September 5, 2007

Mayor calls for new city panel

This came in from Mayor William Stortz this afternoon:

In a prepared release, Mayor William T. Stortz announced that he has suggested that the City enact legislation that would combine and formalize efforts in the area of code enforcement, blight, zoning violations, fire code violations, and health code violations, among others.

“While the City has been more aggressive in this area in recent months, our experience clearly shows that the effort is still somewhat disjointed, that activities do overlap, and most importantly, some items of concern seem to ‘fall through the cracks’ ", said Stortz.

“The overall effort, like ‘Topsy’, just ‘growed’ and now is the time to consolidate it and make it more effective”, continued Stortz.

The Mayor went on to say, “I suggest a committee meeting of representatives from appropriate City departments, and should include some citizen membership. The committee would probably be more effective with 9 to 11 members.

Ideally, it will be a working committee, geared to address the concerns as they are brought forth. There need not be any elected officials, as these resolutions and solutions should be based on existing laws and regulations. In addition, since it will consist mostly of City employees, doing what is part of their job, most meetings should be held during regular working hours. To include elected officials would put an additional time burden on them, and time has shown that there is some difficulty for elected officials to take on additional roles.”

In conclusion, Stortz said, “I have suggested this to councilwoman Zoppo, as Chair of the Ordinance Committee. Hopefully, there will be a Special Ordinance Committee Meeting so that this idea can be jump-started and put into effect as quickly as possible.

We all realize the need to address the issue of property maintenance. This would put it on a more business-like footing, and improve the overall image of Bristol.”


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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why just mention it to Zoppo? Why not bring up at a regular council meeting? Why are you trying to do 2 years of work in 2 months?
Seems to me we don't need more committees to increase the slow pace of govt. we need to slim it down.

Anonymous said...

So "citizen committee members" should not have daytime jobs?
Nice that city workers will manage to ge to the meetings, but so much for the average citizen who works during the day.

Try again Bill!

Anonymous said...

If he wants more people to join city boards, commissions and committees, why is he planning on building one that will meet during the day when most people are working?

He just needs to stop making new committees and implementing new things and just ride out the next couple months doing only the necessary daily tasks.

Anonymous said...

Nice idea Bill. You are doing now what you should have been doing last June. Your nomination and re-election would have been a metter of formality. What a shame you chose to look like a candidate after you declared your intention to not seek re-election. You sure do things in funny ways.