Dover Chemical, city of Dover settle longstanding dispute
DOVER – The legal dispute between the city of Dover and the Dover Chemical Corporation is coming to an end more than four years after it started.
Dover Chemical on Monday filed a notice to dismiss its lawsuit against the city. That night Dover City Council approved a settlement agreement with the company.
Mayor Shane Gunnoe said he was not at liberty to discuss details of the settlement yet, but it will become public when it’s filed with the court.
“Other than the ordinance does specifically say there will be no transfer funds from the city of Dover,” Gunnoe said, “so it will not cost the taxpayers anything as part of the settlement.”
Dover Chemical sued Dover in February 2021 after the city levied what would amount to about $1.1 million in punitive electric surcharges against the company. Dover countersued. The case went through multiple appeals, including to the Ohio Supreme Court. Dover Chemical won the main argument when Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court Judge Elizabeth Thomakos ruled the company didn’t have to pay the surcharges and allowed it to pursue additional claims against the city, leading to the settlement.
“I’m not going to comment on, you know, what I would have hoped for or those kind of things,” Gunnoe said. “I know, today is a matter of executing the settlement agreement in the best interests of the community, and that’s what we’re looking forward to.”
Dover racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs. Gunnoe disputed a claim that it reached $1 million. He says the goal was always to protect Dover taxpayers.
“For every dollar that has been accrued in legal fees, we have found $2 in offsets, in saving costs in other places,” Gunnoe said, “and as a result of which, our rates in 2024 were lower than they were in 2022, which is kind of unheard of for a small utility company, especially with what’s happened in electric in the last few years. So we’ve acted to protect our residents and we’re continuing to act to protect the residents in coming to a settlement agreement with Dover Chemical and moving on in the best interest of the community and going from there.
“The bottom line is, we are glad to be able to move on from this. I think the community and I believe Dover Chemical and everybody’s glad to be moving forward in a positive direction.”
Dover Chemical no longer gets electricity from the city-owned Dover Light and Power plant. Gunnoe says that has not had a negative impact on the rest of the city’s power customers. He says rates are lower now than they were three years ago.
The tension of the sometimes-ugly legal dispute continued briefly at Monday’s Council meeting when Council-at-large candidate Zachary Wallick criticized city officials.
“I’m happy to hear that this Dover chemical debacle is finally coming to an end. Our city leaders failed us in this matter,” Wallick said. “We spent a million dollars on attorneys to lose one of our top customers to our city power plant – $2 million a year in revenue, we lost. For what? What did we gain tonight? What are we gaining from this settlement? All we have done is lost the last four years. We have gained nothing.”
Gunnoe said Wallick’s suggestions would have cost the city more.
“Our rates are lower than they were the day I took over here,” said Gunnoe, who was first appointed interim mayor in 2022 then mayor the next year. “Just going back to what you said tonight … some of these proposals would have been far more costly in the long run. And our obligation through this entire process has been, since we found out about the 2003 assets that were involved in that letter, has been to protect our residents and to protect our taxpayers.”
Wallick previously ran for Council president. He is among five candidates seeking three at-large seats this November. The others are incumbents Perci Garner and John Correll, former Councilman Greg Bair and new challenger Dave Callender.