AD HOC Property Maintenance Review Committee MINUTES of January 15, 2014 Roll Call: Tim Bailey, David Greene, Carol Floyd, Steve Layman, Director Spurgeon Director Spurgeon stated we have a quorum so we will go ahead and get started. Secretary Wetzel stated that she would be recording the meeting today to compare with her notes. Director Spurgeon we don t want to discourage anyone, Cindy is my new secretary so she is going to record so she can go back and correct any inaccuracy of what was said compared to her notes. Director asked if everyone had a chance to look over the minutes from the meeting on December 18, 2013, stating we had sent out the wrong minutes. If everyone has had a chance to review those and are comfortable with the docket I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of December 18, 2013. Motion by Mrs. Floyd to approve the Minutes of December 18, 2013, Second by Mr. Greene Motion was carried by acclamation. Director Spurgeon asked has the committee had the opportunity to review the minutes of January 8, 2014. I am hearing some discomfort or heartburn with the minutes of January 8, 2014 we may discuss that now. Is there a particular passage voicing something the committee does not accept in the document. Mr. Layman stated that he didn t think he called Doug lazy but he believes the minutes are accurate. Director Spurgeon stated that the committee believes that procedurally the minutes are correct but we enter into the record that you, Mr. Layman believe it was a misinterpretation by the Law Director Sassen. Mr. Layman stated yes I would say that. Director Spurgeon stated that Law Director Sassen did say that so these minutes are accurate. If all agree I entertain a motion to approve the minutes of January 8, 2014. Motion by Mrs. Floyd to approve the Minutes of January 8, 2014, Second by Mr. Bailey Motion was carried by acclamation. Director Spurgeon stated that during the last meeting we had some pretty robust discussion. I put a question to the committee that I have not seen in the record that there has been answer.
Mr. Rath had mentioned that he did not get a chance to voice his opinion I was hoping Jeff might be here I was going to try and get him into the mix first and our Law Director has not joined us yet. How would the committee like to proceed? Mrs. Floyd stated I have a question I would like to ask Joe. Mr. Greene stated that the question that Mr. Layman raised at the end where it was paraphrased calling the Law Director lazy the question was does the city have the will to follow through to fix these issues. I think that is worth discussing some more. Director Spurgeon let me interject since Mr. Rath has just now joined us. We have approved the minutes from December 18, 2013 and January 8, 2014. We are now opening the discussion, I had mentioned from the chair a recap of some of the opinions I had given. I have a message out to Joe and Law Director Sassen have obviously not joined us and I put in the record that you, Mr. Rath did not get a chance to participate in the last meeting. Mr. Greene I would like for you to bring your point up and then we can get everyone into the discussion, please. Mr. Greene stated the last meeting we had the discussion about the committee and what might be possible and the purpose of having the code and the question of what the city s priority was in terms of getting the code changed in dealing with the safety issues. Mr. Layman asked the question does the city have the will to follow through and fix these issues. I think from my perspective and people that I work with, that is the important issue, and should be clarified before we go too much further. Mr. Rath stated that he has issue with the statement does the city have the will to follow through and to change the code. I think that is two different questions. Does the city have the will to take care of the properties in Newark, yes, are we doing so, yes, are we making progress, yes. Is that progress fast enough, are we doing enough I don t know if the answer to that is yes. Can we do it faster or better possibly, with the resources we have right now I don t know. Do we have the will to change the code I don t know that is the same question. I don t know if the code needs changed and that s the purpose of this committee. So to lump those two in together pre discloses us to failure instantly or at least distress of the objective of this committee into thinking we are here to change the code. We are not here to change the code we are here to review the code and to see if we can expedite the things we are already doing. So we are not necessarily here to change the code but if changing the code. The point is to care of properties. Mr. Layman asked Mr. Rath what is the purpose of reviewing the code to him. Mr. Rath stated to see if there are areas we can do better.
