Public Service Department Holds Meeting To Consider Vacating A Portion Of Balls Lane

The Public Service Department of Zanesville met with representatives of PNC bank Monday.

The meeting was held to discuss the vacation of a portion of Balls Lane. We spoke to Councilman and Chairman of the Public Services Committee, David Tarbart who gave us the history of the issue at hand.

"When ODOT came through and helped the city, and we improved Maple Avenue in certain areas, part of that improvement process was to cut out some curb cuts. Part of the curb cuts of the current PNC property we taken out and there was some discussion at that time as to access, how to get access into PNC. The issue today and when that project was done is that part of Balls Lane was vacated. The issue was kind of cut off and so there’s been a petition by PNC to vacate that part of Balls Lane."

When a property is vacated, each property owner that adjoins the street gets one half. Tarbert told us about other options that were discussed other than vacation. Those being the use of the portion of the lane for municipal purpose. Selling the property through competitive bid, lease the property to the adjoining land owners or transfer the land to a 3rd entity. Tarbert told us feelings on the issue have been split, and that he anticipates further discussion.

"I think there’s going to be much more discussion on this, at the council. I mean I know that we had the committee vote today. But I would guess that at least a few of the committee members had some reservations about what the right thing to do is here, so there’s going to be much more discussion at the council meetings, probably with regard to these same issues."

The meeting came to the conclusion to propose to council the consideration of an ordinance to vacate the portion of Balls Lane.