New anti-blight law heads to City Council on April 8

A tough new proposal that aims to ease the way for City Hall to crack down on messy, unsafe properties is on the fast track to approval.
The city’s Ordinance Committee unanimously backed the proposed statute Wednesday, opening the door for the City Council to enact it on April 8.
The move won the endorsement of both Bristol Hospital and the Greater Bristol Chamber of Commerce this week, which helped spur the three-person panel to act quickly.
“This is an important step,” said former Mayor John Leone, president of the chamber. “We are going to set the bar higher.”
What officials hope the new law will do is allow them to pressure recalcitrant property owners to clean up or fix up their property before it drags down the surrounding neighborhood.
Dale Clift, an assistant city attorney, said there is “a lot of overlap” between the existing blight ordinance and the code enforcement effort. The new proposal would combine them so that both can be more effective, he said.
One reason the push has won such strong support is that residents are happy with the way Building Official Guy Morin and police Officer Tom Lavigne, who deals with code-related issues, have handled enforcement in recent months.
“It’s tremendous to see the difference it’s made,” said Sue Roesch, a Federal Hill resident.
Karen Pio, president of the Greater Bristol Property Owners Association, said the pair has done a good job of offering suggestions to owners on how to comply with the law, not just cracking the whip.
She said they don’t make landlords feel like slumlords. They’re just trying to get people to comply with the rules.
But they’ve also issued many citations to violators, including two they gave to Pio.
Pio thanked them for singling her out. “It got my son my son off his butt end,” she said.
Tim Furey, chairman of the hospital board, said that the hospital has seen “a spiked increase” in the use of its emergency room by people who may be living in substandard dwellings.
He said the community’s health is being affected and the new law is “vital” so that medical care focused on the wellness of the entire community can continue.
The ordinance panel, chaired by Councilor Craig Minor, opted not to go along with a provision urged by Pio that would let the city give 90-day extensions to those targeted if they are making good faith efforts to comply but have limited resources.
With the economy sagging, she said, “there are going to be people crying” who simply can’t afford the expense involved.
“They are going to be hard-pressed to fix everything,” Pio said.
But councilors said that enforcement agents such as Lavigne have the discretion to come down hard on some while quietly lending a hand in other situations.
Lavigne said that discretion is a key part of law enforcement.


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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com