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CITY OF SOUTH BEND OFFICE OF THE CLERK
<br /> Services, Habitat for Humanity and Rebuilding Together, that can look at those public-private
<br /> partnerships so we can focus our attention and make a greater impact.
<br /> She continued, Tonight, we are going to talk further about the Department of Code Enforcement.
<br /> We'll get into some of the things we've seen that might be part of the problem,and we'll talk about
<br /> some of the solutions the City has already put in place. Finally, we are going to look at the Police
<br /> Department. We've had a lot of community concerns, so in future meetings we will be addressing
<br /> those.
<br /> Committee Chair Williams-Preston then reviewed the agenda and stated, It is very important, if
<br /> we are going to make a change,to recognize what's been happening,what the violations are, what
<br /> the problems are, and what the issues are. We aren't going to shy away from that, as long as I'm
<br /> up here as an elected official. We have to recognize and acknowledge those problems, and from
<br /> those problems we can create solutions. This is about taking in the stories of people and
<br /> recognizing this as truth. Now that we know how the policy affected you, what do we need to do
<br /> differently? It won't be solved tonight, but it is just a taste of where we're going to go.
<br /> She went on, This is an issue with Code Enforcement. One(1) of the ways that I came to be on the
<br /> Council was around the experiences that I was having personally, as a private individual, with
<br /> Code Enforcement. First(1St) and foremost, I think it is really important because there has been a
<br /> lot of media attention about my situation, and there are probably still a lot of questions out there.
<br /> Transparency is extremely important to me, and as an elected official, I am here to answer to you.
<br /> With regard to the case, the City actually sued me and my husband around Code Enforcement
<br /> penalties that we owed. This has gone on for several years because I've felt, as a private citizen,
<br /> that it was wrong. I said this can't be right, this isn't okay. We refused to simply take the fine. So
<br /> over the course of the last several years, my husband and I have been in and out of court, and in
<br /> and out of meetings with the City of South Bend talking about what our issues were, and fighting
<br /> to understand what the problem is and trying to assert our rights. A lot of why we are here today
<br /> is because I have,without really wanting to, become a student of the Unsafe Building Law and the
<br /> practices of Code Enforcement, all based on the work I had to do with regards to those cases. A
<br /> year ago, my case was resolved. I'm happy to go over the details. The original amount was about
<br /> $12,000 that the City had sued me for, and a lot of people said it was taxes. It wasn't property
<br /> taxes, it was civil penalties and ordinance violations. In the end, it was resolved for about$2,000,
<br /> and if anybody wants that information, you can always get an APRA request, and I'm happy to
<br /> have a conversation with you about it. Part of the reason that was reduced was because we
<br /> uncovered some inconsistencies in how civil penalties and ordinance violations were being done.
<br /> By having conversations with the Legal Department, we were able to see how the practices were
<br /> inconsistent. So, those penalties were dismissed.
<br /> She continued, That was my case. They sued us separately. My husband's case, they had
<br /> demolished three (3) of his homes. He had purchased them on a tax sale and they were all within
<br /> a block or so from our house. We had twelve (12) houses on our block, six (6) of them were on
<br /> the vacant and abandoned list, and had been deteriorating for fifteen (15) years. Right after we
<br /> purchased them on the tax sale,he fell ill, almost died, and he wasn't able to work. That's how we
<br /> ended up in the situation where we couldn't fix them up.That happened to coincide with the Vacant
<br /> and Abandoned Tax Force, and 1000 houses in 1000 days initiative. Even though years had gone
<br /> by without anything happening to these homes, all of a sudden there was this initiative. So he
<br /> accrued civil penalties and fines,and eventually they just forcibly demolished the homes.We were
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