City Officials Reevaluating Priorities for Raze or Repair List

WHEELING -- Dilapidated structures are coming down throughout the city of Wheeling, but officials are looking to reprioritize the properties found on the city's raze-or-repair list.

Wheeling City Council has authorized City Manager Robert Herron to spend $395,837 with Raze International Inc. of Shadyside for asbestos abatement and demolition of several properties slated for removal. This was the latest round of homes to make it through the multi-step process before the city eventually removes them and places liens on the property.

Wheeling officials have aggressively pursued demolition initiatives and allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the city's annual demolition projects.

Yet Councilman Ben Seidler requested an amendment to the most recent list of homes set for demolition. He asked council to remove two properties on Wheeling Island set for the wrecking ball. Seidler noted that while these dilapidated homes need to go, they are far from the worst of the ones in his ward.

Seidler, who has remained focused on cleaning up neglected properties in the city's neighborhoods, said the city's code enforcement office and Building and Planning Department have started reevaluating criteria and reprioritizing the properties that make it to the top of the city's raze and repair list.

"Our code enforcement officers and department have worked diligently to create an objective method of ranking by priority the properties slated for demolition," Seidler said. "Two properties in this ordinance at 110 Ohio St. and 523-523½ S. Front St. will probably ultimately need to be demolished some point in the future, but I feel strongly that they are not at the top of the priority list for Ward 2."

Seidler said he has been working with Tom Connelly, director of the Wheeling Building and Planning Department, and has spoken at length with code enforcement officials regarding this process. He noted that the current list of properties to be removed was initially developed prior to the department's change of management and reevaluation of the process.

"Since then, that department has actually put together a comprehensive ranking plan to rank properties accordingly based on a number of objective criteria to determine which ones the real priorities are," Seidler said.

He noted that in the past, certain properties made it to the top of the list simply because a property owner was not protesting its removal or because there was less red tape involved, not because it posed a bigger danger or was the biggest eyesore in the neighborhood.

Such was the case with the properties on Ohio Street and South Front Street, Seidler indicated.

"The answer that I've seen is that these two properties were fairly easy, low-hanging fruit," he said. "They've already been through the legal process, and theoretically speaking, they were easier than some of the other properties to get down at this time."

According to Seidler, the Ohio Street was probably the best looking property from the outside and the most structurally solid property compared to all 27 properties on the city's current raze and repair list for Ward 2. The other property on Front Street is in bad shape, Seidler said, but it is in close vicinity of other properties in similar condition, and if it is removed, there will not be a noticeable improvement because of the other neighboring structures.

"With the list of properties that we actually have higher priorities on, we have houses in this ward that don't have roofs, that are falling in, that are caving in and that are burnt out," Seidler noted.

The recent demolition contract represents about 80 percent of the city's allocated demolition budget for the year. Seidler said he hoped that, if the two low-priority properties were to be removed, the cost to remove them could be put back into the remaining demolition funds for the fiscal year. Then higher priority properties could be razed using the next round of demolitions with the remaining pool of money.

"The three properties that we have listed here for Ward 2 are absolutely not the highest priorities," Seidler said, "and when we look at the remaining $100,000 we have left in the budget at this point, Ward 2 is absolutely not going to get any major wins. I would suspect that any resident of Ward 2 that would tell you that neither of these two properties are at the top of their priority list.

"So if Ward 2 is going to get five or six houses in the next two or three years based on the amount of money that the Finance Committee approves, I want to make sure those five or six houses are the biggest bang for the buck."

Wheeling City Council unanimously agreed to remove the two Wheeling Island properties from the legislation, and they approved the latest round of demolitions.