Sat 6 Jun, 2009
Columbia Heights residents need to attend the informational meetings that the city will be hosting, June 29, at 6:00 p.m. in Murzyn Hall, at 10:00 a.m. in the City Council Chambers and then again on July 20 at 6:00 p.m. at Murzyn Hall. All of this is to convince us that ‘we need’ to have this new point of sale inspection program passed in Columbia Heights. This is the very thing that was defeated last summer when over 150 citizens came forward and told the city this was a ridiculous ordinance. PLEASE attend these meetings; even if you don’t say anything, we need the numbers.
Comments that have been made by council members have been things like, “we need to pass this in spite of what the residents say because ‘the council’ understands this better than the residents do.” “They (citizens) didn’t understand what we were trying to pass. There was a lot of misinformation out there.” The message is still the same-you will not be able to sell your house without a city inspection and then repairs will have 90 days to be done. Repairs will have to be done even if you take your home off the market. Money can be placed in escrow but no house will be able to be sold as-is without an escrow fund in place. No more fixing things up on your own time. Call your neighbors, call your friends, and bring anyone that owns a home or plans on owning a home. We need to remind the city that our homes are our own property. This ordinance is still a ‘blank’ slate so they can change anything that they want so that we look like we are ‘misinformed”. (They already changed the dates on us!) We will need your help to defeat this again!
2 Responses to “Point Of Sale”
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DonnaS says:
Today is the first meeting about this ordinance. The city staff has said they will be passing out copies of a draft of the ordinance at the meetings. I have had several people ask me why are they looking at this again? Didn’t the council get it the first time? Many have said they will be there. I am hoping the meetings will be packed.
DonnaS says:
The Point of Sale ordiance (formerly known as RIBS) was defeated, again! Thank you to everyone that helped stop this issue. After passing out over 1000 fliers, informing people of this issue we were able to get 130+ people to show up for two meetings. When you consider the fact that only 6 typically show up for city council meetings, I believe this was a great turnout and a good representation of what the citizens in this city wanted or rather what they didn’t want. With the delays that people are having with selling homes in this area, it seemed ridiculous that the city would add more regulations.
Every illustration that was presented by the city should have already been covered by current ordinances so to add another one was redundant.
There were several comments after the meeting that this group was rude and threatening. Apparently, those people have never been to a typical city council meeting. This group was not any different from how council members act toward each other.
No video was made of these meetings. Only minutes were taken and they still have not been posted online as it was said that they would be. So any comments made are how someone perceived the meeting nothing can be backed up by video. I am only aware of one newspaper that was represented at those meetings, the SunFocus. The SunFocus and the Northeaster wrote articles after the meeting. It appears that the Northeaster only received information from the city for their article but the article was pulled from the internet so it cannot be looked at except from a hard copy.
In an email from Scott Clark, he stated that “My quote in the paper, from my perspective, was a misquote.” This was in reference to the comment that those that attended the meeting were ‘screaming’. People were asked to speak up because there was no microphone available to anyone, even to those leading the meeting. Looking at this from that perspective, if people have to speak up to be heard by someone with a hearing problem, those that do not have a hearing problem might perceive this as yelling or screaming.
It was evident to me, that Mr. Clark, towards the end of the meeting had already determined that he was not willing to change his opinion about this item. His body language indicated that he had made up his mind. He actually turned his back on a speaker, crossed his arms and started looking out a window, rather than give a show of being open to comments that others were making.
This show of body language continued on at the city council work session. Even though he was sitting across from me, he refused to look at me during a presentation about withdrawing this ordinance from further discussion. He kept his head turned during his whole presentation so that he did not have to make eye contact with me. I did not know that I was that threatening to him.
As a side note, there is discussion that the EDA/HRA meetings are going to be changed. They are discussing the possibility of changing the structure so that they will be meeting on separate nights, rather than on the same night.