Junk Vehicles, Blight Topics for May 26 Zoning Summit
Parkman Township Trustees have decided to tackle a decades-old source of embarrassment to township officials; namely, the blighted condition of their downtown area, at or near its main intersection corner of routes 422 and 528.
Parkman Township Trustees have decided to tackle a decades-old source of embarrassment to township officials; namely, the blighted condition of their downtown area, at or near its main intersection corner of routes 422 and 528.
“It’s a real mess,” Trustee Jon Ferguson said at the May 19 trustees meeting. “We’re faced with some really big problems.”
The discussion started when former Fiscal Officer Joyce Peters asked trustees what they planned to do about junk vehicles on a commercial property on Main Market Road (U.S. 422).
“The fence is falling in and it looks like garbage, like a junkyard,” Peters told trustees. “How long is it going to go on?”
Zoning Inspector John Spelich said he has talked to the property owner, but with little result.
“If he does (clean it up), he does,” Spelich said. “What are you gonna do?”
“Enforce the law,” Peters told him.
“We do, up to a point,” Spelich replied.
“This concerns me,” Peters persisted.
Ferguson said he has been aware for many years about junk vehicles causing eyesores in the township, especially along Main Market Road.
“According to the Ohio Revised Code, we can tow them away, but no one will tow a vehicle without a title,” said Ferguson. “There are a number of things the ORC says we can’t enforce, and that’s nuts.”
The trustee said an even bigger problem is downtown blight, with many vacant and abandoned buildings near the main intersection.
Some of the buildings are two-story brick shells of former stores and homes, long closed. Others are falling in and need to be demolished, but that takes money.
“We can’t physically rip out a building that needs ripped out,” Ferguson said. “We can do it, and it goes on their property tax, but if they don’t pay the tax, we’re stuck.”
He estimated that demolition of the blighted buildings would cost the township at least $20,000 to $30,000, and that’s not in the budget.
Ferguson mentioned three houses near the BP station that are for sale for what he said was an unrealistic price.
“Two of the houses have been condemned and uninhabitable, and the third is looking just as bad, but (the owner) is asking $499,000 for all three, each on one-half acre, with the thought that the lots will be combined,” Ferguson said. “Who’s going to do that?”
He added, “It’s frustrating when you look at our downtown.”
Ferguson also noted the entrance to the industrial park on the edge of town on U.S. 422 is just as unattractive.
“You won’t get businesses to come in here with the town looking like that,” said Ferguson.
“I know you’re trying to deal with it, but it’s hideous,” Peters said. “Old buildings deteriorate, but if someone appears to be flaunting our zoning laws, that bothers me.”
“I’d like to clean it up as much as you do,” Spelich said.
Peters said she wasn’t blaming him for doing the best he could.
Ferguson said that blight and junk vehicles would be two main topics he would address at a May 26 zoning summit with the township’s zoning commission and board of zoning appeals. The summit begins at 7 p.m. in the dining room of the Parkman Community House.
