City Council - Regular Meeting

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All right, buddy. Well, don't we get started? Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Sustainability and Environment Subcommittee meeting. The time is now 4.49. I'm calling this meeting into order. We are joined here in chambers by Councilor Jerry Martin. Thank you for joining us, Councilor. We're also joined by our City Attorney, Attorney Ken Sheeran. Thank you, Attorney Sheeran, for joining us. And we're also joined by resident... Thank you for joining us. Thank you for joining us. Remotely, we're joined by Councillor Walsh, Councillor Govan. We also have Court Enforcement, Steve DeSalette, Keith O'Connor, Tom McCarthy from Parks, Mike Jenkins from Code, Mike McCloskey as well. And then, did I miss anybody? And then we're joined by the newest channel, 22 Remotely, and channel, Western Mass News. Today's agenda is continued discussion on illegal dumping. I want to talk about the five structures that we have here in the city of Springfield and interdepartmental communication. Before we get into this, a little bit of background. We had a meeting a couple of weeks ago, and this comes about from the incident which we have from Orlean Street. Orlean Street, there was a pile of trash, granted that it was on private property. which caused some stir. It was an awful trash pile of trash. The trash was falling onto the ground. We had the diapers, we had milk, we had eggs. Not only was he starting to go over into the sidewalk, but he was also getting into the street that was getting near the water. And so, It finally got cleaned up. I think it took a little too long. And so I think that we all try our best, but I do believe that we have a problem. I counseled Martin as well. I was talking about this and we feel that we have a problem here. And I think to solve the problem, the first thing is to realize that we have a problem. And so I'm looking forward I was looking, okay, what happened in the past? I want to get this fixed. I want to get this fixed. The timely manner that things have been up, hopefully how we can stop this issue from happening so constantly that it's happening. So I think we have a problem. We, last week, we had a meeting with the water and sewer, and we were talking about the water dump into the Connecticut River. And there was pictures on the paper. And those guys, just like every department here in the city, they do the best that they have, that they can with what they have. And one thing that really got me about that story and the picture was those guys were out there and they were pulling out from the river condoms, diapers, just trash into a water system. Now, a lot of that water comes from people throwing it into the toilet, into the city itself, it gets into the water system, into the sewer, and ends up in the Connecticut River. To finish the subject, I know they're doing a great job. The river is cleaner than before, which is good. But this issue of trash, we need to tackle it head on. And so before I get to the agenda, Councilman Jerry, Martin, do you have anything you want to say?

Yeah, first and foremost, I want to Thank publicly Keith O'Connor, Michael Jacob, Maurice. I mean, they've been outstanding public servants. You know, recently I've had a particular issue that's raised a lot of concerns on Great Crest Road. They were wicked attentive to it and they went full force. And I do appreciate that work when all things work together, they're on top. But my big gripe as a whole is the repeat offenders, people who are repeated these violent, these ordinance violations and how we can hold them accountable and make sure that we continue to have respect for them. our neighborhoods and the city that we love. So a lot of, I think my question would probably be focused with the law department and how we can, you know, really put some teeth behind it today.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Councilor Martin. Councilor Cabana, you're part of the committee. You want to say any comments before we get into the full agenda?

I guess what I would say is, you know, I agree that This is a problem and it's been a problem for a very long time and I'm not sure you know how we can address it. I have a great idea on how to tackle the whole city. I'm going to talk to Chris about it because we have eight wards in our city and sometimes it seems like only certain wards get the attention and some other wards are um neglected and i don't know you know i'm sure that it's not on purpose it's just where the priorities are so i just i feel like we need to find a way to address every part of the city because some parts of the city look worse than the others you know and um i think it's something that we need to think about We have a billion dollar budget next year and our city should look like that. The entire city, not just downtown or Forest Park, but the entire city should reflect that we're spending that kind of money. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Caban. Councilor Walsh, any quick comments before we go into the agenda?

Yes. Thank you so much for having this meeting because I think it's so important to address illegal dumping and absentee landlords. And one of my concerns and what I hope you're going to be discussing today is the fees, because are the fees a deterrent? I think we should really look at raising the fees to send a message to the absentee landlords who don't seem to care about what happens in the neighborhoods. We need to put our neighborhoods first. And I think one way to do that is to send a strong message with a fee that will make people sit up and take attention and clean everything up. So I'm going to address that today, and thanks for having the meeting.

