TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - Keeping Toledo's children safe from lead poisoning is a major focus in the Glass City as of late.
The city continues to work to enacted the Lead Safe Law, but Health Department leaders are not seeing as much progress as they would like.
They presented their progress to Toledo City Council on Thursday.
As of October 26th, 634 total properties had registered, 426 of those are Zone 1, meaning they have a deadline of June 30, 2018.
A total of 13,000 properties are expected for Zone 1, or the most dangerous properties. Another 17,000 are expected for Zone 2, with a deadline of June 30, 2019. A total of 5,000 for Zone 3 are expected with a deadline of June 30, 2020.
The Health Department leaders recently added a countdown clock to their website. They are also waiving the $45 registration fee for the first 2,000 property owners registering.
The lead ordinance only applies to rental properties or in-home daycares built before 1978.
If a landlord does not have the inspection done before the deadline, the health department fines the owner $50 a day up to $10,000.
David Welch is in charge of enacting the program. He says it's human nature to wait. Most landlords would rather spend a few hundred dollars later rather than now.
"We still have the fee that's waived for the first $2,000. That may be ending soon. We are trying to encourage, change the issuance date to give landlords a little bit more time," Welch said. "So we've been trying to do whatever we can to encourage landlords to register their property. The key to this whole thing is property maintenance."
