Commissioner Starkey demolition backlog
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
It is a stretch of the recording that this archive identified as a separate matter — a call to order, a recess, or something taken up that the agenda does not list. There is no official title, no staff recommendation and no disposition, because the county never recorded one. Everything below is inferred.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Oct 20, 2020
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, Oct 20, 2020
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 35m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 83% of 157 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
That does it for our regular agenda. We will move to old business. We're gonna start with Commissioner Oakley. Sir, do you have anything today? Okay.
I uh don't have anything to bring up today, so I'll save you some time.
Thank you for your service.
Mm-hmm.
Commissioner Starkey.
I do, but it involves Christie Sims, so I need to wait until she's uh here in the room.
I think we suggested she'd be here at two. I thought she was gonna be here for that first First yeah. Oh she was when I was in the back?
Yeah.
Um so I was on the phone with a constituent. That has to do with the reason why she was gonna be here. So um I'll just wait. There she is. There she is. Okay, cool. And I'm I'm glad that our Aka is here as well. And um you're about to get a hard copy of an email that I I received that kinda goes to this this same issue. So um I think I'm gonna read you this email and um Uh this is from one of my constituents and one of your constituents that lives in Tah, uh Tahitian.
Gardens or whatever. It says um On August twenty-fourth, I called the billing department and spoke to Marty regarding three three two one Cincinnati Drive Holiday, Florida. This property has been vacant for over a year. There was a massive fire there. There was a car that caught on fire too in the garage. Everything is charred and burned terribly. Visible from just riding by, chunks of burned debris of of the ceilings and walls are just hanging and dangling. There
are rats running everywhere, and there are little children playing nearby. Very scary. It's totally unsafe and a grave ice rower to our neighborhood. I explained this all to a Mariano. On 8420 and was given code CE code number 20-00-8751. Then I called again as per instructed on 922-20, gave the same above complaint, and got CE code. Number twenty-one zero I mean zero one zero four two
three. Then on nine twenty-three twenty, Mr. Core called me back and said that the above building has been in the dem demolition. but that the department ran out of money to hire contractors. So on ten sixteen twenty, I called and spoke to Kathy, who gave me your email address. She looked up the code numbers that I was given and both numbers are closed. What does that mean? I'd like to know that too. My concerns as a retired RN One of one of the directors on the board on Tat and
a concerned resident in my neighborhood is that this is that this neglected property is extremely dangerous with rat infestation and dangling burned and charred particles that a child could get seriously injured. I hope this matter gets addressed with significant positive results. Thank you in advance. And then this person. I've received many emails similar to this and I brought up to you all the challenges, especially in my district, of the lack of code enforcement. This is health
this is a health issue here. This this is just not accessible to me. But I want um Christy to fill you in on what's going on with our demolitions and give you some numbers. And I have them, Christy, if you don't have 'em because I I don't know how you can see it on that little thing. I got my big thing here. So um but floor is yours, Christy. Please help.
So I um Keith Mead, our demolition manager, should be joining me. We I had told him to be Here. Come on.
So with res this the Zodiac property. No,
this is a different one.
A different
one. This is a different one. What was the name
that they were reading?
Um this is in in tat. Um I have the address. I I switched it to you. So but we one of you guys just got a hard copy, so the address is on there if you wanna
let me stay on the surface of this because we've had as you said, a similar issue on uh from a citizen last week on Zodiac. Yeah. So my response to the citizen um was instead of her continuing to call because what she was calling about had been Um the determination to that it should be demolished or met the criteria for demolition had been made in May and nothing really had happened and she was asking about
timetables. And my response to her is probably going to be the same with respect to any property that comes up. Um and I think this was new information to Commissioner Starkey that the rest of the board may be may need to know as well. Um The Um as you know, um starting last September, um building and construction services who had been handling demolitions
and community development before then All of the demos were moved under the HRE task force umbrella. And um I'll start with the good news first. Um This board uh um Um Allocated significant general funds and since During fiscal year 2020, more than 130 structures were taken down. Um
taken down or taken down. Taken down are eradicated. Um almost forty percent of the more than 130. Mm almost 40% of those were taken down by the owners, not at county expense. So Having become a Somewhat of a victim of our own success. Um we're getting more and more um requests to look at at properties. We're
identifying um Mr. Mead and the one building investigator working under him.
