FROMONLINE | 2013-05-20

  • By Tami Lange
  • May 20, 2013
  • 392
                        
After three or more years of wrangling, Wooster still has a tent city, even though the Ohio Department of Transportation is sitting on a court order to have the residents of that encampment removed as trespassers. In June of 2011, ODOT sought a court order to remove the tent city, which is located on land near the Madison Avenue/ U.S. 30 interchange. ODOT has had perpetual easements on several parcels on land there since around 1960, when the Dix Expressway project was undertaken. That request was granted in a summary judgment issued by Common Pleas Court Judge Corey Spitler that November. But ODOT has never exercised its right to remove the campers, which causes some problem for the city, which still gets complaints about the area. According to city law director Richard R. Benson Jr., Mayor Bob Breneman recently called the Wayne County Health Department after receiving complaints about the way human waste may have been dealt with at the site. There are no sanitary facilities there, Benson said, and the mayor was concerned people may have been digging latrines or just using the creek. But what further confounds the law director is why ODOT has done an about face on cleaning up tent city. Benson said he contacted ODOT initially and, as a result, got a phone call from Ohio assistant attorney general L. Martin Cordero, with whom he had several lengthy conversations. Since then, Benson said he has since gotten calls from the new chief counsel to ODOT, wondering why the previous lawsuit had even been authorized. Cordero represented ODOT Director Jerry Wray in the suit against the tent city residents. Attempts to reach him were answered by attorney general’s office spokesperson Dan Tierney, who said the AG’s office only comments on the status of court filings. Tierney, in turn, referred questions to ODOT press secretary Steve Faulkner. Faulkner, in turn, referred questions to ODOT District III public information officer Christine Myers. Myers would say only that “ODOT is not an enforcement authority.” She agreed that ODOT holds the perpetual easements on the property, but “the normal maintenance of the right-of-way is not the responsibility of ODOT District III.” However, District III real estate administrator Bradley Corder signed an affidavit included in the 2011 court action that seems to fly in the face of Myers’s statements. Also contrary to what she said is Cordero’s citation of Ohio Revised Code Section 5515.01, which he offered to show ODOT had standing to bring the action in the first place. “We disagree with ODOT's interpretation of what constitutes ‘maintenance’,” Benson said. “We agree that Ohio law assigns us the maintenance of state routes that traverse the city, and for years we have maintained the traveled portions of the roadway, as well as the right-of-way within the fenced portions of the highway. “Go measure the distance from Route 30 to tent city, and tell me if you think that area constitutes the traveled portion of the roadway or the right-of-way immediately adjacent thereto. “ Benson is further perplexed by the state’s lack of action, given that representatives from ODOT were part of an interagency task force composed of city, county, state and social services personnel who met to discuss how best to go about removing the trespassers and finding appropriate relocation services for them. Myers confirmed that ODOT District III had representatives on that task force, but declined to elaborate. The area in dispute is composed of five parcels whose owners are shown as Robert and Mildred Miller, Lloyd and Florence Zuercher, Harry and Grace Koontz and Russell and Genevieve Snyder. ODOT purchased the easements from all the owners in a period between 1958 and 1961. Benson noted that even the county map office, the county treasurer and the county auditor have carried that property in the name of ODOT “because they have had use of that land completely.”


Loading next article...

End of content

No more pages to load