Tamaqua has done “all it can” to deal with a blighted property at 205 W. Broad St., the former Mitchell Furniture Building, said borough council President Micah Gursky.

Tamaqua has done “all it can” to deal with a blighted property at 205 W. Broad St., the former Mitchell Furniture Building, said borough council President Micah Gursky.

In order for the borough to take further action against the property owner, the state legislature must pass Senate Bill 1291, the Neighborhood Blight Reclamation and Revitalization Act, Gursky testified Tuesday at a public hearing on the bill at Schuylkill County Courthouse.

“What happens if this property owner skips town or stays in New Jersey, where he resides? Senate Bill 1291 will allow Tamaqua to bring him back to Pennsylvania to face citations,” Gursky said.

The building’s owner, Tadeusz A. Skwarek, Lawrence Township, Mercer County, N.J., said Tuesday he didn’t like being used as an example. He called it “harassment.”

“Everything I said was true. I was just trying to give a present day, real world example of these issues,” Gursky said.

Describing 205 W. Broad St., Gursky testified the front windows were broken, and the upper-floor, exterior, concrete window sills had to be propped up to prevent them from crashing to the sidewalk.

“I’m fixing it up. I’m replacing all the front windows and making other repairs to the building. I just use it for storage. I’m going to move the stuff out and I’m going to sell it, as soon as I get it cleaned out. I got it up for sale now, if anybody’s interested,” Skwarek said in a phone interview Tuesday afternoon.

In June, Magisterial District Judge Stephen J. Bayer, Tamaqua, sentenced Skwarek to six days in jail for ignoring code violations on the building. That sentence was scheduled to begin later this week, but Skwarek appealed the decision, according to Gursky and Tamaqua Code Enforcement Office Jim Barron.

There are an estimated 300,000 blighted, abandoned buildings in Pennsylvania, according to a 2004 study conducted by The Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. Jeffrey A. Feeser, director of housing and community development for Schuylkill Community Action, said he doesn’t have concrete numbers for Schuylkill County, but believes there are “several thousand.”

Despite this, municipalities don’t have laws strong enough to stop the spread of urban blight, said Gursky and others who took the stand.

“It’s one of the most serious issues facing our area,” said Sen. James J. Rhoades, R-29, Mahanoy City, who conducted the hearing along with Sen. John Pippy, R-37, Allegheny County, Sen. Pat Browne, R-16, Allentown, and Greg Mahon, executive director of the Senate Urban Affairs and Housing Committee, Harrisburg.

This was the second public hearing the committee has so far scheduled to gather public input on Senate Bill 1291 before it goes to the state House and Senate for a vote, according to Mary Beth Dougherty, Rhoades’ administrative assistant.

Meanwhile, the House has developed an identical bill, House Bill 2445, according to the Pennsylvania General Assembly Web site.

The House and Senate proposals include:

• Requiring the owners of properties with serious code violations to bring them into compliance before those individuals can obtain any local or state permits for any other property in the state.

• Requiring property owners with blighted conditions to pay local costs of demolition by giving the municipality legal authority to pursue a property owner’s financial assets.

• Clarifying who owns properties if they are in corporate ownership.

• Requiring mortgage lenders to maintain properties, to prevent properties from becoming blighted.

• Creating a state database offering information about offenders.

“This database can be used to demonstrate a history of violations, where now the only way for a municipality to show that an owner has a history of not correcting violations is to wait until it happens in that particular community,” Gursky said.

Local representatives who also provided testimony at Tuesday’s hearing at the courthouse included Pottsville Mayor John D.W. Reiley and Michael McGeever, Schuylkill Community Action Elm Street manager.

McGeever said if this bill becomes law, it can help the City of Pottsville deal with 11

E. Norwegian St., a vacant three-story building in a state of advanced deterioration.

“Blight seems to have more of an impact on smaller communities, probably because it is more noticeable more quickly. All you have to do is look out of the courthouse window at properties on the 400 block of Laurel Boulevard. I know because I live there,” McGeever said.

Two properties on that block are vacant and falling apart, McGeever said.

