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good morning everyone we would like to welcome you to this GM a webinar on code enforcement we thank you for your willingness to attend this webinar and we hope that you will find the information presented an informative and helpful in your day to day activities this webinar is being recorded and will be placed on the GMA website so that those who are unable to attend today will be able to view the webinar at their leisure all participants are muted this morning this will prevent some audio feedback issues that we've experienced in the past we do encourage you to submit questions that you might have for our panelists this can be done using the questions dialog box in the webinar control panel on the right side of your screen during the presentation I will ask our panelists some of these questions that are asked also during the presentation you may see a poll pop up on your screen if you see this please respond quickly as we will likely only allow the poll to remain for about 30 seconds Sami rich is the assistant city manager in the city of Rome and we are pleased to have him with us today as our panelists to discuss some code enforcement issues at this time I will turn the presentation over to him great Thank You Cory good morning everyone and I would like to first say good morning from Rome and thank you all for joining me via webinar I do hope our technology is going to work correctly because in anyone who has ever done presentations knows technology is great until you have someone watching and then things tend to go awry so with that we'll try to get the technology moving forward here so today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about our model in Rome in Floyd County many of you probably know that we are not a consolidated government however we do like to tell folks the outside of the actual consolidated governments in the state we feel like we probably have more intergovernmental agreements than any other community and so that's one of the areas that has really allowed us to increase efficiencies and so within our planning zoning building GIS code enforcement all of those agencies are consolidated they are all technically city employees but we do provide service countywide to all of fluid so we'll show you a little a little demonstration of what that organizational chart actually looks like specifically looking at code enforcement today of course we're going to talk about some of some of what are the symptoms some of those things that we have to deal with and I suspect a lot of what I'm going to show you you guys are probably going to be familiar with within your community and then ultimately what are some of those solutions to that we have found to be productive in our community so again I mentioned our consolidated model for those of you who haven't been to the downtown room I would welcome you to come by and visit our Carnegie building a former Carnegie Library that's what we refer to as our one-stop shopping area and so within within the corner you're going to find everything zoning building planning related and to get your get your day started so as I mentioned we we pride ourselves on this this model and so what's before you it's simply our organizational chart that depicts how we we function here as assistant city manager one of my responsibilities is to oversee the the planning and building of course in the pop up here so bear with me okay sorry - interruption and so looking at within our billing inspection office specifically we're a pretty small shop considering we provide service to about 96 thousand residents and 514 square miles and so as many of you know we're all literally doing more and we're doing it with less in times of economic downturn and so that's just been an ongoing challenge but looking at our office specifically looking at the ledge of the screen under how it gets in our chief building official you will see our break down and again it's a pretty small shop with four inspectors with slow times we're able to focus more on code enforcement when building Ram stuff we're of course going to need to hire a few more building inspectors but until then things seem to be going well so code enforcement and blight and so the big question does your city or does your community suffer from blight and having been around various parts of the state it's hard to go to any community and not see some things that you know we as governmental leaders would like to improve upon and so simply overgrown Lots many of you have probably experienced what overgrown locks may look like and hopefully not next door to you rubbish and garbage we're that's a that's a very common characteristic illegal dumping has certainly been a problem within our community for a number of years junk cars I'm going to talk about that a little more detail and then simply old houses part of the story of Rome is Rome as an old community we were founded in 1834 and in Rome grew up early on is a thriving community at the intersection or at the confluence of two rivers and so because of that the population developed early on and the downfall of that is that we've got a lot of older homes that has allowed for an older housing stock and so the unfortunate part of that is they don't always get taken care of as well as we would like and so unfortunately we've been given too few examples so boarded up houses this is also symptomatic you have vibrant communities older communities new communities young communities and anytime a home becomes boarded up it certainly draws attention it creates a lot of ill-will toward those owners and unfortunately it can lead to decline in the neighborhoods so another symptoms those solutions what do we do where do we go