One man's trash is another's displeasure
 I get to spend every other Friday morning at the Action Center. I serve on the 311 Oversight Committee so I have the privilege of seeing behind the scenes what the Action Center people are up against in trying to serve the citizen's needs.This morning I sat in the manager's office while she took an escalated call from a concerned citizen. It seems an absentee landlord has done an illegal "set out" which basically means he took everything the previous tenant left and threw it to the curb. I was shocked when the manager told the caller that they would send a notice to the landlord but he would have 10 days to clear the violation. 10 days! Fortunately for the caller the Action Center was able to dispatch a City crew today to clean up the mess without having to wait 10 days for the landlord to do it. I asked why a health hazard like curbside rubbish isn't treated differently than tall weeds or peeling paint. What I got was an education in bureaucracy gone bad. You would be amazed at the holes in our City ordinances when it comes to nuisance violations. All codes inspection has been consolidated under Neighborhood Preservation which is all well and good, but our City Charter says that Neighborhood Preservation has no jurisdiction on public property. Public property like the parkways where landlords dump their trash! The parkways fall under the jurisdiction of Public Works, but Public Works no longer does codes enforcement. Why? Because all codes enforcement was consolidated into Neighborhood Preservation! There is real work to be done if I am fortunate enough to be elected. All it will take is some crafty legislation to fix these problems. Then the Action Center can do their job. The codes enforcement people can do their jobs. The citizens will be happier with their City services. This seems pretty easy, and it is. I guess since it's not a big development and there's no opportunity to smile for the cameras and cut ribbons, it's just not important to most elected officials. That's going to change. Count on it. |
posted by Mark at 1:16 PM
Comments on "One man's trash is another's displeasure"
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Eric said ... (12:54 PM) :
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Mark said ... (9:51 AM) :
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Chuck R said ... (10:50 AM) :
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Hank Reardon said ... (1:36 PM) :
post a commentWow that is unbelievable. Someone reallly thought this through...
The other nice feature of the Action Center is when they get multiple complaints about the same property seem to usualy mark them as duplicate and only keep one request for service active in Kiva. So it looks like one complaint instead of 15.
I proprose John TV for landlords.
Eric,
It's not the Action Center that controls when or if multiple tickets are opened or closed. It's the responsibility of the individual departments like Neighborhood Preservation.
There are some policy issues which do need to be addressed. A big resource eater is the amount of "vendetta" tickets the Action Center is forced to process. One person can continually open tickets against anyone just to be annoying. This happens quite a bit. In every case the inspector is forced to go out and inspect even though they know there is no violation.
The Action Center needs the help of the Council for these types of situations. Considering only one councilman has ever even set foot in the Action Center it's not difficult to see our elected officials don't see the importance of the work being done there.
There are good people in the Action Center. They are constrained by outdated ordinances and poor policies. I intend to help them, so they can help all of us. Doesn't that make sense?
Thanks for reading!
It is not the landlord's trash, but the tenant who left the trash behind. There is a legal process for eviction by which the landlord's hands are tied when it comes to what to do with the "belongings."
Be careful disparaging all landlords. They provide housing for more than half the residents of the city. Often properties that are rented are in better shape than the owner-occupied neighboring properties, if only because the landlords need to attract the best tenants they can while a homeowner can decide to make do with a decrepit structure.
It is good the Action Center was able to take care of the problem.
Chuck R,
You're obviously a landlord. Who cares who the trash belongs to? You're the problem if you're the one setting it to the curb for the rest of us to look at. It's YOUR building so it's YOUR responsibility. You don't like the work? Get out of the business. I don't know where you're getting your information about rental properties being in better shape than the surrounding owner-occupied properties. I have NEVER seen that.
I saw nowhere in the post where Mr. Forsythe disparaged "all" landlords. Where did you see that? Guilty conscience perhaps? It sounds like the next problem the Action Center needs to take care of is YOU.
Don't you have better things to be doing than reading blogs? Shouldn't you be out piling someone's belongings on the curb? Take some responsibility pal. Being a landlord is about more than collecting rent checks every month.