GREENFIELD — After Mayor Ginny Desorgher publicly announced plans to sell for redevelopment the six dilapidated properties that are owned by the city, city councilors assigned to the Community Relations Committee discussed bringing back multi-department meetings to address problem properties.
Discussing dilapidated sites at Monday’s Community Relations Committee meeting, Desorgher said Building Inspector Mark Snow requested that she reconvene, for the first time in eight years, regular meetings between the Health Department, building inspector, Mayor’s Office, Fire Department and Police Department to look into unsafe lots throughout the city. Desorgher previously said there are about 30 dilapidated properties in Greenfield.
“It was over eight years ago that they used to meet, and they’d had great success with the property compliance meetings,” Desorgher said. “We have about 30 parcels. Most of them are actually not city-owned; most of them are privately owned. And so we are moving to see if we can make things better.”
Although dilapidated properties are prevalent throughout the city, Desorgher added that there are more in Precincts 7 and 5. She added that the abandoned properties have all fallen into states of disrepair for a variety of reasons; some, for example, have been damaged by fire, while others were abandoned years ago by their owners.
The mayor noted that the particularly expensive costs of demolishing a building prompted her to consider selling boarded-up properties.
“There are a few [buildings] that actually have to come down,” she said. “What I didn’t know until the last meeting is how much it costs to take a building down. It could be up to about $100,000 to take the building down and we don’t have that money set aside.”
Community and Economic Development Director Amy Cahillane noted that the city will review each dilapidated property on a case-by-case basis, as each structure faces its own unique challenges.
For this reason, Cahillane said developing a uniform procedure to manage dilapidated lots could prove to be a difficult feat.
“Because each case is so different, the problem with each property could be different, and the city department [that] might be monitoring or maintaining that property is going to be different, and it makes it hard to say, [for example], ‘Well, ‘If you’re non-compliant for 60 days, we’re going to fine you $5,000,'” Cahillane said. “That 60 days could look very different if the issue is a building that hasn’t come down because of insurance, versus a building with squatters or an abandoned property versus some other scenario.”
At-Large City Councilor Wahab Minhas mentioned that this review of non-complaint properties might concern residents who believe that if they fall behind on home repairs, they could be penalized or have their homes taken from them. He added that clear messaging to the public is crucial.
“The best way to tackle that is just if we message it correctly, and that might just be saying over and over again, ‘Hey, we’re not after people’s homes. That’s not what’s going on. We’re not trying to steal properties. We’re not trying to rip your home out from under you,'” he said. “If there’s any type of thing that we can just say to offer reassurance to people, like, ‘Hey, if your property is potentially becoming delinquent, these are the resources that we have.”
Desorgher reasserted that the city does not wish to penalize homeowners who need to make minor repairs, adding that the most challenging of the dilapidated houses are those that are bank-owned, abandoned and in such a state of disrepair that they pose a threat to the community.
“I had two houses with probably 10 neighbors each that were very concerned about safety things that were happening in those two houses — one was rectified and the other has not been [rectified]. … People are afraid something will happen there, that something will happen to a child,” she explained. “I want no one’s property and we’ve taken no property. … We’re not going over looking to see if your porch [is compliant].”
