Elected Officials discuss KOA property, 2013 budget

By Randa Wag­ner -
The fate of the for­mer KOA Camp­ground and the 2013 county bud­get were debated top­ics dur­ing the Jan­u­ary 7 Elected Offi­cials meet­ing.
Pros­e­cu­tor Charles How­land said they will be set­ting up meet­ings with the treasurer’s office to get tax col­lec­tions back on sched­ule. The ques­tion was raised where things stand with the for­mer KOA camp­ground prop­erty on SR 95. The prop­erty has gone to auc­tion four times with­out secur­ing the min­i­mum bid (2/3 of appraised value). How­land said the mat­ter has been turned over to Audi­tor Mary Holtrey and they are hop­ing the mar­ket will pick up so the min­i­mum can be secured for the par­cel. How­land said the audi­tor has the author­ity to hold an auditor’s sale and does not have to hold to the 2/3 require­ment, if the com­mis­sion­ers choose to sell it for less. How­land believes the value of the prop­erty will only go up and hates to see it sell for ‘noth­ing.’ His rec­om­men­da­tion is to hold onto it for awhile.
“I don’t think it has to go to the com­mis­sion­ers; I think it’s my call,” said Trea­surer Dan Green. “I’m tired of it sit­ting there and we’re not get­ting any money at all in taxes. The prop­erty value has decreased because of that and I say let’s get it going. Let’s get it in the hands of some­one who will pay taxes on it and clean it up and turn it into some­thing that’s pay­ing more taxes.”
“The only dan­ger we have is to make sure it’s prop­erly adver­tised, mak­ing sure it’s well-known and exposed to a broader mar­ket than the [local paper] will put out,” said Com­mis­sioner Dick Miller.
“We can adver­tise it nation­wide, if that’s what you want,” responded How­land,
“I don’t say nation­wide, but to get the fair mar­ket value, it needs to be exposed to the mar­ket,” said Miller.
“We could do an absolute auc­tion, if that’s what you want to do,” How­land told com­mis­sion­ers.
Com­mis­sioner Tom Whis­ton said he believes devel­op­ment is com­ing north and the land value will appre­ci­ate.
“All we’ll get are the taxes on it,” Dan Green said.
Judge Howard Hall sug­gested if an auc­tion is held, hire an auc­tion­eer to ‘do all the leg­work’ for a per­cent­age of the sale, He believes all the liens that were against the prop­erty have been can­celled. (The lien hold­ers did not show up for the last hear­ing that was held on the prop­erty,)
How­land said he hates to see it go for an amount far less than its appraised value. Sher­iff Bren­ne­man said there’s a cer­tain amount of lia­bil­ity when peo­ple are van­dal­iz­ing the prop­erty. How­land responded in Ohio there is no lia­bil­ity for tres­passers ‘unless we inten­tion­ally set up a trap for them.’ He is con­cerned if the county sells the prop­erty for a small sum, some­one will turn around in a year and sell it for twice that.
“Who­ever buys it has a right to do with it what they want,” said Com­mis­sioner Tom Harden.
Com­mis­sioner Whis­ton said the com­mis­sion­ers are try­ing to wrap up the con­struc­tion on the cour­t­house, and the county received their bond rat­ing for their rollover notes. The com­mis­sion­ers handed out the three-month appro­pri­a­tions bud­get and do not fore­see any sig­nif­i­cant growth for the county.
“We are going to keep the restraints on,” said Whis­ton, “and our hopes are when we do final­ize, that we don’t have the sit­u­a­tions like last year where we had to go to the bud­get com­mis­sion and see if they would give us addi­tional funds to make it through the year. We are going to main­tain a tight reign on spend­ing, our hopes are to gen­er­ate addi­tional rev­enues. That means we’ll work with you (elected offi­cials) the best we can but it needs to be a team effort from the stand­point we are still in dif­fi­cult times and we don’t have a rainy day fund. We need to build up reserves to take care of some of these major expen­di­tures com­ing down the road.”
Sher­iff Steve Bren­ne­man reported three deputies have left the sheriff’s office for other oppor­tu­ni­ties. One deputy went to work in Jack­son County, one retired and one is tak­ing another law enforce­ment pos­tion in the county this month.
Bren­ne­man also men­tioned the floor in the dis­patch area of the sheriff’s office is being removed and a new porcelain-ceramic floor is being laid. Wiring is being updated and new desks will be in place for the MARCS radios that will be com­ing in.
“We have a lot we need to do there but it will take money to do it,” Bren­ne­man said, “We need man­power, we need repairs and main­te­nance.” He men­tioned the com­mis­sion­ers should have received a long list of repairs that need done in the jail, first and fore­most — out­side light­ing.
The jail pop­u­la­tion aver­ages 50 inmates per day, he noted, from out­side hous­ing (inmates from other coun­ties) and ICE detainees, which are down at this time.
Bren­ne­man also men­tioned pro­posed leg­is­la­tion for a ‘gun ban’, namely Sen­a­tor Dianne Feinstein’s ‘Assault Weapons Bill.’ (Feinstein’s bill will pro­hibit the “sale, trans­fer, impor­ta­tion and the pos­ses­sion, not retroac­tively, but prospec­tively,” of assault weapons that hold more than 10 bul­lets.)
