Leesburg town hall sign

LEESBURG — Monday, July 10, at the Leesburg town council meeting, issues with a property on Harrison Street were discussed.

Leesburg Street Superintendent Craig Charlton informed council members that Crouse Body Shop, Warsaw, has been contacted regarding towing a car at that property. Council members discussed the trash situation at this property as well.

“The trash on that property is quite impressive,” remarked council member Tom Moore, “The property is an absolute eyesore and is in violation of at least two of our ordinances.”

Derek Tenney of Tenney and Sons, Warsaw, was not in attendance at the meeting; however, Leesburg Treasurer Mike Searfoss noted that Tenney sent him a copy of the sewer report to share at the meeting. According to Tenney’s report, nine pumps went down during the past month. This was mostly due to foreign objects being flushed down toilets. Council members discussed the fact that they need to enforce ordinance rules.

“We need to start issuing citations and implementing fines,” said Moore.

Moore stated he would also like to discuss another matter with Tenney.

“I want to know if there’s a better way to meter the ant-odor injection rather than just having a set number,” Moore said.  It was agreed that this issue would be discussed with Tenney at the next meeting.

Leesburg Town Council Vice-President Doug Jones gave an update on the Community Crossings street repaving grant.  Jones said when he first started to work on the grants, he was under the impression that the town would be responsible for a 50 percent match of funds. Jones has since discovered that towns under a certain size qualify to have their portion of the payment reduced to 25 percent.

Jones discussed the street projects, including a portion of Old SR 15, Jefferson Street between Plum and VanBuren streets, Brubaker Street, Donna Street, Harrison Street between Prairie and Van Buren streets and Smith Street.

According to Jones, the grand total for these projects would be $90,528, with the town’s portion of the bill being $22,632.

“We’re getting a tremendous amount of paving for a very minute amount of money,” said Jones, “I’d like to see us take advantage of this and do all the paving projects.”

“I’m not opposed to paving the streets,” said Moore, “but we need to make an addition to Jefferson Street because I couldn’t, in good conscience, agree to repave that street without fixing the storm water drainage issue at the intersection of Jefferson and VanBuren.”

A motion was made to approve the street repair and paving projects, and the motion was approved.

Moore gave a town hall ADA assessment bid update, stating that he has had no response from either of the bidders. Moore said part of the reason for this was a “hiccup” in the process as there were no specifications written. This has been rectified, according to Moore, and there is now a set of specifications. Moore added that because the building is both a public building and a commercial building, they have to comply with a lot of different rules. Moore said one of those rules is that the air conditioning efficiency has to be at a certain level.

Monthly town council meetings are held at the Plain Township Fire Department located at 6396 N Old SR 15, Leesburg (corner of Armstrong Road and Old 15).

Other news:

• The next regular meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Monday, August 14.
• A budget workshop has been scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday, July 17.
• Town Council President Larry Richey was not in attendance for the July meeting.
• No parking on any street in Leesburg between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m.
• No burning in the town of Leesburg.
• Town clean-up days were a success and they plan to do this again in the future.