Many people have expressed to me today that I should be delighted that the city is finally cleaning up this mess. I am. I want to thank several councilors former and present who helped get this ball moving.
As you know I complained about this property over 10 years ago where I was reassured by then code enforcement manager, Matt Tobias, that they were moving ‘thru’ the courts on this property.
So if you do the math, that complaint would have originated well before 2017. According to Forum’s article this all started in 2017. So what happened to all the complaints and violations prior to 2017? Obviously thrown in the trash.
I have been researching different code enforcement cases and I have been finding an interesting trend. When management or officers leave code enforcement (especially management) past violations or cases they are working on disappear. The MX liquor property has been in disrepair for almost 20 years, so what happened to all the violations prior to 2017?
I know that the city hasn’t done anything until now because the owner of the property has skirted code enforcement for years! I think he still thinks all the properties were going to be saved. Even though the owner was noticed on September 30 he waited until the dump trucks showed up this morning to move his antique tractor collection from the building in which he moved to the backyard of one of his house properties (that will eventually get torn down to). This tells me the owner of the property has figured out how to skirt the city’s code enforcement office for years basically because they are incompetent and never thought they would show up this morning.
The good news is I won’t have to look at this property ever again and that Councilors Barranco and Sigette are actively working on making code enforcement better and more timely.
I also found it interesting that the city’s public works team is doing the demo. Obviously the property owner will have to pay for demo either directly or thru a lien on the property when it is sold but why is the city handling this and not a private contractor?