by Nick Mattera nick.mattera@niagara-gazette.com
Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS —
With the house across the street slowly crumbling before her eyes, Johnny Harris reminisced when her North End neighborhood was one of the city’s best kept.
Now, her large three-bedroom home on Garden Avenue is surrounded by blighted properties, vacant lots and a vision of what once was.
“When I first moved to Garden Avenue 46 years ago, this was the best street in all of Niagara Falls,” said Harris, as she stood on her porch watching the collapsing roof on an abandoned home across the street. “These days people come in and out and they don’t care about this neighborhood or care about their homes and now look at what we have.”
While Harris said residents in her community have no sense of neighborhood pride, she admitted progress is happening in unconventional ways.
On Wednesday, City Code Enforcement officers scheduled an emergency demolition of a decaying Garden Avenue home, which Harris said is just one example of their much-needed presence in her community.
“It may sound funny but when these houses are being torn down, it is a symbol of progress,” Harris said. “There are three more houses that should come down just on this block, and I think these city workers know much more needs to be done.
While Code Enforcement Director Dennis Virtuoso doesn’t deny the broad scope of housing-related issues in Niagara Falls, he said his three-man department is getting by — but things could certainly be better.
“We are the most understaffed department in the city, we have three guys doing a job once done by 10,” said Virtuoso, a 22-year veteran of the department. “As a department, we can only be reactive as opposed to proactive —that plays a huge role in why many of our neighborhoods look the way they do.”
With Virtuoso’s department in a constant struggle with absentee landlords, a growing number of vacant properties and maintaining normal day-to-day business — resources are stretched very thin.
The code enforcement department is responsible for handling property-related complaints, issuing permits for new construction, renovations or additions, monitoring ongoing construction to ensure everything is being built up to code, issuing citations for properties that are in violation of city codes and ordinances, as well as the new Zone Outreach Objective Mission initiative — which is a proactive attempt by various city departments to get into Niagara Falls communities and issue citations for properties in violation.
The ZOOM team regularly targets certain neighborhoods on Saturdays or after normal work hours.
“We have been working on Saturdays and those 50- or 60-hour work weeks,” Virtuoso said. “We do a number of things here that many people don’t even realize.”
City Council Chairman Sam Fruscione agrees with Virtuoso that the Code Enforcement Department is in dire need of additional manpower.
“If you don’t have inspectors, some of these landlords will drive their houses right into the ground,” Fruscione said. “We need at least another inspector or two, and we need them soon.”
Fruscione called on the mayor to bring back an inspector who was placed on paid administrative leave last year following a FBI investigation into criminal activity between the inspection department and a local contractor.
Last June, following a FBI investigation, Mayor Paul Dyster placed Acting Commissioner of Inspections Guy Bax, Chief Plumbing Inspector George Amendola and Chief Electrical Inspector Peter Butry on paid leave. The three are still on paid leave and the city has used funds from its contingency budget to pay for employee overtime and has created two temporary $70,000 a year positions for plumbing and electrical inspectors.
“We are still wasting money because the mayor refuses to bring back an inspector,” Fruscione said. “Bring him back and there’s an additional member of the staff.”
Building Inspectors on average will visit between 15 and 20 properties each day looking for a number of code violations, from chipped or peeling paint, damaged roofs, broken windows and siding to even overgrown grass and high weeds.
“We really become the eyes of the neighborhood,” said building inspector Robert Stanley. “More eyes are definitely needed.”
Stanley’s day generally includes him making stops at between 15 and 20 properties, which are often determined by complaints or tips the department receives from community members. He said some pan out and others don’t, but when the public knows we are responding that helps lift morale.
“We get out into these communities and let people see us and they begin to realize we are trying to help make properties safer and enhance their appearance” Stanley said.
While Stanley said the code enforcement department does issue a number of citations for housing code infractions, a resolution isn’t always instant.
“Then we haul them into housing court,” Stanley said. “And let the judge make a decision.”
When asked the best part of his job, Stanley paused and looked around the blighted Garden Avenue neighborhood at a house with a crumbling roof, another that is scheduled to be demolished later this month and finally over at Harris, who was standing on her porch with her son and he nodded.
“Making a difference for people like her,” he said.
Contact reporter Nick Mattera at 282-2311, ext. 2251.
