With 17 speakers during the public participation, of the common council meeting held tonight, having many significant comments calling for the return of the Certificate of occupancy to our building codes. The Majority Leader did indicate that this issue would be sent to committee for further review. This was a direct result to the New Britain Herald article of today entitled “ Fight over blight” The Clean and lien resolution being proposed by Alderman Bernacki and Assistant Majority leader Louis Salvio is a direct answer to the needs of effectively collect all the fines due to the city.
Robert Curry, finance director for the city of New Britain took issue with comments made by members of the common council referring to a “conspiracy in the city.”
Adding that these recent statements are a direct insult for the entire finance department.
Frank Smith
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
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10 comments:
Thanks for the update Frank. Citizens need to show up at PZH now to support changes in the ordinance that will improve enforcement for our city. We don't need more rhetoric from McNamara, O'Brien, and Sherwood. It's truly a shame that some people will throw our city employees under a bus simply because they want to hurt the Mayor politically. Our department heads deserve better than that, as they are simply doing their jobs, and do not have a political agenda.
This is what happens when you elect a boy to do a man's job--yes that means you master Sherwood.
The clean and lien AMENDMENT to the existing blight ordinance was forwarded to the Planning, Zoning and Housing committee. This meeting will be held on September 8th at 7:00pm. Hopefully Rich Marzi won't hold a meeting at the same time and slam me or Alderman Salvio for not attending. But that's another story.
The changes, we feel, will strengthen the City's ability to hold property owners accountable for not maintaining their property. These proposed changes will allow the city to notify property owners of a blighted situation and if they are not timely in correcting the problem the City will rectify the situation and place a lien on the property.
Accusations of me and Ald Salvio somehow supporting and protecting slumlords are ridiculous. Accusations of "gutting" the existing blight ordinances were also unfounded. Just like with Obamacare, if the same people that came out to make these claims actually read the proposal they would have quickly realized that "gutting" was furthest from the truth.
Per a council rule that was proposed by Ald Sherwood and approved by the council ALL changes MUST be shown. The confusion was that a few sections were moved and renumbered thus leaving the impression that the laws were being eliminated. Again, if people just took the time to read the proposed changes they would have seen this. Thanks to Ald Bielinski for reading these changes and commenting that there were MINIMAL changes.
A few speakers from the public mentioned that there is still blight in our neighborhoods. Exactly! If the existing laws were perfect and working this clean and lien proposal would be unnecessary. The council is charged with solving the problem. We all want to eliminate blight and Ald Salvio and I want to add more teeth and financial penalties to the existing blight laws as well as cleaning up these properties.
In the end, everyone agreed that we all want a cleaner, blight free community. It is unfortunate that a handful of irresponsible property owners are causing a good deal of the blight in our city.
I look forward to working with everyone interested in this issue.
As Ald Salvio stated if you see blight please report it. The new proposal would have most city departments involved in solving the problem.
If we all work together great things can and will happen in our city. Name calling, disinformation and political grandstanding does nothing to solve the problem.
Ald Mark Bernacki
If the current Blight Ordinance on the books since Tim O'Brien was on the council were working well, we wouldn't need the changes being proposed by Aldermen Salvio and Bernacki.
Keep up the good work Lou and Mark...
Anyone who follows the council should know that Sherwood is nothing more than a puppet of Trueworthy-the circus master who takes him marching orders from Little Mac-the headmaster, so basically you have one radical running the entire council of puppets.
As Obama's ratings plummet like a brick, there is a county in California renaming the county Nobama County, maybe we should rename the city NoMac City!
Mark and Lou: Good job in getting your proposal to the PZH.
Frank:
Jim Craven's article on the "blight ordinance" controversy that took place at the 8/12 Council meeting, indicated that Shirley Black and Eva Magnuszewski reversed their stance on the ordinance; as written in a press release (Herald) that was sent to Craven from Sherwood, these two alderwomen were against the ordinance then voted to send it forward at the Council meeting. As reported in the Herald by Craven, Shirley Black & Eva M. were purported to have said that the Building Dept. had not issued any fines that the city collected ("... not one penny"). Craven reported that the city had collected $7.5K in fines. Sources said, Phony Phil never showed his press release to the two alderwomen and they were both quite irritated. Typical of how the supposed leaders of the Council Dems treat their people. Little mac, O'Brien and Sherwood should be ashamed of themselves.
Great idea..have the city fix up the property, then put a lien on the property for the city to get the money back. Too bad the city can't just take the property away from these do-nothing absentee landlords.They
should be ashamed of themselves!
Frank:
Department heads and directors in NB have been subjected - undeservedly so - to demeaning treatment by Democrat members of the Council, particularly Trueworthy, Sherwood, Hermanowski and Gerratana.
It's about time that one of them (Curry) grew a set of cohones and fought back. Nobody on the Council even comes close to having expertise or education in any specialty controlled by NB's department heads and Directors. The departments that take the most harassment from the four Dem jerks on the Council are, Curry, DeMaio, Moriarty, Wiatr and Carr. The four Dems that are least respectful are also the least respected!
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