MOUNT VERNON – Mount Vernon’s police chief, law director and Councilmember Mike Hillier will hold discussions to figure out how to rewrite an existing ordinance or create a new one that enables police officers to cite property owners or landlords for having nuisance properties.
Hillier brought the ordinance up for discussion in the City Council’s Oct. 25 committee meeting sessions because the ordinance has existed for three years, yet no citations have been issued using it.
The ordinance defines a nuisance property as any property or property with a person associated with it where three or more nuisance activities (such as alcohol, drug, gambling, animal, etc. violations) or two felony drug activities have occured during any six month period.
Police Chief Robert Morgan said the reporting and tracking requirements before warning letters can be issued make it difficult to use the ordinance. Before a warning can be issued, there must be a conviction for a specific criminal ordinance.
The city has 700 pages of data regarding houses that police have been called to multiple times, he said. Officers would need to track each incident and determine if a criminal charge was made, did it go to court and was there a conviction?
“The tracking on it is unreasonable, I believe,” Morgan said.
Law Director Rob Broeren suggested taking a step back and asking what the council is attempting to do.
“At least from my vantage point, Council is attempting to get at the landlords who are allowing these nuisance-type properties to continue to exist,” he said.
Hillier said don’t limit it to landlords, as property owners also have let their parcels become nuisance properties. The original ordinance was designed to clean up properties in neighborhoods without having to wait a year before something is done, he said.
“It was to hit the property owner in the pocket that may be allowing this to happen,” he said.
Councilmember John Francis said the council wants to do what it can to make officers’ jobs easier and include shutting down the slums and drug houses.
“Is this something that can be modified enough to enforce, for you to enforce? Or would it be easier to just go back to the drawing board?” he asked.
Morgan said he didn’t think it was. He would need to sit down with the law director to see how that might be done.
Hillier proposed that he meet with Broeren and Morgan to figure out what they need to do with the ordinance.
Community Reinvestment Area approved
City Council approved a Community Reinvestment Area (CRA) intended to promote renovations to residences and new multifamily properties. The CRA will enable a tax abatement on the increased valuation of a home after additions or qualifying renovations adding $15,000 or more in valuation to the property.
“My caution is this: Not every neighborhood is fit for multi-unit housing. And, you know, as somebody sits on zoning and lives in an old residential area, I'm gonna look at that real close,” Francis said.
The council must appoint members to a Housing Council originally created in 2002 but which never formed. Council gets two appointments, the mayor gets two, the Municipal Planning Commission appoints a single member and the Housing Council can add two more members it chooses.
“In 2002, when they established the Housing Council, apparently no one was ever appointed to it, because the city has a CRA currently active, and it's supposed to have a Housing Council. And we can find no evidence of either Council appointing anyone the administration appointing anyone or municipal planning appointing anyone,” Safety-Services Director Rick Dzik said.
Council wants assurances city can pay salaries for proposed engineering roles
Councilmembers want to know Mount Vernon's revenue will cover salaries for new positions being considered for its Engineering Department.
The councilmembers seemed to agree that salaries and not salary ranges would be established as the city looks to hire professionals in the engineering and utilities departments.
Councilmember Samantha Scoles brought two pieces of legislation to second reading, with the final reading anticipated on Nov. 8. One ordinance would create assistant city engineer and engineering project manager positions and set salaries. The other ordinance would set the salary for the public utilities director and the assistant director, she said.
“I think everyone is aware that we are still working with an interim utilities director. So we want to make sure that we can fill that position with someone that's going to be able to lead us into the future with our utilities, because we know that that's a major asset in our city,” she said.
The utilities – water and wastewater – must fund themselves, she said.
Funds for the assistant city engineer and engineering project manager could be pulled out of the contract engineering budget line and moved into payroll to fund them, Scoles said.
Councilmember Tammy Woods, who heads the utilities committee, said she supported the new assistant city engineer position as she knew how much the city spends on contracted services.
“I’m looking at Terry, and I'm looking at Rick who sits on that committee with me, and with confidence, I can sit here and tell the council, I truly believe that one position would pay for itself," Woods said.
Councilmember Janis Seavolt agreed with Francis’ concerns about future revenues, though she supported the assistant city engineer’s position.
“Because like John was bringing up, we don't know what money we're going to have. We don't know what's ahead of us,” she said.
With a contracted engineer out on maternity leave and City Engineer Brian Ball’s family expecting, the two positions would reduce the stress in Engineering, Councilmember Amber Keener said.
“I think that we're going to be seeing a real crunch in engineering sooner rather than later,” she said.
Councilmember Julia Warga asked for a visual presentation of what has been spent on contract engineering, especially in regard to what work the engineering project manager would do.
“That office, that's the streets, it's the pipes, it's everything and we need them in order to continue to be functioning,” she said.
