Why is Yellow Springs water so expensive?
It’s a question asked in anguish by some villagers each month as they open their utility bills, and one that Village staffers and administrators have renewed their efforts to answer — efforts that come on the heels of the recent publication of data that shows that Yellow Springs residents pay more for municipal water and sewer than every other Miami Valley community, and many beyond.
As nearby examples, the average monthly combined water and sewer bill in Fairborn is about $66, according to that community’s finance director. In Enon, it’s $26 and in Xenia, it’s $38, per the rates outlined in their municipal ordinances.
Here in Yellow Springs, the average village household is charged about $94 per month, according to data from the Village metering and billing departments.
Speaking with the News earlier this month, Village Manager Johnnie Burns said the reason behind that discrepancy can be traced back to local decision-making from decades ago, and is five-fold:
- The ongoing payments on a $6.7 million loan for the Village’s new water treatment plant, which was finished in 2017 and annually siphons 30% of the water department’s budget;
- Water rates that, as a result of political decisions, stagnated for about a decade in the early 2000s, that have since risen exponentially to make up for lost time;
- Keeping up with EPA guidelines and that grow ever more strict, and sometimes divert money and attention toward utility improvements, sometimes unrelated to water, but still take would-be resources away from water improvements;
- More than four decades of deferred maintenance on the various components of our 98-year-old municipal water system, including water lines, mains, towers, valves and hydrants;
- And the costs of mitigating municipal water loss, which in 2025, was almost 32.5 million gallons.
All those costs, Burns said, are necessarily passed onto the consumer — shared among the 1,927 water utility customers in Yellow Springs. “The Village can only absorb so much,” he said.
Cost of treatment
“The new plant is the big one,” Burns said. “That’s really the bottom line — it’s why our rates are so high. Not even 2,000 accounts trying to pay off a $6.7 million loan.”
Presently, the Village pays more than $440,000 a year on the loan, with the intent to pay it off in 20 more years.
Despite the lasting price tag, Burns maintains building a new treatment plant was worth the money, and that municipal water has improved considerably even just in the last decade — from notably hard and occasionally brown water to award-winning water in statewide competitions.
Discussions about the need for a new water plant began around 2011, due, as the News previously reported, to the deteriorating conditions of the previous plant, which was then about 60 years old. As former Water Superintendent Brad Ault told the News, the old plant required constant repairs and had little, if any back-up machinery in the event of mechanical failures.
Village leaders mulled over several alternatives to building new, including purchasing water from Springfield or Xenia, but public opinion strongly favored that the Village maintain local control of its water. As a result, Village leaders considered whether to build a new plant or rehab the old — eventually siding with the former, opting to spend around $7 million over the course of 30 years, rather than spend less in the immediate on renovations, but likely more on a necessitated new build later on.
The Village contracted with HNTB to act as the criteria engineer on the project, and worked closely with Ault, then-Electric and Water Distribution Superintendent Burns, then-Manager Patti Bates and other staffers to tailor the design of the new project to Yellow Springs’ needs — namely mineral removal, softening and the ability to handle a daily flow of 1 million gallons.
Water began flowing through the new plant — more than twice the size of the old one — in 2017, and it sits right by the flattened remains of the old one, just off the Village wellfield at the end of Jacoby Road.
Since the new plant went online, manganese — the naturally occurring mineral that would occasionally discolor residential and commercial water brown — has all but disappeared from local water. Water hardness, likewise, has gone down. In 2016, water measured approximately 500 mg/L, or roughly 30 grains per gallon; according to the Village’s most recent Drinking Water Consumer Confidence Report, it now measures about 213 mg/L, or 12 grains per gallon — which, despite the change, is still classified as “very hard,” per the U.S. Geological Survey.
Likely from these changes to the municipal water, Burns said, the Village has won “best water” twice — once in 2023 and again in 2025 — in the annual Ohio Rural Water Association’s statewide taste contest.
