Post Fire Defence By City Building Department Head

So why can't the response by City of Saint John officials take on a more empathetic tone to the concerns of the people living in the neighbourhood around Mecklenburg Street, the scene of the past weekend's devastating fire ? For a time yesterday it appeared that city officials were denying a work order had been placed against the property in 2009. Then they said there were subsequent orders; then that the 2009 order had resulted in the property owners being brought to court. And if indeed a work order against a property becomes "inapplicable" , when it becomes vacant, as stated yesterday by Amy Poffenroth, the city's manager of building inspections; then what other action can the city take ? 

I strongly support the idea that if a building owner is making timely progress on repairing a building and responding to a city work order, then flexibility should be shown in the process. But the situation at 70 Mecklenburg dragged on for nearly 4 years and the result was this devastating fire which destroyed the neighbouring building and left almost 2 dozen people on the street. The response by Poffenroth appears circuitous, defensive, and retaliatory. People living in the neighbourhood need re-assurance and the feeling that our staffers are protecting the interests of the greater good; not just getting bogged down in the "red tape". 

As I pointed out yesterday, Bill Edwards who is Poffenroth's predecessor and mentor, spent much effort several years ago stewarding a new set of laws that he felt allowed the building department to deal effectively with the issue of condemned and vacant properties. If Poffenroth now suggests that the new rules still aren't adequate, it would make everyone concerned, feel more assured if she pointed this out plainly and made some suggestions. If she feels her hands are tied publicly from this type of commentary, lets have the City Manager hold a press conference to address the issue from a cross department perspective, if indeed this challenge also includes the Legal Department, The Fire Department and others. An explanation and some reassurance would go along way this week to quell the concerns of spooked citizens of the South End. 

At the same time, the property at 134-144 Carmarthen Street has a similar work order that was placed against the property on May 15, 2009. It is still occupied and still in the hands of the same owners. It is in deplorable condition. Here is a photo of it taken Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013. Why hasn't action been taken to evacuate this building and board it up.What does Poffenroth have say say about this circumstance.

 Better still why can't the laws in place provide mechanisms that force a non-compliant, non-cooperating property owner to lose the property to public auction or public stewardship. Such transfer of ownership should also require that a new owner have the capacity to post performance bonds to ensure the property quickly gets repaired and re-inhabited. If all this is impossible or fails...only then should it be demolished. Long term vacancy and boarding up should NOT be allowed to occur  This may sound intrusive to some, but the province legislates that automobile owners have insurance and are subject to vehicle inspections. A safe place to live is every bit as critical to families as a safe vehicle. 

Fire in The"Hood" ; Lessons To Be Learned ?

Lets talk about the Mecklenburg fire for a moment. That block is over 75% occupied by owners; there is significant pride on that block by those citizens. The building that was the starting point of the inferno, has been vacant and boarded up for some time. Its owners are non-resident in the city of Saint John; they were served with work orders to repair that building almost 4 years ago; they have ignored their responsibility; they put people's lives in danger; these owners caused stress and fear amongst the good property owners of the neighbourhood. They should be held to account and the city should have done something much sooner to enforce the work orders and spare the citizens of the neighbourhood this frightening situation.

The work order was issued March 19. 2009. It is a public document, 14 pages long and highly detailed in its points, requirements, and the potential consequences. There are specific timelines outlined for compliance and significant penalties for non-compliance. It appears there was no pre-fire enforcement of the order, other than the emptying out of the building and it being "boarded up". If you happen to park your car in the wrong place during a snowban, the consequences are far more immediate and painful than the consequences and punishment afforded to these property owners. 

In today's Telegraph Journal, SJFD spokesperson Mark Wilson, District Chief  appears to excuse the work order by offering these comments 

" the building has been on the department's watch list since 2010. "It's been vacant for a while,"he said. 

There are about 120 buildings on the list that are monitored by fire crews every few days, or weeks, depending on their availability. 

He said the crews check to ensure those vacant buildings are secured - that doors and windows are boarded up, and no fire hazards are present. 

"Really, can we go around to all vacant buildings and tear them down? No,"Wilson said."However, what we can do is request the property owners to secure the properties. 

"You can't really just say, 'is the city going to come in and do a sweep?' You can't do that. These are private properties. We can work with them and make sure there is a due diligence on the owners to make it safe." He said this vacant structure was secure and didn't pose a hazard on the last check. 

"It was secured," he said."It was boarded up. As far as we know, the doors were locked, the windows were boarded up." He added the fire crews responding had to use forcible entry to get inside. " "

No part of the work order includes boarding up and monitoring the property by the SJFD. By acknowledging this "duty", does the District Chief lay open the possibility of liability by the SJFD. His remarks that ,"it was secure ", provide little re-assurance to the neighbourhood in light of the subsequent fire and displacement. 

The important thing to note in my view is that the work order was issued under the authority of the building department working with the guidance of by-laws enacted by the City. Although the work was done by the inspection department and the process followed; there was no legal action taken when the property owners refused to comply with the order. So for three years the neighbourhood compliance to city hall and lived in fear. 

Here are comments from this mornings TJ by neighbours and property owners living there:

 " Chris Patterson, who lives around the corner from the building, said when he was apartment-hunting a few years ago he looked inside 70 Mecklenburg. 

"I went to look at it and it was pretty gross, and so I was like 'no, there's no way I'm renting that,'" he said. "It's pretty dirty and slummy and stuff like that." He said a month later, the building was boarded up. 

