Two upcoming citywide sales possible

The fee for a rummage sale permit in Ironton is going to go from $5 to $10.

The Ironton City Council passed the ordinance Thursday, but Councilman Chuck O’Leary had been talking to Mayor Katrina Keith and others about having a twice-yearly citywide rummage sale and not having a fee to set up.

“Ironton aLive has agreed to jump on board and publicize it,” Keith said. “We’d like to have two giant rummage sales that will bring people into the community. I love the idea.”

O’Leary said that people have been jumping in to help with the idea.

“Ironton aLive has agreed to take the lead on this and they are just going to magnify it with different activities,” he said, adding his example of a citywide rummage sale is German Village, which attracts 10,000 people to the town. “We’re not going to get that many, but if we advertise it, we can bring people in and that will help our businesses too.”

Keith said there has been discussion about having the permits issued through the mayor’s office instead of the Ironton Police Department.

“That way, we don’t have to pull an officer off the road to issue a permit,” she said. “My office is open from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., so someone is always there.”

The council let an ordinance to raise the rates from service workers’ license from $100 to $150 die, because a similar ordinance passed two weeks ago replaced it.

The council also passed a resolution to allow Vice Mayor Rich Blankenship to be the signatory on all the city’s accounts at financial institutions. The resolution would replace previous vice mayors’ authorization to those accounts.

“In the event that the finance director is not here, it is up to me to sign any financial statements,” Blankenship explained. “Hopefully, that will not happen. It hasn’t happened in awhile.”

He abstained from voting since his name was on the resolution.

In the section of the meeting where the public can talk to the council, it was public officials who spoke.

New Ironton Municipal Court Judge Kevin Waldo spoke to his former colleagues on the council.

He said that he had spoken to the library board about the building they sold to the court and that he is going to get a deed of corrections that will state that the city is the property owner. It has been Waldo’s opinion that courts cannot own property.

The three lots at the corner of Vernon and Fourth streets, between the library and the Ironton City Center, were sold to the court for $150,000. The property had been used as the library’s administrative building and has two parking lots.

Councilman Nate Kline asked if it was going to be used for the court’s probation department.
Waldo said it would not be. The building was being renovated but the department hadn’t moved in yet.

“I never did understand the reason or rationale of having to go outside and walk a half block down the street to report to a different location,” he said. He added that the only thing he intends to have in the building is the court’s community service department.

Keith spoke to the council about the frigid temperatures.

“It has been a nightmare. We have had seven extremely large water line breaks,” she said. “We had so many service line breaks that we have lost count. We have had over 100 frozen meters, 30 meters where the bottom has busted out.”

She said there were four homes that still didn’t have water and that the city bought water for the residents to get through the situation.

She said that public service director Brett Thomas had hopes that it would all be fixed on Friday and service returned to everyone.

“It has been a long 10 days,” Keith said. “And the water is expected to go back down so we will be back in the same situation.”

She recommended three people to be appointed to the Ironton Health Department Board, Edward Holmes, Scott Evans and Jennifer Willis. There had been two resignations and one expired term.

The council did not make the appointments because the board members get paid $80 per meeting and it costs the city approximately $6,000 a year.

The state law requires that people on the board be paid with the maximum amount being $80.

Laura Brown, the director of the city health department, asked the council to make the appointments and then the board would talk about the reducing the payments. She said that without the appointments, the board did not have a quorum to conduct meetings. The council did not change their mind.