T-L Photo Martins Ferry City Council members discus city topics during Wednesday’s meeting.

MARTINS FERRY– Mayor Robert Krajnyak wants to make residents aware that the mess left behind last week was from a state crew and not from the city, however the city will clean up the mess.

The state crews were in towards the middle and end of Ohio 7, Mayor Krajnyak said. The state contracts these jobs twice a year, last week and again in the fall, he said.

“I’m not real happy with the mess they left,” he added.

Krajnyak says the city will be taking the new street sweeper up and down the North and South bound lanes of Ohio 7, in order to clean up the mess left behind from construction.

“We’re responsible if we want it to look nice. … We’ll be responsible for the clean up,” he said.

He said they are going to have it taken care of on a regular basis with seasonal workers who are to start on Monday.

Service Director Scott Porter said they will begin patching holes around the city next week.

In addition, Porter added that the house located on 24 South 10th Street will be coming down in the next 60 to 90 days, along with two other abandoned homes that will be torn down later this year.

Some of the council members disagree on a property maintenance ordinance.

Councilman Jack Regis Sr. said that he and other members of council had a meeting on May 23 in which they mostly discussed the “new practice,” where instead of issuing warnings, officers are issuing tickets for residents having tall weeds, high grass, debris, messy porches and yards.

“The committee’s thoughts on the the first offense is they should at least get the courtesy of a warning instead of being issued tickets,” Regis said.

Councilman Tom Burns agreed with Regis that they should first warn people before enforcing the fines,

“We have to be diligent in enforcing our fines, that’s the key thing…People have to be first notified,” Burns said.

Some of the council members refereed to the Property Maintenance Appeals Board in stating their case.

Regis thinks the tickets are harassing Martins Ferry residents.

“We’re hitting them in the pocket. We’re a small enough city that we can issue a friendly warning,” he said.

Krajnyak said that the new method is “working tremendously.” He said residents are not being issued fines, they are only ordered to come to Mayor’s Court to show they have cleaned up their property.

“We had Mayor’s Court on Tuesday, we had 30 people come through. If I’m not mistaken, there was probably about 16 of those people cited for tall weeds, grass, all that stuff. Of those 16, 12 had it done before they came to court, so we dismissed those chargers.

“We checked with the state and the state said we do not have to charge court costs because we’re dismissing the charges and taking care of the problem, in a sense,” he said.

He went on to say there were two more of the 30 people in Mayor’s Court who did nothing to their property and were fined. Both paid the fines.

An additional person, was given an extension until June 18 to have his property cleaned.

Krajnyak said residents were only given a citation to appear in Mayor’s Court, they were not immediately fined. If the resident has everything on the ticket completed, the charges will be dismissed.

“The 12 had pictures of their properties, and they looked tremendous, and that’s the whole idea,” he added.

The ordinance for the height of grass is 12 inches.