Mayor offers residents plan to relocate homes

If the neighborhood along the river has anything, privacy is at the top of the list.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
GIRARD -- Under the viaduct that spans the Mahoning River between Girard and McDonald is a riverfront neighborhood known as The Flats.
There are a half-dozen small streets and perhaps 10 homes. When the river overflows, such as during the recent storms, The Flats is hit hard.
Robert Miller bought his home at 24 Front St. nine years ago. He likes the neighborhood because it's quiet, except for the occasional screaming four-wheeler screaming.
Miller, who had throat cancer and can't communicate other than with pen and pad, would consider moving. But the 63-year-old says he's put too much money into his house and has too much stuff to move.
Gary Taylor has lived all of his 55 years at 403 W. Liberty St.
Like Miller, Taylor's home gets flooded. He too would consider moving but says he has invested at lot of money to make his home a better place to live.
"People who live here like it -- the privacy," Taylor said.
Miller, Taylor and their neighbors might get the chance to move as Mayor James J. Melfi has applied for The Flats to qualify for a housing relocation program.
"It's certainly not mandatory. It's not to take them out of their homes," Melfi emphasized.
The mayor has applied to the Ohio Department of Public Safety's Emergency Management Agency for The Flats to qualify because it is in a flood plain.
If the area does qualify, Melfi explained, homeowners can receive housing in another neighborhood within the city. It also pays for moving expenses.
"The program is offered to avoid future flood damage," he said.
Their new homes won't be newly constructed, Melfi explained, and their existing homes would be razed and the land reverted to city ownership.
"They have long suffered the rising of the Mahoning River. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them," Melfi said.
No new homes can be built in The Flats because it doesn't have sanitary sewer service.
Melfi suggested a ball field replace the houses that would be demolished.
Home value
Miller has been flooded three times -- once every three years -- since buying his home, which he maintains has a replacement value of $86,000.
No one would buy it at that price, he added, although he wouldn't mind selling and moving into an apartment.
Miller calls attention to a new roof, plumbing, electrical wiring and furnace among his home improvements that have cost him $60,000.
He had flood insurance, but canceled it before the latest round of floods because it became too expensive.
Miller says he pays $98 every six months in property taxes and $12.83 every two months for water. He doesn't pay a sewer charge because he has a septic system.
For Miller, fishing the river has its good and bad points. He catches catfish, walleye and muskies but can't eat them because of pollutants.
Financially attached
During the last flooding this summer, water filled Taylor's basement from floor to ceiling and up to the top step of his deck.
"Right now, I'm financially attached to it," Taylor, a roller at McDonald Steel Co., said, pointing out the house has new replacement windows, siding and fence.
"I just have too much money in it," Taylor added of the house he estimates is worth about $55,000.
Not only does the money have to be right for Taylor, but he would want to be relocated to a house with a good amount of property around it.