1. Discussion of PMC enforcement issues and residential occupancy permit, per Ordinance , per Josh Robles letter dated 4/24/06

Transcription

1 Vice-Chair Silecky called meeting to order at 6:10 pm. PRESENT 8. ABSENT 3 Messrs. Tavenner, Snodgrass, Wargo 1. Discussion of PMC enforcement issues and residential occupancy permit, per Ordinance , per Josh Robles letter dated 4/24/06 MR. JOSH ROBLES, 310 Concord Drive: I have a problem with your $50 fee that you re charging for occupancy certificates or rental certificates, whatever you guys are calling it these days. I pay for permits on every one of my houses to side them and put new windows in them. The city comes out and inspects that as they should every time a permit s drawn. Now I have to pay $50, $10 a year per house that I own and you guys look at stuff that you already looked at. Anybody that s a homeowner in this city, they get a permit to get their house sided; they come out and look at it and never bother with it. Since I m a landlord, property owner, I have to pay this fee. You don t check the inside of the home and that s because the Building Department says they don t have enough people. (inaudible) past for property transfer the Building Department would send somebody to that house for the transfer (inaudible) multi property holder and they would do an inside inspection every time a house transferred. Now they say they don t have enough time. They just added two more building inspectors, they should have enough. They already had three people looking on the outside now and with two more they should have plenty of people to go out every time a property transfers, once a month and look at the insides of these properties. I d like to know what they re going to do. I don t want to pay. You have a property maintenance code in this city that everybody has to abide by. Because I make money on my property, I got to pay a fee? I don t see how that s fair. I have to buy permits to get the aluminum installed and roofs put on, like every other homeowner, I take care of my properties and a homeowner is not subject to these fees. They re not subject to this enforcement. There s so many houses that we don t have enough inspectors at least that s their excuse. But you guys had enough to send out about 2,000 notices at $50 a pop bringing $100,000 to justify hiring those two inspectors. I mean there s houses all over this town that no one s looking. And you telling me that (inaudible) on 21 st St. that have been there with trees growing out of them and yet everybody (inaudible) about that, houses can t be condemned? Right across the street from one of my properties your inspector came out, looked at my house, walked right up underneath and said underneath your gutter there s chipped paint, underneath the gutter, but the house across the street has the roof caved in. It s like you know. So I got to get fascia board, I got to cover it with fascia board, no big deal but the roof on the porch across the street, you couldn t see it? And he parked right in front of the house. There s all kinds of dilapidated houses in this city. They said well, they don t have enough inspectors. Some of these houses have been there 20 years. Go to 2 nd St by the power plant, that house should be condemned. How many citations they got on them? It s not getting done. No one doing nothing to it. How many years has that house been sitting there? There s a lot of them. The one on 21 st St has been like that 17 years. It s across the street from Carrion Auto, it s like 117 W. 21 st St. Craig saw it, I sent him over to it. That house has been there 17 years. There s a lot of houses in this town like that and I m paying all this money to fix this stuff up and I m being (inaudible) for another $10 so you can charge another fee. If you re going to charge a 1

2 business fee, charge every business in this city. Every business in the city should have to pay $10 every single year (inaudible). I mean because that s all your charging for, it ain t for these guys to come out and look, they don t look at things as it is. They can come to your house right now and not charge you a dime but if they come to me I got to pay. What s that because I make more than the rest of them? I make money so I got to pay an extra fee. It s in the Ordinance; you have a property maintenance code, follow it. If you re going to charge money don t tell me that you don t have enough people. Thirty to forty houses transfer a month, if you can look at a house a day, you could look at all those houses that transfer. That s all I have to say. MR. SILECKY: Thank you. Do we have any comments from Council? Mr. Krasienko. MR. KRASIENKO: Thank you Mr. Chairman. I understand that Mr. Robles is saying and I definitely recall the conversations that we had when we adopted the property maintenance code. It happened shortly after I came on this Council and the initial property maintenance code was to cover outside appearances of houses. We weren t going to go inside houses but we wanted to makes sure that the outsides were presentable, that we didn t have chipped paint, houses had gutters, screens in the windows, the roof was in decent shape, that the house looked presentable and wasn t and eye sore to the neighborhood, it didn t drag down our values. It was well received and it started out as a very good program and we kind of seen both ends of the spectrum with one building inspector that probably took it a little too far and now we re all the way to the other end of the spectrum where we re not doing enough. That s how the property maintenance code originally got adopted. It was just for that outside visual inspection. Now when we decided to make a certificate of occupancy for rentals, a lot of that stemmed from, I believe it was more like a compromise to where landlords could do repairs on their own properties. There was concern on that aspect that even though it was their own property, they weren t the ones that were living there so they weren t putting their own lives at risk. You and I if we do our own electrical, we re putting ourselves and our families at risk if we don t know what were doing and it doesn t get inspected properly. But the concern was with rentals that there was a safety concern to the general public because it s not their property and they weren t doing the work themselves. So hence created the occupancy inspection which included a limited inspection for safety and sanitation aspects only which included structural, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Our inspector went in and did an inspection and found that the blow off tube on the water heater wasn t there, it got tagged. If the flu looked bad on the air conditioner, it got tagged. If there s wires hanging out of the breaker box, there s no cover on the breaker box, it got tagged. As well as the visual inspection on the outside. It was basic safety, sanitation and then the aesthetics on the outside. I think part of what s been going on is that we haven t been enforcing the code as it is written. In the property maintenance code 10.5 says the scope of the inspection shall, and that s an important word, shall, it doesn t say may it says shall be limited to the safety and sanitation aspect of the structural electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. That means for that occupancy certificate those things shall be inspected. Not if we feel like it, shall. If we can t gain entry there is reasonable ways for us to get a court order for us to do those inspections. It s come to our attention that, if Mr. Robles is correct, all we re doing is charging landlords $50 to do the exterior inspection that everybody else is getting for free, that s an issue because he s getting that anyway through his taxes that are paid to the city and through inspection fees so on and so forth. That additional $50 was for the additional time to be able to go 2

