Staff report

BOARDMAN

Trustees on Monday amended zoning guidelines to require more green space in parking lots.

The amendment, which increases the portion of parking lot developments that must be landscaped with trees or shrubs or other surfaces able to absorb stormwater from 10 percent to 15 percent, is the lead-up to a complete “revamp” of the zoning code, said township Administrator Jason Loree.

“When the code does get updated, there’s going to be potentially a reduction in the parking requirements and other things that would go along with the redevelopment,” he said. “But this was one of the issues the trustees felt they would like to push forward now and try to encapsulate green space for redevelopment and new development.”

Loree said the new code likely would scale the amount of required green space to the size of the development.

The township zoning department is still meeting on those changes, and they’re expected to come down in the next three to six months, Loree said.

In other business, Melrose Avenue resident Tabitha Fitzpatrick asked police Chief Todd Werth about children loitering around the former Market Street Elementary, which Boardman Local Schools shuttered at the end of the 2018-19 school year.

The school principal reported security cameras torn from walls and 100 textbooks destroyed and strewn across the playground.

Fitzpatrick reported seeing children on the roof of the school one day.

Werth said the school lot is now part of regular police patrols.