how do we you know how do we solve some of these problems so classic cleaning Arlena a lot of folks a lot of communities I'd be surprised many of you did not have some form of an official cleaning or doing it program and you know this is a classic case of complaint comes in mr. Smith your loss overgrown we'd appreciate you doing something there mr. Smith doesn't respond ultimately the city crew would go out with would perform whatever maintenance cut the lawn perhaps haul off rubbish and we would literally place the lien against the property at some point there's a transaction on the property and the city may or may not collect what had been charged against our cost of delivering the service and so that was pretty pretty standard probably again a lot of communities have some form of cleaning or lien it's available and so really moving forward for us and we'll talk about this in some greater detail what you know when you're looking for the tools what is it that that allows you to do something other and that's where we got to what we refer to as I p.m. see and that's our international property maintenance code and of course the international residential code and in the differences is pretty clear the inner the IRC the International residential code is simply the technical specifications if you're going to go and build or you're going to go and repair then you've got to follow what's in those building codes the property maintenance code that's the tool that we use to address blight and so it's it's an interesting ordinance and it is it has a lot of detail and so I would first tell you that that in the you know and again your mileage will vary but a lot of times when I'm talking to folks and especially looking at city governments and City Council's and city Commission's at the end of the day there's always the question of we you know what do we want to do and my response is usually we can do anything it's a question of what is the political will and so do you have blind your community do you have problems you want to clean up and so there are tools available and and these are the tools do you have the political will in your community to go and adopt the ordinance and then to empower your employees to carry it out that is literally where the rubber meets the road so again moving on I PMC that's our code for maintaining the property safe working conditions and then again the international residential code that's our technical code it really dictates the specifics how do you repair this what's the spacing what's the electrical etc so for us again I mentioned early we were being a older community having more opportunity for for housing to be in decline code enforcement you know again back probably 10 to 15 years ago we would have been on a typical clean a clean admission and we may have condemned if you will nailed up the big red signs and ended up of ultimately bringing in a bulldozer and so we probably were somewhere on the order of a hundred to 150 homes of year that would have gone through that old our old process if you will of starting nailing up the red signs and certainly that would get attention within the community and would bring on the phone calls and the questions and occasionally we would find a property owner to discuss many times as you all know that's one of the biggest bigger challenges is finding who that person is and so going through the provisions of our our code and really this goes back to oh seven for us it really declares and dictates the specific of what we can do and so I'm not going to read this in depth or in detail you all can can see on the screen but you know often when we talk about the property maintenance and what I tell folks it it's it's very very comprehensive and so a specific thing you know with screens on windows protective coatings on you know exterior wood that as we know if it's not finished if it's not sealed and painted it's going to lead to decay and ultimately rod and you eventually it's going to lead down the road to further further action overgrown Lots garbage rubbish all of those things the car sitting in the front yard so all of those are things that are we that we are allowed to work with and work on and again here's a list the junk motor vehicles houses that are in decline you know and again it's not lost upon us that you know we're in a tough economy there's a lot of folks that are barely hanging on we have we have a population that certain areas that are certainly in decline and we recognize that and so there it's not to say that you can't enforce and implement these programs without compassion and I'll talk a little about some of the things that we do to counteract them so again vacant dilapidated houses attractive nuisances drug crimes prostitution so the list goes on and on as you can imagine so I'm going to show you just some I've got several several photos examples but you know things that are working especially in weeds and the slide there the photo to your left the rollingwood one of the nicer subdivisions and so it's fun don't assume that things can go wrong and in your upper neighborhoods but but unfortunately when times are bad people lose jobs they are out and about and property becomes overgrown ten dangerous sheds and buildings those those are pretty typical more rubbish more household garbage where we have illegal dump leave illegal dumping that goes on junk motor vehicles in a word of caution this you know surprisingly just Motor Vehicles is an area that is you know they often say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and so we've got uncle Larry's old car on the lap and we all have seen those stories to where uncle where he left the car maybe there's some sentimental value attached and for whatever reason