Committee talks annexation, council rules

SCOTT TRUXELL/independent editor

It appears the issue of forced annexation in Van Wert is dead, at least for the time being.

During Monday night’s meeting of Van Wert City Council’s Judiciary and Annexation Committee, committee members Bill Marshall and Judy Bowers voiced their opposition to the idea.

“To do something along these lines will encumber a lot of heartache – legal heartache,” Marshall stated. “I’m against proposing something along these lines. Maybe somewhere down the road many years past when I’ll be here something will come about that will create that possibility but for right now, no.”

“I think it’s going to cost the city more than it’s worth financially,” Bowers said.

Committee Chairman Andrew Davis also noted any fight over forced annexation would be an expensive one from a legal standpoint and expressed hesitation over the idea.

“There’s going to be a time where maybe the city is in a financial place where they can purchase those properties when people decide to leave,” Davis said. “They can buy those properties, annex them in and market them for sale but right now, we’re not in a position any more than we’re in a position to take every island property in the city to court and go through that process. My opinion is that would be less than beneficial to us at this point.”

The topic was first brought up last month by First Ward Councilman Jeff Agler, who noted several properties along West Main St. across from Danfoss are within city boundaries, but are part of Pleasant Township instead of the city. He said one of the properties in particular, Brown Auto, is considered an eyesore.

However, Pleasant Township Trustees recently issued the business a notice of a zoning ordinance violation for weeds and junk vehicles and said the property will be re-evaluated at the October 26 meeting of the trustees to see if any progress has been made to correct the violations.

It was noted by Marshall and others at the meeting that work is indeed being done to clean up the property.

A handful of people were in attendance at the meeting, including Century Trading owners Doug and Marcia Germann, who previously stated they would fight any attempt at forced annexation. They voiced their objection again and said they keep their property as clean as possible. They also said while they’re not considered inside the city, they’re already tapped into city water and pay double the normal rate, along with sewer, despite the fact they don’t use city sewer services.

“We want to preserve our livelihood and we would like to be respected to be able to preserve our livelihood,” Marcia Germann said.

Several similar properties, referred to as islands, are along Ervin Road. Agler said those properties should be annexed into the city as well, but the discussion ended due to a lack of interest by the committee members.

The committee also heard from Davis about amending or modifying Council rules, specifically Chapter 30.

“I’ve had requests from people to look into trying to…I don’t want to say streamline, but professionalize our meetings,” Davis explained. “I’ve had people bring up the fact that we should operate more as a business meeting. Ultimately there are a lot of things already in the council rules that are antiquated that we don’t use currently.”

Many of those rules discussed were procedural, including consent agenda rules and preparing legislation.

“Some of the rules don’t fit in the modern world,” Law Director John Hatcher said.

A particular area that did get some attention was a three minute time limit by council members during discussion.

“When we have a topic we want to talk about we need to have the time to talk about it,” Davis said. “All of our meetings have to happen in the open, we can’t have a meeting behind closed doors, so this is our opportunity if we have a sensitive topic that comes up that we need to spend a half hour on, we should have a half hour to talk about it.”

Hatcher chimed and noted the Council President should have the ability to set rules for debate, but council members should also be able to modify that.

Davis also stated there should be more decorum during council meetings, including no one talking over another during a discussion, which has been an issue at times this year.

“It should be one person saying their piece, it should be the next person saying their piece and we should move around the room in a very cordial manner,” he said. “It may not seem like it, but it’s very important to understand who could be watching these meetings, from the perspective of potential economic developers and things like that, who may be looking at Van Wert as an option to move here. They need to have the ability to watch these meetings and know that we have the ability to handle ourselves in a professional manner.”

The topic of hearing from the public during meetings was briefly discussed by the committee.

The current rule allows any member of the audience to speak on any agenda item, once council members and/or the administration have had their say. The overwhelming majority of all other governing bodies set aside time for members of the public to speak during a public participation portion of the agenda, usually toward the beginning of the meeting, before moving on to the business portion of the agenda. Some require written notice in advance in order to speak at a meeting.

Davis said a possible change would allow public comments to when a particular agenda item is introduced and would conclude after that. He pointed to recent discussions about junk and weed ordinances that became less than orderly.

“My goal in this is not to curb discussion, it’s to isolate issues,” he said. “We talk about it, we have the discussion and then we move to the next thing. We don’t revisit it later on.”

More discussion on possible changes will come at future meetings.