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OPINIONS
Editorial: City should use new powers to bring down bad buildings
The Huntington City Council is moving closer to speeding up the process for removing dilapidated and dangerous structures from the city. It doesn't have more money available for the work, but it is working on ways to speed up the process of actually removing buildings that should have been demolished long ago.
Monday night, the council gave the first of two required readings to an ordinance entering into a contract with R&B Tassen Construction of Huntington to demolish buildings at a base price of $2.75 per square foot. If the council approves the ordinance, the city can use R&B Tassen for all its demolition needs over the next 12 months. That would eliminate the current process of seeking bids and approving a contract for every building that needs to be demolished.
The second reading is scheduled for the next council meeting, on Sept. 8.
The city has $314,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds to use for demolition. If City Council approves the contract, R&B Tassen will immediately tear down 11 dilapidated properties. They include 739 7th St.; 515-21 West 6th St.; 516-22 West 6th St.; 1259 Jefferson Ave.; 228 Buffington St.; 4440 Piedmont Road; 1033 28th St.; 1508 9th Ave.; 1507 9th Ave.; 1679 11th Ave.; and the garage at 103 Oakland Ave.
Those properties are among 100 on the city's demolition list. A few have been on the list for more than three years.
Three years. That's a long time for an unsightly building to exist in a neighborhood of homes and businesses. Long-vacant buildings create problems, and the council should do what it needs to do to accelerate the process of bringing those buildings down.
The contract under review would remove 11 of 100 buildings. That's a nine-year backlog, and more buildings are added every year.
City government has two more tools at its disposal to speed up the demolition process, but it has not used them yet. Those tools are in the home-rule powers the city has received from the Legislature.
One is the power to establish escrow accounts for payouts from fire insurance policies.
Too many absentee landlords or resident property owners take the insurance money and let their gutted properties sit unrepaired. By requiring that a certain percentage of all fire insurance proceeds go into an escrow account for the repair of properties damaged by fire, the city forces property owners to use insurance money for either repair or demolition.
The other is a land bank. By smoothing the process for the city to take control of abandoned properties, neighborhoods could be rid of bad buildings, and the lots could be returned to productive use.
The window for implementing the city's new powers under home rule is five years. In truth, it's closer to four years, because state officials will review the city's progress a year before the five-year home rule trial ends.
So far, neither the mayor nor the City Council has offered proposals for public review on either the insurance escrow accounts or the land bank. Time is running out. Every year brings more buildings that need to come down.
This should not wait until after the election in November. This needs to be acted on long before then.
Changing the way contractors are hired to demolish dilapidated buildings is a good start, but it's only a start. City officials -- and candidates for office in November, too -- should offer their proposals on the other items as soon as possible.
