Old motel stirs anger

By RICK MORAIN

For The Jefferson Herald

In response to a 16-signature petition to address rural “eyesores and dilapidated properties with no intrinsic value” in Greene County, the county board of supervisors Monday agreed to initiate a discussion with the owner of a particular site on Old Highway 30 west of Jefferson to see what might be done.

The site is the old motel at the top of Danger Hill, just west of Eureka Bridge, owned by Bruce Banister and formerly owned by the late Bill and Doris McGregor.

The petition was presented to the board by Carroll Perkins on behalf of himself and other Jackson Twp. property owners in the vicinity. Also addressing the board were Randy Monthei and Randy Wittrock, who stated their desire to see the site cleaned up.

The petition requests that the board and the county attorney “promulgate rules that would allow the county to address the issue ...” 

It notes that incorporated towns in Greene County are able to deal with blighted properties, and it urges that rural areas be able to seek the same remedy.

On other matters, the board approved a request for $3,000 in Louis Dreyfus grant funds from the Greene County Librarians Association to help digitize newspaper archives of the Scranton Journal, the Churdan Reporter and the Grand Junction Globe-Free Press.

Jefferson librarian Jane Millard, speaking for the association, described the process of digitization, through which the Jefferson Bee and Herald dating from 1866 to the present are now available and searchable on the internet, with storage managed by the Jefferson library at no charge.

Cost of the project to add the three additional newspaper historical files is estimated at $21,506, with the Dreyfus money going to defray $3,000 of that cost.

A proposed agreement with Midwest Alarm Services for the courthouse was tabled following a discussion of the project by County Attorney Thomas Laehn.