3 in and inspect the inside of the dwelling for those mechanical and structural issues to be taken care of. I d like to have Mr. Desvari to come up and explain what is the program, how are we going out and doing the certificate of occupancy inspection and what are the charges and duties of those inspectors that go out? MR. DESVARI, Chief Building Official: Good evening Mr. Chairman. We have been doing interiors and exteriors as a request basis when the homeowner asks us to go inside we go over the interior as well and we ve been giving them the option to do that as dictated to this department. MR. KRASIENKO: Who dictated it to your department? MR. DESVARI: You d have to talk to Mr. Miller about that. MR. KRASIENKO: So Mr. Miller dictated that to the Building Department? MR. DESVARI: I m just saying that the exterior only inspection is strictly voluntary as well as the interior. The interior is strictly voluntary but the exterior is done. If you want the interior done, you got a reason for us to do it, we ll do it. We have been doing it. We ve done a lot of them. I have a whole stack of them right here that we ve done. So I don t know what Mr. Robles says that we don t do that if he asked us to, we ve done it. MR. SILECKY: Mr. Robles, you have to go through the chair. MR. DESVARI: We ve been doing interiors as they request. I don t know what the issue is. MR. KRASIENKO: The issue is that isn t what the law says. MR. DESVARI: Well. Well it says shall be limited to the safety, sanitary aspects of the structure. It doesn t say interior or exterior, it says of the structure. Now.. MR. KRASIENKO: How do you inspect the electrical, plumbing, heating and ventilation of the air condition system without going in? MR. DESVARI: We don t have to inspect it unless the owner asks. MR. KRASIENKO: It does not say that. MR. DESVARI: We need to take this up, we need to talk about this because I ve been told one thing and you re telling me something else. I know what the code says and I ve been asking you guys for language changes in the code and you ve been sitting on it for 8-9 months and it s been in limbo and as far as I m concerned, you don t have anything, and until you have something to me in writing I ll do what we re doing. MR. KRASIENKO: Well MR. DESVARI: I d (inaudible) give me something in writing. MR. KRASIENKO: I just read you what the code was. MR. DESVARI: You know and I know that that whole code is not a legal code. MR. KRASIENKO: I ve never been told that. Never. MR. DESVARI: I ve told you and I told many other... MR. KRASIENKO: No. The only thing we ve ever been told is about the wording of certificate of occupancy. MR. DESVARI: That makes it illegal. Correct. MR. KRASIENKO: Mr. Law Director you said, when I spoke with you earlier that that may not be as problematic as we originally thought. Correct? MR. PROVENZA Law Director: Through the Chair to Councilman Krasienko. The only problem on that aspect legal issue that I can see with the respect to the city having a whatever you want to call it, a law of this kind on the books, would be if it was a penalty provision that would subject somebody to a term of incarceration if they deny an inspection of the interior of the premises. There was a case in Cincinnati that said that 3

