BLIGHT INITIATIVE STATEMENT BY BRINKERHOFF-RILEY

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As I told Dan and Conor, I support the blight initiative. However, the report is misleading at best. I collected the information from Central Dispatch, EPD and EFD. The data from EFD and EPD is sketchy. They just don’t track the time and manpower involved with runs. The EFD took their total budget and divided it by the number of runs to give us a per run number. Obviously those runs can really vary in time and manpower. EPD is the same way. Their per run number was low, but they have no idea of manpower and time involved.

Conor and John are right that there is not going to be 2 million that can be cut from the budget in funding this 2 million, and that won’t be the case for the foreseeable future. However, I think it’s important that these properties being auctioned by the County be caught and razed. They do tremendous damage to neighborhoods and quality of life. Over time, the Building Commission will stop chasing its tail and be able to engage in strategic code enforcement and razing. They will be able to use those tools to grow stable neighborhoods and stabilize declining neighborhoods. That will translate into investment and higher property values, which is critical to tax revenue down the road. There is also an intangible value to quality of life and safety. That too will help with population decline and suburban flight. The EPD and EFD will save resources and be able to focus on other initiatives. Over time, I think we would all like to see the need for these agencies diminished, but there are contractual issues that will have to be addressed down the line.

I will support Conor in the budget process. If it can’t come out of Riverboat funds, I understand. However, I would ask that the question be answered as to what the alternative is to this initiative. Kelley is wrong when he says this blight is finite. Over the next five years of tearing down existing blight, potentially hundreds more properties will fall into that state. If we are lucky, we can slow the trend by strategic use of code enforcement and razing and with the development of lots of affordable and market rate housing. Our blight is driven by vacancy, which is two-fold in economic issues and population decline. There are more answers that have to be found. But without this start, we cannot move to next layer of peeling the onion.

I am satisfied that the issue is part of budget discussions and will defer to the big picture of prioritizing our spending.

Sincerely

Stephine Brinkerhoff -Riley

3rd Ward City Council

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8 COMMENTS

  2. Here we go again. Riecken endorses the single biggest cause of the last recession; “affordable housing”. Sounds good, especially to low information voters, but in reality is successful only in garnering votes from those same voters.
    However, Riecken is on to something when she stresses code enforcement. All of these blighted homes contain multiple code violations. Why were they allowed to get to this point? I would add law enforcement, strong enough to enforce the “broken window theory”.

  3. Some of our elected officials support “a” blight plan. Those that support this blight plan are simply uninformed or have a hidden agenda in hiding the past sins of the Brownfields Corp. This current plan was not conceived with Evansville blight in mind. It was born out of the need to conceal the past performance of the DMD and their so called private Brownfields Corp.

    There are dozens of other initiatives that should take priority over another landing banking scheme.

    The idea that we have to have this land bank to stop the tax sale cycle of zombie houses is not true.

    Fund the historical demolition and open public discussion of of a real plan that will include bonding for a major initiative (just like the stadium, the hotel and the main street project) that addresses more than demolition and a not for profit public funded real estate venture called the brownfields corp.

    • Reading your uninformed blather gets old.

      There’s zero need for the EBC or DMD to conceal its past performance. If you haven’t noticed, the Mayor’s office is winning the PR war. HUD told the EBC some time ago to sell the properties bought with federal dollars and attached strings. There was no crime. The Courier ran a story and life went on. They can’t sell the properties because the land in that area is overvalued and they are too lazy or stupid to challenge the assessments- or worse, they like it because they can pretend like they’ve actually accomplished something.

      There’s been no real attempt to operate as a land bank in the past. Their budget has never been big enough to take that on, so they didn’t. Plus they largely serve an agenda that isn’t particularly good for anyone but themselves. Is the EBC a bunch of turds with two turds (Coures and Rusk) in charge? Absolutely. But guess what? Creating another nonprofit to do this work would include the same turds. Should they get 2 million dollars? Absolutely not. The recent shenanigans have proven that money to those two A holes would be money just as well spent by flushing it down the toilet.

      There has never been a land banking scheme in Evansville. Or any place else for that matter given current state law. And yes, we do need a vehicle to catch properties sold at auction- not tax sale. The County isn’t willing to hold them. They will auction them every year. Most of them uninhabitable. Why don’t you buy them all plus the lots and take care of them? There probably won’t be a new mayor in January and this is all really a pointless exercise until there’s actual leadership for the people.

      Whatever you mean by “fund the historical demolition” is about like your use of “land banking” and “zombie properties.” You obviously have no idea what the practitioner definitions are for those terms. Your ramblings are totally off base. Weinzapfel funded demolition at 1 million for a couple of years, but they couldn’t spend it all in a 12 month cycle due to the length of the process in getting raze orders. That administration never contemplated keeping blighted structures from being auctioned. The Winnecke administration has never funded more than 500k for demolition. That was the budget for 2013, 2014 and 2015. And of course they screw up spending it appropriately. That’s like saying it gets dark at night.

      There has been public discussion on blight since last Spring. I never saw you at any of the meetings. The City has no bonding capacity outside of a TIF zone. Maybe you missed the last few years of discussions on City finances. And once again, you have no idea what you are talking about in seeking another entity outside of a nonprofit as a land bank. Indiana law doesn’t allow a governmental or quasi governmental entity to land bank. But you don’t know what that term means anyway. We’re all fucked basically. I hope you are enjoying your 15 minutes of nothing in particular. This might have worked if the DMD or EBC were the slightest bit trustworthy.

  4. A basic structure fire in Evansville gets a response of 5 apparatus (typically a heavy rescue squad, 3 engine companies, a ladder, and a chief officer), for a total of 19 firefighters. These firefighters are already on salary (we get paid the same whether we’re working out, watching TV, cutting a person out of car or pulling somebody out of burning building), and the trucks are already paid for (or at least being leased to own). Accordingly, the ‘cost’ per run is rather fixed. It is a pretty simple division problem.

    What is NOT fixed is wear and tear on trucks and equipment (more runs = more opportunity for something expensive to break), wear and tear on firefighters (a single workman’s comp injury incurred at a fire can cost BIG money in treatment and sick time), and inherent danger in responding on public streets while running lights and sirens (this seems to bring out the stupid in many people, and is largely when accidents involving fire trucks occur).

    So, it stands to reason that fewer responses to abandoned structure fires will result in SOME kind of public safety savings as far as EFD is concerned, but the councilwoman is correct in stating that it would probably take some rather serious data mining to get a true cost.

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