The Schuylkill County Tax Claim Bureau has an inventory of about 1,300 properties sold at sheriff’s sale for unpaid taxes, and an additional 250 to 300 properties are sold at sheriff’s sale for unpaid taxes each year.

“It’s fair to assume that a majority of these properties offered for tax sale are blighted,” Feeser said. But while he had no statistics, he believed there were more blighted properties in the county than that.

INFO BOX

Neighborhood Blight Reclamation & Revitalization Act

If Senate Bill 1291 and House Bill 2445, which propose to create this act, are passed, they will:

• Require property owners to bring properties with serious code violations into compliance before they can obtain any local or state permits for any other property in the state.
• Require property owners with blighted conditions to pay local costs of demolition, by giving the municipality legal authority to pursue the property owner’s financial assets.
• Clarify who owns properties if they are in corporate ownership.
• Require mortgage lenders to maintain properties, to prevent properties from becoming blighted.
• Educate the state’s judiciary about the economic crime which blight represents.
• Give redevelopment authorities more ability to assist municipalities with blight remediation.
• Create a state database offering information about offenders.
  

Schuylkill hearing focuses on state blight bill

Proposal would let municipalities force property owners to make repairs.

Municipalities throughout the state may be able to act more quickly and effectively against owners of dilapidated properties under a state Senate bill slated for a vote this fall, officials said Tuesday at a hearing in Schuylkill County.

The Neighborhood Blight Reclamation and Revitalization Act would let municipalities force owners of blighted properties to bring them up to code and, if municipalities must do the work themselves, would allow them to pursue reimbursement from the owners' financial assets.

''You see a trend -- a lack of effort in upkeep,'' said state Sen. John Pippy, chairman of the Urban Affairs and Housing Committee, which held the hearing. ''We're usually talking about vacant properties. These aren't people who are living in their homes and just aren't taking care of them.''

Jeri Stumpf of the state chapter of the American Planning Association, which was invited to testify on the bill, said blight is an ''economic crime.''

''That's something most people don't get,'' Stumpf said. ''If I go down the street and rob a bank, I go to jail. If I'm an investor and milk all the equity out of a property and take taxpayer money, isn't that a crime? Slumlords created these conditions. Let them clean it up -- not the taxpayers.''

The bill also got support from the state Housing and Finance Agency, League of Cities and Municipalities, and Association of Boroughs, as well as Schuylkill Community Action.

Tamaqua Borough Councilman Micah Gursky said that in the past 10 years, Tamaqua has spent more than $373,000 demolishing 30 blighted properties, not including the cost of legal fees, borough employees' work and unpaid taxes, water, sewer or refuse bills.

Lebanon Mayor Robert Anspach said his borough spends $400,000 to $500,000 a year to demolish blighted properties. He said blighted row homes are a big problem and have an impact on connecting buildings, which require thousands of dollars in support and foundation repair during and after demolition.

Officials said state regulations punish slumlords by imposing fines or jail sentences through a district magistrate, but often those penalties aren't enough.

''It's not that things aren't being done,'' said Sen. James Rhoades, R-Schuylkill, who co-moderated the event with Pippy. ''It's the amount of hurdles you have to go through, the amount of paperwork.''

Gursky cited a property owner who was jailed and fined more than $10,000 for a dilapidated building just three blocks from a thriving pub he owns.

The new bill also would create a statewide database of repeat offenders and tie an individual's assets together to force them to make repairs by withholding permits, such as liquor license renewals for the pub in the example Gursky provided. Rhoades said it even may be possible to tie assets together across state lines.

Members of the Pennsylvania Bankers Association said they oppose parts of the bill, including one that would require mortgage lenders -- usually banks -- to maintain foreclosed properties they financed until new owners are available.

To view the online articles, please click on the following links.

The Republican Herald

The Morning Call

About Safeguard
Safeguard Properties is the largest privately held field services company in the country. Located in Cleveland, Ohio and founded in 1990 by Robert Klein, Safeguard has grown from a regional preservation company with a few employees and a handful of contractors performing services in the Midwest, to a national company with over 500 employees. Safeguard is supported by a nationwide network of subcontractors able to perform any requested superintendence, preservation, and maintenance functions, as well as numerous ancillary services in the U.S., the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico.