An appeals court rejects a contractor’s contention that Youngstown’s property maintenance code is unconstitutional

By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The 7th District Court of Appeals rejected a filing from a contractor who contended the city’s demolition laws are unconstitutional.

William A. McKinley, owner of McKinley Industries, was found guilty in February 2015 of two counts of failing to follow the city’s procedures for removing debris after demolishing the former Woodside Receiving Hospital on East Indianola Avenue and at a residential property on Selma Avenue.

He was sentenced a month later to three days in Mahoning County jail and two years’ of probation.

Richard W. Machuga of Youngstown, McKinley’s attorney, sought to dismiss the counts because “it requires individuals not compensated by the city ‘to work daily at its direction’ and that failure to comply could result in incarceration.”

The complaint added that the city code violates the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime.

The appeals court dismissed those arguments, writing McKinley “was not forced to undertake these demolition projects,” and the city’s property maintenance code is legal.

The code requires all commercial demolition work once it begins to continue daily until it’s finished except for on holidays, Sundays and when there’s inclement weather.

It also requires residential demolitions to be finished within 72 hours after they begin.

McKinley “failed to show that the ordinance is contrary to any general law or that it is unreasonable,” the appeals court decision reads.

McKinley started the Woodside demolition project started in August 2012 and wasn’t finished until February 2015.

Demolition on the Selma property started in September 2014 and took two months to finish.

Woodside was a state mental hospital that opened in 1945 and closed in 1996 when the state reduced funding for those facilities.

It became a privately-owned residential facility for counseling juveniles, closing in 2008.