4 (inaudible) a violation of that persons 4 th amendment rights. That s the only legal issue that I can see where this can potentially be a problem. MR. KRASIENKO: So whether we call it, a certificate of occupancy or a rental certificate technically isn t a legal problem? MR. PROVENZA: Based on the research that I ve done I haven t encountered a case or certainly a provision in the Ohio Basic Building Code which allows for cities to pass regulations with respect to one, two three family dwelling units. It s clear that this is something that the city can do is to regulate in this area. MR. KRASIENKO: Mr. Provenza your reading of the code, you know the feed, in fact let me read the two sections that I think are most pertinent. Under 10.4 fees, the fee charged for the certificate of occupancy shall be $50 and shall, there s that key word again, include the general property inspection required under property maintenance 10.5 of this Ordinance. The fee shall be collected from the (inaudible) at the time the application is made. Fee shall be refunded at the request of the applicant any time prior to the completion of the inspection general property inspection required within 10 days of receiving the application for certificate of occupancy which shall be marked with the date received by the building department clerk. The Chief Building Inspector shall (inaudible) the general inspection of the premises. The scope of the inspection shall, key word again, be limited to the safety and sanitation aspects of the structural, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems of the dwelling. No citations or violations shall be issued as a result of such inspection except for violations which pose a reasonable threat to the safety or health of the occupants. Such as we stated with the heater, vent, wires hanging out of the box, so on and so forth. With those, that wording, do you see it being number one optional for an interior of those mechanical inspections and legally do you think you can inspect the structure, electrical, plumbing or heating and venting and the air conditioning without going inside the structure? MR. PROVENZA: In response to your second question, it s really not a legal question. It s a pragmatic question. If you have x-ray vision I suppose it s possible. MR. KRASIENKO: But the option interior or exterior is not an option, it s a shall correct? MR. PROVENZA: It s a limiting phrase. It s says the Building Department is restricted to inspecting safety and sanitary aspects excreta and so on. It can t go beyond that. So it encompasses all that but it can t go beyond that. That s how I read that. MR. KRASIENKO: I think if we were to go back when the certificate of occupancy for rentals was passed and discussed in committee that the reason this was done was to inspect the safety aspects of those internal systems. I remember and Mr. Shawver could probably relate to it because he was here, we spoke, we were down here and spoke about it because you re a licensed electrician you wanted to be able to work on your own properties and we agreed with that but we said we wanted to make sure the general public that s out there renting these houses, these dwellings had reasonably safe mechanical systems inside. Especially if we were going to let technically, untrained, unlicensed people do the repairs to the interior systems and the definite premise of this law was to have those interiors inspections and that was the whole purpose of the $50 fee because we had to do an additional inspection. The exterior was already a given. We do those or are supposed to be doing those every day. Again and here s a legal question Mr. Law Director, if we re giving the general exterior property maintenance inspection as just a part of the overall maintenance of the city housing stock how can we charge a rental $50 if we re not doing anything above what is already done for free? 4

5 MR. PROVENZA: Through the Chair to Council-at large Krasienko. There is additional paperwork that is created as a result of this Ordinance whereby the certificate, residency certificate or certificate of occupancy, whatever term you want to use is being created by the Building Department so there is additional bit of work that the Building Department does with respect that type of inspection the follow up creation of that document. MR. KRASIENKO: Because that fee specifically references rental property inspection required under property maintenance code specifically references structural, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning which is not part of the inspection process under the general property maintenance code. MR. PROVENZA: I was just referring back to in other chapters in the property maintenance code where there are some code provision that do address the plumbing, the electrical in general terms. MR. KRASIENKO: But they were technically exterior. MR. PROVENZA: Anybody that has been cited in Lorain Muni court pursuant to violating property maintenance code where their not a landlord has been cited as a result of an exterior inspection. MR. KRASIENKO: Because the Building Department can not come to my house, my personal residence and ask to do an interior property maintenance inspection without just cause. That would be unlawful search and seizure. MR. PROVENZA: Well, cities in Ohio can inspect an interior home, they do have that authority as long as it s done where reasonable notice has been given to the homeowner where a certain time is established as to when that is done. However, if the homeowner doesn t allow somebody to inspect their property then the city is left with to obtain a search warrant. MR. KRASIENKO: And having the probable cause to execute that search warrant. MR. PROVENZA: Correct. MR. KRASIENKO: Is the Mayor still here? Mr. Mayor. What is the Administrations as Mr. Desvari kind of eluded to that the Building Department has been dictated to only do exterior inspections for rentals. Are we deviating what the written law is? MAYOR FOLTIN: Well first of all I haven t been part of those conversations and can t comment on that. Shouldn t this be a separate committee meeting because that isn t on the agenda tonight? MR. KRASIENKO: It is absolutely on the agenda. MAYOR FOLTIN: The agenda is Mr. Robles claim. MR. KRASIENKO: (reading from agenda) Discussion of property maintenance code enforcement issues and residential occupancy permit per Josh Robles letter dated. Which included... MAYOR FOLTIN: But his letter which was a complaint about the $50 fee. If you want to discuss those in detail (inaudible) conversations went on then I could have them sent over here (inaudible). MR. KRASIENKO: Let s settle it right now. Does your Administration support doing the interior inspections for the rental occupancy as per the written code? Are you going to follow the law? MAYOR FOLTIN: You re asking loaded questions. MR. KRASIENKO: All I m asking is, it s always been my belief that, we always here so much, well I haven t been in any of those conversations, well you know I ll have to talk 5

