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Ravenna City Council votes on ordinances and talk fair housing

Kimberly Laferty 0 Comments

By: Jacob Ruffo, Kimberly Laferty, and Devin Moore

12/4/2017 – The Ravenna Council voted on ordinances and viewed a presentation on what to do when it comes to fair housing.

Todd Peetz, who is the director of Portage County Regional Planning, was there because people in the community had received community block grant money.

Peetz showed a brief 4 minute video on how to avoid discrimination when it comes to selling houses, then took questions from the council.

The next line of business was the reading of the ordinances, in particular ordinance number 2017-150 which came about when liens were put on a man’s property. The ordinance states:

“An ordinance authorizing the mayor to sign a certificate or release of judgement lien as it relates to the property located at 132 East Day Street, Kent, Ohio and the property located at 141 Summit Street, Kent, Ohio, contingent upon (1) the purchase of those properties for the sum of $570,000.00; (2) The release of a judgement lien upon those properties by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, NA; (3) The release of judgement lien upon those properties by neighborhood development services and declaring an emergency.”

When asked if there were any questions regarding the ordinance, Cliff Soudil, a resident in attendance at the meeting, spoke up.

“You mentioned that all of his properties had liens put against him,” Soudil said to the council. “So if he used his original name, and he owns property in Ravenna on Main Street, then they didn’t put a lien against that?”

The council said they would have to look into it, and asked Soudil if the man had property on Main Street, to which Soudil said yes and that it was put under the man’s original name in which the man’s original name was not used for the two properties that were mentioned in the ordinance.

“My other thought on this is there’s a lot of people who ask me – well, the city of Ravenna is loaning all this money and they’re not getting it back,” Soudil said. “I have to tell them always that this is not our money, but it’s somebody’s money.”

Soudil said the council should take more caution on who they give the loans to in the future.

The council unanimously motioned to adopt the ordinance, a theme that would come up again and again.

 

In total, ten ordinances were passed, all unanimously. These later ordinances passed with much less friction. The most notable of these were an ordinance to sell $1,200 of exercise bikes to Cuyahoga Falls, and an ordinance to take $2,600 from the sewer fund to repair damage from a pipe clog.

 

Ordinance 2017-151 stated that $1,200 worth of used exercise equipment, clarified to be exercise bikes, would be sold to Cuyahoga Falls. The money gained for Ravenna would be put into the Parks Capital Improvement Fund.

 

“Usually we would auction them off,” said Council President Joe Bica, “But there is a sort-of ‘unwritten rule’ that if another town needs them they get a chance to buy them first. They would do the same thing for us.”

 

Bica said they sold these bikes because the city bought new ones, though he did not know how much they had spent on the new bikes off-hand.

 

Ordinance 2017-156 stated that the city would spend $2,600 from the Sewer Fund to repair damages done to the basement of 244 Stevens Street.

 

Mayor Frank Seman sponsored the bill. He stated that the city council would usually not spend over $1,000 from the sewer fund, but the property damaged was a residential property. The backup had nothing to do with the homeowners, and their insurance would not cover the damage. Therefore, he felt that the city needed to repair this damage that was caused by their sewage line.

 

“There was a huge branch in the pipeline,” said Seman, “We’re just thankful it was only one basement and not five or six. We initially quoted the damage at over $8,000, but luckily nothing too expensive was damaged. We also got the clog fixed.”

Jacob – wrote from “The council unanimously motioned to adopt the ordinance, a theme that would come up again and again….” and on

Kim – Wrote the lede until Jacob’s part mentioned above (first half)

Devin – Video

 

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