“We’ve come a long, long way,” Burns said.
Fast-foward to spring 2026, and more changes are underway at the Village water plant — Superintendent Ault’s last day with the Village was Feb. 27, ending his 19-year tenure in Yellow Springs Public Works, which began in 2007 as a part-time worker.
Taking the helm of the water department in an interim capacity is Kevin Martin, who’s been with the Village for eight years. Until Burns finds a permanent replacement for Ault, it’s just Martin, Dale Fisher and Jeff Horn splitting their time between the municipal treatment and wastewater plants.
“I’ve got a lot of faith that Kevin will do a good job,” Ault told the News on his final day. “He might not have seen everything I’ve seen, but he knows what to do.”
“Yeah, so I can run the plants just fine,” Martin said. “But it’s the going to Council meetings and planning out the capital improvements that’ll be the biggest learning curves.”
Improvements, maintenance also drive up rates
Martin and Ault share Burns’ pride in the Village’s ongoing water improvements, but all three acknowledged the long road ahead in bringing the municipal system up to villagers’ expectations and the EPA’s standards.
Of the Village’s 30 miles of water lines that connect the Jacoby plant to the towers, and to every tap and hydrant in town, two miles of pipe need replacing, per EPA requirements. Those lines — mostly located in the older part of town along Davis, Stafford, Elm, Phillips and the several College streets — are made of galvanized steel, which the EPA includes in its lead-based classification.
As previously reported in the News, the Village needs an estimated $2.5 million in funds to replace those two miles of galvanized lines.
Other forthcoming and costly water improvements include removing toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAs — long-lasting chemicals, with micro components that break down slowly over time — from the local water supply.
Presently, the Village water department is registering well under the EPA’s health advisory limit for PFAs in drinking water at 70 parts per trillion gallons. The Village regularly detects an average of nine parts per trillion in just one of the four wells along Jacoby Road — “Or nine drops in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools,” Martin said.
However, in 2029, the EPA will change its limits to four parts per trillion; municipalities — including Yellow Springs — will be given three years to meet the new standard.
The solution to meeting that forthcoming standard on PFAs mitigation is yet to be determined, Martin said, but he is in sustained talks with the EPA to make it happen.
Municipal water loss — from leaky underground pipes to water main breaks — can also drive up local water costs that may be passed onto the consumer, Martin said. That’s in addition to and beyond the added costs a customer incurs from their own household leaks from toilets or hoses.
By virtue of the water treatment plant needing to process more water that ultimately goes unused, Martin and his team need to use chemicals such as more sand for softening, sodium hydroxide for pH control, sodium hypochlorite for oxidation and chlorine for killing bacteria.
In 2025 alone, Yellow Springs’ “lost” 28.19% of all water that was initially processed by the water treatment plant. That means that of the 115.2 million gallons of clean water produced, only 81.01 gallons were billed for. According to the EPA, the average municipality should expect to lose 14 to 16% of its water.
Though well above that average, the Village water loss appears to be headed in the right direction. 2025 began with a monthly loss that averaged around 40%; the year ended with an average closer to 20%. Burns attributes that improvement to the implementation of the Village’s new remote water meters that can let readers know of a leak within hours of detection, rather than days, or in the past, even weeks.
Taken together, these ongoing infrastructure improvements that need to be made “right darn now,” as Burns says, add up and force the Village to make challenging and often costly decisions.
“I mean, we still have to do an exercising program on valves that haven’t been turned in 30 and 40 years, and they’re going to start breaking,” he said. “Well, that’s $6,000 to $10,000 a valve, and we have 300-plus valves.”
While grant funding can help the Village make these kinds of repairs and to stay within state-mandated compliance, more often than not, Burns said, the cost of these projects typically take the form of utility rate increases.
Breaking down the bill
The rate at which Yellow Springs residents are charged for water has surged over the last 30 years.
