Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. says the city is continuing to process complaints about nuisance properties, but the COVID-19 pandemic has created a backlog of cases and has caused the enforcement process to slow down.
Alderman Mike O’Kane asked the mayor during Tuesday night’s public works committee meeting about complaints regarding nuisance properties and them not being taken care of. Williams says several of the city’s court cases were delayed by the pandemic.
“We are using every tool that’s available to us, but as you and I have discussed many times, unfortunately, sometimes it takes much longer than you hope for to get any kind of a resolution and then when you do get a judgment in the court of law, you don’t always get action,” Williams said.
It’s not only the local shutdowns but state actions that have caused the delays, as alderman Aaron Troglia pointed out. He says landlords such as himself have are in difficult situations since the state has extended a moratorium on evictions indefinitely.
“The landlords’ hands are tied on that,” he explained. “We can’t just evict them for it, now.”
O’Kane says he is frustrated that some of the issues cannot be taken care of since the city has laws on the books about those problems.
