BUCYRUS — The main topic at the Bucyrus Joint Special Committees meeting Thursday evening was potentially adopting a vacant building ordinance.

The vacant building ordinance would penalize the owner of a building for leaving it vacant, in hopes that the building will be renovated by the owner or sold to be renovated, to make Bucyrus look a little nicer.

Buildings considered vacant are ones that are not legally occupied, and could have things like weeds, dry bushes, dead vegetation, trash, debris, furniture, appliances or other things that make the property look vacated.

If the ordinance is passed, once the property has been deemed vacated, the lender/mortgagee or mortgage servicer or owner shall register the building within 30 days as being vacant with forms that will be provided by the municipality/jurisdiction of the “Municipality/Jurisdiction Name” Code Enforcement Department.

Registration fees would not be prorated, but an annual registration fee would go along with the registration form and will be valid for a calendar year or what remains of it.

Fees would be due Jan. 1 and should be received no later than Jan. 31.

The issue was brought up that there are people who have been slowly working on fixing up houses but can’t get them done in short amount of time, and those people should not be fined for having a vacant property because of the efforts they are making to fix it up.

Council member Kevin Meyers said, “I don’t want us to create extra hoops for the people who are doing the right thing to jump through.”

Bucyrus citizen, Bob Erwin, addressed council on his concerns with the ordinance.

“I suppose there is going to be some kind of registration fee, and that seems like another expense that we don’t need and the fact that 116 cities in Ohio are doing it, to me doesn’t mean that we should be,” Erwin said. “There are more cities who aren’t doing it than ones that are. I don’t think this is a big issue in Bucyrus, but I agree with Kevin that there should be a way to not put a burden on the people who are taking care of their stuff or are having bad luck because they can’t rent or sell their building?”

The council tabled discussion on the ordinance in order to get a better understanding on it and to potentially change it a little.