STEUBENVILLE — City Council appears ready to give the code enforcement department a tool its inspectors have said they need to identify vacant properties and their owners.

At tonight’s meeting, council will hear first reading of an ordinance advertising for proposals for companies specializing in vacant property registration services, and another that would tweak the verbiage of the city’s existing vacant property registration ordinance to define a vacant property as one to which water service has been terminated.

The ordinance currently defines a vacant property, in part, as one that’s “unoccupied or having utilities disconnected.”

Urban Projects Director Chris Petrossi told council the problem with that is the utility companies wouldn’t provide that information to them just to verify occupancy.

“When we research properties, it refers to utilities — it would help us if, instead of utilities, it said water service only because water records we can readily access,” Petrossi said. “Other utilities won’t provide us with that information, if we’re just looking into the status of an account with a meter, they won’t provide that information.”

By code, owners of vacant properties are required to register them. The fee the first year a residential property is vacant is $200, then it goes up $50 a year to a maximum of $400 in the fifth year. For commercial properties, fees start at $400.

Petrossi has told council there are “many more vacant properties out there than are registered,” but the way the ordinance is currently worded it’s hard to get to the bottom of who owns them.

‘There’s a lot of problems with vacant properties and registration, the biggest is finding owners of these ‘zombie’ properties,” he said. “Zombie properties aren’t just where we can’t find owners, they’re properties where owners are deceased, where they’re in nursing homes, where they’re indigent or have mental issues. There are a lot of different issues we’re dealing with, with vacant properties.”

Petrossi had said code enforcement sends notices out, “but if they’re returned undeliverable, at that point that case is closed — there’s nothing more we can do with that property whether it’s a hanging gutter or something more serious, like a property that needs demolition, because we can’t get service on that owner.”

Advertising for proposals for companies specializing in vacant property registration services would involve “just the cost of putting an ad in the paper,” Petrossi told council. “We need to see what these companies would propose.”

Also at the July 12 meeting:

— Councilwoman at large Kimberly Hahn sunshined emergency legislation authorizing city officials to apply for a $500,000 U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development planning grant.

Hahn said the grant would “target a specific area of the north end.”

“The idea is they will develop an overall plan dealing with the school, public housing and other properties to develop a better laid-out community with better services,” she said. “Some of public housing will be upgraded with people allowed to stay there but also trying to have it become more mixed income. The bottom line is when HUD commits to $500,000 planning grants, they then commit millions of dollars to implementation.”

She said only 28 of the planning grants are awarded nationwide, “so it’s very competitive. And if you get the planning grant, major money is available.”

— Fifth Ward Councilman Willie Paul sunshined resolution accepting the amounts and rates determined by the budget commission, authorizing the necessary tax levies and certifying them to the auditor.

Jefferson County Treasurer Ray Agresta, chairman of the county’s land bank, meanwhile, told council of the 228 structures they’d demolished countywide, “74 of them were in the city, so roughly 35 percent of what we do has been focused in the city.”

“Of those 74 demos, 58 (properties) have been sold, mostly to adjoining property owners,” he said. “Another 20 have been sold to end users that did not require demolition. So in the city of Steubenville, we have 78 parcels that just a few years ago were delinquent, accruing more property delinquencies, and now they’re back on the tax rolls.”

Agresta said the Land Bank has 12 more structures in Steubenville slated for demolition this year. “Some of you may not know we’ve done that much work in the city,” he said, adding they currently have 19 lots in their inventory.

“Personally, I think the city of Steubenville through Chris Petrossi and the Jefferson County Land Bank have had a fantastic relationship,” he added. “The land bank has assisted Chris with a number of projects when they’ve had some money, they give us a list and say, ‘Can you help us out with this?’ Keep in mind, we’re … a quasi-government agency of the county, not affiliated, really, with Jefferson County.”

He said two properties Petrossi requested assistance with are demolition work at 135 N. 4th, a building Agresta said was basically “imploding on itself, it’s ready to be demolished,” and the old Moose building at 114 S. Fourth Street. The North Fourth Street property is going to be especially tricky — and expensive — to take down, because walls shared with neighboring storefronts must be preserved.

The state Building Demolition Fund recently awarded the Jefferson County Land Bank a $500,000 grant, “so we’re going to proceed with (more) projects.”