Village Considers Relief for Homeowners Under Amnesty Program

Port Chester residents expressed confusion and frustration about the village’s Amnesty Program in general and about proposed changes meant to provide relief to one and two-family homeowners at a public hearing on a local law to amend the program Monday night.

“The Amnesty Program has exploded into a nightmare,” said a Beatrice Conetta, a village resident who said she has heard many stories about how the program has cost homeowners money and time.

The Village Board of Trustees, apparently familiar with these situations, created the local law to help provide people relief. The amendment essentially lowers the code compliance standards for small family homes who may be burdened by the cost of coming into code compliance because they don’t have the same level of impact or risk of danger as multi-family homes, Trustee Daniel Brakewood said. Brakewood also acknowledged that there has been confusion around the program, first established in Nov. 2012, and highlighted the specific changes that are meant to make it easier for one and two family homeowners to get their Certificates of Occupancy. 

“We are really trying to thread a needle of treating everyone fairly,” Brakewood said.

A few Port Chester residents did not feel the amendment would help even the playing field and said that the program seems to inherently “punish the good guys,” Conetta said, and let violators get away “scott free," resident Jerry Tarranova claimed. 

Mayor Neil Pagano pointed out that the amendments are meant to help one and two-family homeowners, but they do not provide relief for commercial buildings, like condominiums or co-ops, where CO issues have affected individual unit owners’ abilities to sell or refinance their apartments.

“We haven’t discussed the commercial property owners, we have problems there too,” Pagano said, asking Village Manager Chris Steers to also look at the process to provide less of a burden on those homeowners. Steers said he has spent the last week hearing stories from those owners to figure out a way to “alleviate” their pain too. 

Four people spoke during the public hearing. The first was Denise Ward, of the Rye, Port Chester Bar Association, who said the Association is glad to see the program being tweaked but mentioned an area that she felt needed clarification. Vague language and requirements in the program have been a frequent complaint of homeowners. She also asked if the village would create a threshold for homeowners who have only small violations but are not in the amnesty program.

“We are concerned about homeowners who have a violation but who don’t want to come forward because they are not in this amnesty,” Ward said.   

Steers said he agreed with her suggestions.

Three other residents spoke out in general against the entire program.

“(The Program) started off with you were trying to get rid of illegal apartments and now we are going after the good guys,” said Conetta.

 “I personally think this is something illegal that because of building inspectors of years ago –what they did was wrong – the good people of Port Chester who thought they bought in good faith are being punished.”

Resident Jerry Tarranova said he got all the necessary permits he needed 40 years ago and because the building department of the past made an error he now has to go through the amnesty program.

He posed a rhetorical question:

“Do you want to pay me back some money because I shouldn’t have taken out the permits and did what I wanted?” 

Tarranova comments echoed those of another village resident at the last trustee meeting; they both said that homeowners who have broken the law are getting relief while he has to pay for permits he already paid for in the past.

“There is a misnomer that the Amnesty Program is providing relief for those particular individuals and that is not the purpose nor the intent,” Steers said. “It might be the, I wouldn’t say, an unintended side effect of it, but the targets are the individuals who bought into the properties, bought into the violations, this is providing relief for them. Otherwise they would be paying full fees, full fines and whole nine yards.”

The Board adjourned the hearing and said it would be brought back on July 1.

 Read the full proposed local law here.