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Post by rodwilson on Sept 23, 2009 10:11:39 GMT -5
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Post by dgriffin on Sept 23, 2009 11:08:10 GMT -5
This brings back a memory of my father when he was a fire inspector for the UFD, a position he held for only a year, unable to endure the politics, graft and laziness he saw daily. (He went back to his former job of tillerman on the ladder truck at No. 2 before eventually leaving the fire service.) Even many years later, he could remember standing on a corner of Whitesboro St. watching a building burn where many people were killed. He and a fellow fireman had tried to have the owner cited some months before, but were consistently ignored and eventually threatened with internal discipline if they didn't keep quiet.
He told me the story of another slumlord with whom he refused to play ball. Nothing as tragic happened with his cold water flats, but his son grew up to become a mayor of Utica and that must say something.
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Post by fiona on Sept 23, 2009 12:22:51 GMT -5
The silent four. The deceased four. It's one for one now.
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Post by fiona on Sept 23, 2009 12:23:55 GMT -5
What mayor are you speaking of, dave? Give us the goods.
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Post by fiona on Sept 23, 2009 20:12:41 GMT -5
Read todays artical in the OD. Then tell me what you think. City hall must be a lunatic bin right about now.
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Post by dgriffin on Sept 23, 2009 23:18:28 GMT -5
Yes, it sounds like the buck might get worn out from being passed so much.
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Post by concerned on Sept 24, 2009 8:15:38 GMT -5
This certainly is sad. It seems that everyone dropped the ball on this one. Hoprfully there will be major lawsuits brought against the City including the Mayor, Common Council and Judge Eannace.
Another sad thing about this is that I bet all of the tenants in Klotz's apartments become homeless.
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Post by fiona on Sept 24, 2009 12:31:04 GMT -5
Here is my take on this mess: Being a social worker for many years I know about paper trails: ie: if you didn't write it, you didn't do it. So, Klotz is issued a 10 day notice by a judge. That is a fact. After that, the judge is not responsible and it his not his responsibility to see wether or not the order is enforced. The original order or a copy of it then goes back to the issuing office: In this case the Codes department. Someone there has to recieve it, sign for it, eyeball it and make sure it goes to the right place, person. That person, the reciever, then notes that the document is high priority: That person has two options: To act on it or to shelve it. Obviously, the latter. Then, Klotz, after not recieving a warrant in 10 days, decides to do nothing, because he is once again home free. This smells rotten to me. I want to know whose desk that peice of paper landed on and why they didn't act on it in a timley fashion. Who is in bed with who here? Slit open the underbelly of this beast and you'll find more than you need to know. The ultimate responsibility lies with the Mayor who is totally and absolutly responsible for the actions of his department heads. It is not the fire department, not the judge, but the Mayor and he should step up to the plate and be a man for once in his life, admit he was wrong, fire the head of codes, fire the person who was responsible for the documents not being acted upon, and then RESIGN. End of story.
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Post by Clipper on Sept 24, 2009 14:32:27 GMT -5
I have said in the past that the head of Codes in Utica NY should be a retired firefighter from out of town, hired through a "headhunter" and not related or known to anyone in the city.
If we want to do away with the slums and the slumlords, codes should be a priority. Codes employees should be hired in an adequate number to enforce the codes all over the city, and to bring those violators to justice.
People want to "take the city back". Well, it will cost money, and take time, but three occupations are necessary to make it happen. Codes, Police, and Firefighters.
If a rental property can 't be kept up to code, then it should be demolished, not allowed to skate by until someone dies. There is something wrong with the picture when a landlord can buy a two family house for 15K or so, and do nothing but rent it to social service recipients for a fairly high rent, and make back his investment in no time, with little work involved.
If it costs a landlord a little bit to keep his properties within codes, he may just elect not to buy these old homes and elect not to be in the slumlord business. The houses will either be fixed up by someone that cares, or they will decay and be torn down. The cycle has to stop somewhere. If there is no housing for welfare recipients in the city, they will simply have to move somewhere that DOES have housing.
It is not a new problem. Years ago when I was riding a Utica ambulance as an EMT, we responded to an apartment that was owned by Mose Goldbas, who used to own a lot of old apartment buildings in the city. The people were using a 5 gallon pail for a toilet and emptying it in their neighbor's toilet, and the toilet had been out of order for 2 months.
The fact that this landlord has a history of ignoring codes going back to Lyn Massachusetts, tells me that he is not only a greedy scumbag, but should be prosecuted as a criminal, as it was only a matter of time before someone died due to his ignorance.
The building on James St was a nice building back when Ben Julian owned it. His son (Tim's brother) did maintenance and repairs and the building was kept up to snuff.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2009 17:48:12 GMT -5
This certainly is sad. It seems that everyone dropped the ball on this one. Hoprfully there will be major lawsuits brought against the City including the Mayor, Common Council and Judge Eannace. Another sad thing about this is that I bet all of the tenants in Klotz's apartments become homeless. I don't mean to make light of this tragic story, but I think that the guy in question has a picture of someone screwing a goat. |
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Post by fiona on Sept 25, 2009 12:09:07 GMT -5
Screwing a goat? Klotz's reply: BAAAAAAAAAAA! BAAAAAAAAAAA! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Anybody got a cigarette?
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Post by rodwilson on Sept 25, 2009 14:01:54 GMT -5
"What I can say is, if he was registered, we would have inspected and brought the building up to code. So why was he never brought into court a year later? Again the fact that we are in a manual system, where everything was done with paper documents, again it's a tracking system and now it's 'computerated,' before it wasn't. What I can say is as far as whether someone followed up it, How I am going to respond to that is, if I was given a directive from a court, from a judge I would have complied with it." "computerated"? Love the excuse of being a "manual" system. Hell man, the world worked OK like that for a LONG time. It's time for these clowns to stop blaming technology and start taking some responsibility. Technology can only do so much. It's THESE PEOPLE that failed. www.wktv.com/news/local/61471972.htmlI am just completely floored that this city is run by these complete morons. I can't even begin to imagine the amounts that will be awarded to the families of the victims and to the survivors. A jury is going to absolutely hang this city out. The amounts will be in the tens if not 100's of millions of dollars. I imagine that the victims already have the business cards of some of the most powerful lawyers in NY and beyond in their pockets. Who's going to defend the city? Certainly not "Check with the Fire Department" Sullivan-Fatata. The legal bills will staggering. The continued and very visible failure will surely seal the fate of this administration. |
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Post by rodwilson on Sept 25, 2009 20:19:43 GMT -5
After giving this a little thought. Perhaps he said Computer aided and the reporter mucked it up.
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Post by Ralph on Sept 26, 2009 2:22:28 GMT -5
The Codes Department has been "computer aided" for a number of years now. Their only problem was that for a while their data bases were not interconnected. But I know for a fact that the "paper system" was working fine for them, sometimes better than the computer system was!
I don't know know why Smiljic made the comment somewhere about there not being enough Codes Inspectors for commercial/apartment buildings. We've been cross-training firefighters for more than five years now to be Codes and Building inspectors.
Maybe he just got his wires crossed.......or his head up his butt.
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Post by clarencebunsen on Sept 26, 2009 6:04:05 GMT -5
Since earlier in the same interview Beck described their system as "computer augmented", I think Rod is correct that he said "computer aided."
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