Whereas in 1997, water customers were charged $2.15 per every 1,000 gallons used, now villagers are charged a rate of $18.04 per 1,000 gallons. Next year, it will be $19.48.
Bearing in mind that the average Yellow Springs household uses 2,300 gallons per month, one can extrapolate that the average water-related amount on a monthly residential utility bill is $93.79, according to Village meter reader and billing clerk Rose Pelzl
Pelzl contends that, while that amount is higher than most other surrounding communities, it’s not quite as high as recent reports and studies may have led some to believe.
Specifically, Pelzl referenced an annual rate cost survey that the Piqua Utilities Department released at the end of last year, which compared water and sewer costs of 70 utility jurisdictions throughout Ohio. The report measured average billing rates from March 2025 through the end of last year, based on a household’s use of 22,500 gallons or 3,000 cubic feet of water over a three-month period.
By those metrics, the survey found the average Yellow Springs utility customer pays an average of $710.19 per quarter for both water and sewer, or $236 per month — which contradicts the household averages she sees on a daily basis.
According to Pelzl’s interpretation, the survey assumes that the average village water customer uses more than three times the amount of water they actually use per month. Furthermore, Pelzl noted that the Village bills per thousand gallons, and rounds down to the nearest thousand. So, based on the current rates, if a customer only uses 1,000 gallons — which, she noted, is the average amount a single-occupant household goes through each month — bills average to about $54.
Pelzl said she doesn’t deny Yellow Springs’ comparatively high water costs to other municipalities. She attributes much of that current exorbitance to a lack of proactivity from Village Councils and administrations of the past — particularly those who didn’t “make the proactive choice” to incrementally raise water rates over time and make infrastructure improvements before reaching a “critical point.”
“This is what happens when you kick the can down the road over and over and over again,” Pelzl said.
She pointed to the years between 2002 and 2009 when the water rates didn’t rise at all. That decade began with a water rate of $3.15 per 1,000 gallons; the rate stagnated at $3.45 for eight years, then rose to $3.80 in 2010.
Five years later, in 2015, water rates skyrocketed by a 30% increase in a single year — then again the following year, and then again. By 2019, rates were at $12.97.
“What I think we saw happen was that the people who were elected then finally understood the infrastructure emergency that we were in, and they couldn’t ignore it any longer,” Pelzl said, referring to the Council who voted to buck the trend of not raising rates.
“There were finally people on Council who were fiscally conscious enough to understand that they had to take the political hit to raise the rates,” she said. “So that’s the difference between a municipal-owned utility and a private one. This is all decided democratically and not by markets, which I truly believe is a good thing. But people need to be informed to make good decisions.”
Most recently, in 2023, Council voted to raise sewer, electric and water rates through 2027 — as it pertains to water, Council authorized an 8% increase for each of those years.
As reported in the News at that time, that decision was prompted by former Village Manager Josue Salmeron wanting to heed the recommendation of Courtney & Associates, the Village’s retainer public utility consultant, to make the rates reflect the cost of providing water service.
Council member Carmen Brown stands by her vote authorizing that increase, and told the News in a recent discussion that past Councils ought to have gradually raised rates over time instead of dramatically and all at once.
“This absolutely should have been happening incrementally,” Brown said. “If rates went up slowly over time, then maybe we could have squirreled away enough money to not go into debt for a new water treatment plant.”
For some villagers, though, the improved quality of water isn’t worth the monthly utility costs.
Longtime Yellow Springs resident Wren Slone said that while she feels the cost of water in the village is high compared to elsewhere, she noted that the quality has improved since the treatment plant went online — though she and her husband still suffer lime scale and other hard water issues.
“When we lived in Dayton, the water was much better and a third of the cost,” Slone said. “We use between one and two thousand gallons a month and our bill still averages $100 per month.”
She continued: “It the cost of the service worth it? No, but unfortunately, we are stuck paying the bill for the choices residents and Council made years ago.”
