Selectmen to consider new blight ordinance
GREENWICH — A long awaited ordinance to provide the town with new powers to address properties considered to be blighted could soon be headed to the Representative Town Meeting.
Town Administrator Ben Branyan unveiled proposed revisions to the town’s nuisance ordinance to the Board of Selectmen this week.
The definition of what is considered a nuisance would be expanded to include any building or structure deemed “unfit for human habitation” by state public health, fire or building code.
Additionally, the town would create a standing working group “to take a more coordinated approach to address potential nuisance properties.” Branyan said the working group would be led by himself and include representatives from the human services, zoning, health, building and police departments plus the fire marshal’s office.
The selectmen are expected to vote on the changes July 22.
The working group would review existing regulations and address resident concerns when they come in, Branyan said.
The pumped-up ordinance would help
officials “maintain the town’s history and reputation for well-kept properties,” he said.
Director of Planning and Zoning Katie DeLuca said the language in the current ordinance is “extremely limited to the issue we’re trying to solve with blight.”
The definition of nuisance would include structures, whether occupied or vacant, that have become dilapidated as evidenced by the presence of missing or boarded up windows or doors, collapsing or missing walls, significantly damaged or missing siding, fire or water damage or a structurally faulty foundation.
Under the revised ordinance, those conditions would have to remain for more than six months for the structure to be declared a nuisance. Language currently already exists in the Town Charter providing residents with the mechanism to appeal a nuisance violation.
“We have had a handful of cases that have exhausted the town’s ability to fully correct a resident’s complaint regarding the condition of properties,” Branyan told the selectmen on Thursday. “Absent a change to the ordinance, the town lacks the ability to fully address that quality of life issue.”
If the selectmen do approve the changes, the revised ordinance would then go to the RTM for consideration, likely at its September meeting. Branyan
noted that from his conversations with town employees who were there when the nuisance ordinance was first established in 1991, there was a “spirited debate regarding individual property rights” at the RTM.
The revised language would provide “a good balance” — giving the town power to respond to nuisance complaints while preventing overregulation of aesthetics, Branyan said.
The new ordinance grew out of residents’ frustrations with an abandoned home at 46 Mead Avenue in Byram. The structure, which had already partially collapsed, was finally demolished last year but only after years of complaints from residents about it being an eyesore and a potential safety threat.
Residents had urged the town to take action about the blighted structure as well as others in town but it was believed that the current town powers did not allow for that kind of action.
Under the town’s current policy, violations must be reported to the town’s Zoning Enforcement Department and its zoning enforcement officer. The department then has to determine if the site is “injurious to the public health, safety and welfare or contributes substantially to the depreciation of the value of real property” before the town can take action to fix the site up — at the expense of the property owners.
The changes being proposed are designed to simplify the process by providing clearer definitions and educating residents about how they can make a report, while still respecting property rights.
“The residents have been crying out for this for a long, long time,” First Selectman Fred Camillo said. “We certainly are mindful of the property rights issue but this is not just a local issue to those neighborhoods where those structures are placed. It ends up being a whole town-wide issue and it’s something that we really do have to take action on. We’ve heard about it for years we’ve heard a lot about it over the last 12 months.”
Camillo said he knew of properties across the road from where he lived that took eight and 11 years to finally be taken care of and rebuilt.
“We’re trying to do something with compassion and to help people who may have fallen on hard times to give them some more time but certainly there has to be a limit,” Camillo said. “Otherwise people are held hostage to this.”