Control board layoffs take a toll on eliminating city eyesores
Inspectors have cracked down on housing violations, but clerk shortages have stopped enforcement cold
But that's where the crackdown ended.
Instead of being sent to
And it's all because of a missing clerk, city officials said.
The clerk returned to work this week, filling the job that was vacant more than four months. Still, it could take months before all of the cited property owners can be summoned to court and the backlog of 523 problem properties eliminated.
And it could be too late for many of the properties to be repaired this summer. Time is running out for the judge to order the problem properties repaired before the cold weather sets in.
"That is mind-boggling. And it's a very good example of the way City Hall works," said Harvey Garrett, a West Side housing activist and volunteer community liaison for Housing Court Judge Henry J. Nowak. "This is not something you play games with."
It didn't have to be this way.
The City Court housing judge and Garrett's
Hoping for action
But instead, Raymond K. McGurn, the commissioner of the Department of Permit and Inspection Services, opted to wait until the control board filled the clerk's job before accepting the offers.
"He's going to get working," McGurn said of the clerk who started on Monday. "And then I will be able to accept the judge's interns and put this whole thing back together and make a practical decision on what cases are going to be brought to court."
Meanwhile, run-down houses in the city remain an eyesore.
And people like Angela Middlebrooks are forced to wait longer for the judge to order repairs or demolition for dilapidated houses near their well-maintained homes in the Fruit Belt and other neighborhoods.
"We have had our fingers crossed hoping something will happen," Middlebrooks said.
Middlebrooks and her family live in a two-story, three-bedroom home that the Crisis Services case manager bought five years ago. It's one of the new houses built to help keep middle-class families in
But eyesores in the neighborhood haven't been renovated or torn down as fast as Middlebrooks had hoped.
A run-down, vacant house across the street - owned by a
There are other violations: broken windows, peeling paint, deteriorated siding and roofing, and loose and crumbling foundation blocks.
In back of Middlebrooks' house, another vacant house was cited for six violations, including trash strewn about the yard, broken windows, peeling paint and deteriorating gutters.
Both houses were inspected more than two months ago; neither owner has been summoned to court yet to answer the violations.
"I like the area," said Middlebrooks, 31. "New homes are being built. But in between, you have all these vacant pieces of garbage that need to be cleaned up or demolished."
Fruit Belt hurting
And now, Nowak worries the backlog means dilapidated houses like the ones near Middlebrooks will not be brought before him until the construction season is over.
The backlog hurts the Fruit Belt more than any other city neighborhood. The Fruit Belt has 64 properties cited for code violations that have not yet been referred to
"A four-month backlog and its impact are not acceptable . . . to those residents that continue to suffer the effects of blighted, vacant properties adjacent to their own," Nowak said in a letter last week to Mayor Anthony M. Masiello.
"Neighbors will have to wait another year for the blighted properties next door to be repaired, or even give up and move out of the city," the judge wrote. "More importantly, these houses can continue to be havens for criminal activity and will require significant time and energy from our city police and fire departments, not to mention the increased costs for emergency demolitions."
McGurn said his hands were tied until last week, when the state control board supervising City Hall's finances approved filling the vacant clerk's job.
Since February, one clerk has been trying to do the work that three clerks did a couple of years ago, he said.
McGurn said he lost the flexibility to reassign other employees to help process the paperwork after his department lost 43 positions in two years. He did not move an inspector over to help with the clerical work because that would put the city at risk of losing the federal reimbursement for the inspector's salary, he said.
"These guys are building inspectors, they're not clerical people," McGurn said. "They're carpenters, engineers and electricians who know their fields."
The lone clerk who had remained on the job all along has been busy keeping up with existing
When Nowak's two interns showed up at the office to help, the clerk didn't have time to train and supervise them, McGurn said.
"It takes her more time during the day to do that," McGurn said of his clerk. "And she's a dedicated employee. She's fantastic. But now she's being asked to supervise someone when she has her own work? She doesn't want to get any more behind than anybody else."
"Bumping' delayed job
Problems in the department started in November when a clerk was laid off. In a process called "bumping," a laid-off police report technician exercised her right to take over the clerk's job because she had more seniority.
But she didn't stay long in the job. She returned to her previous job as a report technician. Her last day working for McGurn was Jan. 31. McGurn said he sent the paperwork seeking her replacement to city budget officials on March 11. Last week, the control board approved putting the former clerk back into his old job.
McGurn said he delayed posting the opening for three weeks in a bid to bring back the department's previous clerk, who was already trained. To get that clerk back, McGurn waited for other laid-off police report technicians to find other jobs before he posted the department's clerk position as available.
The delay couldn't have come at a worse time.
The city's 15 housing inspectors are writing more housing code violations than before. They typically write 2,000 cases a year. But from July to December, they wrote 1,644 cases. And that pace has continued this year, McGurn said.
"It's very simple to me. When you raise your bar from 2,000 cases a year to 3,300 a year, and go from having three (clerks) working to one person working, you're going to get a backlog," McGurn said. "You certainly can't blame one lady who works over there. And we do not have the staff here."
Garrett, the housing activist, doesn't blame the clerk. He blames McGurn.
"If he's a couple of weeks behind because of a staffing issue, that's understandable," Garrett said. "But to be four months behind when he's being offered interns and volunteers is unacceptable and mind-boggling."
e-mail: plakamp@buffnews.com
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