Public hearing will determine fate of condemned structure

By John Howell
City officials during their November 1 meeting set a hearing for a condemned structure at 102 Hoskins Road, implementing a seldom-used property maintenance provision of the city’s building code.
“The police department contacted us about it,” Batesville Code Office Administrator Pam Comer said, speaking to the mayor and alderman.
Code officer Andy Berryhill said that he had placed notices of the condemnation on the structure.
“In our opinion it was an imminent danger for anybody occupying the premises,” Berryhill said.
Berryhill said that the structure’s owner was notified and had since boarded it up. The code officer said he recommends that the building be demolished.
The property owner will have an opportunity to attend the a public hearing and tell city officials what he plans to do about the condemned structure. Options are to bring it to code, demolish it himself or do nothing and leave the demolition to the city which will then attach demolition costs to the lot’s property taxes.
“We got involved in it through some of our undercover work,” Deputy Police Chief Jimmy McCloud said. “The short version is that we did a search warrant (in) early morning hours; we made some arrests and found some very serious health hazards.”
“Somewhere in this process, we have to check the land records and make sure we’ve got everybody involved,” assistant City Attorney Colmon Mitchell said.
Aldermen voted unanimously to set the hearing.
Aldermen also set Dec. 6 public hearings:
• For a conditional use permit requested by roadside seafood vendor Joe Snyder on Highway 6 East next to East Oaks Shopping Center;
• For a request to rezone the old LMT Trucking property on Highway 6 East at McMahan Drive from I-1 to C-2;
• For rezoning of Alderman Ted Stewart’s property on Patton Lane from R-7 to M-1.
Stewart recused himself from the meeting during the discussion and vote to set the hearing for his property.
In other business, aldermen voted unanimously for Berryhill’s recommendation to accept a $15,000 quote from Swindoll Construction of Batesville for repair of 4,400 square feet of flat roof at the Batesville Public Library where a leak had allowed water damage inside
Swindoll’s was the lowest of three quotes Berryhill secured that ranged up to $29,850 for the repair.