City Council appears ready to give the code enforcement department a tool its inspectors have said they need to identify vacant properties and their owners.
At tonight’s meeting, council will hear first reading of an ordinance advertising for proposals for companies specializing in vacant property registration services, and another that would tweak the verbiage of the city’s existing vacant property registration ordinance to define a vacant property as one to which water service has been terminated.
The ordinance currently defines a vacant property, in part, as one that’s “unoccupied or having utilities disconnected.”
Urban Projects Director Chris Petrossi told council the problem with that is the utility companies wouldn’t provide that information to them just to verify occupancy.
“When we research properties, it refers to utilities — it would help us if, instead of utilities, it said water service only because water records we can readily access,” Petrossi said. “Other utilities won’t provide us with that information, if we’re just looking into the status of an account with a meter, they won’t provide that information.”
