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Councilman Bill Johnson arranged a meeting on June 21 with Building Commissioner Claude Cooper to discuss 1603 Claremont Ave.
Chuck Epes, Winnie Cobb, Diana Presson, and John Butcher met at City Hall with Bill, his aide Robert Evans, City Attorney John Rupp, and Mr. Cooper.
We had one of those "frank discussions." Heck, did you ever get anything less from Diana and Winnie?
We wanted action on 1603. We pointed out that the City had (and easily can have again) an order that allows them to fix the property and get their money back from a tax lien. The property is valuable and will repay the cleanup cost.
Mr. Cooper said he has no authority to use demolition funds for anything but structural damage, and that he has no funds for places such as 1603. He has five such places (valuable property in a mess, owner absent, no funds for the City to clean it up).
Moreover, he says tax liens don't work well in Richmond. Typically they collect less than 5% of them. He admitted they have no breakdown of the collection rate on property as valuable as 1603.
Mr. Cooper also said the City has been reluctant to sell tax delinquent property in the past, but has been much more aggressive in recent years (this is consistent with what we heard from Ass't City Attorney Reid at he Leadership Conference).
Mr. Cooper also blamed again the courts for refusing to support his efforts. You already know what one of us thinks about that.
We do not concede that Mr. Cooper lacks the funds. He has a million dollar budget.
Woefully, Mr. Cooper does not have a rational priority system for identifying the problems he wants to/can deal with first. His system is complaint driven and there is no ranking even for the properties that stumble into that system.
Our Councilman was a beacon of clarity in this bureaucratic murk. Bill made it clear that this can be a test case of the City's ability to stop valuable property from sliding into slumdom. He asked Mr. Cooper how much money he needed to fix this problem. Cooper of course did not know.
With Bill Johnson looking him in the eye Mr. Cooper agreed to work 1603 as a test case. He will inspect the property and get an estimate of the repair cost from the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority. Beyond that, the only thing for sure is our Councilman saying he wants to see "positive accomplishments."
Folks, that stream of consciousness narrative does not capture what really happened: As with the stop signs, our Councilman took on the problem, proposed a modest but achievable solution, and demanded action to achieve it. The City bureaucracy that formerly could do nothing at all suddenly could at least try.
1603 will take longer than the stop signs. But now we have action when formerly we had no action. Stay tuned.
The next step: Another meeting. July 1, 5:30 p.m. at Presson's. Mr. Cooper will provide a progress report and will join us for an inspection of 1603.
While we had Mr. Cooper, we raised the question of 1320 Avondale. Mr. Cooper will bring his new environmental inspector, Mr. Krieger (phonetic spelling again) to the July 1 meeting.
Late News: Follow up on July 1.
EDITORIAL (as if there were no opinion content above):
It is important here to notice what Mr. Cooper has NOT done:
- He has NOT sought money from Council or the Manager or the interstices of his own budget to deal with the five or so cases such as 1603
- He has NOT pursued no-cost options such as a civil suit.
- He has NOT pursued the owner vigorously with the criminal tools available.
- He has NOT had a frank chat with the mortgagor about the condition of its security
- He has not in any other way looked for a creative solution to the problem at 1603
- In short, he has NOT done anything to earn the salary we are paying him
This is the Murphy Hotel Annex all over again.
This is no way to run a City. If the only way to solve a problem is to put a Councilman on it, we are going to have to start cloning Councilmen.
See the July 1 minutes for the outcome of this meeting.