10-22-18 Community Relations - Laserfiche WebLink

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•CITY OF SOUTH BEND , OFFICE OF THE CLERK Committee Chair Williams-Preston replied, Well we can redact the name. Councilmember Scott replied, Well you can't, it's already out there. Committee Chair Williams-Preston replied, Your concern is noted. This isn't about shame and blame. I think that is kind of the point here because I've had these conversations with other Council Members. I believe people have seen this transcript before. I had conversations with Randy so it's about pulling the curtain back and understanding what is happening because part of talking about this is validating people's experience. So, ok, maybe we should or shouldn't have said the name but I think the key is here is he was actually directing, he says for example, `We'll go out one (1) day and cite [a property] for tall grass. We used to go cite it for tall grass and litter. Well, we'll hit it for tall grass one (1) day and come back the next day and hit it for litter and that's two (2) violations. If you do it in the same day it's one(1)violation. So people like that,that's why we are actually going after them aggressively,using the law—they use the law against us so we'll use the law against them. And that's who we target is those landlords that we can go after in that manner.' She went on, So, I think it's important we share that information especially since the next few pieces of evidence we talked about actually came from the owner of The Kick Back. Tyria Bailey spoke and she had shared her story with me. Again, she is in my District. She talked about how she had been targeted where she was being citied for illegal, well not illegal, but uncontrolled dumping that was not even on her property that was somewhere else. All of this started at once after she had a hearing of some kind. She wasn't even sure what the hearing was. So she told her story and it was quite compelling in my mind but, I guess, again, it is about recognizing how our practices affect our residents. I think I understand the idea behind aggressive Code Enforcement to force people to take responsibly and fix up their properties and things. As I understand it, our policies are written lawfully and legally, there are no illegal policies or anything like that. It is about practice. It is about understanding what we are doing in the field and making sure we are consistent. She continued, So these were some of the things and there are lots and lots of stories. We just had one(1)being shared that night but there are lots of stories about issues with Code Enforcement at that time. Again, what we wanted to do was really focus on how we make a shift. Now that we've been learning about these things, what can we do differently and what have we been doing differently? So one (1) of the problems was, as we mentioned with this data, the civil penalties were something that could roll into special assessments. A civil penalty is different from an ordinance violation. An ordinance violation is, for instance, if someone doesn't mow their lawn and the City mows it,they have to pay the City back for those costs and then some. A civil penalty is when, for instance, the City cites the property to fix the roof by a specific date and if it is not fixed by that date, the hearing judge can decide if a penalty is assessed. So there is no outlay of funds by the City but it is basically they were bad and you have to pay a fine. She went on, So what happened, in this particular area, was there was a time when civil penalties were around two hundred and fifty dollars ($250). But somewhere in there when we wanted to really address these issues to improve this particular area, there was a decision to change those civil penalties to more like $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000 a piece. It is not illegal. The unsafe building law says that you can fix a civil penalty through a hearing process, determined by a judge, for any amount between zero dollars($0) and $5,000. So what was being done was not illegal, to be clear EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227W Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574 235 9173 TTD 574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 4