laying out the groundwork for the new committee.
“This is not a public forum where people will come up and give comments,” Patrizio said. “However, some of them will want to provide information, I’m not going to discourage anyone from doing that, and I would suggest that you guys establish a procedure where somebody wants to provide you information or even potentially give testimony to you and you would be able to have them come forward.”
Patrizio added that the report the committee creates would be subject to public record and that they should set up an email address that can be accessible to the public.
Members of the committee were instructed after they read evidence and conducted interviews, they would write a report to share with the Piqua City Commission.
“We’re looking for the story of ‘how did this happen?’” Hohman said to the committee. “I have a story [about what happened] and I think there are holes in it.”
Committee members discussed how often they plan on getting together. Thompson said it is essential for the committee to meet often.
“There’s a lot of people that have already done a lot of work, and I feel like we’re playing catch up,” Thompson said.
Drapp said an important aspect of the committee will be conducting cohesive interviews.
“What I typically do is I create like a staple interview guide because we need to figure out what questions we have to ask and that we don’t want to ask one person a question not ask another personal question right so we want to create a system guide when we’re having this conversations and interviews,” Drapp said.
At the end of the meeting, members proposed having a video recording for their next session and asked audience members if they had any suggestions for future meetings.
Resident Debbie Stein gave suggestions on what the public seeks from the committee moving forward.
“Personally, I think that you should have all passed resolutions in front of you, that spells out what this committee was about,” Debbie Stein said. “It needs to be open, fair, and honest.”
“Our goal is to be 100% transparent with you,” David Roth said to the members of the audience.
“I think the history part of this is really important in that you don’t want history to repeat itself, but I also think a lot of citizens in Piqua are looking for how can we move forward from this,” Drapp said.
The committee scheduled its next meeting for Thursday, April 25, at 5:30 p.m. at Fort Piqua Plaza.
The commission will also be in attendance with city commissioners at the open house at the Piqua Public Safety Regional Training Facility located at 9300 State Route 66 on Thursday, April 18, from 4 to 6 p.m.