the owner doesn't want to get rid of it and they're meaning to they're going to do this they're going to do that then we have the entrepreneur and so this is the guy that you know he's gonna he's going to buy the cars he's going to he's going to fix them up he's going to flip them the course in the meantime you end up with a scene like this that where you've got a half dozen cars stacked deep in the yard may or may not be pulling you know engines out and so aside from the zoning issue and of course you know clearly in some cases that would be a zoning violation what you end up with are a bunch of cars that may not be registered and it's one of those long-term assets and in guy and I grew up a car guy so this is a it's an interesting subject because I can certainly appreciate somebody that has the old 57 Chevy sitting out back that they're planning to restore but it's the it's the Impala sitting out front on blocks that they intend to restore they typically get the the the neighborhood calls coming in and so again going back to the maintenance code vehicles been in the yard that aren't registered don't have a current registration they don't have current insurance on them we are able to to go in and deal with those through the abatement process so talk about housing in decline just these are some actual examples from different parts of our community old apartment complexes that that really decline over the years and the owners are just simply not willing to invest the money to maintain this again more the same you also notice that from an attraction of crime the graffiti and so we all know that work in this business a house that sits vacant can and track some undesirables attractive nuisances this is also a popular destination and then we've labeled that haunted house and so the big house down the corner the next thing you know all the kids are telling the ghost stories and they're inclined to go and visit and of course that's certainly a nuisance and dangers waiting waiting to happen burned-out homes where families have literally abandoned the property but then of course there's the things that nobody wants to to think about if you know what goes on behind the closed doors and certainly I would think any community could could happen upon some of these type discoveries that where it's literally needles and there's there's drug paraphernalia and so you know when you when you think of the question of why why is a community is this important why would I want to do something besides you know from the economic impact from the value of housing and decline you know it from the attractive nuisance perspective is who would want this kind of stuff going on in their neighborhood or within an adjacent neighborhood we get into the code issues and so as I mentioned earlier the you know property maintenance allows us to be as specific is is you know windows functional operable windows screening painted windows you know in stairs there's no railing that's kind of your classic code code violations that we're no chance the building permit have been issued there's been no inspections foundational issues cracks where animals can get in roofs being dilapidated you know and that's a tough situation where you've got a resident on a fixed income and they develop a roof leak and unfortunately instead of working on the problem into putting pots and pans out and so we we've certainly seen some of that exterior again you name it we've seen it where houses are crumbling photo on the right you can see the the floor joist is you know it's not a house you want to get in and do some jumping jacks in to say the least interior again ceilings dilapidated pervious surface not not so much and so these are some of those good bad and ugly so does a classic example here work that is done without a building permit you know unfortunately that removed a load-bearing wall in this particular case so we see it all more electrical hazards you the electrical is probably one of the more common issues that we get to deal with in the code code enforcement world and where it's not uncommon that where you have old-style the old-style circuit breakers you will find a piece of copper tubing somebody you know if the breaker kept if you blew the fuse and we'll fix that we'll just put a piece of copper pipe in it we occasionally happen upon those electrical again the the wiring exposed wiring the exposed wire rubbing on the fascia board waiting on them that's a fire hazard waiting to happen so some of the things that we see that we we get into the photo on the left we'll talk a little more about this but that's actually a crawlspace of an apartment complex and pretty sure you could a scuba dive you know you can film scuba diving gear and got got in the crawlspace wouldn't necessarily recommend that but this was an apartment omplex that was completely occupied with about 30 and then in this case it's 30 Hispanic families within our South Rome community so plumbing issues there's there's obviously maintenance that does not always get taken care of and so which leads to terrier Asian the mechanical side again hot water heaters one of the more common things that that permits are skipped out on and occasionally you have a jackleg as we refer to some of the folks that can't necessarily do everything they think they can in the building world and that leads to fire hazards etc then again copper theft I'm sure your community is not hopefully you've not seen as much as we have but we have a lot of abandoned properties that have been stripped of any any inch of copper any inch of you know whether it's plumbing and or electrical wire and so then these classic vandalism kids and the BB guns and Torah the homeless population that decide they want to have some