Bren­ne­man said if it goes through it will ban and rede­fine assault weapons, includ­ing his ser­vice weapon.
“Peo­ple that cur­rently have them would have to reg­is­ter them and, once you do, you can­not dis­pose of them, sell them or give them away. They have to be turned in upon the death of the owner,” he said.
Recorder Dixie Shin­aberry men­tioned a sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple who come in on the main floor of the cour­t­house and they have to go back out and around the build­ing to go to munic­i­pal court; it’s unpleas­ant when the weather is bad. She won­ders if any­thing could be done to pro­vide access between the two areas with­out send­ing peo­ple back out­doors.
Com­mon Pleas Court Judge Howard Hall said he is hop­ing to be able to uti­lize the new court­room soon. There are cubi­cles in place in the area and he said it would be nice to be able to move the juve­nile pro­ba­tion offi­cers in as soon as pos­si­ble, offer­ing them bet­ter facil­ties to do work in.
“It will help immensely in con­duct­ing court busi­ness,” he said, adding the case load con­tin­ues to be as steady as ever.
Tech­ni­cian John Stein­helfer said touch up paint­ing was tak­ing place in the new court­room area and all wiring is in place. The pro­ba­tion room is done and, if an occu­pancy per­mit could be obtained, they could move in to that area. Juve­nile pro­ba­tion is mov­ing upstairs but pre­trial ser­vices and intake (both grant pro­grams) will be using the meet­ing rooms right out­side the court­room.
Com­mis­sioner Whis­ton brought up the sub­ject of the anti-virus and county com­put­ers, par­tic­u­larly cases of mal­ware are ‘sky­rock­et­ing’. Whis­ton said it will cost about $2000 to have the county com­put­ers updated. Tech­ni­cian John Stein­helfer said the free ver­sions on the com­put­ers are phas­ing out, The new soft­ware, Syman­tic Cloud, can set up alerts when some­thing is detected and can take care of viruses right away. Stein­helfer said 30,000+ viruses and mal­wares are being cre­ated every month, and the county needs to be proac­tive.
Trea­surer Dan Green reported tax noti­fi­ca­tions would be sent out in the next day or two.
County Health Com­mis­sioner Angela Smith said the com­mer­cial plumb­ing inspec­tor for the Health Dept. would be chang­ing. The local board of health, rather than the state, man­ages that pro­gram for the county. The pre­vi­ous inspec­tor was con­tracted out of Mar­ion County Health Dept but has retired. Smith said they will prob­a­bly con­tract with Rich­land County for their plumb­ing inspector’s time.
Smith said the state changed the law to place the man­u­fac­tured home park pro­gram under the Ohio Man­u­fac­tured Home Park Asso­ci­a­tion, as opposed to the Ohio Dept. of Health.
“It used to be a pro­gram we man­aged at our local health depart­ment but no longer,” Smith said. “We opted to have some local con­trol over this with inspec­tion. If we go out on any­thing other than a pub­lic health nui­sance (i.e. trash, rodents, insect infes­ta­tion, the kinds of things that are pub­lic health nui­sances) we will still have juris­dic­tion. Any­thing else, the Man­u­fac­tured Home Assoc will be respon­si­ble for.”
She explained pub­lic health nui­sances are, in gen­eral, and unfunded man­date for the health depart­ment. “The asso­ci­a­tion will decide if they want us to go out and rein­spect, (if so,) then they will tell us to rein­spect. I do expect we will get more pub­lic health nui­sances in our man­u­fac­tured home parks going for­ward.”
Smith said there are about a dozen man­u­fac­tured home parks in the county.
The sewage rules are in draft form and open for pub­lic com­ment on the Ohio Dept of Health web­site. Smith said 3–5 years ago the state passed news sewage rules, then rescinded them, revert­ing the rules back to the early 70s, which to many coun­ties was unac­cept­able. Mor­row County adopted a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the leg­is­la­tion and has been oper­at­ing very close to what will go into effect soon. So, changes will be min­i­mal but the pro­posed rules inserted lan­guage that would require the health dept to inspect all sewage sys­tems.
“We need to apply for that $400,000 from the Ohio EPA for low income fam­i­lies to help them be able to com­ply with the law,” Smith said. “We know there are some homes in the county that were built on the 1800s and have no true sewage sys­tem and we have noth­ing on file for them.”
She noted there will be a seven year cycle in which the health depart­ment staff will get out to inspect the homes in the county.
“It will work just like the aer­a­tion inspec­tion pro­gram that we oper­ate cur­rently,” Smith said, “all sewage sys­tems that have mech­a­nized parts that could fail are cur­rently required to get an inspec­tion. This a more proac­tive approach the state is look­ing to see.”
The next elected offi­cials meet­ing will be held the first Mon­day of Feb­ru­ary at noon in the com­mis­sion­ers’ meet­ing room on W. Wal­nut Street.

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.