Lucas Mayor Todd Hall and Village Administrator Tim Stallard reported that an offer has now been made on the former J&J Super Value Market and accepted on a contingency that the property will meet the needs of Dollar General.
“They want to make sure there’s enough space on that property to put a different building,” explained Mayor Hall. There have been a few “sticking points” that need to be resolved before the sale is final.
At Tuesday’s village council meeting, the mayor also reported that Hamilton’s One Stop gas station has been sold and will now be Morgan’s One Stop. “For the most part, it should be a fairly seamless transfer,” said Hall.
The mayor’s office did receive complaints and questions from Lucas residents about the delay on cancelling trick-or-treating last Thursday due to the stormy weather. The mayor explained that he was contacted the day before by the Mansfield service-safety director asking if Lucas wanted to be included in a media release if enough communities wanted to postpone their activities to another day. The mayor said he would need to contact the Lions Club since the parade is handled by them.
“Trick-or-treat has always been one of those gray areas,” said Hall.
The mayor and Stallard agreed that the trick-or-treating itself fell under the umbrella of the village and the parade belonged to the Lions Club. A Lions Club representative told the mayor they did not want to cancel the parade because it would be too difficult to reschedule the deputies who would be closing down part of Route 39 for the parade as well as monitoring the activities.
However, the following day, the mayor was able to speak to another Lions Club member and they agreed to cancel both the parade and trick-or-treating. Because the Lions Club originally did not want to cancel the parade, this delayed a decision being made until 4:45 p.m. on Thursday.
“I don’t expect we’re going to have this issue again going forward. However, if we don’t get that cooperation [from the Lions Club], we will make the decision ourselves to postpone trick-or-treat until another suitable date,” said Hall. “As a village, we did everything that we could to push it out.” With this new decision in place, the mayor hopes this type of delay won’t occur again.
Mayor Hall also told the council that he has approached a candidate to take Judd Cook’s place on the council to serve out the rest of the term until the newly elected council member takes over in January.
The council then discussed their concerns over the junkyard surrounding the village office and how this looks to visitors. Administrator Stallard has spoken to the owner of the extended properties being used for junked cars and said, in the past, some clean-up would be done, but the situation has gotten bad again and no changes have been made. It was suggested that Mayor Hall contact the owner and talk to him about the situation.
Regarding upcoming events, the annual tree lighting is scheduled for Monday, Dec. 2 at 6 p.m. Also, the first council meeting of December has been rescheduled from the regular Tuesday to Wednesday, December 4.
