Expectations vs. Reality – Really? A View From The Right

Recently the Port Chester Fire Department responded to a call at 221 William Street.

As reported in the media, some 15 families were residing in this approved 6 unit apartment house. This is the classic overcrowding scenario about which so many residents have been concerned about over the last ten or more years, causing skyrocketing school taxes and impacting village services.

I have two positions on the matter that I will share in this article and I am sure that almost everyone is not going to like one or both, but here goes –

First point: There is nothing wrong with the current laws or the Amnesty Program.

However, the vast majority of the elected officials in the recent election ran on full repeal or a severe watering down of the current laws. This will not move the issue of compliance forward; rather it will just prolong what we now have.

The vast majority of the comments in the social media are that the people want flesh and blood from slumlords, which is okay by me.  However, in the eyes of the Law and the construction of the State Building Code which is created from ANSI Standards published by such organizations as NFPA, BOCA and the ICC, there is no distinction between properties owned or managed by slumlords and the law abiding general public. This means that you can’t have it both ways.

Imagine this.  You buy a car. You drive it out of the lot and the very next day the tail light stops working. You get the ticket, not the person you bought the car from. All property transfers have a bill of sale which all essentially says the same thing; you are taking possession - as is. When it comes to the Building Code, whatever the issue, whether legal or illegal, it doesn’t matter who caused the violation. We may not like it, but as they say - possession is 9/10’s of the law.

So to finish up the first point, what do the people of Port Chester want? Is it to clean up the problem once and for all, or let the slums continue? You can’t be hard on one class and soft on another. The Amnesty Program was designed to help those who applied, slumlords don’t apply and they don’t get breaks, but the Code remains the same for all.

If we violate the ideals of The Constitution as to the equal protection provisions we will, in fact, end up rewarding those who were breaking the law in the first place when we lose in Court after an expensive Lawsuit. It’s just not worth taking that risk. What is good for one must be good for all, regardless.

Second point:  as a village, we don’t spend enough on code enforcement. This is not the fault of the Manager or any of the employees. It is all about the size and scope of the problem and the ability of the community to fund up to enforcement activity level it wants. If we want more results, then we must be prepared to pay the increased cost. I will say that increased activity does have an immediate as well as a long term effect. Immediately we receive fines and penalties. Long term if we reduce the school populations we will reduce (or slow the growth of) our tax bills for education.

Yes, we are spending more than we ever have in the past and it is making a difference. It just does not appear to be fast enough for the many residents who care. Our demographics show that 54% of our properties, more than 3,000 units, are rentals. Yet our Building and Code Enforcement Department has a total of sixteen people, three of which are part-time. In next years proposed Budget that will grow to nineteen, with four part-time -- an expense of more than $925,000.

It may say “village” in our name, but we have city type problems and we need to staff certain departments like a city. Building and Code Enforcement is the prime example.

So, how do we as a village move forward? First, identify the weakness in our system and make the investment to fix it. As I look at this instance, the failure was not in identifying the location since our Code Officials have been trying to gain lawful entry for well over a year. The issue seems to be with compelling the property owner to allow entry and that falls to the village’s legal staff, which in my opinion, is understaffed. One full time attorney and two part-time prosecutors just can’t keep up.

Moving forward we must have a comprehensive system of automatic triggers system- wide. Repeat notices from the code officials are not enough. But, after a first and second notice within 45 days total, a village legal representative must petition our justice courts for a search warrant.

The solution: right now our elected officials have an excellent opportunity as they are in the budget workshops. Over the last couple of months the BOT was talking about a housing rehab program with the $600,000 proffer from the Mariner Project. We also have the $200,000 from the Castle Project. These combined amounts will not only fund an additional two members of the Code Enforcement detail, but also fund additional time for our village prosecutor to obtain the necessary search warrants to ensure the access which has so far been denied.

Now is not the time to water down the Law, now is time to kick it into a higher and more intensive effort to get the job done.