Published: November 22, 2009 07:50 pm      

HIGGS: Zooming back to the inspections department

The ZOOM team has made good progress but barely a dent in critical neighborhoods throughout the city. I previously mentioned our treks to the South End casino area where there is an overabundance of dilapidated housing. Dilapidated housing and crime go hand-in-hand so these were excellent targets. Later, efforts were made in the North End along the 11th Street area, hitting Pierce, Linwood, Willow, Michigan and South avenues for at least one block east and from Pierce to Lincoln Place west of Main Street. You may recall it takes two visits to target one area so progress is slow with only one day a week assigned to this effort.

New leadership in the Inspections Department has proposed changes outlined by the mayor during budget deliberations. In case you did not hear about that, I am briefly describing these proposals, which have been a long-time in coming. A local law will change the name of the department to the Department of Code Enforcement, which better reflects their actual day-to-day operation and the former title of Building Inspector will change to code enforcement officers (CEO). I hope they do not think they are all now chief executive officers! Just kidding, guys.

Block club leaders have been asking for additional inspectors each year for at least five years to bring the department up to reasonable manpower levels. Casino money will be utilized to hire one new officer who will be assigned to the area around the casino where housing is a major problem. Some of the dilapidated structures sitting in the blocks opposite the casino could possibly be saved from demolition if owners were forced to bring them up to code. Some of this funding will be used to pay for secretarial services.

During this past summer, the inspectors hours were increased to eight-hour days to catch up, which resulted in an additional 60 to 80 more inspections per week. This will continue and by changing the title of the inspectors to code enforcement officers, they will be allowed to work the eight-hour day following Civil Service Commission approval. Changes and upgrades in job titles are necessary to allow the 40-hour workweek to continue.

The City Court judges have agreed to institute restitution of additional department expenses as a part of the sentence and this money will directly offset some of the costs for changes to the 2010 budget mentioned above. Additional costs incurred to bring the case to court and follow-up visits to the site will be presented to the judge. The judge will then consider the amount of restitution to be paid to the city.

I am happy to say that headway is being made in service by substitution, which has been talked about for several years but never really implemented. The law provides service to the Secretary of State when the property owner is a New York corporation. This type of service is being used with some success. It is really too early to tell the final impact this may have in neighborhoods but my bet is it will solve some of the problems of serving a summons to out of town property owners who simply abandon their property and have been considered unreachable in the past.

City Court Judge Robert Merino presided over the Housing Court the day I made a visit. That day, 56 cases were on the calendar. In 2008, only 96 cases were presented during the whole year. Does that tell you something? It tells me that our city inspectors and clean neighborhood inspector have made some real headway in bringing these cases to some sort of conclusion. One guesstimate is that close to 400 cases have been brought to Housing Court since ZOOM began in May.

How will this help the neighborhoods? In time, property owners will own up to their responsibility and make the needed improvements to their property. It may prove less costly than hanging around City Court all afternoon, be assessed fines and restitution, and still have to make the needed improvements.

These penalties also will apply to the tenants who often are the real cause of the housing situation. With no landlord watching over them, many tenants simply ignore the city ordinances about the correct method of putting out the trash each week, cutting the grass, hoarding junk, maintaining weed control and other maintenance issues that most resident owners abide by. No one likes to exert punishment of this sort on renters, but I have seen some pretty bad instances where all the rules of sanitation were put to the test. I have even done my share of cleaning up after some of these problems. Dirty diapers and animal feces do not belong in alleys alongside open trash bags containing raw garbage. Come On! I call it education by enforcement and if you can’t or won’t learn, then perhaps you need some direction by the court. We need to send a message that we won’t tolerate this kind of situation any longer. All of this is a step in the right direction. Tough talk? Yes, but it needs to be said, and tough action is required.

ZOOM needs to be operational all year. Garbage and other code violations do not stop during the winter months. Let’s keep the momentum up. After all, City Court is open all year.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Norma Higgs serves with the Niagara Beautification Commission and Niagara Falls Block Club Council. Her columns appear Mondays in the Gazette.