WEATHERSFIELD Twp. works on tire problem

The cleanup was accomplished without a court battle, the administrator said.
By SHERRI L. SHAULIS
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
MINERAL RIDGE -- A major push to rid Weathersfield Township of old tires has brought out a lot of bad feelings among residents, but there's no need for any of that, one official says.
Using a grant from the Trumbull-Geauga Solid Waste District, township leaders stepped up their efforts last year to increase the number of tires collected during the annual drive, Administrator David Pugh said.
"We made a major push to have residents get rid of them, mainly because of concerns over West Nile virus," he said. The virus is spread by mosquitoes, and scrap tires are a prime breeding ground for the insects.
Road crews went door-to-door, just as they have in past years for the drive, collecting up to four tires from each residence. Workers also collected tires from township roadways throughout the year, he noted; those were disposed of during the annual collection.
Salvage yard
But when the drive was used to help solve a zoning and health problem in the township, some residents got upset.
Pugh said a township resident who lives about a quarter of a mile off West Liberty Street began collecting tires and other items in hopes of opening a salvage yard.
"He had owned a salvage yard before and wanted to open one again, but it was in a residential neighborhood," Pugh said.
Officials from the zoning and health departments stepped in and shut the business down before it got off the ground. They then brought in township officials to try to solve the cleanup problem.
"We could have declared the area a nuisance and cleaned up the tires, and charged that amount against the man's property taxes," Pugh explained. He noted that the likelihood of recovering that money would have been slim, because oftentimes people in similar cases will fight the lien, dragging the battle into court.
Instead, he said, trustees agreed to offer the man a chance to clean up the area on his own by hauling the tires out and disposing of them during the township's annual drive.
Costly effort
Other residents got upset, however, because the extra tires -- almost 3,000, Pugh said -- cost more money to dispose of than the township had from a grant.
Weathersfield received roughly $2,700 from the waste district for the collection program. Once all was said and done in 2002, though, the cost of collection and disposal came in around $6,000, meaning the township covered the difference from its own budget.
Waste district director Robert Villers said Weathersfield was awarded an appropriate amount of money.
"We have a pot of money, and when a township, municipality or city applies for the grant, we award them based on their population numbers," he said.
The solid waste district places no restrictions on the collection process itself, he added, other than requiring that the money be used to cover collection and disposal of tires only and that a hauler approved by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency be used.
"We leave it up to them on whether they want to use the money to collect from residents or clean up a dump or a problem area," Villers said.
Worth the money?
Pugh said the deal for the extra tires probably saved the township money in the long run.
"This way, we avoided paying attorney's fees, and there was no court battle to get the site cleaned up," he said. "In the end, we accomplished the same thing easier and cheaper."
Pugh noted there are still several tires at the site, and he asked trustees this year if they were willing to make the same offer after residents' complaints last year.
Trustees agreed to make the same offer this year, he said, but limited the number of tires from the site to 1,000. To date, he said, only a few hundred have been brought in for collection.
slshaulis@vindy.com