Oh okay. Are getting more and more requests. However We want you to understand um one thing which I probably wasn't fully aware of the ramifications of when the HRE team kinda took over uh this duty um which was there was two hundred case backlog um that had built up over the years. So Mr. Mead and his um investigator
and he also supervises the one person who does all the clerical work as far as ordering um property information reports, what used to be known as OEs, um sending out notices to demolish, etc. Um They have had to take that backlog and try to prioritize the backlog as well as trying to keep up with what is coming in. And um we've identified um Tiffany gave me buzzwords,
Tiffany Payloff, the HRE coordinator, she gave me some buzzwords that um to use. That we have been
You're not supposed to identify.
Y'all know me. This I I don't use words like we're constantly assessing program metrics, but we are, I promise. I'm not good at buzzwords, though. We we actually have a coordinator that is actively assessing program metrics and trying to identify Okay. pro areas for improvement in the process. Um So To make a long story short, we we've known we're running behind, we're behind the eight
ball, we started off behind the eight ball, the eight ball keeps getting bigger, we're chasing it, we're chasing it. Um I'll let Keith talk to you about some of that. But here are some of the revenue neutral um process improvements that we have uh identified to try to start chipping away more quickly at this back backlog. Um the first thing is we have are out for rebid on the demo contractor um vendor
uh contract. And the intention is to get more than one. So we would have maybe one contractor working on the east side and one working on the west. That way we could be taking down houses in more than one location at a time. There's only so much capacity one vendor contractor can do. I mean, he can only take down one house at a time. So we intend to engage more than one Demo
contractor. We um What's the timeline on that? I believe that we should have it I think it's going out for bid this month. So I I would think by December we should I'm purchasing person, somebody stopped me if I misspeak, but I would think that by December we should have another one engaged, as well as our current one as To keep on working. Um
Commissioner Weightman wanna jump in too.
Yeah, if I could uh the contract that we had over in Gulf Islands on Scallop Drive, Uh that guy did a phenomenal job and did it fast.
That's TNT and they have been extremely, extremely responsive um and helped us um organize the program from their perspective as well. And certainly we hope that they will continue to be a ven uh uh one of at least one of the vendors. We've talked to them about imp increasing their capacity. Um there's certain things that they could do, but they would need
You know, a commitment and a contract in order to expand their business to handle more business from us.
So I would say if we need to do that, let's go lay out the groundwork for that as well. Because we and we do and we do not want to slow those guys down at all.
Right. So we're talking about either increasing the capacity of our current one or and or engaging. More than one. And we have we could p back off the state's demo contract, but as you said, we're ver working very well with TNT. So that's one is increase the capacity of our of our ability to take them down. Number two is We've had
some um I'll say challenges. Um with the O and E vendor. So we need to have more than one of those. We n we need to have multiple people. O and E? um order ordering property and information reports before we can send out after Keith's team and Keith Keith ultimately makes the determination that something meets the criteria, then we have to get a property information report to find out who were all the people that have an ownership or interest in this so we can give them
notice to take it down. or appeal or we'll take it down. Those are the three options. Um So that is also in the process of being reworked and rebid um and I d I'm not sure um what the timetable for that is, but in the meantime, um We have plenty backed up that we already have orders on. Um I
would imagine again by the end of the year that we can get an O and E vendor, Jeff. Do you think that's reasonable?
Yes.
