The News-Times (Sunday)

Vote on fourth try at an anti-blight ordinance

- By Anna Quinn aquinn@newstimes.com

NEW FAIRFIELD — Voters will get the final say on whether the town’s fourth attempt at an antiblight ordinance — to control properties that have become health or safety hazards — will be the one to stick.

The proposed rules faced their final public hearing this week and will likely head to a machine vote sometime after Thanksgivi­ng, First Selectman Pat Del Monaco said. New Fairfield is one of only two towns in the Danbury area that doesn’t have an anti-blight ordinance rules on the books.

The newest proposal addresses some of the concerns of the past attempts, Del Monaco said, such as ensuring it is focused on hazards rather than aesthetics and creating a “blight prevention board” to work with homeowners toward a solution.

“It was important to all three of (the selectmen) to make the definition of blight less subjective and more specific,” Del Monaco said. “Also, we want to have a process where we could try to work with residents to correct whatever issues we could.”

But, that doesn’t mean this draft still hasn’t faced its share of pushback.

Authority or overreach?

Most residents who spoke against the proposal at recent hearings said it was an example of “government overreach.” They contended that the town’s current department­s should be able to handle code violations that would qualify as blight.

But, Del Monaco said that under the current rules, the town does not have the authority to step in and fix a hazard if a homeowner refuses to do so or cannot be reached. Many of the properties that might qualify as blight have “absentee owners” that would force the town to refer the property to the state if it cannot reach them.

With the ordinance, the town would be able to at least fix the hazard instead of leaving it unresolved during the lengthy process.

Newtown Anti-blight Enforcemen­t Officer Steve Maguire added that antiblight ordinances speed up the process because they address issues that beforehand would have required individual citations across multiple department­s.

Newtown passed its anti-blight ordinance in 2013.

“It basically pulls all department­s together so we can have more leverage,” Maguire said. “It’s been helping out a lot with vacant properties. It’s a good tool.”

Safety vs. beauty

Another major debate about the ordinance has been whether it will allow the town, or neighbors with a vendetta, to dictate what homeowners can do on their properties.

“Blight is very subjective, what is blight to one is not blight to another,” one resident said this week.

But Del Monaco and the selectmen contended that the most recent draft uses only criteria based on health, fire or building code violations. Neighbors can write a formal complaint, but it will be up to an investigat­ion by the blight prevention board to determine if it actually qualifies as blight.

Maguire said in Newtown, neighbor and aesthetic complaints haven’t gone away, but the ordinance has protected them from being pursued as incidents of blight.

“Once we passed the ordinance people called in left and right to say, ‘my neighbor is a blight,’ ” Maguire said. “(But), for it to rise to that level it has to be pretty significan­t. The level has to be pretty high for it to go into the blight ordinance.”

In New Fairfield, the selectmen made changes this week to its ordinance to further guard against aesthetics coming into play, including adding a spot for a resident on the blight prevention board.

The prevention board includes the volunteer and the town’s fire marshal, health director, building officer, zoning enforcemen­t officer, director of social services and first selectman.

Special circumstan­ces

Residents have also worried about whether the ordinance would place an unfair burden on the town’s most vulnerable residents. The elderly, disabled or those with lower income might not be able to afford fixing what qualifies as blight on their property, they said.

Del Monaco contends that the ordinance makes it so these “special circumstan­ces” will be considered and allows for extensions or financial assistance in those cases.

“(The social services director) will always be part of the process so that we do not overlook those circumstan­ces,” she said, adding that officials hope most cases of blight can be resolved before a citation or fine is needed. “We’re usually able to work through violations of our ordinances with residents without ever getting to that point.”

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