Sometimes a person just has to stand up for what they believe is the right thing to do. In the case of the City Council meeting tomorrow to discuss requiring all landlords to register and pay a $50 per year partnering fee to the City I believe the City would be overstepping their authority to require this. It is bad enough to cause chaos in the business community by playing favorites in the hospitality, retail, and restaurant business as is being pushed with the hotel but this landlord thing is too much.
As a City Councilman, I am in strong support of less crime and safe neighborhoods but have yet to see a case where a local or even the federal government has ever made things better by meddling around in housing. Just here in Evansville the Front Door Pride program overspent and underperformed while the old safe house project found a way to spend $240,000 on apartments that could have been bought from a real estate broker for $20,000. It just doesn’t make sense to force the nonsense of government onto Evansville landlords.
City government has some jobs it has been hired by the voters to do. These are to provide fire and police protection, maintain the roads, parks, and sewers, and enforce existing codes. Evansville does enjoy excellent fire and police protection but the other areas are performing well below what is acceptable. What the heck can a government that can’t mow the grass and fill potholes add to the rental property owners?
An annual tax on each rental property of $50 will just be passed on to the already struggling renters. If the City knows so much and this program is so good they should just do it for free. Some parts of Evansville do have blight and crime. Forcing landlords to fork $50 over to the City will not change that one bit. I know because I myself am a landlord and have experience with both good and bad tenants. The City has not been very helpful to me as a landlord and $50 a year will not make that any better.
I have only been a member of the City Council for a little over a year. During that year I have seen too many things to make me shake my head in disbelief. This one takes the cake. My intention is to vote NO on this resolution and encourage my fellow members of the City Council to do the same. It is time we learned to do our job as custodians of the City of Evansville and let others alone to do their jobs.
Al Lindsey, City Councilman 6th Ward
Agree completely Al, this is bad policy !
At the risk of tainting Mr. Lindsay with my support, this is an excellent statement of principle. This is what real leaders do.
The people supporting this are doing it on principle too. Because, like you said, that’s what leaders do.
I don’t disagree with that, but your principle is statism, which is the archenemy of freedom. Yours is a dangerous principle with a slippery slope to fascism because you trust in the use of government coercion and force over free markets and volunteerism.
With all due respect, I have zero respect for your “principle”. It’s wholly unamerican.
Mr. Lindsay speaks logically and with the “man of the street” point of view. I continue to be more and more impressed with him. I believe his opinions and ideas are spoken without the caveat of fear of not being reelected to the City Council. As far as I’m concerned, he is one of the (very) few on the Council that I would support. He is, indeed, a real leader.
The license fee is not on each rental property. It is on each owner. That means even if you own 30 properties, you still only pay a total of $50. Would you really raise your rent on all of your properties to cover this fee? How much more money would that make for you? Then you portay the renter as “the victim” of this ordinance?
Yes, there are codes and laws and rules. Mr Lindsay, have you ever been tasked with locating any of these property owners under the current system? While you are a local landlord, many are not. Many change ownership on a regular basis. This ordinance is based on the taxpaying, home owning, yard mowing, and law abiding people that are tired of their neighborhoods being run down by lanlords that care about money more than being a good neighbor. The less money that goes into the property, the more money that stays in their pocket. Are you a good landlord? I have not heard anything that says you are not. But there are enough that are not that the neighborhoods have come together to say enough is enough.
There are numerous businesses that pay a fee to the city to have a license. This is no different.
You sure do fat-finger a lot of words. Oh crap…did I just reveal who you are?
Haha!
A person with fat fingers?
Al Lindsey consistently makes the correct decisions and represented the taxpayers well. Kudos to Mr. Lindsey.
Now I finally understand why Missy Mosby and John Boy Weaver wanted Al Linsey kicked off City Council. They understood he has a common voice for common people. That they shall never have.
Al makes me proud I voted for him.
Robinson. Weaver. Mosby. Winnecke. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Now I can understand why they were all hand in hand and arm and arm together in the 2011 mayoral run. They don’t care about the little guy.
McGinn. Davis. Adams. Lindsey. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. They CARE about the little guy!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Little Al is smarter than he looks
You are sure right. He’s doing a heck of a job.
Maybe you should have met with  Mr. Ziemer or done your homework prior to your letter so you could have learned what the ordinance contained.  The $50 is a registration for the owner not a charge  per unit.  I understand you don’t like paying $50 because you think it will hurt both tenants and landlords and is meddlesome in the private business sector.  I wish you had considered that about the small tavern owners when you voted for the smoking ordinance.
That is very true. When some of you quit patting Al on the back drive out to the Westside, find a little bar and tell the bar owner about Al Lindsey’s principles and see what it feels like to be thrown into the middle of Fulton Avenue or Oregon Street.
Since Al Lindsey is a landlord, it would be a conflict of interest for him to vote on this.
If he has really has ethics and cares about the little man, he will do the right thing and abstain.
A lot of landlords don’t spend $50 on the upkeep of their rental property the entire time they own it so I am sure this is a foreign concept to them. The concept of contributing.
It will still be $50 less in the mix of things. And when we are talking about a family member renting to another family member here in Evansville, you only hurt the family in the middle of all this. I might be inclined to be in favor of this type of ordinance, if the ordinance were actually targeting professional landlords of neglect who own multiple properties. There are too many families in Evansville that will become the collateral damage of this ordinance, if it passes.
A landlord only pays $50; no matter how much rental property he has. So, how can the tenant become collateral damage?
Do the math. Roughly, if you have a 100 unit apartment complex and you charge $500 a month for rent, you would be taking in $50,000 a month x 12 months would equal $600,000. So, explain how that $50 is going to hurt this landlord. For a year that would be 50 cents an apartment.
That’s not considering that it might be a one time fee.
Lets see. Do Linsey, Robinson, Weaver and Friend all have rental property?
If so, do they all have comflict of interest and shouldn’t vote on this ordinance?
And I would suppose that since Al Lindsey is a fireman…that you think there is a conflict of interest if he were to vote on any Fire Department related issues too eh?
The legislature passed legislation that starting in 2016, one can not be a fireman or a policeman and sit on a city council because it is a conflict of interest. So, Al will have to retire from one or the other in 2016.
No one should abstain. They have a duty to vote this nonsense down in representation of their constituents.
Problem properties are not a problem for Al because when things get bad at his apartment in the city, he just heads to his house in the county.
Sounds like a true Mosby lover. Hopefully the next ordinance will be a stalking permit ordinance and then you and your friends can stalk Lindsey legally.
So very proud of you Councilman Lindsay-Evansville needs leaders like you, we are glad you’re on our side.
From what I read, it asks that current owner and contact information is on file with the city for city departments, such as the FIRE DEPARTMENT, can contact the property owner! Is that too much to ask? From what I read on another story on this great site, the fee has been reduced to $10 per property owner, not unit. This will not fix all the problems in Evansville, but it may assist in preventing many more. In my opinion, if a Council Member (and I don’t know if any do or not) has rental property, they should astain from this vote. <<<< It is my opinion, so please don't execute me for it!!
dork
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