Council bill would get tough on landlords
Its fate is unlikely, given earlier efforts of the administration to crack down.
City Councilman Bobby Henon plans to haul allegedly negligent landlords into City Hall to answer for why they have let properties deteriorate, going so far as to single out eight people during Council's session Thursday.
If they refuse to agree to testify before Council, Henon said, he will subpoena them under a resolution he introduced in March to compel witnesses to come forward and provide documents.
"We need to start thinking about how and why our buildings fall into disarray, about why they become abandoned in the first place, about the way that we respond when the first call comes in from a resident about short-dumping, about a broken window, about trash on a lawn, and any other property-maintenance issue," Henon said Thursday. "These problems start small, but over time can morph into problems that have disastrous outcomes."
Henon named eight property owners whom he wants to testify: Drew and Blair Demarco, Martin J. Brennan, Anthony Cancelliere, Michael Mola, Wayne Brokes, Walter Ulatowski, and James Walsh. Together, the landlords own hundreds of properties, many in Henon's Sixth District in the Northeast.
Henon said he had received more than 50 calls about the properties.
He also introduced a bill that would establish a task force composed of several top city officials - including from the Police and Fire Departments, Licenses and Inspections, and eight others - who would make recommendations to the managing director on whether to target problematic properties. The task force would decide whether to designate a site a problem property once it racks up two or more violations in two years.
After being notified of such a designation, owners would have 14 days to remedy the situation or face fines of up to $2,000 a day.
Mayor Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, would not say whether the administration, which stepped up its own efforts to go after bad landlords last year, would support the proposal.
The bill's chance of passage was uncertain because as written, it could add significant responsibilities for some of the city's highest officials.
In other business, Council approved a resolution sponsored by Councilman Jim Kenney that called for hearings on the status of a 2009 franchise agreement between Verizon Communications Inc. and the city to bring the FiOS fiber-optic network to Philadelphia.
Kenney said sources had told him Verizon might not be building in low-income areas, as was stipulated in the agreement. Verizon denies that allegation.