by Kate Shunney
Citing a lack of action and a non-functioning advisory board, the Morgan County Commissioners last Wednesday voted unanimously to suspend their Unsafe Structures ordinance.
The county law, enacted August 15, 2018, was championed by then-commissioner Ken Reed to address several unsightly and dilapidated structures around Morgan County that were not being fixed up or removed by their owners.
The ordinance, authorized under West Virginia law, allowed for the creation of a board that would take reports of unsafe structures and work with property owners to address concerns or affect improvements to those properties.
An introduction to the law states: “the Morgan County Commission has determined that there are severely dilapidated and abandoned structures located throughout the county which present a safety or health hazard and which have deteriorated to such a degree as to be unsightly, visually offensive and depressive of the value of the adjacent properties or uses of such properties.”
It authorized the creation of the Morgan County Unsafe Structure and Property Enforcement Agency. That agency, or advisory board, was to contain the county engineer, a county health officer, a fire chief, litter control officer and members of the public.
Discussion on March 26 was led by Commissioner Joel Tuttle, who said the ordinance was put in place by Reed to take care of “two properties that are now gone.”
Tuttle said the advisory board was “not acting” and he proposed the county pause the ordinance.
Commission President Bill Clark said he was on the fence about the ordinance. Clark said he liked the litter control element of the rules.
“There’s this aspect of it I don’t like, where we act as a judge,” Clark said.
Under the rules, a resident could submit a form citing a problem or complaint about an unsafe or dilapidated property. The board would have looked at the property to determine if there was an issue, then followed up with the property owner to work toward resolving the issue. After many steps set out in the ordinance, the advisory board could then have called for the demolition of a property that posed a public safety issue.
Commissioner Sean Forney asked if the county would revisit the ordinance at a later date.
“I don’t know if this ordinance will come back,” said Tuttle. “There’s got to be counties that are doing it the right way, not this convoluted mess.”
Tuttle said a few people had wanted to use the form but he had to tell them the board wasn’t meeting or functioning.
Commissioners voted 3-0 to suspend the ordinance and remove mention of it from the county’s website.