6 to Mr. Miller, well Mr. Miller isn t here. Where does the buck stop in your Administration? Does it stop on your desk? MAYOR FOLTIN: You can badger me all you want Mr. Krasienko, I mean I ll sit here and let you do it. MR. KRASIENKO: Doesn t the buck stop on your desk or is Mr. Miller the patsy fall guy for you all the time? MAYOR FOLTIN: That s uncalled for. Uncalled for saying those things about Mr. Miller I think he is a good man and doesn t warrant those kinds of accusations and personal attacks Mr. Krasienko. MR. KRASIENKO: Well I ll tell you one thing and Mr. Murphy said it best and it cut right to the chase. When people are complaining about some things that he was enforcing, he came down here and he read the code and he said if you don t like the way I m enforcing the law, I m enforcing it as written, you don t like that, change the law. I m enforcing what s written on the law. I said you know, that s makes a lot of sense. MAYOR FOLTIN: Well from what Mr. Provenza said the shall was a not to exceed amount. I don t, if I misunderstood him, is that correct Mr. Provenza? MR. PROVENZA: Shall be limited to. MAYOR FOLTIN: Limited to. So the way, does that mean it s up to the Building Department s discretion on where to draw that line or not? MR. KRASIENKO: I ll tell you what, Thursday I ll come down with an amending Ordinance. We ll put shall include. MAYOR FOLTIN: Is that feasible with you Mr. Desvari? MR. KRASIENKO: Because that s what the whole premise of this inspection code was. MR. DESVARI: Can I make a comment. For 20 years there was, from what I understand, don t quote me but this is what I understand, for 20 years there has been very little to no property maintenance issues or officers available to do these types of inspections. MR. KRASIENKO: And you re wrong. MR. DESVARI: Let me finish. Now in 2005 we did 1,250 inspections and in 2006 we ve done thousands of inspections. The inspections on something that s going back years a lot of these houses as you well know and as Mr. Givens has said many times have gone by the way side as far as maintenance, etc, etc. If your property maintenance (inaudible) exterior on rental properties isn t addressed then your property values are going to go down on neighboring properties that aren t property rentals. 27,000 houses, 73% of those houses are 1 & 2 family and 60% are rentals. That s why we have so many rentals. We have 11,000+ rentals in this city and you re expecting two building inspectors to do all of those inspections in two months. Well we re not going to do them in two months and I told you and I told every body else. You ve got to give us a little bit of time. By taking care of the exterior now we will address the property values dropping and by doing interior when any person asks us to do an interior we never refuse them at all, we ve always done the interiors. If there s an issue where you have a safety issue we ve always addressed them. Whenever any Council member gives us an address, we ve always addressed those. We have too many houses for two and three people to deal with. Eleven thousand inspections, do the math, they would have to do a piece a day in order to keep this type of number up. That s not going to happen. We have to walk and crawl before we can run. That s all I m saying. If we can do the exteriors and bring those property values up then the interiors will come along with that. if you have a person who takes care of his exterior property, 99% of the time 6

7 and you might have renters that might not do this and that would again we would go in if the owner asks us to go in, we would gladly go in and take a look if these people are damaging the house etc, go to court with them, cite the renters whatever it takes. We re trying to get this done and we asked for Legislation eight or nine months ago through your committee and its unfortunate it s been kind of tied down somewhere. Let me make one more comment on the validity of the certificate of occupancy. State statues do not allow us to take back a certificate of occupancy. You can look that up, under Ohio Revised Code they re protected (inaudible) by state laws so you can not go back to somebody and say well I m going to take your certificate of occupancy back every five years. I asked you for that language change nearly a year ago and I haven t gotten it yet and until then we re going to continue what were doing until you give me language change. You want to put shall in there do it and we will do that and that s the way it s going to be. MR. KRASIENKO: All ask is that the law be followed. MR. DESVARI: Then give me a law that s legal. That s all I ve been telling you for eight months. MR. KRASIENKO: Mr. Desvari, number one I m (inaudible) but your damn right I m on your butt because you re not doing your job. MR. SILECKI: Through the Chair please. MR. KRASIENKO: Through the Chair. For clarification property maintenance code has been alive for 10 years not 20 years. That was started back in 96. So for 10 years it s been crawling and I remember when Mr. Murphy brought it down and Nancy can verify this, every week there would be a stack of probably 1,000 violations every week. Wouldn t you agree with that Nancy? CLERK GREER: Yes I would. MR. KRASIENKO: We asked to see the proof and finally we told Mr. Murphy to quit sending it we had no place to store it. CLERK GREER: We didn t have any room for it anymore. MR. KRASIENKO: Boxes upon boxes of violations. MR. DESVARI: That s what we have now today sir. MR. KRASIENKO: Now of course Mr. Murphy kind of took it too the end. We were citing people for cracks in their garage doors windows. It went above what we intended. So we pulled in the reigns and the property maintenance code was simplified to include basic aesthetics; what we needed to be able to maintain the housing stock in the city. The rental or certificate of occupancy was implemented to insure that the general public and that s our charge, our duty is to protect the general public that when repairs were done by a landlord that may not be licensed or trained in that field, that they had a reasonable way to be able to be assured that the house they were in was reasonably safe. MR. DESVARI: That s a great thing and right now currently we have laws because if that landlord does work on that property he s required to get a permit and have an inspection of that mechanical work and if he doesn t he s breaking the law there also. So if we inspect when he does it under permit then we don t have any reason to do it again and as the gentleman said earlier but we still do need to bring up the property values and the only way we can do that is to bring up the neighborhoods and bring up each individual house in every neighborhood to make sure the gutters are not falling off, the windows are in tact, the porches are in order and then this will bring up the property value and people will have a little more pride in this city because this city, right now there s a lot of great people in this city, we re getting 90% cooperation from everybody 7

