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Boardman to offer safe spot for online-transaction exchanges
BOARDMAN
The township next week will begin offering a new service to residents: a safe location for them to exchange items purchased online.
Signs reading “Internet Purchase Exchange Location” will go up in the township government center parking lot, located at 8299 Market St., and in the police department lobby, located in the government center, allowing residents to meet there to conduct those types of transactions.
Those locations are under continuous surveillance by the police dispatch center.
Township Administrator Jason Loree said the service is an easy, cost-effective way for the township to expand what it offers to residents, and it removes the potential risk associated with, for example, meeting at a stranger’s house to complete such a transaction. The only cost to the township was the purchase of the signs.
In other township news, the trustees this week hired four police patrolmen.
Those officers are Michael Manis of Boardman, David Jones of Youngstown, Nicholas Asimakopoulos of Boardman, and Matthew Straniak of Warren. All four are military veterans, Police Chief Jack Nichols noted.
Two were hired using funds from the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services Office, which offers grants to help law-enforcement agencies hire more community policing officers. One was hired to fill the position of an officer who will be deployed for military service, and another was hired to replace a retiring officer, Nichols said.
The four will start as entry-level patrol officers, which under the contract between the township and the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association will start them at an hourly wage rate of $16.93, or $35,221 per year.
Township officials gave first reading of a home-rule resolution that would require businesses to obtain permits through the police department for “large-scale outdoor events.”
Nichols said the aim of that ordinance is to give the police department advance notice of events that might require their presence. He used as an example the Queen of Hearts jackpot drawings at an Austintown bar that last year drew huge crowds on numerous occasions.
“Anytime a business would step outside its conditional-use permit, is what we’re interested in,” Nichols said. “We’re not interested in blocking, stopping or preventing anything. We just need to know about it in advance so we can have enough officers present.”
The cost of those permits will be $20. Businesses will be required to notify the police department about such events a minimum of 14 days in advance, Nichols said.
A second reading will take place at the next trustee meeting, which is at 3:30 p.m. April 22 at the township government center.