Thank you, Councilor Walsh. That's a good segue, by the way, talking about the fine structure. By the way, the sergeant, I think it's a volunteer, is not able to be here today. He sends secrets, but he's going to continue working with us. He's away right now, but he will come back and actively work with us. Two years ago, we increased... increased the fine structure. I believe that it was $100 back then, I believe. We raised it to $500. Plus, we put a provision that if you're caught using a car, your car could be, if you don't pay that ticket, it could be taken for non-payment of the fine because it's called the nexus between the illegal activity and using the vehicle. And so we did it all in two years. I believe we got, for the CARB, it was chapter 90. We got a bill passed, a house, I'm trying to say, what is that called? A home rule petition. And we passed that at the house. And so let me start by asking this. And I'm going to ask Steve this question. One thing that I realized at the last meeting, Steve, is that every department can issue a different level of fine. Can you, I know you're from Code Enforcement, can you speak us to the fine structures you go through from Code Enforcement perspective, both on the residential and business side? I think you're muted, Steve, by the way. Oh, Steve, you're muted.

How's that?

Much better now.

Thank you. Okay. Sorry about that.

Did you have a question? I don't think you need to repeat it.

So the fine structure is actually set by counsel. It's set by counsel with the ordinance. So any given ordinance that's written by counsel and accepted by counsel, generally there's always going to be a fine set with that. And usually a maximum up from, you know, zero to $200. for whatever the violation may be by ordinance. So that's what we follow the structure that's set by or whatever we have under that ordinance that we can follow. And in any given time at that certain point, you may start off from 50 to 150 to whatever the maximum may be depending on the violation.

Well, Steve, I just finished saying that we increase the fines.

What's that again?

Were you made aware that we increase the fines over two years ago?

Well, we do increase, yeah, some of the ordinances, yeah, we have increased the fire. We haven't increased any to some of the stuff with the building code side of it. A lot of our stuff is written by building code, plumbing, and electrical on that part of the division. As far as our ordinance stuff, we're aware.

Okay. Say that to me one more time, Steve, the last part.

As far as the increases on ordinance?

Yeah, so you say that, I missed the last three seconds of your sentence there. You're saying that for electrical and construction, repeat what you said. I don't want to put words in your mouth, please.

Okay, as far as the building code, electrical plumbing, those are set by the state.

Building code, okay.

Okay. Okay. As far as any of the city ordinances, again, that's set by the city council and what any of the maximum tickets may be for whatever certain violation it is.

But if you have somebody who's building and they're legally dumped, that would fall under our ordinance.

That's a dumping violation.

Yeah, it will be under the city.

That would be under the ordinance. That was either going to be something that zoning is going to look at, depending on the size or housing or a combination of both.

Would you be able to tell me how many illegal dumping fines have you determined issue?

No, not off the top of my head. I mean, we issue probably at least $600,000 in fines a year.

How much?

About $600,000.

In what? Illegal dumping?

Fiscal year. No, total. I don't know whether or not the collector's office could vet that out and run a report for you. It possibly could. That'd be something that we could look at.

Which department?

Collectors. Are tickets run through the muni system? And there may be a way that they could probably parse that out. I'm not sure. If not, they could probably look at... taking the actual ordinance code and see if a report could be run that way to see how many have been written against that code.

Okay. So, okay. So basically, when you have an illegal dumping situation, what fine do you guys give it?

Can I just, this is Mike Yockman. Can you guys hear me or am I?

Yeah, give me a second, Mike. I was asking Steve.

Steve. You're breaking up. I'm a hard time hearing you.

So as far as illegal dumping is concerned, you have somebody who legally dumped. What fine do you issue to them?

The article, maybe Keith can answer, actually. Do you know the article off the top of your head, Keith?

Well, when it comes to the illegal dumping first time offender, it really all depends on the severity of the dumping itself there. If it's something that's outrageous there, I mean, we could tick anywhere from $150 to $250. What we try to do is at least three times, and then after that, we'll put in for court action.

Did you say $250?

I'm probably taking maybe $250 if it's still the same.

Gotcha.

Right on there. I mean, our fines go from $10 up to $500.

Keith, if you don't mind, would you say that the chapter that you guys are Yeah. Okay. He went off for a second. Does everybody hear me and see me okay? Yes. Keith, can you send me the chapter, the ordinance that you are making reference to? Sure. That you're basing that? Sure.

One of the things I want to point out, too, is we also can ticket under the state sanitary code on maintenance of land, which actually that's on there for the residential areas there. So we would end up doing a 410-570A maintenance of land, and we ticket under that. Of course, that brings in the refuge, potential hazards, stuff like that. Okay.