8 that we cite on every one of these things. So we got, we ve collected over $61,000 in three months in these rental certificates and we ve done pretty much every one of these inspections and again a 90% compliance rate after 90 days, 40% after 45 days and people are starting to work on their properties and get them up and this will bring up the values of the cities houses. MR. KRASIENKO: So you ve collected $61,000. That s 1,300 rental inspections. Out of those 1,300 rental inspections that they pay $50 how many of them done an interior inspection? MR. DESVARI: Everyone that asked. I don t know the number. That s handled by the inspectors. MR. KRASIENKO: It gets back to the question, why should a landlord pay $50 for an inspection that everybody else gets for free? MR. DESVARI: No one s getting an inspection for free. MR. KRASIENKO: I call on my neighbor s house when the paints falling off, inspector comes out. MR. DESVARI: You re talking maintenance as opposed to rental inspections. You wrote the language, I m only doing what you asked me to do. MR. KRASIENKO: Well, nothing in here says exterior inspection. It talks about inspecting structural, electrical, plumbing, heating, ventilation and air conditioning. MR. DESVARI: I ve heard that. Yes sir. It also says the validity of the certificate is no good after five years. I ve asked you for clear language for almost a year and I haven t gotten it. MR. KRASIENKO: Okay, have we been challenged in court over the five year expiration? MR. DESVARI: No. MR. KRASIENKO: Have we lost. MR. DESVARI: We haven t been challenged. MR. KRASIENKO: So then it s legal. It s legal as written until it s challenged or that man up there says it s not legal or constitutional. That s the way government works. It s not up for an employee to MR. DESVARI: I m not an employee MR. KRASIENKO: You re an employee. MR. SILECKY: Through the Chair please. MR. KRASIENKO: It s not up to our employee s to decide what they think the law says. If there s a question it needs to go through the Law Department but the law needs to be enforced as the law is written. MR. DESVARI: The law is written and says that the building officials shall make a determination to (inaudible) the language. MR. KRASIENKO: It s says the Chief Building Inspector shall cause the general inspection of the premises. MR. DESVARI: Well that particular paragraph. There are other paragraphs. MR. KRASEINKO: I m telling you what it was initially passed for and that s what the $50 fee was instituted for and that s what number one Mr. Robles complaining about and I think he s got a legitimate claim and I ll leave that to the Law Director that he s paying for something that everybody else is getting for free. Unless he s getting the interior and nowhere in here, I don t think it should be the Administrations stance to let the general public suffer because he doesn t want to push the landlords and enforce the law as it should be enforced. You have the ability to enforce and push for the inside 8

9 inspection of those rentals to protect the general public from substandard systems and we ve been in enough rental houses in this city to see where there are shambles inside worse than they are outside. There are some of these mechanical systems that have been cobbled together so totally out of code and there s no way for us to get in there to do it unless we require the interior inspections, the interior mechanical systems to be inspected as per written in this law. We re leaving, we re hanging the general public out to dry and we re charging landlords for a fake inspection. It s a money grab. It s the equivalent of a red light camera. MR. SILECKY: Thank you Mr. Krasienko. Mr. Given. MR. GIVEN: Thank you Mr. Chair. The passion from both of these people, Mr. Krasienko as well as Mr. Desvari ultimately should lead to what we want in this community and that is improved housing stock. The conversation that s taking place, it s like Groundhog Day all over again. November 14 th, 2005, this exact conversation took place. Exactly the same. Where it was left was in the Law Director s hands and we referred this back to him to clarify because, let me go through some points that we talked about here. In that meeting Mr. Desvari did say that he has cause to agree that or contest what is written. He has concerns about it. He s told us that in this meeting. In that meeting Mr. Miller clearly states that he s doing exterior, that he s not doing interior. His exact comments were if you agree to pass this Legislation we ll begin to work with the two newly hired building inspectors to get a real data base to get a list or rental properties and begin to do the cosmetic exterior improvements that the property maintenance requires and begin to get compliance. Then he says, I think our plan is to start now, do the exterior and we will do the interior when the inspector feels that maybe there s a problem on the inside. If the landlord requests it or if the tenant says that (inaudible). So according to that conversation at that time the Safety/Service Director is stating that we are, it is exterior but if the building inspector sees due cause we should be able to gain access to that house. If you go through other information in here, the Law Director clearly states my recommendation would be that there s, that if there s some type of enforcement policy where just the exterior of houses will be inspected over a five year period then that is what the Ordinance should read. He warned us there as well. We also go through, various members of Council commented on this. My comments at that point in time were to basically make people, enforce people with a (inaudible) code so that if you have somebody in the Building Department or the Police Department or even the Health Department they have the power, they should be able to write citations for that. Since then I have had conversations with Cel Rivera about this topic and Cel agrees with me that one of the main causes of problems in this community is the fact that our housing stock is maintained poorly that we get all of the people that are problems. You get your crack addicts. You get your prostitutes. You get the people that are from lower levels, drug dealers etc and they are here because you can get an apartment or you can get a house for $250 a month and if your paying $250 a month you can have your house in the suburbs or your going to live somewhere else but this is your place to conduct whatever monkey business you have going on. The Police Department said they would do whatever they can to assist us if we would decide. But during this conversation, this groundhog conversation that we re having over again, this was referred back to the Law Department for them to clarify and bring us back Legislation that would solve the problem, clears it up, takes away any sort of ambiguity so that hopefully the legislative body, the Administrative body and the department heads can 9

