Residents Want Blight Ordinance To Have More Teeth

A sad example of blight

By KIM VELSEY,The Hartford Courant

WINDSOR LOCKS — —

Residents shared their thoughts on a new blight ordinance at a public hearing Tuesday night, offering suggestions and expressing their displeasure with the current ordinance.

The town decided to re-examine its ordinance, which was passed in 2001, after brothers Malcolm and Douglas Hamilton pressed Windsor Locks to bolster regulations.  

A proposed new ordinance includes more specific descriptions of what constitutes blight, according to Town Attorney Scott Chadwick. It also allows the first selectman to designate other people to identify blighted properties — a power that he and the police chief now hold exclusively, although residents may submit complaints to be verified.

Other changes would enable residents to make complaints anonymously and allow fines to be levied on a case-by-case basis, to allow for consideration of difficult circumstances and avoid being overly punitive, said Chadwick.

Overwhelmingly, residents expressed approval for any changes that would give the ordinance more teeth, but said that they wanted an easier way to view and evaluate what steps the town had taken to address certain blighted properties.

Malcolm Hamilton said that the arrival of spring and summer had uncovered many troublesome properties that had been hidden by snow during the winter, including a blighted house on Halfway House Road that had been foreclosed on and ignored by both the bank that took possession and the real estate company trying to sell it.

Numerous calls to the real estate agent had been fruitless, he said. Hamilton said he found it hard to understand why such a longstanding and obvious eyesore remained a problem.

The Halfway House Road home was one of about 10 properties that banks had foreclosed on but refused to maintain, said First Selectman Steven Wawruck, prompting the town to step in and do basic yard work after all other avenues had failed. The cost of the yard work would be added to the property tax bill.

Selectman Denise Balboni said that it was important to make an easily accessible public record of all such interventions because taxpayer money was being used for the repairs — in the case of the 10 homes requiring yard maintenance, the money was taken from a $2,500 line item in the town budget, according to Wawruck.

Others spoke of the need to include specific and verifiable complaints in blight notices.

Gail Burrington, who said that she received a blight notice for her father's property shortly after he died, expressed frustration with complaints that included vague wording — in her case, describing the home's carport as "looking trashy."

"It was extremely subjective," said Burrington, adding that it was difficult to understand the nature of such a complaint, and therefore, how to remedy it.

Burrington also said that she had found the appeals process for property owners unclear and had received no confirmation that her appeal had ever been received after she sent it.

A town meeting to vote on the new ordinance has not yet been scheduled. Wawruck said that he wanted to make sure that the new ordinance would provide avenues to solve problems and work with people, rather than simply being about fines, before a vote was scheduled.