ventilation so you know looking looking at some of those you know what I call really the the worst case areas some really ugly things you know and I mentioned we were on a track of probably you know anywhere from 100 to 200 houses a year that we were having to demolish and of course when the economy is going great when when the funds are flowing in and we're okay to cash flow some of the the cost of legal fees in demolition it's not such a such a problem but for most of us that are you know we're doing more literally more with less tax revenues are down we struggle to to make ends meet and so to be able to spend a thirty five hundred to five thousand a house just in demolition cost well those days are pretty much gone and so it's it's fewer far between now that we're able to just decide and go in and so we kind of do that as a break glass if necessary and so what you know a couple of photos here just to point out you will see at the track hoe and then at least the house on the right you'll notice the big sign on the door and so not bear a very uncommon sight in our community in polishing homes so give them a little info you know kind of our process how do we how do we go now and I will tell folks that you know it's hard to be in this business and not be compassionate and where where there's a challenge and I've waited of this little earlier is when you have a sensitive population where you have seniors seniors living on income and they are literally doing the best they can do in it's tough to send a code enforcement officer out in to have that officer you know go and inspect based on a complaint and they end up finding some violations and then that's where you've got little Miss Smith who may be 80 lived there 50 years and she's on a fixed income and so those are tough and I will tell you one of the things that we do to help in situations like that is our minor repair and our moderate repair program that we have within our Community Development Department and I'm hopeful that some of you all have similar similar programs so we're yeah there is an alternative and it's where it's not just the government if you will that shows up with a big stick to to make some compliance but to where we do have some solutions and you know and again a lot of folks are resourceful to where you we run into those situations to where is somebody that you know they're doing they're literally doing the best they can we we really do try to find a way to help and so we do take on that the role where we're going to attract more more bees with honey and so we have been successful with that or both our minor repair and modern repair those have those are obviously grant funded programs we have a part-time employee that administers those and she is paid from the grant and so that's it's been a very big success and if something's been very very popular for our City Commission this is just one of those areas it's good to provide some help so that's something that we we have in our toolbox to help us and so again we we take the what I call the soft hand approach it's rare that we end up in court for someone that's trying to do the right thing but we do and so within our medical court we have we set aside one court day a month and we have deemed that our environmental court and says those are the cases that the cases that we're talking about today those are all hurt an environmental court and so we we've had some success in trying to lump those together so that we handle them as a whole we have a city Ernie who is there to represent and help with the caseload and of course our code enforcement officers have become really really versed in the legal process if you will and so they've been they've been very successful but in looking at our you know our normal process it's you know you don't you don't always go out and issue the Notice of Violation it's usually we've been working with the property sometimes 30 sometimes 60 days before there's ever an issuance of the Notice of Violation and so that's where you know when we talk about the political will the you again this is this is some of this is my my advice if if we're if we're adding we're issuing a notice it's typically because we've tried to be the good guys and it didn't work for whatever reason and so the only way to get real attention or to get action is to issue the Notice of Violation and so within that so notice is issued 30 days basically notice hey I'm going to you know see you in court in 30 days the person in this case would have a 20 day window to to decide if they wanted to appeal you know they may want to call up the code enforcement officer hey you know I disagreed with what you're saying and here's wine or they may say I'm definitely guilty it may become court day they've they've taken care of it many cases they will have a story of you know for the judge just and well here's what I've done and here's what I've not done and everyone seems to have a story and so a lot of times the judge will will work with someone and give them more time in a lot of cases depending on the situation it could be you know minimum thirteen hundred dollar fine and so when we going back to rolling out our property maintenance code we had a very aggressive stance and so one of the one of the benefits of that aggressive stance and the judge was pretty rigid just to be honest and so we had some pretty large fines being assessed and it didn't take long before the word got out within you know basically the circles of anyone that may have a what I would call a slum property these guys are serious we better get our act together and get it cleaned up before we go before the judge and the beauty of that is we ended up with a lot of self compliance and of course that's a huge win for