10 coexist and bring about a resolution. With that I d like to hit the ping pong ball back to the Law Department and say where are we? MR. SILECKY: Mr. Law Director. MR. PROVENZA: Through the Chair to Councilman Given. I reviewed the minutes form the Building and Plans committee from November the 14 th meeting 2005 in an effort to try to determine if somebody phrased a specific motion with specific language and the closest that I could come to any kind of a request on the part of anybody that was a part of the discussion that night was from you Mr. Given when you requested that we, the inspection should be every two years, every time the property changes hands and that was the only specific marching orders if you will that I could really gleam from going through pages and pages and pages of.. MR. GIVEN: Did you bring anything back down or did you ask any other questions from the committee to clarify this? MR. PROVENZA: Well actually in looking at the Ordinance that was submitted by the Administration to Council it would be my opinion that an entirely new Ordinance needs to be submitted to Council and put on their June 5 th, 2006 agenda because there s some problems with the Ordinance as written. MR. GIVEN: I think that that s grammatical and I think we need to this Council and anybody that works for this Council needs to when we get into a situation when there are questions and we don t have clear-cut definitive pathways to deal with what took place in committee we need to come up in the next committee meeting and say, hey guys not enough information was given, we need to revisit this. Obviously Mr. Desvari is frustrated because he did report, the original Legislation did come down to us and he did express his concerns, it did come to Council we thought we did what we were supposed to do by passing it back for clarification, you had questions about it and didn t let this body know so we need to clarify that. My parting comment would be, I raised this question every year regarding, if you drive through this city, and I challenge you Mr. Mayor, if you drive through this city and you look at the housing stock you can t tell me that you are proud what is taking place here. The Police Department can pull over, if I m speeding down the road, they can give me a ticket for breaking the law. There has to be a way, the Health Department I know, when I talked to them prior to the levy failing they said that they would jump on this if they had the opportunity. I said I guess I will throw down a challenge, if there s a way to do it legally, this Council will step up to the plate and find the money to hire additional inspectors because those inspectors will pay for themselves if we put the penalties in place. If you get cited for something and you get hit with a $50 fine, just like if you re speeding down the road, that $50 is going into a pot to pay for those inspectors. There s no reason why somebody couldn t make not only a years salary out here but a lifetime s. Thirty years, you could retire in this city with all the violations we have. Give somebody the power to write the citations to force people to maintain their property the way that it should be maintained and our problems would slowly start disappearing, from the housing stock to all the other problems that we have. I challenge the Administration and the Legal Department to figure out a way to make it happen. The Health Department knows how to do it. They have the ability to do it, they just don t have the funding. This has been pushed under the rug all the time for whatever reasons. I don t care if it s the Landlord Association because you know, landlords own a lot of houses but single families own a lot of houses to. Every body in this community has to step up to the plate and start looking at themselves in the 10

