City council hears from residents
COSHOCTON – Coshocton City Council had visitors from Swayne Street at its June 11 meeting.
The residents built their home there in 2012 and have been hoping for the past several years to get their road paved. They brought pictures showing the condition of the road to share with council members and asked if they could have a timeline of when action would be taken.
Safety-Service Director Max Crown said the road probably hasn’t been paved in 50 years and said plans are in the works to have repairs made.
“Before summer is over we will have blacktop on it,” he said.
Two other visitors then spoke about their concerns in regards to council’s legislation dealing with vacant residential and commercial properties. Councilman Brad Fuller assured them that the purpose of legislation is not to punish property owners, but to help the community.
“The spirit it was written in is to make sure there aren’t buildings just sitting around empty (in the city), especially on Main Street,” Fuller said. “Seeing empty buildings on Main Street doesn’t do anything for the community.”
Ordinance 31-18, which amends the City of Coshocton building code, adding chapter 1355, sections 1355.01 through 1355.09 vacant residential and commercial properties, was given a third reading at the meeting and passed by council.
The ordinance states, “The purpose of this subchapter is to establish a program for identifying and registering vacant residential and commercial buildings; to determine the responsibilities of owners and or persons of control of vacant buildings and structures; and to speed the rehabilitation of the vacant buildings. Shifting the cost of burden from the general citizenry to the owners of the vacant buildings will be the result of this subchapter.”
Also during the meeting, council gave three readings to ordinance 47-18, which authorizes the mayor or service director to sign all documents necessary to apply for the public assistance grant program for FEMA DR-4360-OH. Crown said this grant could help with work they need to do on Hydraulic Avenue.
Category: Government