Villager Jason Laveck said that he’s regularly astonished by his high utility bills — with water and sewer accounting for more than half of his monthly amount owed.
“My water bills from any other municipality have never been this much. On average I remember paying $100 at most per quarter,” Laveck said. “I feel pretty uneasy about the cost of our electric and water, but also try to do my best to understand our growing infrastructure and the improvements that seem to be ongoing.”
He added: “But when there’s a water main break every other week in the winter, I do not feel I’m getting my money’s worth.”
For Council member Brown, the village’s neverending utility woes are part and parcel with its geography.
“I think everyone forgets that Yellow Springs is a rural community in the state of Ohio,” she said. “We expect urban services in a rural community — champagne on a beer budget.”
The Village offers several services and programs to help village residents with their utility bills.
Individuals can sign up for the Utility Round-Up Program, which can provide individuals who are under threat of disconnection of their services with up to $400 per year. The application for the program can be found at http://www.yellowsprings.gov.
Yellow Springs Emergency Assistance, or YSEA, can also help villagers in need with utility payments. For those in need, call the Village Community Outreach Specialist Florence Randolph at 937-767-3716.
The News plans to break down mounting electric costs in a future article.
On a gray winter afternoon last month, students at Open Air Village spent their last few school-day moments in their play yard outside the McGregor Building at Antioch College as teachers began to round them up to go home.
Youngsters gathered cast-off gloves and hats from slides, hay bales and a sandbox.
“Over there is the ‘burning bush’,” Open Air Village co-founder Nicole Gay said, gesturing toward the edge of the yard and a large shrub, where children disappeared and reappeared as though the branches were the entrance to a fort. “The kids love to play in it.”
Open Air Village — the nature-based early childhood education program Nicole and Bryan Gay launched during the pandemic on the Antioch campus — is operating at the college through the end of the school year.
Beginning this summer, however, the program expects to relocate to a home on President Street, provided the Village approves a zoning variance that would allow the Gays to operate an in-home child care program there.
The expected pivot is the latest for the Gays who, after nearly six years of running their program, have gotten used to being adaptable.
After several years of running outdoor education workshops in public parks and working in different early childhood settings, the Gays established Open Air Village in the summer of 2020 in the former Children’s Montessori Cooperative space inside the Sontag-Fels building on Antioch’s campus. As the Gays told the News in 2021, their approach, which centers nature immersion and open-ended play for children ages 3–5, proved fairly compatible with COVID-era safety restrictions, and they later expanded to include after-school care, offering students and families a longer relationship with Open Air Village.
“When we bring children in, it feels like they’re our family,” Nicole Gay said.
Nearly five years into Open Air Village’s tenure at Antioch, however, a potential shift was in the wind. Last March, the News reported that the Sontag-Fels building was under contract by Columbus-based Windsor Companies; though Windsor now owns and plans to develop the campus’s former student union, at the time of the News report last year, Windsor representatives indicated that they had not made any concrete plans to pursue development at Sontag-Fels. They did say, however, that the building would likely need to be demolished for development to be an option.
By phone this week, Windsor’s head designer Jason Dorsey said the company is not actively working toward formalizing a purchase of Sontag-Fels at this time. However, he added that the company is working to pursue an Ohio Demolition Land Grant on Antioch’s behalf to help cover the cost of razing Sontag-Fels, an intention the company also communicated last year.
At that time, Dorsey told the News that, if the company did move forward with plans for development at Sontag-Fels, the team would be “committed” to keeping Open Air Village on site — an affirmation the Gays said they took to heart.
“There were assurances made to us, primarily through Windsor, that we were going to be a part of it,” Nicole Gay said.
Bryan Gay said the couple relied on those assurances as they planned for the future.
“We wasted months not looking for a space because we thought we had it,” he said.
According to Nicole Gay, what was previously a potential shift became a reality last August. That month, the couple met with Antioch President Jane Fernandes, who said the building was indeed slated for demolition and Open Air Village would need to move.