Law Director Sassen has joined the meeting. Mrs. Floyd stated she has two issues and wanted to ask Joe a question, she had talked to the Law Director the day before and the Law Director said he believed most of the time when Joe wanted to get into a property that he could, that someone would let him in if he thinks there is a problem. So that is my question to Joe since he is the one knocking on doors. The second thing is that after so many violations we wanted to have some kind of punishment. That is already in there, I am looking at it, 106.3E Prosecution of Violation. But this deals with noncompliant of 4 occasions in a 7 year period. What I want to know, Mr. Law Director could we change that part of the code. That is a long time almost two election processes, you get new people and all of that kind of thing. Could it be changed to say so many violations within a shorter period of time? Law Director Sassen stated sure, the history is basically it is a longer period of time, for lack of better terms to catch more violators. It gives a bad landlord a broader period of time that they would be susceptible to this enhance kind of sanction. For example if you were going to say 4 violations in 1 year, it is far more unlikely they would have 4 unresolved violations in 1 year than in 7 years. You don t have to wait 7 years once they hit 4 violations these enhance sanction opportunities are available. It just broadens that window so that I m a bad landlord and I get 2 violations within the year, I get a clean slate at the end of the year and they would not be subject to those enhance sanctions. So if you have a 7 year window that landlord is under that enhanced scrutiny longer. Mrs. Floyd asked how long has this been used? Law Director Sassen stated it hasn t. Mrs. Floyd stated that is my concern since it is such a long window I know that when your committee met with council members individually everyone wanted that after so many violations there would be internal inspections. Law Director you stated last week that much of what we wanted to do is already in the code. But because this is a 7 year time frame that is just too long. Law Director Sassen stated he thinks you are missing what he is trying to say. If you shorten that period of time you essentially giving that landlord a clean slate more often, like I said earlier we don t have to wait 7 years when the landlord is noncompliant can we do something with this guy. Once that landlord hits 4 findings of noncompliance he is eligible for these enhance sanctions, whether that takes 1 year or 3 years you are giving him a clean slate sooner. We haven t done that because we have not found a landlord to be noncompliant on 4 occasions within the 7 year period.
Mr. Layman stated he would like to put some of the Law Director s comments into context. First we have to make a couple of assumptions, one that the Law Director and Joe are doing their jobs. My experience with Joe is that he does a good job so let s start with the idea that the problem is not the people. Next assumption is that there is a problem and it is either unsolvable and we all should just go home and forget about it. I don t believe it is unsolvable. Then the problem must be the code, which I believe it is the code. I think I am here to have a different code. I am only one voice maybe refashion would be a better word for changing the code. The focus of the code is too broad to solve the problems of the city. Joe can keep busy day and night just on sidewalks and sidewalks are important but that is not going to solve the problem. If the problem is identified as substandard housing or a business model then fixing sidewalks which is important doesn t do anything. This is where we got off on does the city, community, administration have the political will to make some changes. The changes that I think we should make and have been gradually moving toward are sort of a refocus with more of a rifle shot as opposed to a shotgun shot. Let s refashion the code and give Joe the tools and the instruction of our focus. Our focus is on ten bad landlords who have one hundred fifty problems and let s figure out a way to change that, change their behavior or change their ownership. That s where I think we should go and that s one voice and you guys can disagree. If everyone thinks that the way we should go, then we have to fashion the tools so that the Law Director can be comfortable to take it to the Judge. Then you begin to follow that process and if five or so years you look at it its working, housing stock in Newark has gradually gotten better and now we can worry about the sidewalks and tree limbs. Give the property and maintenance department the focus and tools to solve specific problems which are the bad landlords. Mr. Rath stated there are two different directions that we are going here; the two areas that I see us going in are opposite directions. One do we want to just drop the hammer on these people that can t afford to do anything with their properties or are we going to help them solve their problem. I see hammering them just making them disgruntle. I like the idea of trying to help them with their issues. On the other hand you have these people that are just abusive. Abusive and irresponsible in their business actions, could care less about the people living in their properties, only concerned about making a buck and they don t want to reinvest in their properties. How do we get those people out of that business? Mrs. Floyd had a question for Joe earlier and I would love to hear you ask that question now. Mrs. Floyd asked Joe Paul when I talked to the Law Director he said he believed if you wanted to get into a property that most of the time you could is that correct? Joe Paul stated that most of the time someone will let him enter the property. Very few times have I tried to get into a property and not been allowed to enter. But the reality is a lot of the time you don t know what the problems are until you enter the property.
