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SCHENECTADY
Council takes aim at run-down homes
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    The Schenectady City Council is taking on a new line of work this summer.
    Instead of hammering out legislation in an air-conditioned meeting room, the council members are going to spend some of their Monday evenings personally investigating hundreds of deteriorating buildings throughout the city.
    The council has come up with a list of about 200 “neglected properties,” which it will split up into groups of about 30 properties.
    Council members are supposed to look at each house on their list, report back to the full council and eventually develop ideas on how to force the owners to make repairs.
    “I think part of an outcome of this review is increased criminal penalties,” said council President Gary McCarthy.
    He criticized the city’s current code enforcement efforts, saying it produces “meager results.”
    But he also admitted that his list of neglected properties hadn’t led to any successes either.
    “Our database isn’t much different from what it was in February,” he said. “It’s languished a little bit.”
    So he asked the council members to commit to a house-by-house review in exchange for meeting half as often this summer. In committee, the proposal was approved without complaint.
    The council will have just one committee meeting each month, followed by one voting session.
    The committee meetings will be on July 12 and Aug. 9. The voting sessions will be July 19 and Aug. 16.
    The times of the meetings will not change — committees will begin at 5:30 p.m. and voting sessions will start at 7 p.m. In the past, the council has moved its voting meetings up to 6 p.m., provoking complaints from residents who want to attend but have no time to eat dinner fi rst.
    McCarthy said the council would also convene for emergency meetings if necessary. .................>>>>.............................>>>>................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00801&AppName=1

Don't they have code enforcement for this? Code enforcement has become the place to put an unemployable DEM hack. Now, it's so bad the City Council must actually do something. How about lowering property taxes which might allow funds for improvements? Naah, let's raise penalities.

If the city just raises the taxes a little higher, writes a few more code enforcement tickets, and keeps letting the infrastructure deteriorate in a couple of years they can have a ghost town.

Quoted from Shadow

If the city just raises the taxes a little higher, writes a few more code enforcement tickets, and keeps letting the infrastructure deteriorate in a couple of years they can have a ghost town.

I know you are joking but that is exactly the moronic mindset of these rubber stamps. If they can just raise property taxes more and hire a few more code enforcers than they can turn it around? As usual they have it backwards- slash spending, stop the handouts to nonprofits, collect a PILOT from Union and Ellis, lower property taxes and a real "renaissance" will occur. Then you won't need to do what the code enforcers are paid to do in the first place.

      "The DEMS understand the importance of high taxes"-quote from the DEM chairman.

talk about micro-management??

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SCHENECTADY
City to decide how to enforce codes
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    The era of zero tolerance code enforcement will likely come to an end next month when department head Keith Lamp retires.
    Lamp insisted on zero tolerance, despite regular criticism from City Council members who wanted him to focus his efforts on blight and dangerous houses.
    He ordered his code enforcers to measure house numbers and check for unpainted wood on every street, rather than honing in on the one problem property in each area. He said it wasn’t fair to ticket the worst offenders and ignore the others, even though he acknowledged that the paperwork to process minor violations was taking up valuable time.
    City Council members wanted enforcers to spend their time tracking down owners of burned-out, boarded-up and falling-down houses, but Lamp refused to budge.
    Now he has accepted an early retirement incentive, as have several other workers in the department. City officials plan to reorganize code enforcement over the next month as they build the 2011 budget.
    “We’re going to go to a different system,” Council President Gary McCarthy said. “What they’re doing now isn’t working.”
    McCarthy has been trying to change the department all year. The council created a list of 200 problem properties, which McCarthy had hoped would be tracked by council members to develop an understanding of the current process. Then, he said, the council could refi ne the system.
    However, the council has made little progress. McCarthy now plans to begin a reorganization discussion on Monday after Mayor Brian U. Stratton presents his budget proposal at 5:30 p.m.
    By the end of the month, Mc-Carthy said, the council should have a new plan for code enforcement.
    “As part of the budget process, we will deal with how to implement it,” he said.
    Four other workers in the department are taking early retirement, leaving a staff of 12.
    Lamp may be called back after his Oct. 31 retirement date to briefly work as a contractor while city officials reorganize, Acting City Corporation Counsel Al Goldberger said. That will give them time to plan. ................>>>>....................................>>>>.......................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01103&AppName=1

Those burnt out and boarded up houses most likely have no viable owners. The loss of thousands of tax dollars and severe urban blight - pathetic! The City Council is going to do something? Like what? Get Metroplex...no they won't go into any Schenectady area other than the Proctor Corridor.

Here's an idea...it's called URBAN PLANNING! Take a course, hire a professional, do something!  

Am I missing something here????

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City Council members wanted enforcers to spend their time tracking down owners of burned-out, boarded-up and falling-down houses, but Lamp refused to budge.

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   Lamp may be called back after his Oct. 31 retirement date to briefly work as a contractor while city officials reorganize, Acting City Corporation Counsel Al Goldberger said. That will give them time to plan.

Soooooo....the city admits that lamp did a crappy  job and did not follow rules, offered him an early retirement that he accepted and NOW, after the guy retires, the city will hire him back as a contractor???????

WOW....that's a sweet deal that can only come out of schenectady!!!

Ya just can't make this stuff up! It's like reading a fiction novel about a backwards town!!

