Wellman City Administrator Kelly Litwiller

After a contractor’s report of the poor condition of some of the street beds in the Deer Meadows subdivision, the Wellman City Council came to the conclusion that no heavy trucks should be allowed on those streets.

Mark Ebersole, owner of Terra Enterprises of Wellman, told the council Monday that he found severe erosion issues while doing repair work on Brown Deer Court.

“The base is a sandy clay,” Ebersole said. “The water separates the sand from the clay. There’s quite a bit of erosion in some of those sections.”

He said that on one side of the street there is a hollowed out area caused by water flowing under the concrete.

He explained that there is no way to repair that without tearing up existing concrete.

Ebersole added that, in his opinion, the street would hold up well with car traffic. Heavy trucks, though, are a different story.

“I would definitely say it’s not going to help the situation with the hollow areas,” he said. “In that particular cul-de-sac, I think we’re asking for trouble.”

At issue was a request from Doug Schmieder, who lives on Brown Deer Court, to park his heavy service truck at his home at night.

The request had been on hold throughout the summer while work was being done.

Given the new information, council members grappled with how to proceed with Schmieder’s permit request.

“I don’t see how we can allow any heavy traffic on that,” Council member Bob Goodrich said. “We either need to give an allowance for that truck or put a weight limit and enforce it.”

City Administrator Kelly Litwiller agreed, saying, “We’re trying to preserve what we’ve done.”

“The problem is that we didn’t find an outlet for them,” Council member Tracy Owens said.

“Things have changed. We can’t help that,” Litwiller said. “We didn’t know what was underneath there.”

Council member Bob Freeman said that it was not the city’s responsibility to find parking for trucks.

“I don’t think it would be awful to contact them and say based on this new information that we have that we didn’t have previously that the option has changed,” Council member Mark Philpot said.

Freeman made the motion to deny the permit, and it passed unanimously.

“It’s nothing personal,” Owens said after the vote. “We’ve just got our hands tied.”