any community so again going through the court process we we like to think we've been pretty successful in this this arrangement one of the things that alluded to earlier want to show you the the swimming pool in the crawl space and that's actually building the building on the right there and one of the things that we a provision that we're allowed to do is emergency closing and these are those families you know typically it's going to be a sensitive population families with children and if there's an imminent danger then we have the latitude to declare emergency closing and I believe we've got some lingo here let me scroll forward just a bit and so kind of the key here looking at this the bottom is once the declaration has been made we have to have a hearing within 72 hours and so that's it's pretty tough and so if you think about an apartment complex and the process of going through you can imagine it's certainly tough when you've got that many folks that could be displaced but again this is the break glass if necessary you find something that's really just so bad that you can't you can't imagine letting it go on any longer and you can't wait then again this is one of those tools that and it's become available to us we have an apartment this is just one at local local example so there there are real cost involved and so don't ever let anyone tell you that that getting in code enforcement is not going to be a costly proposition because it is because one you're going to have staff time and good banner and different you're definitely going to have some legal time and that's just nature of the beast but it you know again and I'll you'll hear me say this over and over as a community if you're serious about your community if you've got the political will to clean it up these are some of those costs that you're going to have to be willing to take on whether you're a small town or you're a medium-sized town or a large town and so this this I'll show you some photos here hopefully this does not look familiar to anyone that's on the webinar today you know it's just sort of the this is not the area you can think about running across and seeing children grow and grow it up in this and during some of this so it's is pretty pretty bad stuff again more electrical violations and not sure what they were doing with the bathtub but don't think I'd want to try that and so you know legal fees they could be costly we do try to contain we try to do as much research with our code guys as possible before we have to rely upon our attorneys when the case like this you know it was it the right thing to do of course it was you know we don't want to see anybody in harm's way so another concept want to talk to you about little is the concept of this whole cost of vacancy and so other than you've got a blighted property on the neighborhood then there's also the economic impact perspective so simple math here simply looking at you know the cost of a home sitting vacant and you know again it's this simple math but but those dollars that are being lost or dollars that are not being returned and spent and turned over again within your community and so I think you know is your is your thinking about code enforcement or maybe you're thinking about implementing for the first time this is one of those areas that you may not normally think about but working in the economic development side of the business and his assistant city manager here in Rome I spend a lot of my time working on economic development dollars and cents and so we work hard to try to attract investment to our community and so this is just one of those areas that can be overlooked and so I simply mentioned that to you as a point of reference so again I've got some of the legal ease here you may or may not care to to read in some of the finer detail and again as was stated earlier webinar will be will be available for further view and I'd be happy to share the presentation I could do that by email later if anyone wants to know some of the more specifics and they want to perhaps you want some of the code sections we'll be happy to put some of those in your hands so again which is talking about unsafe buildings I won't read you the the extent of the detail but you know the definition what what is it often we think we know it when we see it but to be able to to enter into the legal the legal process we have had some some specific damage definitions and those are written in as part are part of our amendment again goes back to 2007 mm or yeah 2003 Highland Circle so probably one of the not one of the better homes within our community but looking at this this is a you know when we talk about the cost this this is a lie on the expensive side and I say that because you know demolition is going to vary community by community here we're neglected to mention but one of the things about Rome is we we operate a joint municipal landfill and between so we operate that as an enterprise fund and so there are no free tipping fees and so when the city or when the county when we do a haul off and we pay tipping fees just like any other customer would and so that's why you will you will notice that there are in this particular example it goes back to 2008 and so again looking at what we have spent added up a little over $7,000 on this this one example again times are tough that we want to spend that on each property of course not but do we have to occasionally unfortunately we do another example may recognize this as the haunted house on Magee Street and look at the cost of this one and so this is a this is literally what I would call the ideal scenario of hey mr. property owner we we have codes in place you're in violation we want to work with you what can we do to help you and