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Boardman Township unveils new online-transaction exchange location
The town-ship this week unveiled a new service that aims to keep residents safe.
Signs are posted at the township government center, 8299 Market St., to mark locations where residents can meet to exchange items purchased online. Those locations are the parking lot and the lobby of the police department, which is located in the government center.
Those spots are equipped with video surveillance (and audio surveillance in the lobby) that is monitored continuously by the police dispatch center, making them ideal places to complete transactions made on online buy/sell/trade sites, township officials said.
“There’s been a lot of use of the buy/sell/trades on Facebook,” township Administrator Jason Loree said. “It made sense to provide a space that was a little bit more safe than having them come to your home.”
One “Boardman Area Buy Sell or Trade” page on Facebook, for example, has more than 30,500 members. Numerous other Facebook buy/sell/trade pages for this area also exist, in addition to classified-advertisement websites such as Craigs-list.
Loree said he came up with the idea for a township exchange location after reading on social media sites about similar programs and talking with officials from other municipalities.
“We heard the horror stories of people getting robbed at their house. So why not do this?” he said.
As the township government center already was equipped with surveillance tools, the only cost to the township to add this service was to purchase two signs that read “Internet Purchase Exchange Location.”
The parking lot location is accessible at all times. The government center lobby is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, excluding holidays.