South Side inspection notes public nuisances

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

An unannounced mass exterior inspection of some 60 parcels of real estate on the city’s South Side that showed evidence of various public-nuisance violations was a success, according to a city official.

“We gathered a lot of information. Eight of the residences in that area will be red-tagged, which means they’re not safe to enter because they have no utilities or they’re structurally unsound,” said Brenda Williams, an architect who serves as the city’s chief building official.

Residents of the occupied homes will have to arrange for restoration of utilities or move out, Williams said. A house with a collapsed foundation at 64 Garfield Ave. will almost certainly go on the city’s demolition list, she added.

City police and firefighters, health, building and zoning inspectors, Mahoning County deputy sheriffs, and Dog Warden Dave Nelson converged on the block bounded by Oak Hill, Garfield and Myrtle avenues and Market Street at 9 a.m. Friday and remained for more than two hours.

The area is in the shadows of St. Patrick Church on Oak Hill, where the Rev. Edward Noga has been pastor for 26 years.

“I’m thrilled because many neighbors, including us, are trying to maintain our properties ... so that we lift up the neighborhood,” Father Noga said in response to the inspection.

“If we’re going to make a run at making our shrinking city better, we have to do these things,” the pastor added.

City Prosecutor Jay Macejko said authorities were looking for health, safety, littering, and unlicensed vehicle and dog violations in the area.

“This was just an initial inspection, and we’ll take it from here,” Williams said. “Our basic goal is obviously to clean up” the neighborhood.

The building official described the inspection as “a new attempt at doing stricter code enforcement in target areas so that we can have a bigger impact, as opposed to just picking a house here and a house there.”

Williams took aerial photographs from the platform atop an extended firetruck-mounted ladder to identify vehicles and other things inside some of the fenced-in lots. Owners of much of the fenced-in property have died, she said.

The dog warden and his deputy caught five loose mixed-breed dogs that were roaming the neighborhood and moved them to the dog pound, said Cicero Davis, environmental health director with the city health department.

If the exterior inspection reveals probable cause that violations exist, authorities will seek a search warrant to enter the premises at a future date, Macejko said.

“We had received over a number of years complaints about debris, inoperable motor vehicles and just the unsightliness of these parcels,” Macejko said.

“Given their proximity to some of the main corridors of Youngstown, and certainly, their proximity to St. Patrick Church, we organized an inspection team,” he added.

“This is only the first phase of our series of inspections,” Macejko said, adding that the inspection targeted both residential and commercial properties.

Many parcels in the area are zoned B-2 for light-industrial use and some have structures on them. “We’re organizing them in a spreadsheet, parcel by parcel,” and noting who the owners are and whether structures are present, the prosecutor said.

“This is probably one of the worst sites in the city of Youngstown” for inoperable motor vehicles, debris and other solid-waste storage, he said. “It’s absolutely shameful what’s going on here.”

Macejko pointed to a large dump truck on one of the Oak Hill sites, the truck having been piled high with debris, which he said was most likely from house demolition.

That truck was inside a fenced-in compound, where Hasper Leggett operates a trucking business at 1300 Oak Hill. Inside the compound were four dogs.

Leggett, who could not be reached for comment, is scheduled to appear Monday in Youngstown Municipal Court to answer citations for litter and tire accumulation, abandoned vehicles and unlicensed dogs. The city health department gave Leggett a week to prove that the dogs have their current rabies vaccinations or be cited for the vaccination violation, Davis said.

Williams said Leggett told her he lives in a Garfield Avenue house, which has no water or electric service.

“Our intent is not to put him in jail. We want him to just attempt to start to remediate and abate the eyesore, the problem and the nuisances that exist,” Davis said.

Notices of various violations will be sent to multiple other owners of real estate in the neighborhood, Williams said.