by the way you know if we have to take you to court chances are you're going to be on the hook for you know could be 22 as much as twenty six hundred dollars with the judge in addition to whatever action you're going to have to ultimately take so in this particular case and again this is one of those best-case scenario we had we have the owner decided to take action themselves and so total cost of the city we don't show the demand hours that we pay our code enforcement officer isn't because they're going to be getting paid regardless but in this case we don't attribute any of that directly to this property so some of the reasons some of the excuses you guys probably you have probably encountered this what do you expect the 350 a month or you know how these people are or I would do something if they would pay their rent and it's it can be a vicious cycle and say you you end up with and unfortunately in some cases out there what I call slumlords that they you know they buy bad property and it is a vicious cycle because they're not going to they're not going to invest any money in it say yes and we have received a question yeah duty the question is how do you have authority to enter private property we have we have authority under our property maintenance code and so once and you know in some cases we are more what I would say we are more available to do some things than are say our city police department maybe in terms of dealing with dilapidated structures okay thank you so and again as Cory mentioned earlier please send in any any questions and if we will be again we'll have them pretty certain we'll have time at the end to to open it up so our advice to to the folks that are the one of the real estate investors you know the market is going to fluctuate there's going to be some low there's going to be some high risk short and long term but you know we don't we don't encourage these folks to go pick up these good deal properties with the thought of I'm not going to do anything to it and it's going to sit there and generate money and so you know at the end of the day is that the government's job to be involved will no it's not but it's simply our advice to the those out there that are making those kind of decisions to go and buy and we're you know again the the perception is often reality and so in our case we've we've tried to work with the community at large but we we definitely want the community know that we can't we can't turn a blind eye and often that you know in our case we've got to get we've got to get out and do something so please don't you know don't buy junk and expect to don't have to come into compliance so in this example pretty pretty good before and after pretty structurally sound home by and large and you'll see there's rubbish in the front yard there was some of the classic graffiti you look inside and it's like oh wow so this is what goes on behind closed doors and so this is the case so where folks have gone crazy with graffiti and here you see the after and so I'll go back I mean let me go back just again okay so again looking on the left interior then this is the after and so this is the case that we're a little hand-holding goes a long way in working with a property owner there were numerous numerous violations and this property I want to think was probably a 90 day a 90 day process of just trying to get cooperation because this this was a case where the huh there was a mortgage on the property hey the easy thing to do is I'll just walk away I'll just walk away you guys tear down I don't want to have any part of it but in lieu of that again through some what I would call some creative hand-holding we were able to convince the owner and try to help the owner and so in this case they ended up reinvesting in this property fix the property up and so al hough they did not make a fortune off of this it was a break-even scenario and so I think that's certainly in my book it was a win that they were able to walk away and of course the bigger picture and why would we be interested in this is because what was a cancer in an otherwise stable neighborhood has now become you know one of the best looking properties on the street and so it's certainly something that we would deem deema win for us so talk to you a lot about kind of the the property maintenance side the wives of what looks like things that are on our list we do have a Rome Floyd County Land Bank and so land banking has been on again off again topics I know there are quite a few around the state now and there are quite a few communities that are talking about them so we we were one of the early early creators but unfortunately we really just are for whatever reason our land bank has not grown to full potential and so our land bank we're actually dusting off as I have told the City Commission and so we've we've got to come into compliance with the new state law that was passed during the last session so as late as our last night City Commission meeting we reappointed our two members and for those of you that are not familiar land banking is really a neat tool that can be available to help with your redevelopment efforts and so on oftentimes when you're dealing in the coat business and code enforcement specifically you're going to have abandoned properties and the whole goal of the land bank is how to get those abandoned properties back into productive productive use and back on the tax roll land bank has some unique tools that allow that one of those tools is the abatement of property taxes and so from the city government perspective we that's not something that we we want to see go away as far as taxes because we obviously need those to function but from a redevelopment perspective it's a good it is a good deal