More than 100 seized dogs up for adoption in Kokomo
Making Kokomo clean and safe
Nearly every Wednesday morning around 10 a.m., Steve Barnett can be found at the Kokomo Board of Works and Public Safety meeting in City Hall. And he's usually talking about cleaning up someone's property.
For those who don't attend the meetings or watch them on KGOV, the city's government access television station, they may be more familiar with Barnett's work in the community. As director of inspection services, it is his responsibility to identify and remediate nuisance and unsafe properties across the city. Last week, that meant pulling tons of trash and debris from the property along South LaFountain Street owner by Roger McConnell.
"The property that Mr. McConnell owns at 2100 and 2110 South LaFountain had been in violation of the nuisance ordinances for a long time," said Barnett. "We address many properties within the city limits every year, and Roger has one of those properties that keeps coming back up.
"Once it's cleaned up, it keeps rolling back into the safe unsafe condition that it was prior to the clean-up. I don't think it's a personal issue or any kind of defiant maneuver. He has told me before he was going to plant it all in corn, but that didn't happen. That would have been a defiant move.
"I just believe that Roger has an issue with collecting things and hoarding things. The things that he thinks have value could be plastic milk jugs and old McDonald's wrappers and sacks. To us, as an administrative body, that's trash and litter."..." More
photo / Peter Adelsen
