Councilman Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5, reported on the discussion of the housing committee about work being done by the Department of Development during the latest work session.

The city’s development director is asking for between 6 to 8 additional code enforcement officers.

The request from Crystal Surdyk, city development director, came during Monday’s City Council Housing Committee meeting and was discussed briefly during the council’s work session. There isn’t money included for additional code enforcement officers in the 2026 budget, which the council passed in November with a 5.5% tax increase.

“I’ll never stop asking,” Surdyk said.

Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5 and Housing Committee chairman, agreed that there was no harm in continuing to ask for the additional staff. Surdyk said the additional officers would help reduce the workload for the city’s existing staff. It has been a long time since many of these items have been a priority, Reynolds said, and that a lot of the decisions made by the department reflect on safety and health issues, with those taking priority over smaller issues such as tall grass.

Surdyk also reported to the Housing Committee at its Monday meeting about the work and activities done in the past year, along with some other projects moving forward into next year.

Reynolds said some of the things Surdyk talked with the committee about included the annual CAPER submission which was on the agenda to be discussed as a resolution, along with the $200,000 allocation from the HOME Redevelopment Program for the Blooming Gardens Project being done by Southern Tier Environments For Living and CODE Inc. for site preparation.

Other work being done by the Department of Development that continues into next year is work on the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

“She added that the comprehensive plan is forthcoming and she hopes to have some sort of a draft soon,” Reynolds said. “It’s moving along pretty well, about a year and a half’s worth of work. Once that’s done the zoning code will be revisited and probably will take a year to a year and a half to complete.”

Reynolds said the town of Chautauqua is doing a similar project, but it has taken them around three years to do, giving kudos to Surdyk and the team for getting that work done quickly. Besides that, the demolition list that was presented to the committee at the previous meeting that was not fully updated is still being worked on with continuing computer glitches, but Reynolds said the plan is for that to be fully fixed later this week.

Some individual properties were also talked about at the Housing Committee meeting, including one on Crescent Street that has been condemned but has not been boarded up properly and appears to still be owned by somebody and not the Chautauqua County Land Bank. The committee talked about a few other specific places, another court case with a landlord with multiple violations, and some constituents have expressed their thanks to Councilman Randy Daversa, R-At Large, about some work that was done by the Department of Development.