Wallen@communitycommon.com

Portsmouth City Council held a special meeting on March 1 to reconsider whether the city should apply for Community Housing Improvement Program (CIP) funds and passed the ordinance. The resolution had failed the week before, February 22, at councils regular meeting due to a tie vote.

"The funding for the program comes from the Ohio Department of Development, its a competitive grant process. To the best of our knowledge the last time the city applied for this grant was 1998. I know the city began the process last year, for part of the funding by completing its Community Housing Strategy. It's a huge process there are a lot of community meetings and out of that came a strategy, also a performance manual," Mandy Heart, with The Center for Appalachian Philanthropy who is helping the city submit it's application said.

There is a plan in place for if the city receives the funding and how it will be allocated.

"The CDC of Ohio, was one of the organizations that applied to help us through the application process. My recommendation is the city hire the CDC of Ohio," Heart said.

She said the application is due on April 1, "we do not have a lot of time we need to act fast. The coordination and collaboration of people in the community will be very important for us to be successful," Heart said.

The council voted to approve the submittal of the application for possible funding.

The city traffic committee met in special session on February 25 to discuss the recommendations of council. The committee chose not to act on the matter stating, it was only a recommending body and could not have an impact on the final decision.

Shortly after the meeting of the traffic committee started and the public option portion of the meeting was over, committee member Dick Grim called for the meeting to be adjourned.

"We are only an advisory committee. ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation) has said after an extensive, expensive survey what lights should be removed and which should be maintained. The council, early this year took action to reenforce somewhat," Dick Grim, a member of the Portsmouth city traffic committee said after the meeting. "Anything we do or say here today, does not amount to a whole lot. We elected six city councilmen, they say this is the proper course of action, that's good enough for me, if it does not prove right there will be another election."

Portsmouth Mayor Jane Murray has held several meeting with ODOT officials to best address the issue of hanging the traffic lights at the intersections of 11th and Findlay, 12th and Findlay, 11th and Hutchins, 12th and Hutchins, 11th and Clay, Gallia Street and Norfolk and Walnut and Norfolk.

Public meetings were held on Thursday, March 4 at the Portsmouth Public Library for citizens to express concerns and hear the cities perspective on the issue.

Murray said she will be asking the traffic committee to meet again, to consider recommendations on the issue.