04-07-16 Health and Public Safety

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properties so things like tall grass and illegal dumping, and the other is separately for processing of demolition orders. So increasing the fees for service for processing demolition orders. They are both 11.5% as she understood it. Linda Wolfson, 809 Park Avenue, is part of the Community Forum for Economic Justice. We were aware of the bill and it was of interest to us because a lot of our meetings concern issues of enriching neighborhoods. We appreciate that the Council took this request seriously and also that you're having this meeting today. I'm sorry that you are being disrespected today. She was asked by the Committee Chair John Voorde to pull together some questions from people in her organization, and that is what the committee has. I think that this is the demonstration of a situation where we need a much deeper communication on a number of issues. I am not opposed to the fees, because I do not know enough about them. There are reasonable fee increases and there are unreasonable fee increases. If I heard correctly, the Public Works Committee seemed to say that one of the criteria for this raise in fees was a response to the nuisance property fees, and that we had a battle about them in the summertime because there was some opposition to that. I at first thought this was based on an inflation figure. It is reasonable to use inflation if things cost more, but that is not what I heard read from the minutes of the meeting, and I would like to know more about where these figures came from and if they couldn't have been avoided. Reynoldo Hernandez, 702 E. South St., stated this evening I got a look at the current fee structure, and it leads me to believe that even the current fee structure is burdensome. We should not be considering an increase in fees, but rather a decrease in the fees. To impose this kind of a fee structure on people who are economically stressed and cannot afford the compliance that we would expect from those citizens strikes me as Ferguson all over again. The city is financing the cost of its operations on the backs of those who are most burdened by the loss. We should consider the same kind of negative impact on the poor as we've seen them do in Ferguson. We need to consider a more reasonable fee structure that would involve a decrease rather than an increase in fees. Bob Masters, Attorney with Nemeth, Feeny, Masters, & Campiti, offices at 350 Columbia Street, here as an attorney for Rage Customs Automotive Inc. joined by the two owners of Rage Customs, Mathew Rice and Mike Harris. Rage Customs has been located at 1307 Lincolnway West for the last 6 years. They're expanding operations further west on Lincolnway as well. You don't need to raise fees on these poor people. Code Enforcement's problems are self - created. There are better ways to do business. Mr. Price estimates that in 2016 he's had roughly 40 visits from city code inspectors at his 1307 location. That's almost every day of the working week. The visits run anywhere from a half hour to all day. This isn't the way this used to be done. If there was a code problem, Ed Williams would come to the shop and say this this and this, can you take care of it, and Mr. Rice would. There has been a change, and the impression that these small businessmen are forming is that they're being picked on because they aren't the kind of business people want to see in the neighborhood. Auto repair work is tough, dirty work, but it is important work. Their customers are people with low income or moderate income. Having a working car is not a luxury for those folks, it is a necessity to get to work, childcare, and medical care. Without Matt and Mike in that