It was a tall order for the Gays: the school year was set to open in just a few weeks when they received the news, and they had already signed contracts with new and returning families for the upcoming school year and had revamped the school’s outdoor area, including adding a number of native plants.
The college offered Open Air Village another campus space in McGregor Hall, which includes two classrooms and an office in a hallway with exclusive use by the school, and access to the current play yard, by which the Gays said Antioch students and staff often walk and offer a wave and “hello” to youngsters.
The Gays said the McGregor space, though not as tailored to their needs as Sontag-Fels, has been working well with some adjustments. However, the space was offered temporarily — through the end of the school year this May — so the search for a new home was only delayed. As soon as the school year started, the couple began looking for another location that could preserve the school’s mission and, importantly, keep Open Air Village local.
Nicole Gay said offers came quickly and generously: potential farm space, properties near nature preserves, other buildings in town. But many options, she said, would have meant sacrificing what makes Open Air Village distinctive: daily walking “field trips,” access to Glen Helen and the Antioch Farm and the ability to keep after-school programming.
“These are huge pieces of what we are,” Nicole Gay said.
A solution finally presented itself, quite literally, close to home: a “For Lease” sign appeared right across the street from the Gays’ house.
It seemed perfect, they said: The President Street house, the former home of the late George and Toshiko Asakawa, sits on roughly an acre, with a large U-shaped driveway ideal for drop-offs and a finished basement.
“There’s a full walkout basement that is the size of our old classroom,” Nicole Gay said. “It’s still walking distance to the Glen, it’s still walking distance to Antioch Farm, and the backyard is awesome.”
While still living in their previous rented home, the Gays took a chance and put in an offer to lease the new space. The layout of the home would allow the school portion of the house to be separated from the family’s private living space. The Gays have already begun hosting parent meetings there and envision a part of the upstairs as a gathering area for coffee, conversation and future “Parents Night Out” and parent group meetings.
The only downside, the Gays figured, would be that the move would require downsizing; by state law, the upper limit for in-home childcare models is 12 students. At present, Open Air Village accommodates 14 children.
For that reason, Nicole Gay said, the move is bittersweet, but with Mills Lawn’s planned opening of a preschool program to provide more local early childhood education options in the next few years, the time feels right to downsize.
“And I feel like it just really gets us back to the roots of where we started, with Bryan and me teaching together,” she said.
Longtime teacher Tiffany Ward, who was recently accepted into Glen Helen’s naturalist program, remains part of the core educational team at Open Air Village. Other educators, including music teacher Caryn Diamond, newly hired Jessica Struewing-Grigorian and Jules Molnar, remain connected to the program, but in-home care will primarily be led by the Gays.
Financially, the transition has been draining, the Gays said. The couple has managed overlapping rents at their previous home, the new home and at Antioch to plan for the shift. But even throughout the uncertainty of transition, the Gays said they’ve received nothing but support from the families involved in the school.
“Everybody stayed,” Nicole Gay said of the announcement last year that the center would have to move. “And not only did they stay, but they helped us pack and they helped us move.”
Now, the immediate hurdle is procedural. The Gays plan to appear before the Planning Commission in April to seek the variance required to operate from President Street. In the interim, the Gays’ concern is about creating bonds with neighbors who might have questions about what an in-home care program in their area might look like, operating on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. with, at most, 12 kids.
“We did find out there are a few neighbors who are concerned,” Nicole Gay said, adding that she’s in the process of setting up a meeting to chat with neighbors face-to-face, and that she hopes the new setting will eventually deepen community ties. In particular, she pointed to the dormant gardens in the President Street home’s backyard, which the Gays have begun to revive.
“We want to be on good terms with our neighbors, and we found out we have neighbors who are naturalists or avid gardeners — wouldn’t it be cool if we could bring some of those people in to share their experiences with kids?” she said.
Bryan Gay said he remains optimistic that the variance will be approved, and that the future looks bright for Open Air Village.
