http://rutlandherald.com/article/20130329/NEWS02/703299927/1003
Springfield hires pro to look at problem properties
By Susan Smallheer
Staff Writer | March 29,2013
Rutland Herald
SPRINGFIELD — The town is getting serious about dilapidated buildings.
The Select Board this week authorized hiring a structural engineer to work with Town Manager Robert Forguites on a list of properties that need attention.
“I have someone in mind, but I haven’t hired him yet,” Forguites said Thursday. “He’ll be working on helping me come up with a list.”
He said he expected the initial reviews would be from the sidewalk. If necessary, the engineer would get access to the inside of buildings for a more detailed evaluation.
“I don’t want to mention any buildings, but there are some,” Forguites said. “I hear from people about buildings that don’t have people living in them right now and they’re not being kept up.”
The town manager and the structural engineer will work with Fire Chief Russell Thompson, who is the town’s health officer.
“We want some quick looks at some properties,” Forguites said.
At Monday’s meeting, members of the Select Board voiced support for, and some skepticism of, the renewed effort at getting dilapidated buildings fixed up.
Selectman David Yesman said the engineer should look at the foundation of any questionable building.
“We went through this drill 25 years ago,” said Yesman, who served on the board back then.
The engineer has to go inside buildings to make a serious assessment, Yesman said. “Anything else is a waste of time.”
The town already has a dilapidated buildings ordinance, he pointed out, and Forguites said that ordinance was the basis for the more recent push at enforcement.
If a property owner refuses to give the town access to the inside of the building, the ordinance gives the town recourse.
Town Attorney Stephen Ankuda, who was at Monday’s meeting, said if a complaint is filed against a building, the Select Board must appoint a committee and act within five days.
The town needs to be prepared before an issue goes to a committee, he said.
Ankuda said that the town is “trying to accomplish something,” and by hiring the structural engineer, it will have a preliminary review of potential trouble spots in place.
Yesman said that he could think of 10 to 20 properties in town that warrant a closer look, and Ankuda said there’s “a fair amount of efficiency” in doing several properties at once.
One perennial eyesore has been “saved three times” by the fire department, said Selectman Michael Knoras, who said earlier boards never acted on the issue.
“We’ve got to do them all at once, otherwise we’ll bog down and accomplish nothing,” he said.
Once Forguites has a list of properties in hand, he said he’ll come back to the board for the next step.
“The board has to act on it,” Knoras said.
The vote was 4-0 in favor of hiring the engineer. Selectman Peter MacGillivray was absent.
Forguites said Thursday that money for the engineer would come out of the professional services budget, but he said he didn’t know how much it would cost.
How much is this stupidity going to cost me?
ReplyDeleteJohn Q Public
So, what would you do about it instead of hiring someone?
DeleteWhat's the big secret about who Forguites is going to hire to do the engineering. Spit it out Forguites.
ReplyDelete5 18, you would be the first to complain about the eyesore buildings if nothing was done...
ReplyDeleteShades of the old west...Forguites is bringing in the hired gun to deal with the slumlords!
ReplyDeleteGood for him.
DeleteAt last!!!! Let the wrecking ball fly!!! Make a list of failed properties - eliminate the top 5 every year. It should only take a couple decades to clear away the debris - or the property owners would get the hint and fix them up.
ReplyDeleteYes! This is really great.
DeleteI hope they do clean things up.
ReplyDeleteI am assuming that by hiring a "expert" that the problem properties can then be forced to "clean" up in court?
ReplyDeleteOR the penalty will be what?
Let the penalty be a 50% increase in the property tax; then the market will determine whether the owners will pay for improvements (boosting the local employment scene), sell out to someone else who will (boosting the real estate activity scene). or leave them shabby (a 50% boost would be only a rise from 2% to 3%), which would mean more revenue for the town. A three-way win!
ReplyDeleteChuck you're forgetting most people who live in this town don't pay taxes! It will be a bigger burden on you and I.
DeleteOn what do you base that claim, 5:07?