All right. Mike, did you want to say something?

I just wanted to point out that we've had the zoning department since October 1st of last year. So since October 1st, until it got cleaned up, it was a total of $3,100 in fines that got sent out.

You're talking for only on Street?

Yes, just on the zoning department side. You know, because, you know, zoning ordinance is $100 per violation per day. Now that can be a max of $300 per mass general laws. So at some point we're issuing up to $600 tickets out there. And again, so from October till it got cleaned up, there was $3,100 in fines that were issued out. But I don't think at the end of the day that it was the money that got it cleaned up. but it's certainly helpful.

Okay. Thank you, Michael. Before I go on my own question, I believe the council has some questions. Councilor Martin, followed by Councilor Vermont.

I just, I wanted to go back to something Commissioner Desolates had said earlier. I believe you may have answered it, but I was writing, so I might not have cashed it. So I know you said $600,000 of the total amount of tickets was issued. You don't know how much of that $600,000 was actually collected.

Oh, collection? No, we don't do the collection part. That would have to be a request of maybe collectors to see what... Again, some of this stuff you have to realize it's going to go against properties that maybe have tough landlords. It could be sometimes we find out later that these properties are going at the tax title. So the collection on the... The tickets, fines, and violations could eventually be a lien against the property, and that's going to be whether or not that's going to get paid during a tax title taking or a flip from a real estate sale.

I see. So that information of how much was actually collected would come from the collector's office. They don't have any lines of communication with you guys in your department to say if a ticket was actually collected on or not? Would that be helpful to you guys?

Part of the stuff is if somebody does pay a ticket, they have to, they're supposed to go into our open golf system and mark as a paid, paid ticket, especially if it's something that's sitting in the building department, because on the building department side, if we have any outstanding fines, fees or violations, um, Landowners in Springfield can't file for a building permit. So sometimes that will rise to the top where somebody all of a sudden now wants to file for a building permit and we find that there's unpaid fines and fees that can hold off on building permits. Okay. And other departments can act on that too. I mean, if there's outstanding, where they're looking for liquor licenses or entertainment licenses, any unpaid fees, fines are going to show up against the, as a municipal lien against the property, then they're shut off from any access to what they may be filing for in the city.

Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you, Councilor Martin. Councilor Gabbard?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to clarify, Steve, you said $6,000 in fines that Orleans got, right? Not $600,000.

No, that was Mike. I was talking about total fiscal year fines. $600,000? Yeah, we're probably anywhere from $500,000 to $600,000 in fines and fees.

So I have the same question that Councilor Martin had, you know, how much of those fees were paid? Because to Councilor Walsh's point, increasing the fines aren't going to matter if they're not paying them, if we're not able to collect them. So I'm wondering if there's some other sort of deterrent that we can use and thinking about the absentee landlords, which sounds like a lot of the times they have a big part to play in this. I want to think about doing something outside of the fines and the code enforcement, something more, I want to say permanent, because I would love to see more local landlords take over these properties, which I think they would take care of them better because they live here. And we wouldn't have to worry about so much blight because right now that's what I'm seeing all over the city is a lot of blight, properties that have been basically abandoned, except that they're owned by these private owners who don't live here and probably live across the country. So I'm actually thinking about what we can do about that because i don't know if this is the place because we keep coming back to this and we keep hearing the same thing um and if they're not paying them it doesn't matter to them you know until the property is sold then it'll you know they'll take it off on the lien um but while they're here and while they own it it doesn't seem like they care That's just my point.

Yeah, no, I think you're very accurate on that. I mean, part of code enforcement, we deal with that all the time. That's why you've heard me over the years say how important it is if I have a break in one of the links in code enforcement. And there's four links in code enforcement, how we operate. You have the clerks that take in all the complaints and process all the NOVs. You have your inspectors that are out in the field every day of the week. You know, and then we have the prosecution team, the lawyers, you know, generally code enforcement. We have, if we're full staff, we have four lawyers going full time along with their help. And the fourth link that's very important would be the court system. If any one of those links break, it makes it very difficult for us to make progress on any, especially these difficult properties. And the prosecution is where the subject that you're talking about, the landlords that abandon property, walk away from property. There's a lot of options that we use that's to the court system, whether it's receivership or we had mentioned earlier, tax title taking.