“It’s just about having the support of the people around us,” he said.
And despite the upheaval, the couple said their goal of remaining local has not changed.
“We’re not gonna give up,” Nicole Gay said. “We don’t want to leave Yellow Springs.”
Last week, Yellow Springs resident Frederick Dane Muenchau-Peterson was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of his father and beloved villager, Frederick “Doc Pete” Peterson.
Muenchau-Peterson was sentenced Friday, Jan. 30, by Greene County Common Pleas Judge Adolfo Tornichio.
Last October, Muenchau-Peterson pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and tampering with evidence in connection to the killing of Peterson at his Livermore Street home on Jan. 11, 2025
At the time of this plea, the Greene County Prosecutor’s Office recommended the sentence Muenchau-Peterson received last week.
“I want to express my deepest condolences to the family of the victim in this case,” Greene County Prosecuting Attorney David Hayes said at the time of the plea in November. “This murder was completely senseless and, frankly, incomprehensible. At this stage, the defendant has accepted responsibility for what he has done, and now we move on to sentencing.”
In addition to being a psychologist, Peterson was a writer and educator whose work focused on sexuality and gender and trauma resolution therapy. He was the author or co-author of several works, including 2020’s “The Gender Revolution and New Sexual Health” and a textbook released in 2022, “Sex and Gender: Current Clinical Concepts and Practices.” He co-authored a sex column in the Yellow Springs News.
He was one of the final clinical fellows of the Masters and Johnson Institute, founded by William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, who were pioneers in the study of human sexuality. He was also, as the News reported in 2022, a passionate educator on issues of cultural diversity and white privilege.
Beyond his professional life, Peterson was an “incredible, loving husband,” his wife, villager Deborah Dixon, told the News last year.
“He had this way of instinctively knowing and giving a person what they needed,” Dixon said. “He has truly been the wind beneath my wings, and I cannot express how devastated I am that he’s no longer in my life.”
Ahead of Muenchau-Peterson’s sentencing last week, Dixon and several others addressed Muenchau-Peterson directly in the court room.
“Based on the documented evidence and the course of conduct that led to this murder, you present an ongoing and serious danger. For those reasons, and for the protection of others, I respectfully ask that justice be served through a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, Dixon said.
She continued: “This is not about revenge. It is about reality. Frederick L. Peterson deserved to live. He deserved safety in his own home. He deserved a future. Since he cannot stand here today, I do.”
By Chris Wyatt
Jan. 10, 2026
Every time it warms up a bit, I consider turning the water back on but then I check the weather forecast only to discover a week of temperatures below freezing. I realize it is supposed to be like this but I’m getting a strong sense that Karen is missing The Hall, and she won’t go out there if there is no toilet.
Jan. 17, 2026
Well, the first week of teaching is done and I survived. The semi-annual inspection meeting went reasonably well and I had us finished in 90 minutes, rather than the anticipated three hours. My classes have higher numbers than usual which is nice. The main graduate class that I teach usually has between 10 and 12 students in it, but this semester there are 18. It’s only a small increase, but it radically improves the dynamic of the classroom, the presence of more students increases the chances of someone actually answering questions in class.
The Hall has been abandoned for a week as it is sub-freezing and snowy. After a full day of teaching, I have no interest in building a fire; I need home comforts. However, today is different. Today I do have an interest in building a fire and so will head out shortly with an old copy of The Yellow Springs News, some fatwood and a box of big matches. Let’s see if we can drive out the cold and damp.
It will be cold next week with temperatures falling to 4oF and the possibility of snow flurries. It’s time to batten down the hatches, and break out the books. This weekend will be lazy. I plan to make a shepherd’s pie with ground lamb from Meijer (good store Meijer, they stock lamb and duck). I will likely throw away the traditional British cooking rulebook, and add peas and carrots to the pie. Traditionally the shepherd’s pie would contain ground lamb, onion, stock (or bisto gravy) and mashed potatoes. Other vegetables would be cooked separately, if you had them. I may even finely chop some celery and add that.