Okay. So
the issue with the ONE vendor is that in twenty seventeen the legislature decided to change The law And They allowed people other than lawyers. And title companies to issue these property information reports. As part of that, they basically have said. that the liability for issuing those property information reports is limited to the price you pay for them. So it
becomes a liability issue Um if you're not sure that the vendor is providing you with everybody in the title chain. Your only liability is the hundred and seventy five dollars that you paid. For a title report, not the larger number of the house that you've taken down. And so that's we're trying to work through that change in law since our contract just has expired.
Okay.
Um so in addition to uh the um another or more demo Demos going on at the same time, more O and E reports going on at the same time. Um, we've also identified a way to really double Keith's capacity. He can't go and look at every house. I mean, they just stickered three this morning that meet the criteria. Um So he
has a building inspector, Sam Lackey, who works under his direct supervision. Another member of the HRE team, Paul Sallitz, we've determined meets the experience criteria to take the test to get his building inspector license. And I spoke with Paula and Esther about um you know, getting his application together once he becomes a building inspector, that essentially doubles Keith's capacity
for They go out and do the initial determination, make take photographs, Keith reviews them, he signs off on them. So that will double our ability to do determinations. Um and then Paul right now is the um dedicated Officer from Code Compliance to Um the HRE team and we would backfill as needed. Um there's a couple of pure code, um, high return task force uh
um projects that we would like to do, the first of which is to send out demand letters to all these yards that we've paid to have mowed over the past however many years. and start demanding that they pay off those liens. But I I've spoken with the management down and code. They've always been very generous in temporarily loaning, you know, some of their personnel. We will assess whether our current clerical person,
Jen Gardner, that uh is um Processing all of these needs more clerical help and if so, we'll ask. It you know, for somebody to be temporarily detached to help Jen process the paperwork for these demolitions. But I think that only through Um you know, getting more capacity for our demo contractor, faster O and E's and
um additional assistance for Keith to have somebody to lay eyes on the ones that keep rolling in. And keep in mind, Keith and his team not only not only do they go out and look at them in the beginning, then they have to go out and they have to assess the property before our demo contractor can take it. They have to make sure that the electricity is turned off, identify where the sewer is, see if there's asbestos, and then after After it's demolished, then they have
to go back and make sure that everything was cleared and etc.
But we're certainly not Suggesting we throw more money at the problem. We're looking at ways to force multiply what we have, get some more vendors on board to spend what's been allocated. More quickly. And if we need to, as far as the clerical aspects of it, we will you know, asked to borrow some clerical personnel. You know, hey, can we have someone for two months to help
us run through all of these notices? Um But I think the key is going to be um getting another licensed building inspector and we we've identified that person, he's already on the team. He just needs to take the test and um
I I will also say that another part of this that citizens have been asking about is what happens after we clear it. And um I spoke with Mr. Wiles about this earlier this year and said, hey, we have an irresponsible property owner, for example, that's let something sit there for 10 years. um and now they're gonna let a vacant lot sit there for ten years and it's gonna become a dumping ground, et cetera, et cetera. He suggested
that um community development hire uh um a program What's that? program coordinator to because the The answer to that is different in every question. We took down four we cleared a four Four parcel area in the middle of a neighborhood, and that neighborhood, for example, wants to turn it into a community garden or a passive recreational space.
Sometimes the adjacent property owner may want the property. We don't want to take ownership of all these properties. We can't afford to maintain and own all of these random properties everywhere. But the answer may be for um us to assist in getting it into the hands of a nonprofit like pr like Habitat for Humanity that will Rebuild with a responsible owner and put it back on the tax rolls. So community
development is working on the back end part of it. I'm just letting y'all know that we know about the backlog. We are actively brainstorming how to address the backlog. And we certainly appreciate the support for the program and it's absolutely paid off. Um no time in the history of this county have we taken down a hundred and thirty structures in a year, not even close.
So Christy, do you have any idea um how many lots we have um in our possession? Or I guess that's two two levels to that question. Some we own now I guess and some We should own because they're derelict lots.