that takes something that's producing nothing to back in generation potential for a blight acts and I will tell you this is something that we have been researching we have a redevelopment committee internally as the city of Rome and so the black tax is simply that some of you that may not be familiar it's where you provide a special assessment to property that is in a state of disrepair and so and just to give you the hypothetical example you've got property X and they have whatever the tax assessor has set that value for that property you would apply some function of the millage rate and so for example it might be five times so it could be a factor of five or maybe a factor of 10 and the blight tax and so if I'm the owner sitting on that property I would much rather fix that property up and have to pay an extra fee that the city would then reinvest in the in the community or into that particular property there's a vacant property registry this is something we have also researched it's not been such an issue for us because by and large is a community we've not had a very large foreclosure rate but in many communities that have looked at they can properly registry it's been simply that to where you have a building a home that becomes vacant and the idea here someone would have to come in and register that with the city there would be AC and we would be able to better keep track of okay who owns the property when did it go vacant what's the lending institution and it's amazing how much time you can spend trying to track down who the lenders are compute Community Improvement Districts or C IDs again a lot of communities have these in place these have been pretty popular within the metro area we're just at the threshold of taking a look to see if those may be right for us neighborhood enhancement program this is something I'm pretty excited about that I picked up on at a conference last year and the city of Cincinnati Ohio does the neighborhood enhancement program and so I'll give you the CliffsNotes version is they have very active neighborhood associations and by and large these associations compete to be chosen for the NEP program and so what is anything so in essence if you're the you're the community your neighborhood let's say you're chosen for 90 days you're going to be at the top of the list for city services and so whether it's code enforcement whether it's policing whether it's fire maybe you've just got a question for the mayor essentially the city's going to come out and they're going to set up shop within your community and you're going to get what I would call a very intensive focus and the reason that that was I've been very intrigued by that because we've had a program here in Rome that we called neighborhood focus and it's it's literally a baby scale of this and so little did I know that Cincinnati was doing what we're doing but they're doing it on steroids so in our case we go out a week we take we may go plant some trees we may clean a sidewalk we may do any sort of typical maintenance things that could have been neglected but the key is is we get the neighbors out get the neighbors meeting each other get the neighbors comfortable with the police whichever officers typically patrol in that zone we at the end of the week for us we of a community cookout and so we all the providers all of our different city services are there city commissioners are there and literally grilling hot dogs and so this so I want to I'm in investigating how do we take that to the greater level which would be the NEP levels at Cincinnati's doing and so it seems to be a popular very popular option and it worked very well for those guys so much so that their neighborhoods are competing and so that's that's just again one of those things that we want to look at so with that I know I have probably talked your ears off and maybe there are going to be some questions and if there are not questions now I would obviously welcome anything by email and otherwise if you guys anyone would like to come to Rome I'm happy to facilitate a visit to where we could get you a face-to-face with our inspections department and kind of show you the ropes of how it works for us Sammy we do have a couple of questions okay um the first is how do you handle dilapidation and potential demolition and the historic districts oh great question and we do have a very active sort Preservation Commission we and it's rare I will say it is rare to have a demolition in a historic neighborhood but it does happen and so that's unfortunate and and you know to be honest with you I've got a house probably two hundred yards from where I'm sitting now it is on the river and it is a classic case of where I know that house is going to head toward demolition the owner unfortunately has filed bankruptcy but in our case what we do is our historic preservation commission has to approve any demolition and they also at the time that they do that they won't just haphazardly approved they want to know what are you going to build back and exactly how is that going to look and so I don't you know I don't want I don't want to make it seem that it's just that easy because it's certainly not and it's certainly rare to have a property in our case that has gone to demolition there's only a handful that I can think of that has been in the store preservation area that did have to reach the militia and in those cases it's a very tough profit proposition for our preservation committee to approve those but in our case when we're when we've had a situation where it's gotten out of hand or where you know we're at the end of the rope they have basically rawhide upon our professional staff and the recommendation and so really the the challenge there is not so much to