Yeah, so and that's the way I'm thinking because, you know, right now we have so many properties that have been basically for all intents and purposes abandoned. And, you know, the land, the owners of the properties don't live here. So, you know, getting in contact with them takes work. You know, getting them to do anything takes a lot of work. And I imagine, you know, if you guys are doing it, or if another department is doing it, it's costing the city money to do just that job, you know, so I'm hoping that we as a body can can find other solutions that won't have to keep us coming back to this table. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Council Barton?

No, I think Commissioner Desolates and Councilor Govan, you know, raising excellent points about, you know, if they're not paying the tickets, what can we do? And something I had mentioned in the last meeting was this city initiative for Operation Clean Sweep. And I'm glad Attorney Shea is here for me to bounce these things off of because this is when the city brought back in 2009, 70 cases and in 2010, 118 cases before the housing court in Springfield. where they can bring in these habitual offenders, these negligent properties, these ordinance violators in and, you know, get these court orders that they, they clean the property. I really do believe that's that, that way in that teeth and that enforcement, that, that we're looking for. So I just, I want to, you know, this was before my time, obviously, but I, I want to know, you know, what that process would look like, why it's not going on, how we can get it back going with an effective, you know what I mean? Like it's,

Well, going in, in other words, taking the case into housing court?

Yes, like people who have tickets that have been open for all these times.

As long as the housing court has jurisdiction over that type of item, you could get code enforcement there, or you might have to go to district court. I'm not quite sure when it's fines on property. whether that becomes a housing court jurisdiction, because housing court jurisdiction generally falls around tenants, rights of tenants and people in the property. But either way, it's either the housing court or the district court, and you have a way to get into the court system to enforce the fines. There's no question about that. It's a case of which venue that one apartment was picked to cause the enforcement.

Do you know how many cases are brought from the city? I'd have to find that out.

Off my head, top of my head, I can give you, I'm not going to break it out by case, but we average any given time we're managing about 280 to 300 court cases constantly in court. That's, you know, including all our emergencies, blights, everything along that line. So we have a huge volume of how we handle a lot of stuff in our enforcement court. Is that a month or a year? No, that's on average for the constant round robin all the time. That's, you know, if you look at through the process right now, if we looked at and said, how many active cases are we currently handling through the court system right now would be anywhere from generally up and down 250 to 300. Because, you know, if you have so many cases are closing out, we're bringing more cases in. So that's a constant caseload on top of that. So, yeah. What I don't hear, and I really want to call out to the law department and how good they are with this. There is no other community around there to handle the amount of volume and stuff that we're doing. And at the rate we're doing it and how many different ways that we handle these between receiverships, looking at, you know, trying to partner up with where we should be looking more at tax title takings, where we've gotten held up with that for years because of the court system. ruled against cities with their tax title takings that has created a big backlog with all the communities when it came to tax title takings so that you're you're starting to see the repercussions of that in the city also not no it's not necessarily our code enforcement issue it's become a tax title taking issue with the properties that are sitting out there that have been now backlogged for a few years since this ruined by the court uh uh i cast under the

As you were talking, it just made me think, if we are between 280 cases on average on the pipeline in Springfield, what is the one common denominator that attaches all these cases? I know it's dumping slash some sort of housing issue, Are they mainly absentee landlords not doing their job? Are they people in need that they're not able to perform their repairs? What do you see as the common denominator, Steve?

Well, I wouldn't say this really is a common anomaly. There's so many different facets in there. I mean, it's not, I mean, a lot of assume it's outside landlords. It's a lot of landlords that are in the city. A lot of people, a lot of landlords, all the two families and three families that can be very problematic in the city. It's not just the big block landlords that we may see once a while, which those tend to be just a handful. You know, they're concentrated into a big block, but it's right across the board. And a lot of these are very complicated cases where because. A lot of people make the mistakes of not setting up their family trust, right? There's estate issues, properties, somebody dies and ends up in the probate court and we have to try to force family members forward to try to come take care of the properties. There's just... It's not where it's so easy to say, you know, there's a silver bullet and there's one button we can push to take care of all these different cases. This is where I say, again, the law department and the team that we have is very good at working with all the different dimensions that go with the code enforcement and the cases that go to court. You look at something on a subject where we have all the fires and we have these catastrophic fires on properties were very unusual. The law department will take these cases to court. If we have a condemnation, we get everybody in court because at that point in time, we want control of property and the insurance money so that we don't go back to the old days. Me and Catery have been around for quite a long time. We know we're going back years ago when we started. We had a lot of burned out properties in the city because people could take their insurance money and run. Well- We've got a good system. Will we stop that from happening? A good example is just looking at the tornado, how many properties that were damaged in a tornado, how many people took their insurance money and ran? None.

