NOT ATTRACTIVE — Third Ward Councilwoman Heather Hoover says junked-up lots like this one in the 1300 block of Oak Grove Avenue, piled high with cast-off sofas, mattresses and other junk, can stifle economic development. -- Contributed

STEUBENVILLE — Municipal Judge John Mascio Jr. wasn’t at the Steubenville City Council meeting two weeks ago when talk turned to property management issues and what can be done to fix them.

But even if he was, he said he couldn’t tell them anything he hasn’t said many times before — and that’s that anything can be fixed, as long as city officials are willing to pay the price. “I don’t see it as the complicated issue it’s become,” Mascio said. “In fact, it’s very uncomplicated — it’s just changing from past practices and maybe making some people do things they don’t want to do.”

Council’s Pride Committee, chaired by Third Ward Councilwoman Heather Hoover, is hoping to do that.

Hoover, backed by her committee members — First Ward Councilman Dave Albaugh and Councilman at large Joel Walker — called on council to address the city’s ongoing, longstanding property maintenance issues, pointing out that, “If we don’t have pride in our own community and take a stand to clean it up, how do we expect our citizens to?”

She’s scheduled a committee meeting April 30 to bring city officials together to look at what they can do to address problem properties.

Albaugh said it’s “very critical” that they do whatever is necessary to correct the issues, “because people and businesses will not want to relocate to our city (if) they perceive it as being dirty and run down.”

“If we don’t get a handle on it soon the neighborhoods are going to continue to decay,” Walker agreed. “(If that’s) the case, we will not be able to have the city move forward — people will not want to move here and live next to these properties.”

As it stands, individual homeowners whose properties are deemed in violation and don’t correct the problem end up in Mascio’s courtroom: Complaints involving litter, unpaid vacant property fees, castoff furniture and household items left on porches and yards, as well as high weeds and grass, are addressed by him as they come up. The maximum penalty for misdemeanor property violations is a $250 fine and 30 days in jail, but in extreme cases those penalties can be assessed for each day the property is out of compliance.

But once a month Mascio holds housing court, a session that focuses on unsafe and dilapidated buildings, “so city employees can address all of their cases in one sitting, freeing them up to do their jobs the rest of the month.”

That part of the system works well, he said.

In a 2018 memo to then-city council members, Mascio said he’d “long ago realized that simply fining and jailing (those) offenders does nothing to secure or clean the property in question,” though there are instances where he’s had to resort to those measures.

“Many properties have been brought into compliance through this docket,” Mascio he pointed out in that same memo. “Offenders have been fined, put in jail and ordered (into) community service. (But) there are, unfortunately, violators who simply cannot come into compliance.”

Properties controlled by LLCs, corporations, trusts and out-of-state owners are more challenging.

The first three — LLCs, corporations and trusts — are legal entities but, because they aren’t “natural persons” in the eyes of the law, they cannot be jailed though they do face significantly heftier fines — $2,000 per offense, with per diem penalties applied if the violation goes uncorrected.

But enforcement is “very problematic” in those cases because individual owners are shielded from liability, so there’s no one individual the court can hold accountable.

“Where the problem lies is that you can only fine those types of entities,” he said. “You can’t put an LLC in jail.”

He said if a legal entity doesn’t pay up the city would have to try and collect the debt the same as they would any other judgment by “filing liens, taxing bank accounts, seizing property, things like that.”

Bringing out-of-state owners into compliance is doable, but not necessarily easy or cheap: The court can issue a warrant for no-show owners, he said, “but the problem is that now you’ve got to pay to extradite that person … you can really run into a lot of expenses.”

In those cases the court can have a “very hard time bringing that property owner into compliance,” Mascio said. “And that’s where, by law, the city can, after proper notice, go onto that property and resolve the problem on its own.”

To recoup its expenses the city would have to apply the cost as a lien against the property owner’s taxes — though going into it, he said they need to realize they’re not always going to get their money back.

“But sometimes you’ve just got to be proactive to remedy things,” Mascio said, though admitting it could “get very expensive, very quickly” if the city were to continually go on private property to address maintenance issues.

Hoover said city officials need to “explore all our options” for dealing with their out-of-town landlord and owner property issues, saying, “neighborhoods deserve that.”

“It’s the properties where an owner cannot be reached that I feel we need to put more effort into cleaning up,” she stressed. “I realize that this may be a daunting task but as a city, we must find solutions to these issues.”

Unless they live by or near one of those properties, she said residents might be unaware how very real the problem is.

“I’ve taken the time to go back through concerns that I was made aware of last year and have driven by these specific properties over the last few weeks, and I can tell you that these properties will again be issues this year,” she said. “A majority of these properties are owned by individuals who do not reside in Steubenville or, for that matter, not even in Ohio. They’ve left (them) to become vacant and troublesome.”

Hoover said council’s been told many times city employees cannot go onto privately owned property to clean it up, “(but) if we follow through with proper procedures, we can” using the tools provided to them through the city charter and Ohio Revised Code

“We just have to work together as a city to address (them.) I know that there are some who feel that this is not the city’s responsibility to clean up these homes, but the neighbors living next door or across the street or even on that block want these issues corrected. They want the city to do something, and I have to agree with them,” Hoover said.

“These are not new issues — these are the same properties that city officials have been hearing about for years,” she added. “I think if we can’t get hold of these out-of-town owners, then we must use our own ordinances and the laws set forth by the state and hold them accountable by any means that the law allows us. We’ll have to take on this burden, because we cannot leave these issues to go unnoticed by the city any longer.”

Mascio agreed, pointing out that while they’ve had success with the system currently in place in Municipal Court, “there are times that the court cannot bring violators into compliance and the city will have to take action on its own.”

He figures they could start to make inroads just by earmarking some funds each year to address some of the property maintenance issues.

“I firmly believe that violators should be prosecuted, but there has to be a plan in place for those cases where the court, for whatever reason, cannot get an offender to bring the property into code compliance,” he said. “Before we can even begin to address the problem of property maintenance there has to be a change from past practices and a proactive approach that in some circumstances will require the city to expend money (because) on its own, the court can only do so much.”

He said the revised code gives them the tools they need to do that.

“New laws are not needed but, rather, utilization of the laws we already have,” Mascio said. “But that will require a change from past practices and the expenditure of money in certain circumstances.”

Walker figures something has to be done, and quickly, though he concedes paying for the fix is “(something) we need to figure out.”

“We also need to look into other options to get this under control, like using community service and the city (workers),” Walker said. “We also need to look into getting more teeth in the codes and ordinances to hold people accountable for their actions.”

Albaugh said he’s not sure how much money council can throw at the property maintenance problems because its tax base continues to shrink.

“But I think we should try to find other avenues for funding, such as grants and possibly partnerships with other organizations (like) JB Green team, and community service (through) the Jefferson County court system and the Steubenville courts,” he said. “Most of all, we need to take pride in our community.”