Both my grandmothers are spinning in their graves, and I anticipate a stern phone call from my mother admonishing me for cultural drift.
Twenty years in America and I’m adding celery to shepherd’s pie. I should be ashamed of myself. Before you know it, I’ll be adding brown ale and putting horseradish in the mash. Hmm. That probably works well for a cottage pie.
Jan. 18, 2026
Yep, it’s cold. I shall finish this cup of tea and head out to build fire. Archie was limping at the end of his two-block walk this morning, so we will need to be careful with him in the coming days. Bob enjoys taking Arch on long walks, but that will need to be put on hold for the next week or so.
Years ago, we tried to protect Betty’s paws from the cold with a wax-based product called “Mush.” She loved lying on the floor licking it off, and absolutely refused to walk anywhere until it had all been removed. Unfortunately, if you own a headstrong, stubborn little Terrier, I cannot recommend the product “Mush.”
Jan. 19, 2026
Splitting frozen cherry wood is deeply satisfying. It cracks with a resounding poink and the two pieces fly apart. It also splits down to kindling well, and burns quickly and easily when cut into small pieces. It is ideal for starting fires, which is what will be happening later, as it will fall way below freezing tonight. I teach all day tomorrow, so I’m not sure that I will stay out there, but I can certainly build up a fire that will burn most of the way through the night. We have some heroic pieces of oak that I have set aside as “all-nighter” logs. The right combination of oak and ash should keep the house nice and toasty.
Holy cow, it’s cold outside; 15oF and a brisk wind meant that Archie’s walk was swiftly terminated. Blankets on the sofa and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” are the order of the day.
Jan. 21, 2026
Last night Bob and a bunch of his friends went out to the Hall and built a fire. They played board games until 2 a.m. then snuck home and slept late.
This is why we bought Patterdale Hall.
My kids have a space outside the house that is unlike anything their friends are familiar with. The fact I can give that to my children, without having any family here, is precious to me. It’s not Grandma’s house, it’s actually their space. Patterdale Hall belongs to my children as much as it does to me and Karen.
With that said, Bob can replace all the bloody wood that he burned last night. Start chopping, child.
Jan. 24, 2026
Winter is about to hit its nadir. We are predicted to get a foot of snow, and temperatures will drop to -4oF. I’m fine with this as long as we don’t lose power. You might think that having a wood burning stove will keep us all lovely and warm, but that means we actually have to be at The Hall. My plan is to stay in Yellow Springs, and with a foot of snow, there is no way I’m driving out to Patterdale.
We either head out there today and stay for three days, leaving the kids behind, or hang out in YS and pray that we don’t lose power. I favor the latter, although there is freshly split wood and about a week’s worth of dry wood in the garage. Either way, I’m bracing for impact.
*Originally from Manchester, England, Chris Wyatt is an associate professor of neuroscience, cell biology and physiology at Wright State University. He has lived in Yellow Springs for 19 years, is married and has two children and an insane Patterdale terrier. “The Patterdale Hall Diaries,” by Chris Wyatt, is now available in book format via Amazon for $11.99.
Last week, the YS Senior Center’s Fireplace Room was filled with works of art: A small marble statue was nestled in a corner. A pair of colorful feet with sprigs of paper sprouting from their tops sat on the mantle. A floral oil painting glowed from a wall over the hearth, facing dozens of other drawings, paintings and fiber works.
By next week, those works will have moved to the Mills Park Hotel for the Senior Center’s first-ever Ageless Art Auction, where community members are invited to gather, spend time with neighbors and take part in a little friendly competition, bidding to take home works by well-known Miami Valley artists.
The Ageless Art Auction will be held Thursday, Feb. 19, 6:30–9 p.m., at the Mills Park Hotel. Tickets are $50 in advance and $75 at the door.