11 mirror and say, is my house or is my house not up to code and am I proud to live here? A bucket of paint doesn t cost that much money. MR. SILECKY: Thank you Mr. Given. Do we have a comment from the audience? MR. DAVE HOUSEMAN (?), 1317 W. 2 nd : I own a piece of property 1300 & 1302 W. 2 nd St. I received a notice about the rental inspections. My property is on the corner of Brownell and W. 2 nd St. It s all brick, copper gutters, copper downspouts, the plumbing, the electrical is all just like the outside of it. The inside is representative of the outside. Everything is good. Well maintained. That property was built in 1948 by my parents. At that time we got a certificate of occupancy. The wiring was inspected with no dry wall, not dry wall, no plaster and the plumbing was the same way and everything was inspected. Your code indicates interior inspection. I will tell you one thing, you can not do a really good job of inspecting the wiring and plumbing and so forth unless you go behind the walls and see what s there. It is ridiculous in my opinion what they re trying to do. I think further more if you look at the outside as Bill said, 95% of the houses are maintained on the outside are maintained on the inside. I gave him an example today. I met in his office for about an hour this morning. If you go to the airport, I will give you this example, you get on a commuter flight and you send this old ragged airplane out on the ground are you going to want to fly on it when the paint is bad on it? I ll guarantee you that airplane is not maintained on the engine and the rest of it if it s poorly maintained on the outside. What really gets me disturbed with the city of Lorain everybody s moving out because of the way we re maintaining our properties. I have pictures that I gave Bill this morning of houses that I ve complained about on W. 2 nd St. and Lake Pl. They have been in horrible condition for years and the city has done little or nothing about it. Bill assures me now that one place is going to be torn down on or before July and I m expecting it to be done. Right now if the Fire Department would go out there or a building inspector the integrity of the house is so poor that it s actually dangerous to walk inside and inspect it. The walls are crooked, they re not parallel, they re not plumb, they re leaning and different walls are leaning different directions and I think the code in regards to the rental property needs to be revised and I don t mind paying a fee but I want to see you do something to the other properties whether it s rental or not. My property value is going down because of the situation up the street and if you re not sure where this property is, it s close to the power plant. When you have a piece of property that s in deplorable condition and a nice house beside it, you can t sell the nice house. You re not going to get your money because no one s going to want to move in to something right next door to it, a drug house or a house that is poorly maintained with no windows and so forth. I think you need to do something and not get on the rental people so much. I think you need to look at your neighborhood and clean it up first, clean all of it up and then go to the inside of the house and inspect the plumbing and electric because I ll tell you I m getting very disturbed when it comes to Lorain and I spend my time here in Lorain and I go away from the winter or something and come back and nothing has been done. It is absolutely, I ve been complaining about these houses for over five years and Mr. Mayor I would like for you to look at these pictures, the addresses are on the back. I d like to have them back. Bill has a set of them that I gave him this morning and the rest of you, you need to look at them and think what you re doing to this city by letting them remain. MR. SILECKY: Thank you Mr. Houseman. Mr. Given. MR. GIVEN: As I was going through these minutes I think it s important that Jack Kerowsky of the Lorain Health Department our Chief Sanitarian speaks about what his 11

12 department does and what his department does about it. I d like to read these captions. He says keep in mind that Lorain City Health Department does administer multi family dwelling programs now. We license owners that have three or more in the building. They pay a yearly fee and then he goes on about expenses. They get into the common areas but sometimes it difficult to get into the apartments based upon the laws and whether people are home or not. They took over the program in 92 and they had 300 buildings registered and now they re up to 582. He then goes into explaining that the Ordinance that s on the books right now states that his department does three units and above and they planned on intending to keep inspecting those multi-dwelling units and they think it s very beneficial and if there are citations, they go to the prosecutor s office. There are very few three in a buildings or more where you got substantial problems because of their inspection programs. The owners are on notice. He goes on to talk about the fact that they do surprise inspections because they think it pays off. Says 60% of the residential units in Lorain are rentals and the majority of the problems that we have are one and two units. He says that he recommends that you look at these on a yearly basis and it will provide a data base to follow every year. If the homes are sold then the new owner is notified of that application right away to make him pay all those fees all over again to get put back in the system. The Health Department I think should be questioned in regards to how they re doing it so we can implement programs throughout the city. The last time we spoke about this all hell broke lose from the Landlord Association and some people said they don t want us coming around their house. This Council, the Building Department, that Administration, we have an obligation to do something with this town before it s beyond repair and we re getting pretty close. Once again Mr. Law Director, I d like to see some Legislation, something come back to us in regards to a pathway so we can start administering some of what we talk about all the time but never seem to get off the ground so that we can improve this housing stock. We need to help the Building Department; we need to help the Health Department. These positions can be self funded with citations. MR. SILECKY: Thank you Mr. Given. Mr. Law Director. MR. PROVENZA: Through the Chair to Councilman Given, all members of Council. Instead of requesting that Council reduce to the specific language tonight what it is that you d like to see drafted what I will do subsequent to tonight s committee meeting is be contacting with you and the phone works both ways, be contacting me with respect to what type of Legislation you d like put on Council s June 5 th agenda. MR. SILECKY: Could we have members of the audience please MR. PROVENZA: It should be done in the next two weeks. MR. SILECKY: Yes Mr. Given. MR. GIVEN: If I could ask a question. Mr. Desvari, obviously I think you understand the intent of Council with regards to improving the housing stock and I would think that that s your objective as well, if through the Law Department with your department with your knowledge because I know that your well hooked up with the state, if we can put forth Ordinances to better police our housing stock, do you have any problems with that? MR. DESVARI: Not at all. In fact it was suggested to Chief Rivera possibly deputizing some people to do fining or ticketing right on the spot in some cases also we re looking to possibly start a night court for housing court to have a magistrate appointed by the Judges to fine.. MR. GIVEN: Mr. Mayor please don t go anywhere. 12