Clyde Ouellette owns the building on the other side of the vacant building that was not damaged by the fire. He said he'd been concerned about the safety of his own property since the abandoned building was boarded up several years ago. 

"We all complained,"he said. 

"He did, I did, they did," he said, gesturing at the houses down the street."It should have been torn down the month that they boarded it up." Donald Irving, the owner of the apartment that was gutted in the fire, said he had also complained in the past. 

"I'm in a bad situation now," he said. "Bad luck for me." 

The legal department should have done its job; the fire department should not be forced to undertake monitoring of vacant buildings  ( even though I am sure they do that work from the perspective of community service and proactive effort to prevent fire ), residents need to be protected. 

And so on Monday , January 28, 2013, the City issued a demolition order for 70 Mecklenburg AND 76 Mecklenburg; both fire damaged beyond repair. Why couldn't the city have issued that order last week, for the one condemned building where the fire started; based on the 4 year old work order. BEFORE the neighbourhood was subjected to this terror, with 14 homeless now, a 100 year old historic streetscape now with a gaping hole in it, and a neighbourhood left nervously thinking about the "what ifs". 

Provincial Property Tax and Wealth Re-Distribution

Many people are not aware that Saint John contributes a disproportionate share of taxes to the province. Often when we read of an Atcon bailout or of millions of dollars in "Economic Development" money being sent to other parts of NB - the lion’s share of that money is being sucked out of Saint John. 

The Equal Opportunity Act has - in the long term – disadvantaged the urban areas of the province in favour of unsustainable areas with multi-generational economic subsidies to pay for it. To understand our current challenges we need to know how many dollars are sent to Fredericton that don't come back? Perhaps the most direct route is to ask the question "how much provincial property tax is taken from SJ, versus the annual 'un-conditional grant' rec'd by the City". The so-called grants, are the vehicle by which this "provincial property tax" is re-distributed by the Province. Help in understanding this financial maneuvering would be a good undertaking for an elected provincial member locally, if he/she really wanted to help constituents understand what is happening. 

Who among our provincial representatives has their eye on the big picture? It's time to remind ourselves and our elected reps at all government levels that there's only one taxpayer here. Why in the hell aren't our MLAs adding something during this intense time of service reductions, pension concerns and budget discussions? It is a well established fact that in New Brunswick, the provincial government has very significant control of municipal government finances. We NEED leadership and co-operation here. Where are Margaret-Ann Blaney, Blaine Higgs, Carl Killen, Trevor Holder, Glen Tait, Dorothy Sheppard, Jim Parrot, on this? They have all been virtually absent from the public debate on Saint John City challenges the past month.

We live with a property taxation system that sucks wealth out of this community and then leaves it to fight among itself to deal with the inadequacy of the situation. The city and its people get beat up by the system and by each other even though we produce the majority of the wealth that supports the rest of the province. This situation also stands in the way of our desire for a stronger URBAN agenda for our future. There is a direct conflict between these two issues; wealth re-distribution to rural areas at the expense of stronger investment in wealth producing and efficient URBAN communities like Saint John. Which politicians are connecting the dots and showing leadership? The days of political reactionary ways must be replaced by visionary leadership if we ever hope to realize our dreams.

Information about where tax is collected and where it is spent may be found here .

Time to follow the money

Interesting day. We now know there will be a special public budget meeting tomorrow, Wednesday Feb. 01, to allow council to make their decisions for the budget and tax rate. There seems to be several views in play as to how we got in this mess and how we get out.

Today I raised the issue of an unfair provincial property taxation system that takes wealth from the economic powerhouse that Saint John is and re-distributes that wealth around the province in the name of Equal Opportunity; others say forcefully that there is also the widely held belief that we are over staffed at City Hall and that there should be serious work done on inefficiencies and productivity before we cut back services in the name of job reductions caused by budget cutbacks, and finally the wider higher minded idea that as a single community stretching from Quispamsis to Grand Bay, we should be under one municipal government.

I hope to help open a discussion over the next several days that will:

evoke a more thoughtful approach to the root causes of our civic woes;

pursue real facts to demonstrate how those things are holding back our Urban dreams;

•  lastly to bring together a broad group who want to take real action to move this community forward with pride and security in a way that allows us to realize our aspirations for Saint John as New Brunswicks' only "true Urban metropolis" as my good friend Kurt Peacock so correctly describes it.

Your ideas, comments, and input could turn this into real action and not just frustrated and angry rhetoric. A chance to improve the results of the next municipal election in the short term and beyond that a real shot at re-designing the way things work in Saint John and New Brunswick to provide a more environmentally, economically, secure, and sustainable way of life.

Taxation Woes

All City of Saint John operations need to be subject to efficiency standards. The burden on home owning taxpayers is out of proportion. The amount of property taxes paid in Saint John by Irving companies and Irving family is huge(go find the numbers if you're interested in the truth and NOT the BS rhetoric that they don't pay); the city does suffer significant wear and tear from the presence of this economic activity. But its NOT the lack of paying taxes that puts us under the gun; its the amount of property tax paid by city businesses of all sizes that is sucked out of the city by the provincial tax system and re-distributed to other "have not" areas that is causing the problems. We are left to fight among ourselves as the economic wealth generated in this place is displaced to subsidize other un-sustainable areas of the province. There in lies the real story! EQUAL OPPORTUNITY has created un-equal challenges for the citizens of Saint John and now we live with civic dis-harmony. Its time to turn the anger in the direction it deserves. We are participating in the act of "killing the goose that laid the golden egg" and that goose is the City of Saint John.