The Revere City Council recently unanimously approved a new vacant property ordinance whereby the city will charge annual registration fees to the owners of empty commercial and residential buildings.

The following report in the Boston Globe discusses the parameters of the ordinance.

Vacant property to bring city fees
Effort to revive abandoned sites

Revere has devised a new tool to return vacant buildings to productive use.

Under a new ordinance proposed by Mayor Thomas G. Ambrosino and approved unanimously by the City Council last week, the city will charge annual registration fees to the owners of empty commercial and residential buildings.

"It's an effort to try to help us deal more effectively with abandoned properties," said Ambrosino, who modeled the ordinance on a similar measure in Wilmington, Del. "This is an effort to create an incentive for people to rehabilitate those properties."

In particular, it is intended, he said, to target properties that are vacant and boarded up but are otherwise not unkempt or in violation of city building and health codes. The city currently can take action against owners of properties that violate codes, but has few options when it comes to buildings that are simply boarded up.

"Like every other city our size, we have a handful of these properties, and they tend to detract from the aesthetic value of the neighborhoods and diminish property values," said Ambrosino, who is not aware of any other Massachusetts communities that have established such a fee.

The new ordinance, which took effect immediately, defines a vacant building as one in which no one is residing or no business is being conducted. Also meeting the definition are any buildings in which more than half of the exterior windows and doors are broken, boarded up, or without a functioning lock.

Within 45 days of a building becoming vacant, the owner is required to register it with the city's Department of Municipal Inspections. Then, by Nov. 15 of each year, the owner must pay a registration fee to cover the administrative cost of "monitoring and ensuring the property maintenance" of the building.

The fees escalate based on the amount of time the structure has been vacant, from $500 for properties that have been vacant for less than a year to $3,000 for those vacant for three years or more. Building owners have the right to appeal the fees to the Board of Health, but only based on the issue of whether the building is vacant and for how long. Those who don't register or pay their fees are subject to $300-per-day fines.

Ambrosino said it is possible that owners could challenge the ordinance in court by stating that the fee is an unconstitutional tax. Under the state constitution, cities and towns are not permitted to impose a tax outside of the property tax without authority from the Legislature, according to the mayor.

But the mayor said that is a risk worth taking. "I think we can justify the fee, based upon how much time and effort we generally apply to abandoned properties."

Ambrosino said he has no estimate of the revenue the city would generate from the program. "That is not the issue for us," he said. "It's a matter of trying to create a monetary incentive for people to do work on their properties."

Councilor at Large John R. Correggio believes the ordinance can do "a tremendous amount of good.

"We need to do something about these abandoned buildings," Correggio said, noting that he has first hand knowledge of the problem as a retired Revere fire lieutenant. "They are not only major safety hazards for children and residents in the area... but also, it's a major risk to firefighters to have to fight fires in these abandoned buildings."

John Rago, director of policy development and communications for Mayor James M. Baker of Wilmington, Del., said his city has had significant success with its vacant building ordinance.

Rago said the ordinance actually dates to the 1980s, when Baker put it through as City Council president. But it only began to have an impact when it was revised in 2003, after Baker became mayor, and the previous $25-a-year fee was replaced with an escalating annual charge based on how long properties have been vacant.

"The results have been really, really amazing," Rago said, noting that in the first three years of the revised program, the owners of vacant properties took out permits for approximately $30 million in renovations, and Wilmington saw a net reduction of about 300 in the number of vacant properties in the city. Today about 1,100 remain.

The Wilmington program already has withstood a legal challenge. According to Rago, Delaware's highest court ruled against a property owner who stated, "We didn't have any right to force him to fix up his property."

Rago said the US Conference of Mayors last year presented a "best practices" award to Wilmington for its program, which has drawn inquiries from many other cities.

Revere will begin assessing its registration fees this November.

"I'm very happy that the council was willing to go along with this," Ambrosino said, "and, hopefully, it will have some positive impact."

"It's a start," Correggio said. "Abandoned buildings are all over, not only in Revere, and we need to clamp down on these things.... Hopefully, other cities will follow what we have."

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