Washington’s City Council met in its regular session Monday evening. Prior to the meeting, the council held two public hearings. The first hearing concerned the proposed ordinance authorizing an additional appropriation to purchase a new bus for the Transit Department. There were no comments, and the hearing was closed after one minute. The Council approved the ordinance during its regular session. The second hearing concerned the proposed ordinance to pave a 20-foot section of an alley in the Doherty Subdivision between Lincoln and Jefferson Streets. Percy Lyford, who owns property on both sides of the alley, would like to combine the properties. The alley in question runs north and south. The block in question is also served by an east-west alley. Keith Ellis, an adjoining property owner, said he didn’t think it was a good idea. During the regular meeting, the council voted to table the ordinance for further investigation. During the public comment section of the meeting, Charlie Vaught asked about progress on an ordinance requiring safety inspections of rental properties. Mayor Rhoads said the city is organizing a meeting of local landlords to explain what safety measures could be required. Council also heard from Beth Young, who said that her property on Sunset Avenue flooded and that water seeped into her crawl space after every rain. Mayor Rhoads said he would have the city engineer contact her and see what measures could be taken.
In regular business, three ordinances rezoning property in the city were introduced. One request was to rezone property located on State Road 57, just north of the Bobe’s Pizza Express property, from residential to commercial. The second request was to rezone a lot on the northwest corner of the Power House property on East Main Street from residential to commercial to match the zoning of the remainder of the property. The third request was to rezone a tract of property just south of Cherry Tree Apartments on Bussard Road from commercial to residential multi-family residence. The council will consider the three requests at its next meeting.
