It was a long meeting of the Ironton City Council on Thursday.

While most meetings take a half hour or so, this one went an hour and ten minutes before they went into executive session to discuss personnel matters.

The length wasn’t due to a long agenda; those four items were dealt with in about 10 minutes.
It was under the agenda’s miscellaneous section in which members of the public can talk to the council that took an hour.

The subjects ranged from repair of the brick section of Fifth Street to Monday’s bridge demolition to paving to the land bank to what the Lawrence-Scioto Solid Waste Management District does.

Mayor Katrina Keith said that the brick road on Fifth Street is going to be repaired starting Monday.

“That’s what has been told to me by our city engineer,” Keith said.

Keith said that she had met with the land bank, as the Lawrence County Land Reutilization Corporation is commonly called, earlier in the day on Thursday.

“There are 31 properties they have the possibility of taking possession of in the city of Ironton. That would eliminate a lot of high weeds,” she said. She added that there have been bids to purchase seven of those properties. “They have accepted those bids and so you will start seeing, over the next few weeks, properties being cut, buildings coming down. That will eliminate a lot off the health department.”

Keith said that there are 13 paving projects that are out for (requests for qualifications). “So we are in the process of trying to obtain those quotes so we can see how much paving we can get done in 2017,” Keith said.

Any proceeds from the sales go back to the land bank so they can buy more distressed properties to be cleaned up.

The council set up a committee to make a plan on how the city’s budget would be used if the city’s income tax were raised to 1 percent. The city’s current income tax is 0.5 percent, and only about 35 percent of Ironton residents have an income that can be taxed.

Raising the income tax is something that has to be on the ballot for voters to decide, said Vice Mayor Craig Harvey.

“We have to have a plan (for that money) before anyone would even vote on it,” said Council member Rich Blankenship. “I don’t think it would pass if we didn’t have a plan. I’m not going to do anything more until we have a concise plan.”

Council member Chuck O’Leary said he would not support an income tax raise until there was a five-year plan projecting how that money would be used because he doesn’t want the money squandered.

“I want a plan we can show the people,” he said.

Council member Jim Tordiff said that schools, by law, have to have a five-year plan.

“It’s not an earth-shattering document as it is. In my opinion, a starting point to initiate the kind of discussions that Chuck was talking about,” he said. He added a committee would have to plan for things that would really make a difference to the city before they took the idea to the voters.

In the end, a committee was formed with Keith, finance director John Elam, O’Leary, Tordiff as the chairperson, and either Harvey or Kevin Waldo as the third council member.

Harvey said they could add other people to the committee as needed.

Dan Palmer of the Lawrence-Scioto Solid Waste Management District came before the council to answer questions about why there weren’t dumpsters available for last Saturday’s Ironton Cleanup Day and what the district does for Ironton since residents pay $12 a month to the agency.

He said the short answer was that there was no grant for dumpsters this year.

“We had a grant for you last year, 17 roll offs (dumpsters) we did for the city of Ironton,” Palmer said.

He said a problem was that the city didn’t have a secure site to keep people out of the dumpsters at night, and by the end of the five-day period, they had 17 full dumpsters and over 400 mattresses because people would come over night and dumped stuff. “We spent out a lot of money. And I have to be fair to the eastern end of the county. I have to be fair to Portsmouth.”

Between the two counties, there are 30 townships as well as villages that the district covers.

Palmer said that among the things the solid waste district does for Ironton includes an e-waste/document shred day, prescription pill take back day, tire removal, mosquito control and doing recycling for city hall.

And a lot of work is done with a trailer and workers supplied by Lawrence County Judge O. Clark Collins.

Palmer said his enforcement officer has cited people in Ironton to get them to remove things like couches and chairs.

He said in one case, the officer told a property owner that if he didn’t clean up some items, he would be cited into court.

“He had it cleaned up by the end of the day,” Palmer said.

In one case, a person was cited for dumping stuff on Porter Gap Road and went to court. “She served days in jail and a $500 fine,” Palmer said.

Around 7 p.m., the council got to another part of the agenda besides miscellanous.

Under the correspondence section of the agenda, the council received a notice from the Ohio Division of Liquor Control about a Class B License for the Dollar General on Third Street. The council accepted the correspondence, but will not request a meeting since no members of the public ever attend.

On the ordinances on the agenda, council voted to amend the budget after removing $60,000 for the Municipal Court Special Projects fund; approved the salary being set for the finance director at $58,652.07 for 2017; and approved payment to Ackerman Construction of $37,500 for roof repair to the municipal water filtration plant facility. An Item on the agenda to allow SBA Communications to sublease space on a cell tower to T-Mobile was tabled until a later time.