MANSFIELD — Stephen Risser said Richland County commissioners offered him a chance he couldn’t refuse.
The chance to come home again.
Two weeks into his role as the county’s building department director, the 1994 Lexington High School graduate sat down Thursday to update commissioners on what he has seen thus far in his return.
“(Commissioners) approached me about coming back,” said Risser, who had worked for the past year as the chief building official for the Ohio Dept. of Commerce’s Division of Industrial Compliance.
“It was a really good opportunity to be closer to home, closer to my family,” the Lexington resident said. “I don’t have any complaints about (working) for the state whatsoever. But just some of the demands of the job were rather time consuming.”
Translation: Driving from Lexington to Longview Avenue is far quicker than a daily hour-plus commute to his state office in Reynoldsburg.
The 2002 civil engineering graduate of The Ohio State University was also the director of building regulations for Richland County from 2003 to 2016. His roles included sanitary and stormwater engineer and floodplain administrator for the county.
He moved across Park Avenue East in 2016 and spent five years working for the City of Mansfield as its chief building officer and deputy city engineer before taking the state position.
Though his job is not necessarily to promote new housing in the county, Risser said he is aware of the year-old, countywide housing study that pointed to the need for additional housing of all types in the county.
One potential significant housing development that has been discussed is a mixed-use housing project in Bellville near Interstate 71/Ohio 97, not far from the YMCA of North Central sports complex scheduled for groundbreaking in 2024.
One project that’s been ongoing since the study was unveiled is an effort to simplify and make mor uniform all of the various zoning codes around the county. Those vary from municipality to village to township, making it more difficult for potential developers planning projects.
Risser said his department doesn’t deal with zoning regulations.
“We coordinate with them, but we don’t actually enforce the zoning. That’s the responsibility of the local jurisdictions that handle the zoning. As far as the (Bellville) development goes, we obviously want to coordinate and make the process as smooth as possible and help people follow the rules.
“From a participation standpoint, that was briefly very briefly discussed with the (recent) Richmond Community Development Group. I don’t know what involvement we may have, but we’re hoping that whatever it is, it’ll be collaborative going forward,” Risser said.
He said his office met Monday with the design team working on the $22 million indoor/outdoor YMCA sports complex.
“They’re still working through some life-safety issues with automatic sprinkler protection. There’s some exceptions for the type of building that they’re going to construct. They’re still dialing in some of the use of the spaces between the, the main floor and the second floor and how we look at that second floor — if it’s a story or versus what we call a mezzanine.
“There’s some different code requirements in how you approach that. They’re still kind of working things out on their end, but we would hope in the next week or so, we’re going to have a little bit more defined plan that we can give them some comment and direction on,” Risser said.
He told officials his department had no immediate or significant financial needs.
“From a budgetary standpoint, nothing dire jumps out. Nothing’s on fire, nothing got overlooked,” Risser said.