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City targets vacant properties
By Lauren Stanforth Staff Writer
Published: 12:00 a.m., Tuesday, October 19, 2010

SCHENECTADY -- The City Council is considering a vacant building registry that would require owners to maintain their properties or face fines and possible criminal prosecution.

The city would maintain a list of vacant properties -- an estimated 300 to 500 buildings throughout Schenectady -- and require owners to pay a $1,000 fee the first year and submit a maintenance or rehabilitation plan.

A building will be considered vacant if it's completely unoccupied and all efforts to keep the building in a livable condition by the owner have been abandoned.

If property owners ignore the registry requirement, the city will move to prosecute them in city court, which could mean fines or possibly jail time.

While City Council has been considering such a list for some time, some council members questioned at its regular committee meeting Monday night if the city will be able to locate and punish the many property owners who have gone absent over the years.

The city's law office says it will use various databases, including one maintained by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, to locate property owners. It appears at least 20 percent of vacant properties are also still owned by people who have died, and the city must seek out relatives to determine why the property hasn't been appropriately transferred to another individual........................>>>>....................>>>>.....................http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/City-targets-vacant-properties-712340.php

This regulation will just increase the cases of arson that occur each year and once a person dies if the property hasn't been deeded to someone else thru a will there isn't a thing anyone can do but have the city demolish it at the taxpayers expense. If the city passes the curb tax there will be even more vacant properties to deal with. Keep raising the property taxes and the city will eventually become a ghost town.

Another useless proposal from the "fast thinkers" in the Finance Dept. What total rubbish. Now you can't even abandon a property in the City. They will hound you for yet another $1,000 and a "rehabilitation" plan. These morons still don't get it. A total waste of money tracking down owners. Because of the high taxes, new fees and horrible schools no one will buy any City property. And some idiot dares call it a miracle?

     No no will pay this idiotic fee. They want to leave a City in total free fall. Things are so pathetic one mansion in the GE Realty Plot is under $200,000 and another one is on the auction block. What is their "rehabilitation" plans? Take your DEM political signs down before the auction.

Didn't they propose this in the last election (or the one before that) - and hasn't it gone nowhere until another election cycle.

I remember this coming up before.

Quoted from 147

Didn't they propose this in the last election (or the one before that) - and hasn't it gone nowhere until another election cycle.

I remember this coming up before.

Yes it did....but it's an election year!!!
And what are they going to do with all of the vacant homes where families just had to walk away because the taxes are too high and they couldn't find people to sell them to?? These poor people who had to walk away, because of an incompetent government, will get penalized!

They have yet to realize that people do not MOVE to schenectady....they LEAVE schenectady!

Quoted from bumblethru

Yes it did....but it's an election year!!!
And what are they going to do with all of the vacant homes where families just had to walk away because the taxes are too high and they couldn't find people to sell them to?? These poor people who had to walk away, because of an incompetent government, will get penalized!

They have yet to realize that people do not MOVE to schenectady....they LEAVE schenectady!

well, they're moving TO schdy, but only for the welfare.

Soon, this city will be like Detroit - where they literally close entire neighborhoods - or make them huge parks because there's no one left to live there

http://www.ldjackson.net/news-politics/downsizing-detroit/

This is official City policy. They refuse to knock down any eyesores. The code enforcers harass property owners into leaving the City. Whether they sell or not. Then the morons on City Council have to do a housing inventory. Nothing has been knocked down and the problem expands Citywide because of the horrible DEM tax and fee policies.

     Schenectady already has blocks like Detroit. Entire blocks in Hamilton Hill, Vale and Eastern abandoned. Have fun tracking down the last owner which in 99% of time will be a bank holding bad paper. The DEMS are clueless on how to end the 35 years spending and tax orgy. Try "working together"-lol-

Quoted from Shadow

This regulation will just increase the cases of arson that occur each year and once a person dies if the property hasn't been deeded to someone else thru a will there isn't a thing anyone can do but have the city demolish it at the taxpayers expense. If the city passes the curb tax there will be even more vacant properties to deal with. Keep raising the property taxes and the city will eventually become a ghost town.

first they had to lay off firemen and close a firehouse.....let the urban renewal begin.......

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Schenectady goes too far with vacant building registry

    Schenectady offi cials seem determined to reduce the city’s inventory of abandoned property — a good idea and, frankly, long overdue — but the plan they’ve developed for doing so seems a bit heavy-handed. It might end up creating more legal hassles than it solves.
    The plan revolves around the creation of a registry of unoccupied, unlivable buildings. Owners of same would be required to inform the city of their whereabouts — something many of them have already demonstrated a reluctance to do — and provide a remediation plan. But some owners will be even less inclined to step forward when they find out that the city plans to assess them onerous fees, starting at $1,000 the first and year and climbing to $4,000 by the fi fth, just for leaving their property vacant.
    The city envisions using the revenue to fix up, board up or demolish the worst eyesores — a laudable enough goal. But it’s safe to assume that they will be owned by the worst actors — people who continue resisting the city’s efforts to locate them, assess them the new registration fees and/or make them fix up their properties. The people who’ll pay for this intransigence will be suckers — law-abiding types inclined to do what the fee is designed to do: get them to fix up their property or raze it. City officials say that if they do that, they’ll give them a break on the fee, so where will the money come from?
    The city envisions a compliance rate with the new registry of 50 percent to 60 percent, which seems optimistic given the types of people who own these properties and the announcement that it doesn’t expect everyone to pay. The idea of taking such scoffl aws to court, where they could be fi ned upwards of $500, might solve the problem — if they could be found. But it’s likely to be a time-consuming and costly effort. ...................>>>>..................>>>>............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00702&AppName=1

Lower taxes, cut spending, and become more business friendly and there won't be so many vacant properties.