At the Ironton City Council meeting on Thursday, they heard from citizens about basement flooding. They also passed a resolution to put a recreation tax renewal levy on the November ballot.

Neighbors from North Second Street were at the meeting about flooding in their basements that has occurred during heavy rains since a line was put in their neighborhood as part of the EPA mandated separation of sewer and wastewater lines.

Rick McKnight said while it hasn’t flooded during a couple recent heavy rains, the fear that it will remains.

“So what happened, did we turn something on we had off? What happened? That’s what we want to know,” he said.

Wastewater Super-intendent Dennis Gumbert said that nothing had been changed that would affect the flooding.

Mayor Katrina Keith spoke to the council on city matters.

She said that she was recently in Columbus to talk to state officials in the Governor’s Office of Appalachia, Department of Admini-strative Services, the Ohio Department of Health and JobsOhio.

“So we were establishing connections there so we can talk about economic development and what properties we have here in Ironton, see how they can work with us and what potential is out there for Ironton,” she said.

Keith added that they are working on a video project to promote Ironton on the city website and on Facebook. She said they are creating a series of videos about each city department.

“That is in connection with our town hall meetings,” she said. “We want to continue to do those. If you know anybody that wants us to come out and talk about our annual report and get them up to speed, we would like to. It’s been a great, great effort.”

She said that she had attended the grand opening of Decadence, a formal wear clothing store on Second Street.

“Sometimes, you get busy and don’t really realize what has come to Ironton,” she said. “As we started looking around, I realized we have a new coffee shop, The Chat Room. We have the dress shop, we have Gypsy Hearts, The Hot Spot Boutique, Consigned Books, and Cardinal Wishes. We’re seeing growth, we are seeing promising things in Ironton. It may not be all the large things all at once, but we are seeing promising things. We are seeing positive growth and people are excited about Ironton.”

She also said they are working on a system so people can use a credit card to pay bills online rather than having to come into an office.

The system is not up and running yet, but is in the process of working out all the details.

Before the council voted on passing a resolution to put a half-mill recreation tax levy renewal on the ballot, Council member Chuck O’Leary told the mayor that he would like to see a plan for how the money is used.

“I am going to vote for this because I am not going to deny the citizens, but I would like to see a detailed plan, mainly about the church sports league,” he said. “I would like to see a step by step, clear, precise plan of how we are going to do this.”

The league would be for the whole community, not just churches. They would like to see a league that involves teams from various businesses.

In the end the resolution passed and it will be sent to the board of elections.

Ironton residents already pay a half-mill levy, which is five cents for every $100 worth of property, to fund the rec department.

This gives voters the option of renewing it until 2021.