We don't own them. Okay. Um I I mean we might own one of them. I think we own one. And it hasn't been a pretty process. Um Uh all of the other ones are in the hands of, I would say, Uh of the ones that we've taken down, half of them I would say are investors that will by their own nature. because it's an investment, replace the
structure. The other half are sitting. Um and something needs to be done with it. But that's that's my intuition. I haven't looked into that exact number or question. I can have them as payload. Pull those numbers for you as far as what's vacant and and that sort of thing.
So if we were the ones to take down a structure, then we must have a lien on that property. So we could for enforce some kind of action on those, either get our money back, right? I mean what what are the steps where we could get some action going?
You'd have to go through former f formal foreclosure of your lien.
Yeah, so what why would we not want to do that and help move the neighborhood forward?
We we did that on one, sort of as a test case. Um it took a Full year and that was before the court slowed down in COVID. And now we own it and it's a problem. And we keep having to send public works out there to clean it up, et cetera, et cetera. We had to do an eviction for people that wouldn't leave. Um it it took a lot longer and and I I'm treading sort of on Kathy's area here because Yeah. They've
been assigned a brain child Is that a legitimate, you know, thing? And we may wish to do that in some cases. In other cases where there's mortgage holders, our lien's just gonna end up being foreclosed or lost. Uh
but
can't we force
something to start happening? On our I mean even if we're not the only ones that are owed money on the lot. Well, and
respectfully, I'd like to punt on that. I'd like to talk to um our program coordinator and see what they've been thinking about and come back to you and tell you the answer to that. I really I have the information and the answers for you. I don't want to give you bad information. I'm I'm thinking this is a What we're doing on the backlog. Um But I I just simply don't know w where they are in the process. She's new.
Um i we've thought about it, I can assure you that. We've taken steps to you know, hire somebody to come up with the solution to this problem that we foresee, um, because the more we take down, the more empty lots we're going to have. Um And so we've been proactive in addressing that as far as where exactly we are in the process and whether there's multiple answers to
what we do, which I'm sure there is, um, and how we go about that, I don't know. So
I have one more question. I think Commissioner Mariano's looking like he's has questions, but um two two comments. One, I remember when we had George here and the banks were giving um vacant properties to the county. uh on vacant houses. Uh they would give them to us and we would give them to George who would kind of get them out to the nonprofits to rehabilitate and get people in with a special program. And um so may you know, I don't know if that's still out there or not. Um but as far
as the houses that are slated to be demolished, is there a for example this one is a burned structure that's dangerous to the community? Is there a ranking system as far as um which demolitions need to occur first, even though you have 200?
Yeah, we have two hundred and to tell you the truth, usually on fires and I don't know when the fire occurred, but normally on fires we give them a little bit of time because there's usually insurance involved or settlements that need to be made before they can fix the house up. So we give them a little bit of time. We don't I don't know when the fire occurred and I just texted uh the admin girl Jen to see if there is a CD case on this one. I was just reading this in my office when I came in here. Um so I'm not 100% familiar with it. It doesn't ring a bell as far as us being out
there. And I'm not sure where she got her information as far as code enforcement saying that it was in demolition they ran out of money. I don't know where that came from.
Well she's you know, she's quoting names here.
So I think it's just
someone.
I think it's one of the code enforcement officers and we've spoken to them many, many times. It's like when it comes to demolition Direct them to us. We'll answer the questions on demolition. We don't need you giving them false information or telling them, you know, getting their hopes up, saying, Oh yeah, they're gonna be out here the next week to tear it down. They they should not be doing that.
Okay.
So and we we've We we work very closely with 'em because the majority of our referrals come from code enforcement. Um we some of them are are We see 'em ourselves, drive into one, we see another one, so we stop and do an investigation. But uh we we do work closely with 'em and I'll get to the bottom of this when find out where we're at.
