A.G. Gancarski
Denise Lee is approaching the end of her tenure on Jacksonville City Council.
She has a lot to be proud of as she exits for her next venue, with smart money having her headed toward the Curry administration. Her signature achievement, however, must be considered the Blight Committee, which she has used to take aim at blight citywide and to that end has brought together a wide variety of stakeholders.
At Wednesday morning’s Blight Committee meeting, those in attendance saw the cumulative fruits of her effort. One such that was discussed at the front of the meeting: bill, 2015-340, that was passed this week by city council to deal with zombie properties, those for which the foreclosure process was started but never completed.
The properties sit in a netherworld, where no one occupies or fulfills the obligations of ownership. The bank holds title, yet the properties sit vacant, without utilities, and are ripe for vagrants and miscreants to use as they see fit.
Bill 340, committee member and Councilman Warren Jones said, brings Jacksonville’s program into “compliance with what other cities are doing,” by encouraging lenders to move off foreclosure. Enhanced fines and penalties on the lenders create a funding source to remedy blight, including by demolition efforts, and also go to Legal Aid.
It’s expected that 24,000 properties will be affected, creating an about $3 million funding source, and a negative incentive for banks to be derelict in their duties to neighborhoods.
Another speaker, Robert Prado, spoke of the difficulties of code enforcement on a given property on East 24th Street. All told, there were 22 documented code violations over the years, including nuisance and unsafe structure claims. Power and water had been cut off, yet it took two years to fully address the issue, as some parts of the property were unsafe, yet others were not.
Council members Jones and Lee addressed the connection between disconnected utilities and eligibility for demolition.
When properties are “vacant without utilities for two years, boarded up, and [incurring] fines,” said Jones, they are “eligible for demolition.”
Lee added that “15,000 properties didn’t have utilities; this will cure that problem.”
The committee then turned its attention to Officer Pat Ivey, who will be the new undersheriff effective July 1. Ivey’s topic: the Jacksonville Sheriff Office’s contribution to blight remediation.
Policing is integral to the blight effort, Lee said and Ivey has been a point man.
“Pat Ivey has worked diligently to take care of crime,” Lee said of 13th and Moncrief and surrounding areas. “People in the neighborhood have been bombarded with foolishness: drugs, kidnapping, breaking and entering, and thuggery.”
Ivey talked of the proximate causes of crime, which include vacant properties.
“Dopers, both users and sellers, hang out,” he said. “They stand on the porch and do their thing.”
They are aided and abetted by “slumlord scenarios,” including “management companies outside of Jacksonville.”
One remedy: JSO-approved, enforceable “No Loitering” signs.
Ivey also spoke of crime hotspots. A fun fact: Local Walmarts have two of the five top locations in the country for shoplifting.
Beyond the five-finger discount, Ivey addresses how stats can be deceiving. Apartment complexes, such as the Section 8 project Eureka Gardens, have crime rates boosted by a high concentration of people.
Of a proposed resolution to push for HUD to defund Eureka Gardens — which could be extended to other, similarly blighted complexes where willful neglect and crime predominate, Lee dismissed the “naysayers.”
“People live in these communities. At the end of the day, we’ve got to take measures … and deal with these criminals right now.”
“We can’t be gun shy,” she said.
As one person in attendance said, the Blight Committee takes pieces of information as spokes in a hub, and creates a larger policy that amounts to “triage” for the areas that need it most.
