City Councilman Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5 and Housing Committee chairman, and Councilwoman Regina Brackman, D-Ward 3, look at housing documents during a recent City Council Housing Committee meeting. Reynolds asked this week for more regular reports on housing-related statistics and progress. P-J photo by John Whittaker

Councilman Jeff Russell isn’t the only council member asking for more information from city staff.

Councilman Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5, is asking Crystal Surdyk, city development director, for a monthly update during the council’s Housing Committee meeting on housing-related developments. Reynolds, who chairs the Housing Committee, said it would be helpful if the committee’s meeting included a regular reporting to the public on issues like number of code violations filed, remedied, houses demolished and the status of demolitions.

“As busy as it is, there has to be some sort of emphasis on what is being done rather than circulating different committees or circulating different agendas,” Reynolds said. “I think there’s a lot of people out in the community that would like to see some evidence of something being done. Maybe the idea of having a little quick summary of monthly stats might help satisfy or pacify some citizens and some of us on council. Even the little things make a big difference.”

Reynolds’ request comes on the heels of Russell, R-At Large, asking for regular updates on construction of the city’s new fleet maintenance facility as the project’s budget has escalated from start to near completion, forcing the city to increase its bond anticipation note so it can pay for the rest of the project. That note was approved at the April council voting session.

Councilwoman Regina Brackman, D-Ward 3, noted a past citation list of cases that have been taken to the city’s Housing Court and demolition lists as pieces of information that could be useful to report. Surdyk said she didn’t mind providing the report each month, though she noted some information won’t be available immediately as the city switches from the MyGov software that has been used to file code enforcement cases to a new system. The new system will be more user friendly for both code enforcement staff and the public, while Surdyk said she hopes getting reports will be easier with the new system as well.

“We certainly can put together a monthly report that shows the data for all our code enforcement, where it’s all at and various accomplishments,” Surdyk said. “We are in the process of transitioning from one data platform to another so what that report might look like I don’t know yet. We’re supposed to make that transition June 1. So we’re in a very weird limbo place with the MyGov system that we currently use, which is not a great system.”

Brent Sheldon, R-Ward 1, asked about demolitions being handled by the Chautauqua County Land Bank. Surdyk said they are in various stages of progress and that she will update committee members at the next meeting.

The city is also still having a hard time moving cases through the court system. As has been reported previously, Surdyk said there are between 800 and 1,000 open code enforcement cases at any one time, with a small number able to be heard during Housing Court.

“We are still only allowed 20 cases at a time,” Surdyk said. “We have a brand new Housing Court judge who is learning. The court process is still clunky and slow and we are working with the new judge to see what his new process is like. We’re doing everything we can to streamline that process.”