You
know,
I have the Yesella reports here and there's seems like there should be a lot more information in here than there than there is. Um I have Both both numbers here. Uh oh actually it's a copy. I'll I'll only have one, one oh four two three. I don't have the report on the other one.
Well the the thing is code enforcement uses a different Acela than than we do.
What?
Yeah. So they have their own Acela program and we have our Acela program.
Okay.
So we can't see what they're doing and they can't see what we're doing.
I
agree a hundred percent.
Okay, yes. Um so I have one more question for you guys and that is the drug house behind Wa Wah, the the trailer that I went and visited that had all the garbage. Um
On Holiday Drive?
Yeah.
Yeah, we've been out there. I've actually been inside that structure. And yeah, you know, that was last year. And I know code enforcement with PSO was in there uh about a month ago. Um the the structure itself by definition of the ordinance does not meet the criteria for demolition. I mean I know there's lots of crime and lots of drugs. When I was out there last time with PSO, they arrested four people on site.
Yeah, so it's it's a travel trailer from nineteen sixty. Mm-hmm. So it's it's Sixty years old. It's not an it's not a mobile home. It's a tr it's a travel home.
Oh I I understand. We see we see them there all over the place.
And it's still habitable in good shape.
Yeah.
Yeah. And unfortunately I can't just say, okay, it's it's a crappy RV from nineteen sixty two. We should take it out. Because if they do appeal it Then I have to explain that to
So how many people can live in a you know one hundred square foot travel trailer from nineteen sixty?
Well by code. You're I think it's fifty square feet per occupant of a residential structure, so But but it's grandfathered from if it was put there in nineteen sixty two It follows the land development code and building code from nineteen sixty two.
This is where you'll find a lot of the folks who like to hang out at our bus stop there, that's still there. This is where they This is their other hangout place. That's where they live back there. Okay. I think there's other questions. Is anybody else and Commissioner Oakley?
Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman Mariano The financial capacity to go tear down more homes? Because you you say that there is a bunch more that you can take down if you had the funds?
Oh there's a lot like she said, we already have we have a backlog of over two hundred cases. This just this calendar year, not fiscal year, since January first, I think we're on case number one ninety right now that have met the determination for demolition.
So do you need the funding to be able to take them down by judging by the letter we saw on Cincinnati Drive? I mean,
that that let I I don't know
the new fiscal year just started and yes, there was funding allocated
A half million dollars was allocated for the program for fiscal year 21. And at this point, until we can increase our administrative And Dem actual demo capacity, that's all we can that's all we physically can do. Um we have maxed out as far as how many he can investigate, how many O and E's, you know, we
can order, absorb, do the clerical work on, and how many our demo contractor can take down. Now Certainly. as an attorney, um, I don't do math, but um
I've been warned by people who do that if I start getting close, if we start getting close to what the board has allocated in March or so, we will come back to you and say, hey, we've taken down this many, we've spent this much money, do you want us to Go do other things between now and the end of the fiscal year or do you want to allocate more money to the program? So at this point I don't think that y'all saying, hey, here's another two hundred
thousand dollars isn't going to move us forward because of these logistical
improvements that we are making.
Okay. Well I I think l logistically you've got a pretty good budget to start with. If you go through it and you need more, I think this board is going to say, come back and ask for more money. Uh next thing now, it's hard when you take down a house because now you've got an issue with what's left. And what's gonna happen to it? Talking about the one even on scallop drive. You got two hoes right beside it. They're afraid of just people just going in there. A matter of fact some of the old residents there are kind of dropping off trash. Had to pick them up the other day. Uh you gotta mow the grass, et cetera. So we want to go
turn those things back.
Right.
So If we're struggling getting those turned, then there's like I know there's plenty in Jasmine, I'm sure there's plenty in holiday, et cetera, empty lots sitting there that aren't doing the taxpayers any good, aren't doing the neighborhood any good. So I would love for us to go explore if there's not working with the banks, working with the nonprofits, working to say that we need e may may even e maybe may even need to put a special program together, something maybe we Work something with a tax break or something to get a new home put in there or something?
