The Indianola City Council met in regular session Monday night, and approved a resolution allowing the City Attorney to petition for the title to the abandoned property at 701 West Boston Avenue. City Manager Ben Reeves tells KNIA News the house is empty, and was a safety risk and a harm to surrounding property values.

“For a long time it sat abandoned. So we have to go through a process of making sure we take care of the communities overall value and making sure that we don’t let homes start deteriorating. So we went through a process to try and engage the property owner to make necessary repairs and or take care of the weeds and everything else that was wrong, and unfortunately we didn’t have any response from the property owner.”

Reeves also said the city will attempt to take ownership to try and mitigate the negative impacts to the neighborhood.