Trustees take aim at blight

Weathersfield lists properties for probe

By MARY SMITH

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

MINERAL RIDGE — Weathersfield trustees have approved a list of 16 residential properties that the township wants the Trumbull County Health Department to investigate.

The township is asking the county to “determine if the dwellings, buildings and or structures ... can be declared unfit for human habitation.”

Trustees have declared the properties “a nuisance.”

Trustee chairman James Stoddard said the township also usually has the fire department check such properties, and it will this time.

The list is much longer than past lists, he added.

“We’re trying to keep our township as blight-free as possible,” Stoddard said. “If you don’t, it will escalate; blight breeds blight.”

He noted, however, that the township would not attempt to take down a property if someone is in the process of rehabilitating it.

Listed properties in the township are: 3591 Bee St., 1473 Salt Springs Road, 1487 Salt Springs, 1760 North State St., 104 E. Emmet St., 2314 Earl St., 3617 Main St., 2210 Garfield St., 1452 Ohltown-Girard Road, 2603 Arthur St., 530 McDonald Ave., 3410 McDonald, 2201 Garfield St., 1239 Beech St., 2360 Brightwood Ave. and 1570 Prospect St.

In another matter, negotiations for a new police contract with the six members of the department who are represented by the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association have been under way for about a month, the chairman said.

The old, three-year contract approved in 2006 expires July 1, and it included 3 percent increases in each year.

Covered by the negotiations are four patrolmen and two lieutenants.

The captain and the chief are not included. The township’s seven part-time officers also are not covered by the bargaining unit.

A patrolman currently earns $19.72 an hour.

Stoddard said township police patrols will be increased in the neighborhoods now that school is out to beef up coverage of speeders or any other violations.