tearing it down is if you got one bad enough to be torn down you may not have an owner that's capable of producing a replacement and so that's really where the rubber meets the road and so in an ideal scenario you're going to have here at least you're going to have approval of what's leaving and simultaneous approval of what's coming back and so in a perfect world that be the case here we've not seen much of those and where we have they've they have approved something that's going to be compatible with at least a district thank you we've received several questions and we will not have time to answer them all in this session but we will copy those down and I'll send them over to Sammy and see if he can provide and I was going to ask or if they're I don't know if my email was provided but I'm happy email is a great way to get in touch with me okay can you speak a little bit more about the land bank process sure I'm glad that Sol and banking and I'll give you kind of the example of sort of a snapshot around around the state so in our case we had to we had a joint land bank with Floyd County and we had two members that were city appointees and two members that were County appointees within the bylaws there was basically a hierarchy of what do we want to do what's the business of the land bank and in the essence of the rhomboid land bank was dealing with affordable housing so in communities where you have an active Habitat for Humanity they certainly loved landings and and you know if there's a key of Brian's a land bank you know what's important about it it's because they can dispose of property in ways that we can't and we being city or county government they could basically act as a private developer they could go out and acquire they can put together land deals I mentioned earlier they can abate taxes and so if you think about it in terms of a redevelopment arm of your community there's some pretty powerful things that they could do for your community that a City Commission City Council or County could just simply can't do under the state state statutes that govern how we how we declare property surplus we accept seal bids or we hold an auction well the land bank they don't have to do that and their disposition of property so that's that's really one of the key ingredients for how they do business but again most folks that have done land banking is it does flirt on the the affordable or workforce housing side I will tell you one story I'm makin makin bid has probably one of the better landing agencies in the state they have a full-time executive director and she her job is literally to get up every day and think about how am I going to make the plan thing successful and one of the keys that I've noticed for their community is everyone there utilizes the land bank for their normal property actions whether it's their Housing Authority where there had been the city or the county prior to consolidation they all relied upon the land bank to go out and acquire property whereas in our case we have used it as a tool and we've baiting it for our land bank we put together a hope six application and so we use the land bank to do some processing of property and that's essentially been it and so as a tool it's pretty valuable if you're serious about redevelopment it's just a great tool to have in your toolbox thank you would you mind just saying your email address yes I'm glad to my email is F rich that's s RI CH at Rome GA dot us couple of questions about grants one was what specific grants have you applied for to use toward clean it or lean it situations well we haven't I guess it would be a little bit of a misnomer to say that we've applied specifically for that what what we have is within our Community Development Office we have the chip funds and so those are funds through that we we work obviously very closely with DCA and because we have those programs available in our community those have been very vital we are also an entitlement city and so for those of you that compete for CDBG funds you probably know what I'm talking about so each year we get an allocation from HUD and so we decide how are we going to you know what are we going to do with those funds and so we have historically always sectioned off some of the money to go towards our housing and so that's again it's been a very popular tool when I talk about political will our City Commission it's been one of the very most popular things that they enjoy doing is because at the end of the day we have a waiting list there's a lot of those folks out there that want to tap into some of that repair money and so I'm glad that I'm glad to help and talk about that and I have a referral our Community Development Director is Miss Becky Fox and Becky I'm certainly glad to put you in touch with our she she has administer our programs and could talk to you about all the tips and tricks of things that we have done to be able to go in and not only to repair but to build new new construction in some of our redevelopment areas okay well thank you Sammy very much for doing this webinar for us and like I said I'll be sending you the questions and we can figure out how the best to respond to those absolutely Corinne the other thing I would mention is my phone number is seven zero six two three six four four zero zero and again you have email emails probably the easiest way to get me because I'm usually away from my desk but we we would love to help and we've got a great team in Rome and we'd be glad to put you in front of him of them and explain it in an intimate level of detail so thanks for the opportunity Cort thank you to our attendees and remember that this webinar will be posted on the GMA website probably within two days or so thank you again thank you