Mrs. Floyd stated that is what she has never understood, sometimes you go in and there are 3 violations on issues that you didn t even know were issues, like heating, electrical, plumbing things you can t even see until you get inside and we were saying 3 violations of these things with a court order would allow you to go inside. The whole thing just hasn t totally made sense to me. Mr. Rath stated I think we were saying if a person had these violations and have more than one property we would be able to inspect those properties as well. Mr. Floyd stated according to the Law Director we would have a hard time getting a Judge to approve that. Law Director Sassen stated he thought the Judges would be hesitant it would have be very fact specific and we are going to have to make sure that there is a logical connection between the violations that are perceived and what it is we are asking the Judge to do. Obvious example that we have used a hundred times before is that there is no Judge in the world that is going to sign a search warrant for you to go into a guys property or other properties because on one particular property you have 3 violations where the grass is too long. I know that s absurd and I know that s not what we are talking about I understand that. But we have to move back along that spectrum to that point where there is a logical connection between the three qualifying events. The simple fact is just because the code says it doesn t mean the Judge is going to do it unless you have that logical connection. I think that was one of the next topics we were going to talk about. Mr. Layman stated the focus or the purpose is not on one person, one house or one property. It s on someone who is doing it on purpose and it s a business model and here is how we know it is a business model there are five of them and they all look alike. At the end of the day the property and maintenance department should have the tools in conjunction with the law to take that business model and break it. Let them know they cannot do this in Newark, putting tenants in unsafe situations and not repairing the property you no longer can run that business in Newark. The code may allow that now and I am not going to argue if it does or doesn t but what I will argue is that the focus of the code is way broader than that. The code would benefit from being narrowed and very clear to Joe and the Director. Once job one is done then you can talk about changing the focus. Law Director Sassen stated if he could just back up one second here. You framed the issue using a logical equation that if it s not a problem with the people and we accept that to be a fact then it must be a problem with the code. That ignores one other reality maybe it s a problem with not enough people. That probably needs to be explored maybe not by this
committee but at the same time the code needs to be explored also. Maybe it s both we just can t ignore that element of it. Mr. Greene stated I don t think the individuals responsible are not doing their part. It s not whether people think there is a problem and not want to deal with it but if we can start to talk about what it would take to go after the landlords that are abusive. Right now I know that property and maintenance are overloaded with what they have to do. I m not saying they don t do well with what they have but this is another issue that is connected with will it is connected with prioritization. People along the way have said property and maintenance in Newark is a priority. I know funds are short but you know the expression of put your money where your mouth is I think there is another issue her let s talk together about other resources about whether there is a possibility of getting more inspectors or getting more money. I mean that in a bigger way. We dismiss things because of their history, the Law Director was mentioning about when the citizens rose up against the earlier code and then another code was passed. But what about getting more people involved maybe we need to pass a levy. I know people are scared of levies, I m not scared of them and maybe it wouldn t pass but informing the public might draw out some support to clean up this community. I m just trying to think out of this box that we are in. We are all subject to political pressure from those who want to see something done. I am of open mind about how to get it done and not limited to what is currently being done. While we can take credit for what is currently being done more needs to be done. Mr. Bailey stated that he thought the whole reason for the committee was to reclassify the articles in the code. As to severity and that we could concentrate on the more severe issues. Do we just tell Joe to forget about sidewalks for now and use the rifle approach to actually aim at the landlords to put them out of business? No one wants to hear someone is going to be put out of business but in a roundabout way that is what you are trying to do. We are talking about the guy that goes out and buys 4 or 5 houses rents them out doesn t fix anything. Whether we like it or not it goes back to the financial issues. There are more houses right now getting dumped people just walking off. It isn t just landlords but when they walk off they leave you 5 or 6 properties to deal with. There are houses in the east end that look nice they have made improvements. You have neighborhoods with new houses and no sidewalks, does it look nice, no but it is not a safety issue. High grass and trash are not the issues. Mrs. Floyd stated I just want to say I like the idea of taking care of those people with multiple properties and that sort of thing. But as a member of council I get more calls about grass and trash on the porch or critters getting into the trash than I do about a property with safety issues because they don t see those things. I look at Franklin County and how they are cracking down on slum lords and people like that and I know their budget is bigger. I understand that safety money has to go to police and fire first. I would like to see more money for property and
