Warren workshop planned

The committee would include city officials and landlords.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- To facilitate compromise, the discussion about how to reduce housing blight in the city will move to an informal workshop format, according to city Councilman James Pugh, known as "Doc," D-6th, chairman of council's health and welfare committee.
"We have a few bad tenants, and we have a few bad landlords," Pugh said after Thursday's 90-minute meeting of the health and welfare committee, which drew several dozen landlords. "Now we have to come up with some solution that's going to satisfy everybody," he added.
Pugh said he will soon assemble a committee of city officials, landlords, tenants and other interested parties for a workshop on housing blight issues.
The landlords, represented by the Trumbull County Real Estate Investors' Association, are opposed to an ordinance introduced last month that would raise annual permit fees for rental dwelling units from $18 to $96 to pay for additional health inspectors for the units.
Councilman Robert Holmes III, D-4th, initially proposed that inspections be conducted twice a year, but later modified his stance to say they should be at least once a year. The two inspectors now available are insufficient for some 8,000 rental units in the city, Holmes said.
Holmes and Councilman Gary Fonce, D-at large, proposed the workshop committee.
Time estimated
Robert Pinti, deputy city health commissioner, estimated inspection of each unit would take an average combined total of 1.2 staff hours for the inspection, record-keeping and any needed follow-up.
The landlords' association opposes the ordinance because it says the measure would impose unfair cost burdens on landlords and invade tenants' privacy.
Bill Kruppa, an association trustee, said he's eager to participate in the new committee's workshops, which he said should bring a wide range of issues to the table. "We cannot pass on [cost] increases to our tenants. Everybody in this area is tapped out," Kruppa said.
Among the blight-fighting proposals Kruppa said he'd like to see discussed are facilitating evictions of unsavory tenants, offering incentives for landlords to acquire and rehabilitate salvageable properties, increasing demolition where necessary, legislating against predatory lending, making financial institutions accountable for securing and maintaining properties they foreclose on, and bringing the city's police department up to its authorized strength.
William "Doug" Franklin, safety-service director, said establishing a city housing court is an idea that should be revisited in the workshops.