Tidewater Road junkyard raises ire of residents

By Tay­lor Kaser

Part of the com­mis­sion­ers’ Sep­tem­ber 12 reg­u­lar meet­ing was spent lis­ten­ing to con­cerns from cit­i­zens about a junk yard on Tide­wa­ter Road off Co. Rd. 61.

Res­i­dent Dar­ren Seiben expressed his dis­sat­is­fac­tion with how the mat­ter of per­mit­ting a junk­yard to func­tion was han­dled. He alleged that it had been in oper­a­tion before they had received the per­mits, and that they’re still oper­at­ing now — even when they’ve been told not to.

A Con­di­tional Use per­mit for the junk­yard is cur­rently under review by the Board of Zon­ing Appeals; evi­dence and infor­ma­tion regard­ing the case has been sub­mit­ted to the County Prosecutor.

“Any­where in the United States where a junk­yard goes in, prop­erty val­ues drop,” said Seiben, “and Mor­row County’s not exempt from that. It’s con­tin­ued to oper­ate while it’s been told to shut down for the last six months.” He went on to com­ment that no cita­tions have been issued.

Com­mis­sioner Tom Whis­ton said he has been out to the area to see the prop­erty. He said when he did stop there, he was told they were closed.

Seiben also noted that the owner of the prop­erty, not the owner of the busi­ness, is behind on pay­ment of his prop­erty taxes for the land. A pay­ment plan was set up between the prop­erty owner and the County Trea­surer, he said, and the owner has already missed mak­ing some of those payments

“I always assumed,” said Seiben, “that if you don’t pay your taxes, there’s reper­cus­sions. It not only appears he’s been given con­ces­sions, but we’re going above and beyond giv­ing con­ces­sions. And in the mean­time, this con­di­tional use per­mit has the abil­ity to be detri­men­tal to every sin­gle per­son who lives on our road.”

“I’m not sure from the stand­point of inhibit­ing a per­mit,” said Whis­ton, “because some­one hasn’t paid their taxes.”

A BZA on-site inspec­tion is sched­uled for the junk yard this week.

He also said he has filed a nui­sance com­plaint for a col­lapsed struc­ture on that same prop­erty. It was built in 1953 he said, and prob­a­bly con­tains asbestos. Fil­ing has been sub­mit­ted to the Town­ship Trustees and Health Depart­ment. He said noth­ing is hap­pen­ing on this mat­ter yet, he is now fil­ing the com­plaint with the Zon­ing Office.

Com­mis­sioner Olen Jack­son stated they would dis­cuss the mat­ter with the County Pros­e­cu­tor at their weekly meeting.

Use of the Bar­racuda Web Fil­ter­ing pro­gram was approved and will begin on Octo­ber 1. Elected offi­cials will then have suf­fi­cient time to deter­mine what Inter­net usage is allowed on each com­puter in their depart­ment, includ­ing their own said Jackson.

The place­ment of a per­ma­nent liquors license at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course was approved to be placed on the Novem­ber Gen­eral Elec­tion bal­lot. The pas­sage of the issue would help Mid-Ohio remain com­pet­i­tive with other sport­ing venues.

A con­tract was approved for pro­fes­sional sur­veyor ser­vices with Garv­er­ick Sur­vey­ing, LLC in con­nec­tion with a require­ment for the Mov­ing Ohio For­ward Grant.

A bid received last week for the Dog Shelter’s 2001 Dodge Ram Truck, for $700 from Beck’s Auto Wreck­ing was accepted by the com­mis­sion­ers at their Sep­tem­ber 17 reg­u­lar meeting.

Harden explained that due to the vehicle’s con­di­tion, the offer accepted was very good.

Trans­fer of funds were granted to the Court of Com­mon Pleas and the Vic­tim Wit­ness Program.

Esti­mated resources of $91,838.46 received by the bud­get com­mis­sion was approved for appro­pri­a­tion to Emer­gency Squad Gen­eral Real Estate.

An appro­pri­a­tion of $20,000 was approved in the Devel­op­ment Office to Habi­tat for Human­ity for $20,000.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Sep 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.