I think it's a customer.

Well, thank you, Victor. You know, Steve, you've been thanking the law department, but I think we all need to thank all of you guys for the job that you've been doing. You know, you and Keith and Mike, you're dealing with a lot. And I have you know, we're talking about deterrence. I'm wondering, since we have the cameras that have been installed, do we know if that's been affected? having cameras that show who's illegally dumping and what happens to those people who get caught?

That would be a police department answer to your question. I'm sorry. Code enforcement doesn't have the camera system per se. From what I hear, it's a great deterrent. It's effective.

I think maybe Tom McCarthy probably could talk about that. He deals with the camera systems in the city of Springfield.

Yeah, I mean, we have probably about 35 to 40 cameras out there right now. And what Katery was talking about the fines, what you could do like what Boston does, $5,000 first fine. That will deter a lot, deter a lot of people dumping. $500 to these people is a joke.

$5,000 first offense.

I think people would notice that.

Right.

Excuse me?

Would they pay it?

Yeah. I mean, I'm telling you right now, Boston doesn't have as bad dumping as we do up here in Springfield.

Wow. Wow.

I'm telling you, a big fine like that will deter a lot of people from dumping in the city.

Hey, Tom, do you know how they actually attach the fine? Is it to the vehicle or is it to...

The courts haven't done that yet. But most of the time, we get the plate and everything like that. And then I give it all to whoever the ordinance officer for that area, the police ordinances. And then I do an invoice for them with the fine and everything, how much it costs the city to dump everything. Then they put out a court order against that person. Especially the lady in Ludlow who dumped on Markson Street. That was almost a $5,000 dumping that the city had to pay for. And she hasn't paid yet.

Oh, wow. Yeah, they don't pay. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Councilor Barton. I'm sorry, Councilor Barton, before you go on. No, go ahead. Councilor Walsh, are you done, ma'am?

No, but I like your idea. We want to be cleaner than Boston.

Okay. Thank you. Castle of Mind followed by Castle of Mind.

So just a quick clarifying question. That fine, is that just for out-of-town plates, or is that for anybody who's dumping, illegal dumping, or is that for ordinance violations, generally speaking, or is that just you're in a car, you're dropping off these tires on the side of the road, and you're moving on? How does that break down?

It depends. I mean, if we catch them on camera, that's when we can get them. That's how we put it out that way.

Does it matter where they're from or where their car is?

It doesn't make a difference where they're from.

Okay, what just to the office's point. The lady in Ludlow hasn't paid yet, right? So if we put up a $5,000 fine the first time, it may deter some people. And I think it would be beneficial. But then will they pay it, you know, or will we be chasing them in court or wait for that? Go ahead.

I'll give you a couple examples. We've put out and then people don't want to go to court and they have paid those fines up right away. And then if I make a couple of them, they're like maybe 1500 to $2000 and we've got payment for that right now. I probably have out of the 25 invoices that I did in the last five years. I probably still have 18 invoices still unpaid.

How many people are paid? Hmm. Wow. Thank you, Tom. Tom, I believe you guys say that if I remember Director Ash say that one of the last meetings that you guys handle or have about 300 complaints weekly for dumping in the city.

I get dumpings every single day.

It's all 300 a day. I mean, a week, right?

Right now, last month, I did 450 dumpings in the city.

Wow. Thank you for the job you're doing.

And, Tom, that goes from tires, refrigerators, mattresses.

Carriages.

You name it. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you, Tom.

Yeah, no problem.

And I realize that, like I said at the beginning of the meeting, the police department is not here. They're going to be an important component to this. One of the things that I found out during Orlean Street is the communication between departments. In Orlean Street, it really bothered me that, in my understanding, court enforcement did a due diligence to issue fines. The police department did also issue fines. I believe maybe even the health department, I'm not sure. And nobody knew what everybody was doing. So Steve, I ask you, since you're only department head here, what's the communication between departments that somebody knows Like, this is a problem. If I see all the departments ticketed at the same location, that will give me more red flags in my head. So I know we have OpenGov that checks whether something has been paid, but I feel like we're not seeing all the alarms go off for the lack of word.

Can you speak to that? I'm not sure where you're going with that, but I mean, code enforcement, we have your new OpenGov system that we are working on. So I think our communication is very good. I mean, anybody can see into the portal, see what we are working on when it comes to- I'm sorry, Steve, are you working with OpenGov, right? Yes, we are working with OpenGov now. That's our new system. Can you hear me? Yeah, I hear you. Can you hear me? Oh, okay.

