Councilman Brent Sheldon, R-Ward 1, and Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5, review a proposed housing ordinance during Monday’s Housing Committee meeting. P-J photo by John Whittaker

Owners of vacant property in Jamestown will soon have to show they have a plan to redevelop their property – or literally pay the consequences to simply hold on to a vacant building. Both the vacant property ordinance and a new nuisance ordinance were discussed during the City Council’s Housing and Public Safety committee meetings on Monday. There will be a full presentation on the ordinances during the council’s March 18 work session, with passage possible on both by the end of the month. Vacant building owners will be required to create a Vacant Building Plan explaining how they will comply with city codes and pay a $250 cost to register the building and reimburse the city for monitoring the site. The plan is to include a timeline laying out what work needs to be done to bring the property up to code and a rough estimate for the amount of time necessary for said repairs to be made. Building owners will have to update the city Development Department when any contract to do said work has been finalized and provide a copy to the Department of Development. The owner shall also inform the Department of Development at that point at which any of the required work has been completed. The Department of Development will maintain a separate file for each vacant building and include in the file any property-specific written statements from community organizations, other interested parties or citizens, regarding the history, problems, status or blighting influence of a vacant building. “So that’s really what the vacant property registration will allow us to do is identify all those vacant properties,” said Crystal Surdyk, city development director. “It’s not just targeting residential. It’s also targeting commercial buildings. So large, empty buildings that real estate investors sit on for years and years and years with no plan or intention of redevelopment, just kind of holding them as an asset, that kind of behavior which is what causes blight in our community and devalues our own properties is really what this ordinance is meant to start to address.” The vacant property ordinance requires property owners to secure their buildings to keep people out of them, maintain the yard, remove any graffiti or tags on the exterior of the building and paint all boarded openings a color similar to the rest of the building or in an earth-toned color. Building owners will have to make sure a building’s windows, doors, gates and other openings can be closed and locked. Broken windows that would let a person inside a building will be required to be repaired, reglazed or boarded up. Buildings deemed to pose an immediate danger or risk to the public can be ordered to be demolished. The vacant property ordinance would include fees for vacant residential and commercial properties that increase each year the building is vacant. The residential vacant property fee starts at $500 and escalates to $2,000 over the course of five years while the commercial fee begins at $1,000 a year and escalates to $5,000 over five years. City officials propose requiring from vacant property owners a description of the property and the names and addresses of all owners. If none of the owners live in Chautauqua County or any adjoining county, or if the property is owned by a corporate entity, the registration will require the name and address of any third party with whom the owner has entered into a contract or agreement for property management. The city will also require a telephone number where a responsible party can be reached at all times during business and nonbusiness hours and a statement whether the building is currently insured by a policy of fire insurance and, if so, the name, address and telephone number of the insurance company and the insurance agent and the amount of the coverage. If the building is not currently covered by fire insurance, the owner will have to explain why the building is not insured. “We’ve seen a serious increase in the number of vacant and blighted properties,” Surdyk said. “We are constantly getting called out with the JPD and (Jamestown) fire department to complaints that come in through our regular complaint system about properties that are not supposed to be occupied. So we may have posted it not to be occupied or condemned, but they may be vacant and in some limbo of probate or foreclosure or whatever the case may be, these properties are typically not in good condition.” NUISANCE PROPERTY ORDINANCE Jamestown already has a nuisance ordinance on the books, but the new proposed ordinance will deal specifically with properties that result in neighborhood issues because they are used for illegal purposes, haven’t been properly maintained and are the subject of multiple police responses. In multi-unit properties, the finding of a public nuisance would require three arrests within a twenty-four month period in a single unit. Additionally, any conviction for a disorderly conduct violation that involves a property during a 24-month period may be considered along with the three or more arrests in the determination of the existence of a public nuisance under the proposed ordinance. Domestic violence would not be considered a qualifying arrest under the nuisance law. The ordinance also spells out a procedure for the city to close a property that has been the subject of too many nuisance violations, with part of the policy spelling out a nuisance abatement hearing overseen by a hearing officer and the ability for both the property owner, the city and neighbors to provide evidence of illegal activity. The hearing officer will decide whether a public nuisance exists on the premises; if a public nuisance does exist on the premises, whether the public nuisance has been abated; and if the public nuisance has not been abated, what the remedies to abate the public nuisance should be. The hearing officer’s recommendation is not binding. “The public nuisance policy, this really is just taking some of the subjectivity out of our current nuisance policy and giving it a little more teeth,” Surdyk said. There’s not a lot of changes to that one, and not a huge lift. We already use the ordinance to do some of our own code enforcement and we work very closely with the police department and their nuisance officer on really putting this into play when we’re doing code enforcement. It exists, it just has a little more teeth.”