January 27, 2011 marked the 6th meeting of BlightStat and the 6th time that the public was invited to attend.
This BlightStat meeting was not as well attended as the previous meetings with only 27 public chairs filled. All of the City departments were represented at the main table.
A new City of New Orleans employee was introduced – James Husserl.
He will be the Director for statistics concerning purchasing and accounts payables (RevenueStat?). James has been with the city for two weeks.
The merger of the Code Enforcement and Environmental Health Departments continues to go well with a target date of completion being March 1st.
In the link below, please find a PDF of the handout of the presentation shown today. There you will find charts, graphs and statistics. A general synopsis of the meeting will follow the link:
Presentation made at the January 27, 2011 BlightStat meeting.
Code Enforcement met its goal of 800 inspections during a two week period. There was some discussion of how to make the reports presented at the meeting better express what is happening.
Code Enforcement liens recently appeared on tax bills which spurred a lot of re-inspections as people called in to inform the City that their property is now in compliance.
There are currently 22 inspectors 3 of which are District Managers.
Hearing numbers remain steady with an average of approximately 250-300 each bi-weekly period. 333 hearings took place this time. Consistency in hearing officers and case managers is critical to the success of the hearings. Resets continue to be a problem.
Fines are not proving to be a big enough incentive for property owners to bring their property into compliance.
Illegally dumped tires continue to be a problem but the Sanitation Department is still targeting the Almonaster and 9th Ward areas. They also continue to check tire shops for manifests proving used tires were disposed of properly.
Ms Sylvain-Lear also want to get the word out about landlords who dump tenants property out on the curb after the tenant does not pay. Ms. Sylvain-Lear want to remind landlords that they should not be surprised when the city sends them a bill for this type of collection.
FEMA trailers continue to be picked up but 200 still remain.
Ms. Brenda Breaux of the Legal Department noted that database issues are preventing Sheriff Sales from taking place. Staffing issues also contribute to the problem.
A PDF of properties coming up for Sheriff Sale should be in the Code Enforcement section of http://nola.gov soon.
Allen Square said to look for more data from the city’s Accela program to be available on nola.gov in April, 2011.
Jeff Hebert noted that Andy Koppel previously met with the National Guard about the possibility of them helping the city fight blight. Mr. Hebert indicated he would be following up with Colonel Landrenau of the National Guard.