DeleteThe 2011 data for Springfield shows 4,366 returns filed, most probably representing 4,203 households. Of those, only 53 paid no taxes, primarily because they averaged a negative income of over $63,000. The next income group up, 417 filers, paid net taxes of $409, or an average of about $1-- and these are the people whose income ranged from $1 to $4,999, or $14,000 less than it takes for a single person to get by in this town without needing food stamps, rent assistance, subsidized health insurance or heating fuel assistance, etc.
The town probably has data on just how many households there are, but I am pretty sure it's a close match to the returns filed.
The ones who will bear the biggest burden with a "crummy property tax" would be not you and I, but the retired blue collar people who never had a union job-- all they have is SS and whatever savings/investments (hah! on a blue collar "right to work" income?) and their home. Clearly, such a tax would be a hardship for them, but hey, let the market decide, right? Isn't that what "freedom" is all about? (Sorry, Boss Hogg; didn't mean to swipe your style.)
Once again you are citing your version of "facts" without proving research sources to back up your jibberish .
DeleteHow does that taste 11:29?
DeleteIf it's homeowners who have fallen on hard times or an elderly person on a fixed income, I can sympathize. But some of these properties are owned by landlords who are making money from the renters. For them I hae no sympathy - declare the building uninhabitable and let them pay taxes without getting any income until they fix the property.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting observation, 5:23! A couple of observations about the local rental situation:
Delete1. The Guy with the Really Big Stick in Springfield rentals is the Springfield Housing Authority. It has the resources to skim off the most credit-worthy renters and avoid or shed the defaulters and deadbeats. Most other landlords lack the ability to bring deadbeats to heel. The remaining would-be renters are likely to be the more problematic, and in dealing with them (bribing them to leave, lying to other landlords in order to get them out of one's own property, hiring an attorney for a protracted legal battle and swallowing thousands in losses) often leaves landlords feeling they can't afford to keep up the properties.
2. Which gives rise to the question: Are there too many properties for rent in Springfield? In order to make their properties pay, the "free market" forces landlords to lower their standards, thus creating both undesirable (by some, certainly, if not by all) neighborhoods and an underclass (deserved or not) of undesirable tenants.
3. If the answer to #2 is yes, then what is the solution?
4. If the answer to #2 is no, then what is the solution?
It's me, 5:23 again. I am a small time landlord and know the town pretty well.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion is that there are too many available rentals. My opinion is also that not all small time landlords are putting forth an effort to avoid renting to dirtbags. There are several who take the attitude that as long as the checks roll in, they really don't care about the property. Out of sight, out of mind. The dirtbags they rent to certainly don't care.
IMO entire sections of the town were ruined in part by savvy real estate agents who bought up large houses, broke them up into several small units and made a lot of $$$. What should have happened IMO was that when these houses were converted to multi-units, the town should have had something to say about maximum occupancy, minimum number of off-street parking spaces per unit, and minimum yard area per unit. Now the slums are there and aren't going away.
What might actually happen is that the better tenants will find that they can actually BUY a property cheaper than they can rent as the housing market corrects itself. This is going to leave more vacant rentals and put the squeeze on the LLs who have the least desirable properties. If the town puts some heat to them as well and does something about all those bonfires waiting to happen, then probably we'll see a repeat of what happened a few years ago. There was a husband and wife who owned several properties around town that they were not keeping up. The town got after them and they stopped paying taxes. After a while the properties went up for auction. But surprise surprise the houses were only in wifey's name, so hubby was able to buy them for a song.
We can't turn Springdale into an HOA but at a minimum, fire safety standards should be enforced. I see rental properties where wood is literally falling off the structure and getting piled up in the yard. That presents a danger not only to the structure itself (hell the owner would probably jump for joy if the building burned to the ground and they got the insurance money) but also to surroundind buildings.
And the cops have to get off their high horses. Time was they would call ME and ask if I had noticed stolen items in one of my tenant's apartments. But if I call THEM and say "Joe Blow has applied for a rental, can you tell me anything about a criminal record" they plead privacy act. If we do not stick together in this town and dump that kind of BS, we will be sitting ducks for NJ trash that wants to come up here and set up shop.
I think enough key people have woken up to the fact that they need to change how things are done. Even the little tin-pot demi-gods have figured out that their investments won't be worth much if the town property values sink too low and property tax rates go even higher.
Thanks for this information! It is much appreciated.
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