By Joyce Miles<br><a href="mailto:milesj@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Joyce</a>
Lockport Union-Sun & Journal
May 08, 2008 01:33 am
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The Common Council adopted a rental property registry law Wednesday.
In the second public hearing on the topic, rental property owners were mum as a handful of concerned citizens claimed the law still lacks bite.
“The Council is going in the right direction (but) I still think it’s a little bit weak. It should include local landowners,” Jack Smith of Waterman Street said.
Members of a Waterman Street-area block club, a mix of homeowners and apartment tenants, have tried to find common ground with owners of problem rental properties, both local and non-local, and don’t always have success, Luisa Smith said.
“We’re at the mercy of the landlords ... stuck having to deal with all this commotion,” she said. “A lot of times they ignore us. We try to find out who the (corporate owners) are, and sometimes it’s impossible.”
Michael Rabis, a Park Place apartment dweller, said the registry is a “great idea” but warned its focus on non-local property owners, exclusively, might miss the mark. He said he complained repeatedly to the property manager of a neighboring rental dwelling about trash and other code issues and said the complaints weren’t resolved until the building inspection department got involved.
The local law will require any non-locally based person or company owning rental property of two or more units to register the dwellings with the building inspection department. “Non local” means ownership that is not based in the counties of Niagara, Orleans, Erie or Genesee.
Owners who are eligible to register must provide their name and a real address, not a post office box, and the name, address and contact information for a local property manager/agent — that is, someone who is responsible for property maintenance and can accept service of court summonses in the event the property is cited for code violations. The information is to be kept in a database that will be open to public review, according to the law.
Failure to register is a violation carrying fines between $250 and $2,500, and unpaid fines will become liens on the property.
Mayor Michael Tucker, who pushed for the law as early as last fall, said it’s not written to punish landlords as a class, and a more extensive registry including local landowners was not necessary.
“The law does not affect local people. We know how to get a hold of them,” he said. “It’s going to be a great resource for us, for building inspection and the law department, as we work to make people accountable for their property.”
Council meeting times pushed ahead
In other business Wednesday, the Council voted to move its business meeting times back to 6 p.m. every first and third Wednesday of the month.
Tucker said the change is to “summertime” hours — traditionally the Council met earlier during the summer months only to allow members daylight family time after meetings — and it’s driven by the observation that a year-long experiment with steady later meeting times didn’t bring a big increase in public attendance.
Tucker pushed the business meeting time to 7 p.m. in April 2007 and left it there after former First Ward Alderman Tom Grzebinski complained working people, both electeds and citizen observers/participants, had difficulty making earlier meetings.
Since then, Tucker said, it’s seemed to him that the change did not lead to greater citizen participation. People seem to come out based on the issues, not the meeting time.
“I haven’t seen a tremendous spike in turnout. The impact just isn’t that great,” Tucker said. “In the fall, we can take another look at it.”
About 15 residents attended Wednesday’s business meeting, some regulars and some not. None spoke about the time change when afforded the chance in agenda recess, the time given over to public comments specifically about matters being voted on by the Council.
Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.
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