Board of Aldermen — 3/22/16 Page 17
was occurring on any kind of a basis, this legislation, | am quite sure, would be modified by my colleagues or
myself and it would be voted to be modified. So that is not an issue. Life safety issues are very different. If
somebody stops and there’s a gas leak or there’s a problem that’s not something we’re going to give you ten
days to rectify. | think everybody in this audience would recognize that.
One of the things that was interesting to note was the initial hearing. Quite a number of people were not aware
of Nashua’s blue book which is the code book. | think that, again, feeds into this sense that the legislation was
adopting all sorts of new things. If you didn’t know there was a blue book, you wouldn’t realize that the stuff
that’s in there is right out of it. | think if anything there’s a side benefit. Now more people are aware of what
exists right now. But if you go through all of these things, there’s nothing here also that doesn’t represent good
practice under any circumstance. | believe that most of the people in the audience already do that. |
remember half the people that were polled at the hearing had no contact with code at all. They didn’t even
know who they were, which is fantastic. That means that this is a complete non-issue for you. They are not
showing up because you are running your properties well. They are not going to be proactively going after
you. That’s not at all what we want to achieve. This is to deal with willful violators. There aren’t that many of
them so it’s a very narrowly scoped piece of legislation although again if you are not aware of the way things
work now it wouldn’t necessarily appear to be that way. | don’t want to belabor this too much, but | actually
would urge that my colleagues not table this. The reason is because this was worked on over a lengthy period
of time by city staff. There was a lot of thought put into this. | think it is eminently reasonable, again, given that
it is addressing willful violators and only willful violators.
Alderman Clemons
| support the concept of this legislation. | think it's something that is going to be very useful for the code
enforcement department. | support them in their efforts for wanting something like this. However, I’ve listened
to you folks at the Personnel Committee meeting. Some of you were there and then a lot more of you are here
tonight which is good to see. I’ve listened to some of your complaints about the legislation. It is in the
legislation that if penalties aren’t paid within ten days there is going to be a subsequent fine. That is a problem,
| think, with the legislation. In addition to that although the state law that governs this legislation says that there
has to be a warning issued prior to any of these citations being sent out, | think it would be helpful if the
legislation stated that just for everyone’s peace of mind. | don’t think it would hurt if we were to add something
like that. There are a couple of other things that | can see that were brought up as being issues with this. |
also think it wouldn’t hurt to have more input on it. As it stands, | cannot support it. | will not support final
passage. However, | would support sending it back either to Personnel or to the Substandard Living
Committee so it can be worked on to address the issues that were brought up tonight by you folks.
Alderwoman McGuinness
Where does it say in the text of the ordinance, where does it talk about willful violators and where does it say
someone making a good faith attempt won't be fined? | just don’t see the language in here.
Alderman Siegel
The enabling statute is the wait period. That’s been the policy of code, and there’s no reason to believe that it
wouldn’t continue to be the policy of code. Again let's remember where we are right now there’s a policy in
place. This is dealing with violations. The things that lead up to that, issues, and | can address the tenant-
landlord issues. As was addressed at the public hearing, tenants that willfully destroy property inside their
living space, the code have very explicitly not gone after landlords for that. It’s not the job of the city. The city
has no standing in a civil action. But again this doesn’t change a situation that exists right now. If there’s a
conflict between a landlord and a destructive tenant and there’s an issue that’s created such that code gets
involved, they get involved and this has nothing to do with it. This has to do with the willful violation where
there’s an issue and the tenant or the landlord doesn’t correct it. The tenant also according to code
enforcement is on the hook for some of these things. It isn’t just that the burden falls on the landlords. We talk
about landlords, landlords, landlords but there’s more to this because it’s administrative enforcement of other
issues such as health department fines. Again, | would urge my colleagues to look at what the intent is and