13 MR. DESVARI: These are separate ideas that we can come up with that we will ask to be reviewed and we think that, they have worked in other communities and then we would be able to cite, right on the spot, have them people come in here to the housing court and they would either be fined or given extra time to make changes and then we could do a lot more a lot quicker that way but those are things that are right now in the processing stages. MR. GIVEN: Based upon your experience of other communities and the fact that you sit on the State Board, I m making the assumption that you also have the ability to bring forth examples of Legislation of some of some of these better communities. MR. DESVARI: I don t know if they are better communities than Lorain but I know of some that have been working on this longer than us. MR. GIVEN: Mr. Mayor. If this Council, this committee with the Law Director bring forth Legislation to fine tune this Ordinance so that to make the Building Department and the Health Department and possibly the Police Department, we have the ability to police our housing stock to make improvement will you support that? MAYOR FOLTIN: It depends what the fine tuning encompasses but I am certainly open for that kind of discussion. MR. GIVEN: Based upon the conversation and based upon what we re seeing the fine tuning is going to be, we re going to clarify what the code is going to be, we re going to put the clarification on the books so that people clearly understand that they have the obligation to maintain their property and hold it in a certain matter and that if they do not do so that we have the ability to cite them and if they don t correct it then we have the ability to take them to court. Just like every other community does. Mr. Mayor? MAYOR FOLTIN: I think from what Mr. Desvari has indicated, we have that ability but the process I quite lengthy. I would certainly look into fine tuning to encompass Mr. Desvari s expertise. MR. GIVEN: We re asking for Mr. Desvari s expertise. What I m asking is your Administration going to support it or are they going to thwart it? MAYOR FOLTIN: Well again show me what the fine tuning is and then you ll get our answer. MR. GIVEN: Mr. Mayor do you believe the housing stock in this city needs improvement, yes or no? MAYOR FOLTIN: The housing stock in any city could use some improvement. I ll tell you MR. GIVEN: Mr. Mayor MAYOR FOLTIN: Let me talk. Unlike you MR. GIVEN: Please Mr. Chairman.. CLERK GREER: Through the Chair. MR. GIVEN: This is an example. We come back to the point all the time that the housing stock in this town needs improvement. The only way that the housing stock.. MAYOR FOLTIN: It is improving MR. GIVEN: will improve is if this Administration MAYOR FOLTIN: Drive down Reid Ave, drive down 5 th St MR. GIVEN: Mr. Mayor why don t I take you through the 5 th ward. Let me drive you through Campedo; let me drive you through Central MAYOR FOLTIN: Where were you on Pride Day Mr. Given MR. GIVEN: I was working, where were you? 13

14 MAYOR FOLTIN: I was out through all Central Lorain. I was at the Sons of Italy, I was at the graffiti house on 17 th and MR. GIVEN: Is there anybody in this Council that would like to take this Mayor driving through different sections of their ward and showing him where we failed in terms of housing inspections? MAYOR FOLTIN: I m telling you that if you would have driven through there six years ago it wasn t as good as it is now. MR. GIVEN: Mr. Mayor I can take you through sections of the 7 th ward that I ve represented for 13 years that I turned in numerous times, the house that the gentleman over there talked about on 21 st behind that auto body shop, I turned in a dozen times. He s correct, it s been there for a decade and for some reason this building has not accepted the responsibility of making improvements so whether you re running for Mayor or running for Congress or whatever, we have failed in terms of making improvements to the housing stock in one way or another. It needs to be improved. MR. SILECKY: Can we have a point of order for the Law Director please? MR. PROVENZA: Instead of delaying asking this question to a time where nobody is in the same room, what I d like to do is ask the Administration, city Council this question. Currently the City of Lorain building code authorized the Lorain Police Department to assist the Building Department in the enforcement of notices; it doesn t speak about issuing citations. Is it consensus of city Council and the Administration that Legislation would be desired whereby the Police Department has the authority to issue citations for violations of the building code? MR. GIVEN: Yes. Moved by Mr. Given, supported by Mr. Krasienko to authorize the Police Department to issue building code violations. REMARKS: MR. PROVENZA: I m just wondering if that s going to be problematic for the Administration as far as an enforcement standpoint. I don t know what the manpower capability of the Police Department is as to whether or not they re in position to do that. That s why I asked for Administration s answer. MR. GIVEN: It s the Legislative body s to pass laws. If we pass a law and then the Police Department comes down and says that they need additional support to do that then we can do that. It s their obligation if Legislation is passed to support the law. MR. PROVENZA: Based on your comments pursuant to a conversation that you had with Chief Rivera it does not appear as though that would be problematic. MR. GIVEN: He agrees that this is the root cause of our problem. With regards to manpower and those types of things, that s a conversation for another day. It s a matter of what do we do to correct the problem. MR. SILECKY: Thank you Mr. Given. We have a few other lights here. Mr. Betleski. MR. BETLESKI: Thank you Mr. Chairman, I forgot I had my light on. I think we re getting away from the subject. The problem was that the landlord had a problem with the $50 fine for simple inspections on the outer side of his residences. Shall, can, should, those kinds of words should be eliminated. Go ahead Mark. MR. PROVENZA: Through the chair to Councilman Betleski. It is my understanding that Councilman At-large Krasienko would like words limited to, eliminated from Chapter 10 of the property maintenance code. 14