Board of Aldermen 06-12-2018 Page 11
The most that has ever happened is we have had the Police go over and tell someone “hey look you
can’t just plow the snow from your parking area across and dump it on the sidewalk across the street”.
And after that, that seemed to take care of the problem. But there has been a perceived problem that
people are in fact blowing leaves into the road, it creates a hazard, leaves get slippery when wet and it
is hoped that with something on the books, either the Police Department or Public Works employees,
when they inform someone that it shouldn’t be done, it will stop being done. When you don’t have
anything on the books, sometimes people just won’t listen to what is a good idea on its face.
Alderwoman Melizzi-Golja
| would just say that when this concern was brought to me initially, before moving forward with this, |
spoke with Director Marchant, and | also e-mailed our Code Enforcement Office, and the response | got
back from both of them is that this is a problem throughout the City and they have nothing on the books
to address it. And both of them spoke to me about hours of time being spent dealing with this situation.
And | also received some phone calls and e-mails from people in other parts of the City saying “thank
you because this is a problem and we have a chronic offender and it doesn’t matter what anyone from
the City says they know there is nothing that can be done”. So after getting that feedback that made
me decide to go forward with this. | know that it has been on-going in terms of being a problem across
the City.
Alderman Lopez
There was like 3 years ago a massive snowbank on East Hollis right next to the State Courthouse and |
think they were spoken to and then they just never did it again. | think in most cases if you address it
once or twice, it doesn’t even need to necessarily get to the fine and that has kind of been my
experience. I’m sure the public can dispute it that typically Code Enforcement doesn’t come out heavy-
handed but if they did, because that is a legitimate concern, if they did, then it would definitely be our
responsibility as Aldermen to address that and amend the legislation so it is not so heavy-handed.
Ultimately we don’t want to spend a lot of Corporation Counsel’s time having somebody in court over
where their leaves ended up or whatever. | understand Alderman Tencza’s point, | think we just have
to make sure that the implementation is as we intend it and then if an unintended consequence occurs,
then we need to address that too. Or the future version of us.
Alderman Klee
| agree with actually all three of the Aldermen. | had a case where someone was blowing leaves into
the street. They had come in from Connecticut where in their neighborhood that’s what they did, they
put it out into the street and they had a big, giant machine that came in and sucked it out. Once it was
explained that they really shouldn’t be doing that because we don’t have such a machine, they stopped
doing it. So | do think for the most part, just warning or a talking-to is enough to fix it but for repeat
offenders | do think we should have something on the books.
Alderman Dowd
| support the Ordinance and | do agree with Alderman Tencza that it probably should have some
additional language in it. | hope that we don’t have issues going forward where it has to come back and
we have to add the additional language, although | think | would have liked to see some additional
language in it relative to warnings. The other thing that concerns me is our Code Enforcement is
already strapped and short-handed so | don’t see them going out on this case unless it is a habitual
offender because they don’t have the time. | think as it is written will suffice, it gives the City some
leverage if something happens. If we do have problems with it downstream, we can always bring it
back and amend it
