City struggles to make blight cases right
STAMFORD — The city last week cleaned and swept a Waterside street after ordering the owner of a recycling company to remove bales of paper and cardboard from the curb.
Within a couple of days, neighbors say, the bales and other items were piled in the yard, and a large trailer holding two paper compactors was parked at the curb instead.
It happened even though, just before the sweep, police ordered the company owner, Tapione Cummings, to comply with antiblight laws. But there’s a complication. The man doesn’t own the property at 54 Taff Ave. — it belongs to a relative.
So the relative, who did not give Cummings permission to use the property, owes the city more than
$21,000 in fines that continue to accrue at $100 a day. It’s a catandmouse game that has gone on for years. Efforts to reach Cummings early in the week were unsuccessful.
In the fight against blight, it’s one of many stories from the field.
“Now the street is somewhat cleaned up, but the yard is packed with junk,” said James Krasniewicz, one of the Taff Avenue business owners who has reported many times that the unsightly mess creates a fire hazard and blocks access to the street in a congested industrial zone. “Blight is blight, whether it’s in the front of the house or the back. This isn’t going to stop.”
It’s not for lack of trying, said Vincent Freccia, an attorney contracted by the city to handle blight cases.
“We have a system, and it works,” said Freccia, who has done the work for 10 years and also handles tax cases for the city. “People will say it does not work fast enough, and sometimes I agree. People want results and you can’t blame them.”
While the Taff Avenue businesses — a scrap metal company, truck repair shop, landscapers and more — struggle to pull their vehicles in and out of their lots and make their way along the street each day — the AntiBlight Office wrestles with notices of fines, liens, foreclosures, lawyers and courts, Freccia said.
Here’s how it works:
A complaint comes in to AntiBlight Officer Paul Zeiss, who does the job part time after retiring as a city building inspector. Freccia said Zeiss does not go out looking for blighted properties; he acts on reports from residents.
Zeiss adds the complaint to his list of properties to investigate. Freccia said that, depending on the length of the list, it takes at least a week for Zeiss to get to it. If he finds blight, he photographs it and takes the information back to the office where the only other employee, parttime paralegal Moira Sawch, looks up the owner and sends a warning letter.
“The warning letter gives the owner 10 days,” Freccia said. “Then Paul goes out again, according to his schedule, to see if anything changed and take new photos.”
If it’s still a problem, Sawch sends a notice of blight, which allows the owner seven days to fix it. If not, the $100aday fine begins.
After that, Sawch sends a civil citation, which the owner has 10 days to appeal.
After that, Zeiss may generate a lien for the property, though there’s no rule saying how long he has to decide, Freccia said.
“At that point, we’re still hoping the owner will take action,” Freccia said.
If not, they discuss whether to foreclose on the property. There’s no timeline for that decision, either, Freccia said. If they choose foreclosure, Freccia draws up the notice and gives it to a marshal to serve, with a court return date of one month. After that, the court motion can begin.
“Court cases can take any amount of time, depending on how much of a fight we get from the owner,” Freccia said. “Most are settled before litigation.”
Zeiss could not be reached last week, so no one was able to say how much the city is owed in blight fines.
Sawch provided the latest in other data, which goes back three or four months, showing that roughly 55 blighted properties have liens, about 45 are in foreclosure, and approximately 87 owners have been issued warnings.
A city ordinance defines blight as a site of criminal activity, fire hazard, unauthorized dumping or vandalism, or a property that is unmaintained, has repeated citations for building or health code violations, or otherwise poses a danger.
“It’s a common problem, and not just in Stamford,” Freccia said. “The vast majority of blighted properties are occupied, not abandoned. The cases are all over the spectrum — people who own the property, people who rent it and don’t know what’s going on because they haven’t been there for a while. Some involve elderly people or people who went through a divorce. One involved a house that had a tree through the roof after a windstorm. It stayed that way for years. Animals were getting in; there was mold. It was on a main drag and lots of people complained. It went to court. That was a sad story.”
He and Zeiss take into account “mitigating factors,” Freccia said.
“We try to work with people. Paul tells them what needs to be done. We deal with the accumulation of fines. I tell the person to make a reasonable offer of settlement so we can resolve it without litigation,” he said.
City Rep. Jeff Stella, D9, who sits on the Blight Hearing Committee that considers property owners’ appeals, said the city should make a bigger effort.
“We only have one blight officer, and he’s parttime,” Stella said. “He’s doing the best he can, but we should have more.”