So if the police department issues a fine in one location, you'll be able to see it as well?

If Keith, can you see an ordinance violation now on open go?

Yeah, yes, I can see it.

Yeah, if they've been to a property, yes, but you know this environment or any other department issues if I you be able to see it as well.

Yes, yes.

OK, and what do you guys wanted? What do you guys do if you see all the files being issued like substantial amounts? What happens? Does anybody pick up their phone and talk to somebody else or do you just put in a ticket? So when we go out, you know, we get the... Can you hear me?

Yeah, I hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah. OK. So your question was in regards to the other departments there issuing the same fine. That's what it was there?

Yeah. In other words, you have a property that has a significant amount of fines, and everyone is fined the heck out of them. At which point, somebody is going to say, we have a problem in our hands. Who calls who? How does that issue ?

So again, typically what we try to do is we'll issue the tickets there, and then we'll give it for court action, put it in for court action there. So like in Orleans Street there, for instance, the zoning department, they went out, and they had other issues besides the dumping. You've got to realize that. They had a dumpster violation. I believe it was a setback of the dumpster, the enclosure of a dumpster and cars parking on the lot. So they incorporated that, ticketed in regards to that and the illegal dumping. US HOUSING DEPARTMENT THERE, WE HAD THE OVERGROWTH AND THE DUMPING PART OF IT THERE. AND I BELIEVE THE ORDINANCE, THEY WERE TICKING JUST STRAIGHT FOR THE ILLEGAL DUMPING. BUT WHAT WE DID IS WE GROUPED EVERYTHING UP. THAT'S ZONING, HOUSING, BROUGHT IT TO ATTENTION, A LOT OF APARTMENT. And then they processed everything. That particular property there, I mean, it took a little while for compliance. Our ultimate goal is compliance. Turned out he was an out-of-town landlord in Florida. So, I mean, the law department, I mean... To get like a court order, if we had to go to the extent to get a court order clean, I mean, there's a process that our law department has to go through. In this case, this gentleman elected to send his crew out and finally clean up the property after he had hired an attorney himself and he was wise just to clean up the property there.

Is there any world out there in which we can say this is a health emergency and we can act before then?

It's really all how the law department, they process the complaint there. Is it regular? I think this all started like... I don't have it in front of you. I think it all started as like a regular dumping type of deal. It really escalated from what I'm hearing. And I say that because I saw some stuff online that someone had moved out of one of the units in the apartment that abuts that property. And they moved out and dumped all their stuff out there. And then everybody else sort of piled on. So I think it started off as a regular notice, and then it escalated there.

I walked the area on that particular neighborhood on Leon Street, and what I was told, at least, Keith, what I was told was that that little corner there just basically became the neighborhood dump.

Yeah.

It's just beyond it. It was pretty bad. I know you guys saw it.

Yeah, which it is there.

I just want to point out the most important thing when our law department is putting something in for court order to clean is getting service.

to file something in court there. I mean, I just put some notes together. I mean, they sort of have to serve owner a copy of the court filing, NOV summons information, and the entire process can take one to two weeks if the owner lives in Hampton County, three to four weeks if they live outside of Hampton County. By law, I would try to use the shares to serve an owner in Massachusetts. Some shares take longer than that. Outside of mass, we're required to obtain service via proof of signature. Then that takes time as well. We may not move forward in court until we get service on the owner. If it's service... If we do not get service, this holds up the process. If the owner agrees to comply, we can do an agreement in court. And then again, in this case, Orleans Street, he elected to do agreement in court there. And I don't know if I point out this owner did reside in Florida there. So we had to track him down for a good address to serve him. So, you know, hopefully, I mean, we don't have anything to this extent. I, you know, I've been in code enforcement for a while. I've never seen anything as large as, you know, what has happened. on this particular property. But it definitely was an eyesore. It was a mess. It was pretty disgusting there. And I definitely talked to our inspectors in the office and just reminded them of the process that we need to do in regards to getting stuff into court like right away. I'm still...

It's not only you guys, because you guys can't be responsible for the whole city. There's other departments involved. But I still don't see how we're managing communication amongst departments. I mean, if we have, if we know, if somebody knows about a location that is a problem, will everybody on the board know about it? I mean, maybe I'm crazy. I don't know.

