Oil City Council members on Thursday discussed holding a public nuisance meeting about the IOOF building on Seneca Street, which is still missing part of its roof.
Council scheduled the nuisance meeting to follow the May 25 council meeting if building owner Milan Adamovsky doesn’t rectify the situation with code violations on the property by May 4.
“So far at this time there has been no voluntary compliance from the owner,” city manager Mark Schroyer said Thursday.
Part of the roof of the IOOF building, commonly referred to as the Odd Fellows building, at 220 and 222 Seneca St., blew off in an April 1 storm and damaged the neighboring Seneca Court roof, causing that building to be evacuated of its tenants.
Seneca Court has been repaired and the tenants have moved back.
The roof of the IOOF building is “still wide open” and has not been repaired almost a month later, Schroyer said.
He added that he has been getting inquires from the neighbors as to what the city is doing about the Odd Fellows buildings. Concerns have also been raised that more of the roof could blow off in a future storm.
A 20 foot by 16 foot piece of the roof flew off the Odd Fellows building during the April 1 storm, struck part of the parapet on the building and knocked it down, then flew over another building and landed on the Seneca Court building, causing significant damage to the roof.
Oil City fire chief Derek Long recalled responding to the Odd Fellows building during that storm when they had “like 40 calls going.” He said they initially believed the Odd Fellows building was struck by lightning, but then they realized upon arriving that part of the roof came off and the building hadn’t been struck by lightning.
The IOOF building is one of five buildings in Oil City owned by Adamovsky, who came to town with grand ideas for “bringing back Oil City” more than two years ago and bought up buildings in the North Side business district, then went silent, leaving his buildings to rot for two years.
All five deeds were transferred from the sellers to Adamovsky and his various limited liability companies.
He is already facing code violations on four of the buildings, including the Odd Fellows, that are unrelated to the storm and which he has ignored for several months.
Swimming pool update
Herman said the costs of operating the pool have increased due to dramatic inflation in the price of things needed to keep the pool running and 15-year maintenance, such as replacing the pool filter.
He added that he hopes the costs will go down some in future years when there aren’t the additional maintenance costs.
In recent years, the city has broke even or lost only about $4,000 operating the pool, but last year the pool the city lost $13,000, Herman said.
He said he expects the city will lose money again this year, so he suggested collecting donations to cover the costs of the pool as has been done in the past.
Herman added that he stopped asking for donations when the pool started to break even.
In March, Herman said he evaluated the family passes and found many people are taking advantage of the system. At that time he proposed getting rid of the family passes and changing the fee structure for individual passes.
The matter was tabled at the last several meetings because Herman was dealing with emergencies and not able to attend the meetings.
On Thursday, Herman withdrew the request to overhaul the structure of pool passes, which are already being sold, and said he would make administrative adjustments instead, such as clarifying who is eligible to be put on a family pool pass.
In other matters, Sam McSparren and Scott Attenborough of the Oil City Fire Department were both promoted to lieutenant.
And the city will hold an electronics recycling event May 19 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the city garage in Siverly.
The event is only open to city residents, not businesses, and proof of residency is required.
Air conditioners won’t be accepted.
Anyone with questions can call the city utilities office at (814) 678-3002.
