Marietta City Council’s Streets committee, one of two committees that met Thursday evening, discussed the vacation and dedication of a city street within the Fourth Ward.

A portion of Barber Street and Fearing Street, as well as a part of Clinton Street, is up for vacation and dedication due to the streets running into a piece of property owned by Daniel Keerps from the Fourth Ward.

Keerps’ front porch as well as two different lots of land are on the piece of city street that is up for vacation discussion.

“We have around 90 to 120 days to complete this,” said Law Director Paul Bertram III. “It’s going to be a difficult project because we’re going to be moving a piece of pavement and we are going to need another survey of the vacation.”

Bertram and City of Marietta Development Director Geoff Schenkel discussed that they would be talking with the owners of each of the properties and would update the Streets committee in February on the project.

Also discussed at Thursday night’s Streets meeting was the annual Ohio Department of Transportation Prequalified Consultant list and ODOT Cooperative Purchasing Program. The consultant list is utilized to talk to a set of consultants about any of the city’s streets projects, while the Purchasing Program is utilized to purchase supplies for those projects instead of waiting on project bids from various companies. In addition to the ODOT items, there was a brief update on the 2024 street construction materials bid, and stated that they are still awaiting companies bids on the project.

Prior to the Streets committee meeting, the Finance committee briefly met to discuss a few transfers and appropriations as well as an appropriation for the Marietta Fire Department’s fire training structure within Jackson Park.

The transfers and appropriations that were made involved appropriations to balance out such funds as the American Rescue Plan Act fund and any funds that might have been over or under appropriated. They also moved funds to the new Harbor operating fund for dredging purposes as well as set aside contingency funds for the Seventh and Putnam project.

Marietta Fire Chief CW Durham gave an update on the fire training structure project and stated that they were given two bids, with the lowest bid being $353,000. The project was given $209,601 from ARPA and the Finance committee gave them the remainder of the balance in the amount of $150,000.

“It’s going to be a nice thing for Jackson Park with the fixing up of the building,” Durham said. “We’ll have a nice presentation for it. The money will be in place next week and the estimated completion of the project is set for September. Then, we’ll have everyone out for a completion and dedication ceremony.”