Yeah. We've we've done that. Um we anticipated the problem. Um Ms. Pearson's group with community development has hired a project coordinator who is studying the various options that we have for these properties. That's what I said that I can't tell you exactly where they are in that process, but that we already know that that has to be done. So
can I jump in real quick?
Let me let me just real quick, because this is really, really important obviously to a lot of people. So right now we're getting that thirty minutes on this one subject matter.
I still need a workshop.
So I think we need to either schedule an agenda item or a workshop or bring it into a workshop or an agenda item. I agree. Yep. 'Cause I I think we can Lily discuss this for two more hours. Which is fine. We need to do it. But this gives you
a Love Demolition.
So we'll talk it
all day on another day. Yes. Whenever you tell us to.
I think I think it also gives you guys time to prepare and you know have some some answers uh prepared for some of the questions that are being asked and continue to be asked. I will though I do want to give credit where credit's due. Um so if I'm not correct, the year before last we only probably demoed twenty or thirty homes and last year was upwards a hundred and thirty or more.
We're a victim of our success.
Right. So at the same time, congratulations and thank you to the teams for all your great efforts because You literally demoed five to seven times more last year or than we did previous years. Actually probably more than that. Maybe like more like eight or ten times more. So you guys everybody agree with us?
But I have one more question for Christy. Not not on that same subject, but it is Christy's world that I wanted to ask you. So uh and I'm getting these calls again, and so uh and there was a newspaper article about juries. So are we able to send code enforcement out now and tell them they can't have garbage piled up on their house and give them a citation?
So uh I know on the west side they have set their first final hearing date for December. Um so I would say yes that they could start writing citations. Um Hallelujah, yeah.
Good.
Yes. Okay. As to when the court will set them for hearing on the east side. I don't have that information right at my fingertips because I don't usually that's Patrick Moore handles the month to month citation stuff, but um Lat just last week we we got information that they had set on the west side a final hearing date in December. Okay.
So I think this is a really important issue and I'm I'm glad that we're gonna I think move this to a workshop to to B D.
Well that is an agenda item on one of your board meetings. Workshops logistically don't We don't have space social distance to do a workshop in the format you do a workshop. But I you know I want
to hear from the nonprofits and others on how and Kathy's department how this could all work together. Because it doesn't do any good. to take down a house in a neighborhood then becomes the place where everyone puts their l their washing machine and their sofa and all that stuff. And then as we've seen on some, they pitch their tents and they live on it. Then we have to get the sheriff in. So I think we have to have a comprehensive plan. Yeah,
I think it's a great idea. Great great Makes a hundred percent sense. So maybe if you want to work with Dan and his team to formulate that agenda item. We'll bring it back and then Soon.
Be happy to.
Thank you both for everything you do. Thank you all.
Thank you.
Commissioner Starkey, uh just spoke to my uh admin uh Jen and there is a C D case on this one. So it's just a matter of order and a property report and then Take it from there. So we're we're already aware of it. We've been out there.
Have some coordination between the two offices because when our constituents call and they're told it's closed, well they're you know there's the wrong
department. We need to straighten that out. There actually is a lot of coordination. It's just that all all um questions regarding the status of anything on demo needs we we have a dedicated email, demo contact.
I just mean uh the information. Should we have a little bit? Should be between
the case.
She spoke to the code enforcement case numbers. Those were closed up because it came to us and now it's a CD number. Yeah,
but there should be a message there.
But somebody in building gave her the wrong number so it was mis
It's a process. There's a step missing. I I will handle it. The processes. Processes. I
will
handle it. Thanks guys.
Great job. I didn't get to say this earlier, but Commissioner Weightman I thank you for your support, plain speaking. and um your respect that you've given not just to me but to my colleagues as well over the years. So I appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Feel the same about you.
Bye,