maintenance but knowing the budget the money just isn t available. Do you have a suggestion on how we go about setting this up to target these slum lords? Mr. Rath stated before we go any farther I would like to make a comment on Mr. Layman s comment. I like the idea of giving the rightful tool and give them an avenue to pinpoint the issue and aim to take care of it. I don t like the idea of taking away the breath of the current property and maintenance code because of what Mrs. Floyd just said. If we want to provide property and maintenance with the tools I think that s great but I think it is an administrative function to determine what their focus is. So if we do pinpoint the landlords than that becomes a resolved issue they still have the ability to go out and continue to do the things that are bothering all the people of Newark. Law Director Sassen stated that he thinks Mr. Greene hit the nail on the head there needs to be some creativity of how we find additional funding to address these issues. The code that is written can be applied if we are using the analogy of shotgun verses rifle. You can take the code and focus on the high end problems and that s going to be our priority. But if that is the case you are going to have council members calling you because they have people calling about high grass. Then we are right back where we are now, trying to fight a huge problem with a small amount of resources. If you say ok we forget the people calling about grass and focus on high end that is simply sifting priorities not changing the code. I will touch on the whole broken window analogy we learned in juvenile court, I know I keep going back to juvenile court but we learned a lot from that. We had a lot of high end offenders that took a lot of our focus but we did not ignore the low end offenders such as truants. Because that truant becomes a misdemeanant and when you ignore that misdemeanant that misdemeanant becomes a felony. You have to address both ends of the pipeline because the bottom end becomes the top end if you ignore it. I don t think it s an issue of changing the code, it s like David said it is an issue of prioritizing the code. Initially it s of current resources and where do we want to apply them and second finding some way to be creative to make this pie bigger. Mrs. Floyd just said priority police, fire and water. Ask the people in Charleston, West Virginia what they think about clean water. Those things are going to come before property and maintenance you can t help that. So where do we get the money for property and maintenance? That s where I fall down I am not creative. Mr. Rath asked so we had and inspector at one time that was funded by federal money. That is no longer available can you address why? Director Spurgeon stated the federal money went away. That inspector you are speaking of was a restricted respondent and could only work in certain areas of the community. I said it last week and I will say it again we have many problems it requires a government subsidy to fix it. If somebody said here director is one hundred thousand dollars what should we do with it, I will
publicly state fix what we are aware of. We do these things, everything this committee has discussed we are doing. We have altered the ordinance to respond to grass, trash and rodents quicker. We gained efficiencies instead of hiring the contractor, we do that with employees. We continue to look at big offenders, there are two and I believe this is lawyer client privilege but there are two in the Law Director s office that we have asked to prosecute. So the things that I have heard we are doing. What I have not heard is an answer to my question. Somebody is going to get hurt if we don t fix this. What are you going to write that makes them fix those issues? Mr. Bailey stated we already have it written. Director Spurgeon stated and that s what I am really encouraging this committee to think about before you venture on the rewriting of the law what is it you hope to accomplish. What is the hammer you are going to swing to make the unwilling become willing. I also have said I am not getting a lot of unwilling folks. I have not had folks saying I am not abiding by this ordinance because I don t like it. I get folks saying I don t have the money or its February can you wait until May for me to paint the shed. Mr. Greene stated that there are properties in Newark that are rental properties that are not being kept up. The direction here is how can we deal with landlords that are not taking care of their properties and are being abusive. We are talking about a select audience not about all the landlords in Newark. Something is wrong with the process here because there are those landlords who do these things and create unsafe conditions. Director you are not saying that all those landlords just don t have the money to fix the issues and that s why the problem exists. Director Spurgeon stated I was under the understanding that it was about all properties. Today I am hearing about only rentals and I am entirely uncomfortable with that. So for example are there rentals that are not being kept up, sure and there are plenty owner occupied in the same boat. Mrs. Floyd stated I thought we discussed a long time ago that we were talking about rentals, because we were trying to decide what we were going to do. Law Director Sassen stated the code applies to all property whether it is owner occupied or rental. The only time I was saying we need to restrict the debate to rentals was this three strikes and you are out issue. Mr. Rath asked the Law Director if he was talking about internal inspections. Law Director Sassen stated yes when we started down that path.