No, I, uh, counselor, I, I, I think we, I mean, we talk to each other every day. I mean, the housing division, the zoning division, building division, we talk every day, either through emails or cell phones. They, we set up group inspections every day between all of us. Uh, the flex squad is right in the building with us. So any given day zoning, building, plumbing, electrical housing, uh, The Flex Squad, we all may be involved in team inspections on stuff. This happens a lot. So there's a constant communication there. Then if there's somebody that's needed from the outside, let's say maybe fire services, the fire marshal's office, we're involved with them. We pick up the phone. We talk to them every day. The health department, same thing. And those communications are going back and forth from all of us together. If the fire chief has a problem, they're giving us a call. They're sending us a text. Same thing with the health department. They utilize us a lot when they're having problems. If they come in, they may see something, let's say, in a restaurant on one of their food license inspections. They maybe notice maybe possible violations with plumbing or electrical issues. There's a lot of great, great information. communication going between these departments that's why in some cases you'll see when it comes to ordinance stuff you'll see police tickets on it you're going to see zoning tickets on it you're going to see housing tickets on it you may even see in that address that sometimes because building plumbing electrical got in there now we're tickling inside the dwelling also for um violations

No, Steve, I agree with you. Like I said at the beginning of the meeting, I know that you're working through the best with what they have, with the resources they have. Which, by the way, before I forget, Steve, the FLEX squad could really pay a visit to Granada Terrace on Pomona Street. I drove by yesterday. I was not impressed. I would highly suggest you guys go and pay a visit to Granada on Pomona Street. And so... It will seem to me that I'm still not, I hear what you guys are saying, but I'm not, I feel like I'm missing something here with communication. I don't know what it is. I just, we will find out more as we progress. But if I may, Attorney Shea, you could be as calm and gentle as I'm concerned. Do you think you could be available to really dig up and dig in into the fines that anybody in the city, all the departments can legally issue for illegal dumping? I know that, I believe it was Keith before mentioned they could under the state's dash, which is highest penalty. And Tom said something. And where we are with the city ordinances, how much are they really finding? 500 or finding less? Should be 500 as far as I'm concerned. I wrote it, so it should be 500. And so for illegal dumping, I just want to get a feel of that. as to where we are. Hopefully that's something you can do for the next meeting, take a while forward. So thank you. Without being said, if you guys allow me, does anybody, any of the residents, it's 5.35 now, so just your time to check. Anybody, any of the residents have anything in the comments? No?

well the police department's not here but they're usually the ones that deal with like property maintenance tickets and stuff and they've expressed that a lot of times they issue multiple tickets and people just don't pay them and they don't they don't clean up like parking on lawns and doing auto mechanics work in the driveway and stuff so we have one neighborhood on Allendale where they have You know, they have like a little mechanics yard out there and the membrane garages and stuff they're not supposed to have. I mean, it looks like Appalachian, you know, and, you know, they ticket people and they just ignore it. So that would have been a question I would have for the police department. What happens when the regular ordinance violations in the Good Neighbor Handbook are not paid or addressed.

Let me ask that question for the police department.

You can email Counselor Dabbler, Counselor LaVar Walsh, and we can just forward it and put it on an email chain with the police officer to get a quicker response to that too.

Counselor LaVar?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. A question that I had maybe along the same lines as the resident is when we have people living in buildings that are not, I'm going to say livable, because the landlords are what they're calling slumlords. What is our recourse for that kind of thing? Do people just have to call wayfinders or do you guys address that?

Are you addressing this through?

I don't know who would take care of it. Would you take care of it, Steve, or would you, Mike?

Yeah, well, that would be more, well, it could be a combination of all of us. I mean, again, sometimes, depending on the condition of building with the complaint, there's usually complaints are going to come in directly to the department, or the complaint's going to come in through 311. Majority of our complaints are anonymous. They come in through 311. But if it's a tenant complaint on a landlord, when they file with 311, 311 will take all their information, what the complaint is, and then 311 will source it to the proper department. So if this is a housing case where it's based on, let's say, no heat, no hot water, maybe no electricity or sanitary conditions, Keys Division will pick that up. We get a housing inspector out there right away. If it's put in for an emergency, usually we're always there within 24 hours. That's something we always do if it's considered emergency. Let's say winter, they have no heat, no electricity, or no hot water. Those responses are spot on within 24 hours. Once we've made that inspection, that's where that inspector is going to make a determination to have the communication with the other departments. That may include fire. It may include the building plumbing electrical they may view something that may be a zoning violation along there basically our rules are if we see something we say something even if it's not in our lane so the communication there is very good between our departments because it goes every which direction if it was health department in there first they're going to bring in the people that they think they need in there on top of that a lot of our stuff comes through 3-1-1 every day okay

Okay, and that's good to hear.

