One of the items that the city is looking at is copying Crystal’s Vacant Building Ordinance.  In looking at that ordinance it involves an annual registration with the city and a fee of $500 paid to the city, annually, to register a vacant property.  Some of my questions are:

1.  What will the city be charging for this registration?  (Cities all over the nation are charging anywhere from nothing to over $3,000.)

2.  What penalties will you have for non-registering?

3.  How will you be able to confirm that this is really vacant and not just being maintained from a company that checks in on this property occasionally?

4.  What will this money pay for?  Lawn mowing? Winterizing? Demolition? Will this include an annual inspection? Does this mean the city will be replacing locks and holding keys for these properties?  Does this mean the city will be responsible for repairing any vandalism?

5.  This could potentially be giving the city the rights to this property without actually having to own the property.

6.  Is this a way to collect taxes on a property without having to call it property tax?

7.  How do you expect to collect money from these properties if they are vacant?  There seems to be an inability to collect for mowing the grass and many other accounts.  What makes this something that the city will be able to collect?

9.  What happens if the city decides to demolish a vacant property and it is found out later that the person is in a nursing care facility?  Such information could be considered patient confidentiality and not easily attainable by anyone other than an approved family member.

10.  If the city collects this fee, would the county or the state come and claim that this money should have been paid to them, first and ask for a portion or possibly all of that fee?  Or even take this as a partial payment of property taxes and reduce our tax portion based on the fees that we have collected?

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