Mr. Greene stated my understanding is that we had some discussion that we are not talking about homeowners in terms of this internal inspection question. It was my understanding that this committees creation came out of the effort that we needed some rental regulations, rental registration, rental licensing and so on. Director Spurgeon stated that is partly accurate. Mayor Hall and I have discussed the intense interest in the community with property maintenance in general. He asked me to put together a committee and let them review this from top to bottom. I believe we have done that. Last week I was asked by Mrs. Floyd to give my opinion and this where the rubber hits the road, so to speak, but this was not a response to one faucet of a community discussion. There is much that the community does not understand and I keep using practical realities of property maintenance. I do think this is great that we are having this discussion and folks are looking at the law and realizing limitations whether they be lawful, financial or what have you and the discussion is now in my opinion is when it is unsafe, sidewalks are not as important, what is the committee trying to accomplish, what would committee suggests for someone in my example. Mrs. Floyd asked will you support it if we discuss this on a larger platform? I will not until I understand what this committee wants to accomplish. Is it going to be felonious conduct not to fix your stair rises as in my example. That s where I am from the chair. Mr. Layman stated then I would say we would focus on trying to set up a pattern of behavior. That pattern would be to have a business model that doesn t do repairs, the city would put that business out of business. Director Spurgeon asked Mr. Layman if that was going to be a felony, we have that. Mr. Layman stated I am not saying we don t have that but it should be the focus to break that business model. We are talking about people with more than one property and it s a pattern. The code should be organized to make those people change their business model or get out of business and if we have that why aren t we using it. Director Spurgeon stated we are using it. We have two to prosecute, people are making monthly payments as part of their lawful settlement that was processed in the judiciary using the threat of an M1 violation if they don t comply. Law Director Sassen stated initially the previous code was subject to referendum and overturned because the sanctions were too severe. Right or wrong that s the perspective that was sold to the voters to object it. It begins as what we call decriminalized model and then for the flagrant violators you move into this misdemeanor criminal environment. I know it s not a fair analogy to compare it with Franklin County, but they have environmental Judges that only deal with these issues and put those people out of business when they don t follow the business model. We don t have that here in Newark, the Judge addresses all issues in a
different ways. He is not going to deal with these offenders like he would OVI or Mental Health Court. He would put on his environmental hat and say what are we going to do with this? There are probation opportunities we could do, and impose sanctions if for example ABC are not done. That s one option of the court. If the offender is flagrant and doesn t believe that probation is an option they simply impose the sanction. Why haven t we done this? We are on are third safety director since the code was in effect and there was no interest to do anything about this issue. It was the intention to keep this as a decriminalization code but since then the situation has gotten much worse. It has reached a point that the decriminalization is not working and the next step process of criminalization needs to be activated. There are a multitude of reasons why it hasn t been done, some of which are philosophical, practical or legal but it seems as though the problem has moved from decriminalization. Mrs. Floyd asked is that up to you and the courts, safety or who? Law Director Sassen stated all of the above, there is an education element that says we are doing this a little different and here is why. You will have to be able to educate the Judge on here is what we are doing and why. Mr. Greene stated that he is for criminalization of landlords with repeated violations. I wanted to ask a question to the Director, as chair of this committee you could not present this to council. Director Spurgeon stated that this is an administrative endeavor to review this ordinance and I have said I believe we have done that. As progresses I don t know if it will be an administrative endeavor that the Director would say this is a great thing pass it to council or maybe it s a legislative endeavor where a council member or citizens would bring it to council. Mr. Greene stated I don t think anyone disagrees that we are doing what we can. But from my prospective and others it is not enough more needs to be done. I know it can t be done overnight. Mr. Rath stated the way I understand it is we have the tool to do it right now and it is an administrative function not a legislative function. We don t have to change the law or the code to do that. So we are going to focus on high end and not low end, unless we had more property and maintenance code to focus on low end. Mr. Floyd stated that she doesn t know anyone on council who would not want more property and maintenance people. I would like to ask Joe a question these slum lords as we call them, what amount of property do you think is owned by these people?
