Process to vacate Carroll Twp. ditch starts

The Ottawa County engineer has until Aug. 12 to file the required paperwork for vacating the Otto Pfeiffer Ditch in Carroll Township.
The county commissioners, after holding a hearing to consider a petition to vacate the ditch, unanimously approved a resolution in favor of the petitioners.
“The board finds, on balance, that the vacation of the Otto Pfeiffer Ditch will be conducive to the public welfare, as the property owners of the benefited real property have petitioned to and shall jointly bear this sole responsibility to maintain the ditch to their satisfaction and enjoyment without assessment from the county,” the resolution says.
The resolution directs the county engineer’s office to prepare final assessments for the cost of vacating the ditch, including expenses for engineering, legal notices and final maintenance.
Once the process is complete, the ditch, which stretches along Duff-Washa Road for 1.25 miles to State Rte. 19, will be removed from the county’s maintenance program. Under the program, costs of maintaining a ditch are assessed to landowners whose property benefits from the drainage.
County records indicate the Otto Pfeiffer Ditch was added to the county’s list of maintenance ditches in 1963, Ron Lajti, county engineer, said. In all, the ditch drains approximately 145 acres.
Leona Dupler, who filed the petition to vacate in December, said she was pleased with commissioners’ decision. She said she was frustrated with the work of a contractor who replaced drainage tiles on the section of the ditch that crosses her property.
Eight other property owners signed the petition, including Vicki Snow, who was also critical of how the county handled repairs and the clean-up after a project.
She said she is also wary of how final assessments will be tallied.
“There was no discussion on how final arrangements of the maintenance program would be fulfilled,” Snow said. “Of course all landowners will be expensed to the very end, including hours for employees being at the hearing who didn't need to be there; to inspection and reports that should have been executed before for instructions for a costly clean out. So it is a little confusing on what we are left with and what was supposed to be a part of the cleaning and what the end charges are with no itemized record.”
There is a 30-day window to appeal the commissioners’ decision to approve the petition to vacate.
A bond posted by Dupler when she filed the petition will be returned to her after the 30-day period expires.
Lajti said final assessment letters that will include a deadline to submit payments will be mailed to property owners.
During a May 5 hearing on the petition, he said the ditch didn’t meet criteria set in the Ohio Revised Code to be vacated.
It has ‘never ceased to be a public utility,” he said.