They do have an office of "development" it's not used for urban planning but for collecting CONS petitions. Since Metrograft calls all the shots-it should be totally shut with the coming City layoffs.

     Quote of the month from the Gazetto; "However the Council has made little progress!" This can be used on any issue. The rubber stamps talk a good game and then throw up their hands, blame the State and raise every tax and fee. The first place to cut is the useless council. Go to a neighborhood system, remove 2 seats and eliminate all benefits. This alone would save half a million a year. But I know, it's better to keep Erie redo, keep the useless DSIC, keep all nonprofits on the budget and screw business/property owners again.

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SCHENECTADY
City’s blight fight is gaining traction
Big changes planned in code enforcement
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    The retirement of one of Schenectady’s most criticized civil servants has opened the door to the modernization of the building department.
    City offi cials hope the new department will be able to do what it has never done before: win the war on blight, or at least fight it to a draw.
    The department’s code enforcers have the task of finding some solution for the city’s abandoned buildings, decaying apartments and burnt-out hulks. And there are plenty of them; the city had about 90,000 residents in its heyday and now has just 62,000 people, but the buildings remain.
    Workers are expected to not only cite the code violations that build up in those vacant structures but also hunt down the owners, who sometimes live as far away as Florida. It’s not an easy task, and many residents have castigated the department for failing at it in recent years.
    But now that the city finally has a chance to improve, many residents are giving up. They showed up en masse at city meetings this fall to demand that the City Council gut the department and spend the money on other ventures. Many said the crux of the problem is not the buildings but too few people to live in them.
    “It’s just not addressing the core issue. We need people to live here,” said Fred Lee, who leads Schenectady United Neighborhoods.
    “Our cities have been the battleground of the war on poverty and the war on drugs, which have gone on for decades. What we see is the result of that war. The day after Gettysburg, nobody would expect code enforcers to run out — and this battle isn’t over!”
    Even the man who is reorganizing the department, Director of Administration John Paolino, isn’t confident. He thinks the department can do a better job — but he’s not promising a miracle next year.
    “You’ll see some kind of improvement,” Paolino said.
    Many local officials think better code enforcement would draw in more residents, discourage crime and encourage development.
    Metroplex Development Authority Chairman Ray Gillen pointed to economic development at the city’s entrances after derelict buildings were renovated or torn down.
    “Look at that whole area near the [Broadway] exit where we built the Broadway Commerce Park,” Gillen said. “Those buildings had been closed for decades. You have a whole different feeling going into the city now.”
    The broken and crumbling Alco buildings on Erie Boulevard are now being demolished to eliminate the blight that kept that area from being developed, Gillen added. It’s now planned as a waterfront area, with both residential and commercial spaces.
    “Look at the contrast,” Gillen said. “Look downtown. You remember how it was. We’ve done 100-plus facades downtown. The appearance of new and freshly painted, attractive space certainly contributes to an economic turnaround.”
    But Metroplex used its sales tax revenue and funding from major developers to pay for facades, renovations and demolition. All the city’s code enforcers have is paper tickets to plaster on front doors.
MATTER OF FOCUS
    City Council members have long had a simple solution to the problem: they want the code enforcers to focus solely on the worst of the worst, ignoring peeling paint and house numbers too small to be read by speeding ambulances.
    But longtime Building Inspector Keith Lamp adamantly refused to make such a change. He said his enforcers had to ticket every violation they saw, no matter how minor, on every street. The house with tiny numbers had to get just as much attention as the collapsing building next door.
    Code enforcers said they were overwhelmed by the paperwork generated from the zero-tolerance policy and couldn’t regularly follow up on the tickets. Residents said they were offended by getting a ticket for a minor matter when the absent owners nearby did nothing about their blighted property.
    Council members told Lamp to abandon the policy, but he refused.
As a civil service employee, he could not be removed from offi ce without just cause, and council members tried instead to persuade him.
For years, he was unmoved. But two weeks ago, he retired.
Now, fi nally, city offi cials have a free hand to make any changes they want — and they are changing nearly everything.
They’re bringing in a consultant who can evaluate the department and create new procedures. The 2011 budget has $15,000 set aside for a part-timer.
“We’re going to straighten everything out,” Paolino said.
Before Paolino was given the job of reorganizing the department, Mayor Brian U. Stratton placed him in charge of investigating serious complaints against the department early this year. Those included reports that Elisa Wickham was overstepping her authority and closing down businesses without reason.
    In one case, the law department had to intervene and determined that the business should not have been closed.
    Paolino declined to discuss the other cases, but Wickham’s job was eliminated in the 2011 budget. Bumping rights make it diffi cult to predict which individual employees will be employed next year, but Wickham will not be in the code enforcement department next year, Paolino said.
    He is also arranging far more education for the code enforcers — including a conference earlier this year with the law department on how to gather evidence of code violations without breaking the law. That class startled even Lamp, who said he learned things he had never known before.
    But because many in the department took a retirement incentive this year, Paolino has to reorganize with far fewer code enforcers — he has just three, down from fi ve this year, and two aides, down from three. He also has no one to lead the department.
    With his staff halved, the question is whether he can make any dent in the city’s blight, considering that the larger staff couldn’t get the job done to the council’s satisfaction this year. ......................>>>>.........................>>>>..........................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01101&AppName=1

The city still doesn't get it, there are empty houses all over the city due to the high taxes, high crime, and poor educational system.