JAMESTOWN – Members of the Jamestown City Council’s housing committee will soon begin the process of developing a law to crack down on nuisance properties.
On Monday committee members met with officials from the Jamestown Renaissance Corporation to discuss a chronic nuisance property ordinance. The purpose of the ordinance would be to record nuisance complaints so that when a certain number has been reached within a designated time period, a property owner would be put on notice to respond to the problem. City Housing Committee Chair Marie Carruba said it’s designed to go after chronic nuisance problem.
“Properties that are chronically be called on for either noise violations, code violations or drug issues could be cited after three or more occurrences,” Carrubba explained. “Some of the provisions that we’ve looked at are from out of state, but one includes an ordinance in New York State – in Hudson, NY – and they address it a little bit differently in each one of these examples, but it does give code officers and the police a little more ability to cite homeowners or rental tenants for violations that are occurring on a regular basis.”
Carrubba says the committee is now asking for input from other city lawmakers and officials to help structure a local ordinance to address the problem.
“We’re still looking at this and there is nothing that has been excited. We’re still in the exploratory stage,” Carrubba said. “But we would encourage anyone who has anything they would like to bring to council regarding this, to please forward any questions. We would like to delve further into this to get more questions answered before we even begin to propose an ordinance.”
Carrubba said anyone who would like to offer input can contact her directly and should do so before May 18.
Acording to Carrubbba, 75 percent of all police calls related to property nuisance complaints are tied to just 15 percent of all properties in the city. She added that only about 70 city residences account for half of all housing code complaints.
The housing committee initially had planned to discuss the real property tax incentive known as Section 485-A, which is allowed under New York’s Real Property Tax Law but currently not utilized by the city. That was pulled from the agenda late Monday morning and replaced with the nuisance property ordinance discussion. Carrubba said the committee will likely discuss Section 485-A during an upcoming committee meeting.
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