Joe Paul stated I can t give you percentages but what you have to understand when we are enforcing codes we are doing those on a C or D not on an A. Is it what we would all like to see? Maybe not but it does pass the minimum standards. Mr. Greene in response to Mrs. Floyd I have a lot of trouble with this is the budget and we can t have anymore. It doesn t mean we will never have the money. We need to think about other avenues to get money. Mrs. Floyd stated that she believes that is out of the realm of this committee. The whole rental registration thing was financial, you had to have an office, secretary and forms and its fine to say this is what we need, we need a lot of things in this city. There is a financial reality and there are things we just can t do at the point when the budget improves that s when we can look at these issues. Law Director Sassen stated he couldn t agree more with Mr. Green. The key to this is making the pie bigger, you have people on this committee that come from different schools of thought, that may have ideas that others may have never thought of. So there is no reason why that topic can t come from this committee with a recommendation as to how additional revenue can be identified and located. If you are talking a tax that s a legislative function, if you are talking grants that s a mixture. Making the pie bigger is always worthy of discussion. Mr. Rath stated he was against rental registration because it was a tax on compliant landlords with no issues. Mr. Layman and Mr. Bailey you are landlords do the slum lords we have in town help or hurt your businesses? Mr. Bailey stated it has a negative effect. Mr. Layman stated it has a negative effect. Mr. Rath stated he is against forced taxation to solve this problem. What about approaching good standing landlords and ask them to help fund a property and maintenance person to get these issues taken care of. Let them know we feel it has a negative impact on your business. Mr. Bailey stated the problem is that the majority of landlords are not in Newark. He is not positive we could get those people to help. We have now finally started chasing these people, it sounds like something new I have never heard of the landlords going to court. Director Spurgeon stated it is not new. This is my 3 rd year as Director I have collaborated with the Law Director and he has provided resources we believe who have the financial wherewithal to be compliant, we believe, for lack of a better term, thumbed their noses at us and we have asked the Director s assistance and he has provided.
Mr. Bailey asked do you think it changed when you came on board. Director Spurgeon stated yes I believe I brought the willingness to pursue. Mr. Bailey stated if this is the case then this may solve this problem if we are willing to wait. I believe the economy is turning around and maybe we won t be getting so many dumped back in. Director Spurgeon stated we talked about when there are fiscal difficulties money is tight, you do two things you raise funds and find efficiencies. Mayor Hall is working tirelessly to make the pie bigger and he has charged his Director s including me, to find efficiencies and I spoke of those today. We have to a blend of low end and high end results. We are moving forward with the ordinance. I am proud of what we are doing and I think it valuable that this committee and the public can understand the dynamics of trying to address this problem. Mr. Greene stated this is just a suggestion that we look again at the unresolved violations and what questions we have regarding classification and focusing on the slum lords and penalties. Director Spurgeon stated that he would not set another meeting date until he had to time to review the minutes from today. Request a motion to adjourn. Motion by Mr. Rath to adjourn, Second by Mrs. Floyd. Meeting adjourned at 10:10 a.m.