Brownton City Council discusses home repair, fire contract at meeting

The Brownton City Council spent a good portion of a special meeting Monday discussing property on First Avenue S that has a work repair order.
The property, which was cited several times for blight issues under a previous owner, has since been purchased by a couple with the intention of fixing it up as their home.
However, the city kept the work order in place, and there is some discussion as to whether the house can be fixed to address health and safety issues.
The city’s building inspector, Darin Haslip, said he does not feel the house can be brought up to standards, at least not without a significant investment. The new owners, however, feel that it is worth saving.
At the end of a long and sometimes contentious discussion, the general consensus was to have the couple have a structural engineer look at the home to see if it can, in fact, be rehabilitated. Haslip said he would like to have that opinion before issuing any permits.
For more from the City Council meeting, including a discussion of the city's fire service contract with area townships, see the Sept. 20 print edition of The Chronicle.