It’s encouraging to hear that residents of Fulton Street in Jamestown see conditions on the street improving.

No one should have to deal with the types of issues that neighborhood residents have dealt with over the past couple of years. The demolition of some vacant houses has helped, as has increased police patrols in the neighborhood and an increased presence from city officials. It should serve as a lesson to city residents that raising issues with the City Council can help – even if solutions don’t happen overnight.

The city’s work isn’t done. Residents say drug sales are still a problem in some houses on the street and more condemned houses that need to be torn down. We have no doubt those things will come as police officers do their jobs and as city officials work to secure additional money to tear down condemned houses both in the Fulton Street neighborhood and the rest of the city.

But perhaps the most important thing the city can do is to lobby state officials for ways to help people like the residents of Fulton Street to help themselves. A reoccurring request from Fulton Street residents has been to literally clean up the neighborhood. The city legally can’t sanction a cleanup in the area without opening itself up to legal liability while something as simple as placing a dumpster in the area to help residents with a place to put the abandoned items is a lengthy process. Crystal Surdyk, city development director, said during a recent City Council voting session that the city has to go through a process to put a dumpster out for residents to fill and a process to approve entering a property that doesn’t belong to the city.

Too often, people look to the government to solve their problems. But in this case Fulton Street residents are asking the government to help residents solve their own problem. If current state laws prevent the city from helping people who are trying to improve their neighborhood, then the state laws should be changed. Property rights have to be respected, but we think there should be a legal process whereby a city can issue a declaration to help clean up constant eyesore properties that create unlivable conditions for neighbors.

It’s one reason why the city asked the county to transfer more than a dozen parcels that the county had foreclosed upon after the taxes hadn’t been paid. The city wants to clean up the properties, remove the homeless encampments, and prepare the area for redevelopment. But that is easier now that the city has control of the properties. It’s an avenue that only opens on Fulton Street if property owners fail to pay their property taxes. In our opinion there has to be a better way.