In that process, if it's found that they're life safety or it could be turned into a condemnation case right away, those are moved to court right away. Those get priority. Those are a lot of our cases in court. And that could stem from a fire or any given day where, again, like you said, you've got a tenant that's out of electricity, they've been cut off, the water shut off. Those are emergencies. Those go right to court right away. The judge hears those right away.

Hmm, okay. And I'm thinking about, you guys know Indian Orchard, Center Street, that big giant garage type thing where the residents were complaining that there were rats coming from there to their house right next door to them. Do you remember that at all?

Bottom of Central?

I'm not sure if it's the bottom or center. um like toward behind the um the post office the sites the little side street that's been an issue for a long time because we don't know um who owns that property there i think it's a private owner of course um but we don't know what they're doing with them whenever they move things around the the person that lives in the house right next to them rats come to her house, because I guess there's rats in there. I don't know if anybody's gone there. They've called 311 a number of times, because every time they talk to me, that's what they talk about. And they say they have called 311, and I'm not sure if that's being addressed or not.

If you could give us a call during the day, we can look at it. Or you could even, if you know the address, you could look up in OpenGov to look at what the response is right now, how the inspectors run it.

Are you referenced OpenGov? This is my first time hearing about it. Maybe I haven't read the emails. So what is OpenGov?

OpenGov is our replacement for the Excel system that we had. We put in place back in 2010 to automate the department.

And that's on the city website?

It's on the city website. Yep. 311 is tied directly into it. So if tenants, anybody wants to file complaints, they can see it in the system. They should be able to see what the last status was when it was inspected and track their complaints.

Okay. Okay.

But, you know, we encourage everybody to use 3-1-1 because that's the best way you can track your complaint. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Thank you, Councilor LaCroix.

The time is now 541, so we can start wrapping up this meeting. We will have another meeting in about four weeks to continue the discussion, because like I said, it's just the beginning. Again, I'm sure we're doing the best that we can, but something is missing. I'm not exactly sure what it is. Something is obviously missing. We could do... could do better and i think we all want to do better with striving towards that goal um i can't really i just something is missing if it wasn't missing we wouldn't be what we are now getting so many complaints and you could drive you could see it when you drive to the city you know uh i know we know that uh without being said uh the last counselors any closing comments anybody

Um, again, thank you Mr. chair. I do want to again, thank. All department heads and a lot of partner for being here being so responsive again on an individual basis as I. Raised an issue you guys were very prompt in addressing it, but I just. Yeah, just having that follow through and making sure these repeat violators are stopped because it just. I want people to have respect for our neighborhoods and our cities. I do appreciate all the hard work, but let's work harder and let's get the job done. So thank you again and thank you for your time.

Anybody else?

Yeah, I'd say I hope a lot of constituents actually watch this meeting so they can see how hardworking all our department heads are and how quickly they respond. I cannot believe people would not respond to a call about rats. So I'd like to know what happened there. But I think we're lucky to have the people that are in those jobs doing the jobs that they do. So keep up your good work.

Thank you. Yes, I agree with Councilor Walsh. The work that you all are doing is very important and I appreciate it very much. And I'm just realizing the cost of this to our city. Every time you guys make a call or have to go out somewhere that costs the city money because that's your work um and i want to make sure that our residents are in line with that right um i was thinking about the street sweepers and how much that costs right And if the residents on the street would just get together and sweep their street, then we wouldn't need the street sweepers. I'm thinking about saving money. But I appreciate you all. And I thank you for responding to me whenever I reach out. I reach out to Mike all the time, to Steve. I haven't called you, Keith. I will call you soon, maybe.

Yeah, if you could give us a call on that address. I will do that.

I'm going to ask.

Just so we can follow up, make sure we have it.

Yeah, I'm going to do that right now, Steve, and I'll let you know. Thank you all so much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In closing, I just want to say I want to join Councilman White in saying the court enforcement, you guys have, like I said, very prompt. Steve, Keith, Mike, you always be straight with me, straight shooters. Again, I know you're doing the best way you can. I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward. We're going to solve this one way or the other. We're going to solve this. We're going to make the city better, much better. With that being said, guys, thank you. I won't invite you again in the next four weeks or so. And with that being said, thank you, everybody. The meeting is adjourned at 544.