Speaking with the News last week, Senior Center Executive Director Caroline Mullin said the upcoming event grew out of a fundraising committee conversation, with local resident and committee member Jim Johnson suggesting the idea.
“He’s successfully done art auctions in his bed and breakfast,” Mullin said. “Around the table, we just started talking about different artists we had ideas of in town, and it just sort of quickly evolved.”
Mullin said Jim and Libby Hammond, former owners of Mills Park Hotel, had previously offered support if the Senior Center needed it, and the hotel’s event space seemed like a perfect spot for the fundraiser.
“They said, ‘Whatever you want, we’ll take care of it,’” Mullin said.
Yellow Springs being as artist-rich — and, Mullin said, as generous — as it is, the Senior Center had a plethora of donated works quickly lined up for the show. Many pieces were donated directly by artists, many of whom have ties to the Senior Center as members, collaborators or supporters; others come from personal collections.
The week she spoke with the News, in fact, Mullin said she was still receiving offers of donated works.
“I told them, ‘Next year,’” she said. “There’s been a lot of enthusiasm.”
Local connoisseurs of art will likely recognize the artist signatures on the 39 works up for auction: Chris Glaser, Jennifer Berman, Nancy Mellon, Naysan McIlhargey, Anthony Maughan, and the late Eddie Eckenrode, to name a few. There’s a large floral oil painting, “Night Garden 2,” from Katherine Kadish, whose retrospective is currently on display at The Winds; a small marble sculpture by Jon Barlow Hudson — a model from his “Etruscan Manaeds” series; and an oil pastel, “Ancestral Spirit Dance (Study)” from famed Dayton artist Willis “Bing” Davis. Mullin noted that one work, donated from a private collection, is a pastel by former villager Julie Karlson, whose work is no longer typically available for sale.
“I can’t imagine another senior center could say, ‘We’re going to auction art,’ and come up with a collection like this,” Mullin said.
Most of the artwork will be sold via silent auction, with a handful of pieces designated for live bidding during the evening.
“We’re going to pick maybe three or four items for live auction,” Mullin said. “It keeps people around, and it’s just fun to watch what happens. So even if people don’t plan to buy art, they should still come.”
She added that many of the artists whose work will be up for bid will be in attendance, so folks can talk to them about their inspiration, style and techniques.
One of those present will be fiber artist Pam Geisel, who serves as the Senior Center’s marketing manager. She said the auction also reflects the Senior Center’s relationship with local art collective Village Artisans and its attendant artists, several of whom donated to the event.
“When Village Artisans wasn’t able to have Art on the Lawn [at Mills Lawn] for a couple of years, we were hosting it at the Senior Center land [near Antioch College],” Geisel said. “Afterward, a lot of people were asking how they could thank the center. This was a really natural answer.”
One of Geisel’s art quilts, “Picnic at Ellis Pond,” is up for auction; as its name suggests, the colorful art quilt, stitched with intricate free-motion-style textures, depicts a sunny day at Ellis Pond, with black-eyed Susans in the foreground and the park’s telltale willows in the distance.
“The quilt is part of a series I did of art quilt scenes from around Yellow Springs,” Geisel said. “I picked that particular view because I thought the willow trees would make it really identifiable as Ellis Pond.”
Proceeds from the auction will support the Senior Center’s operations, Mullin said, as the organization aims to respond to growing community need for services.
“We’re hiring right now,” she said. “We really need to increase our staffing to cover the increased needs around here.”
Mullin added that capacity at the auction event is limited to 125, and encouraged those who are interested to purchase tickets early. She also encouraged folks to bring their own creative energy to the event.
“We’ve told people the dress code is ‘show us your style,’” Mullin said. “We’re hoping to see some pretty fun outfits — maybe something someone hasn’t had a chance to wear in a while.”
Ticket information and a full list of artists and available works for the Ageless Art Auction can be found at www.ysseniors.org/art-auction.html
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