When the process started, there were 121 properties on the list. At the informal Common Council meeting this past Monday, city treasurer Heather Campbell reported that sixty properties have been redeemed and $733,404 in back taxes has been paid. On the original list, there were seven properties with more than $100,000 owed in back taxes and penalties, and three of those seven owed more than $250,000. It's likely none of these properties has been redeemed, but there is no way of knowing, since an updated list of properties at risk for foreclosure has not been published.
At Monday's informal Council meeting, councilmember Margaret Morris (First Ward) reported that the City was owed $743,250 in unpaid parking tickets and late fees. There are six people whose unpaid parking tickets and late fees total more than $1,000 each. There is one person who has more than 30 unpaid parking tickets.
In 2023, Mayor Kamal Johnson initiated an amnesty program to try to collect some of the money from parking tickets that were going unpaid. During a two-month period, people with delinquent parking tickets could pay off their tickets and have all the penalties waived. That program was not a success. Only three people took advantage of it. A total of $391 in penalties was waived, and a total of $46 was collected.
This time, the City is going to be using a collection agency to go after the scofflaws. They will also be returning to the practice of booting cars with significant unpaid parking tickets.
The fact that no one at City Hall ever felt the need to begin collecting delinquent taxes goes to show how useless our mayors have been and how especially useless our current mayor has been for the past 6 years. All the more reason to get a city manager to make sure the city doesn't go bankrupt. What and when will the next OOPSIE, NO ONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION BECAUSE THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY be?
ReplyDeleteFascinating to me how a few mortals on the Common Council - as always Margaret, Rich and Vicky - through very basic persistence can produce hundreds of thousands of dollars for the city. The mayor told us this was morally reprehensible because it was all old blind ladies that couldn't pay their property taxes for lack of eyesight.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if those were the same ladies that racked up the unpaid parking fines. Probably were.
But fret not. While the alert members on the council most likely averted Hudson's bankruptcy, wait for Kamal to take credit for this sudden windfall and reiterate his call for Rich's resignation for being so audacious to suggest that the city might be in financial trouble which it would be if it had followed Kamal's lead.
This is amazingly low hanging fruit. Just the threat of accountability alone has generated owed revenue from people who likely had the ability to pay but didn’t bother. As the failed amnesty program showed, unfortunately, is that people respond to the stick over the carrot. Many of these properties are vacant. As for the rest; how is it fair for the rest of us who struggle to pay more than our fair share because of “Welcome Stranger” assessments, PILOTs for wealthy developers, and increased taxes and raiding the rainy day fund to cover the shortfall caused by nonpayment?
ReplyDeleteIronically, many of the names on the nonpayment list are familiar advocates for subsidizing housing, increase funding to the youth department, schools, etc. Easy to do when it’s other people’s money.
Several years ago, I heard from someone in City Hall that there was an arrest warrant out for the owner of the long vacant and neglected property in the middle of the 500 block of Union on the even side (near where the big sidewalk tree used to be) for failure to maintain the house as per CEO demands. I recall that the owner lived in Florida. The "house" is still untouched (the front "steps" are a serious hazard) and certainly in worse shape than when CEO long ago deemed it dangerous and unsafe, one of the issues being wild animals living inside. The neighbors must really appreciate the city doing nothing about it year after year. How long has that property been on the delinquents list, and for how much longer?
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it, the taxes continue to be paid on that property. It is not on the list of properties at risk of foreclosure.
DeleteEvery generation must relearn lessons of freedom and fight to preserve progress.
ReplyDeleteSo it's solely a code enforcement issue. Which begs the question: how much has the property owner paid in fines ($1,000/year?) each year their vacant rotting property has been on the CEO 's vacant buildings registry? Probably zero dollars. Zero revenue. Like the uncollected delinquent property taxes, this is uncollected revenue the city desperately needs but nobody at City Hall seems to care about. Even worse, though, you can't call it uncollected if Code Enforcement has never fined the property owner to collect one thousand dollars a year. We can't even hire a collection agency to gather this missing revenue. Big Zeroes all around.
ReplyDeleteAre there 30 vacant rotting properties on the list? Or just 25? The annual fine is designed to force vacant property owners to fix their properties so someone can live in them again. Duh! Now we have arrived to the housing shortage issue. Missing revenue, missing housing. What else is missing? Properly functioning government and a city manager.
Can someone tell me when car booting was suspended? Also, what's considered "significant" in terms of unpaid parking tickets?
ReplyDeleteTo my knowledge, car booting is not currently suspended. It's just that it is not being done with any regularity. Booting was suspended in 2016 by Mayor Tiffany Martin, but it was reinstated in 2018.
DeleteWhat it takes to get booted is three or four parking tickets that have been outstanding for more than 45 days.
Life imitating art.
Delete"WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. State Department announced Monday that it will begin sending young Americans to Hudson, New York as part of its new “Hudson Corps” initiative, a program modeled on the Fulbright Program and Teach for America, with a touch of Peace Corps. The goal is to expose youth to “foreign dysfunction” without leaving U.S. borders."
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/shallot-hudsonpeacecorps
3 tickets overdue for more than 45 days, and I can assure you that the booting of vehicles is being done with regularity since early this year when data from the former company handling processing of tickets was transferred to the new one the city hired last year or prior. The city does not send out reminders to scoffs, the parking contractor does. It seems that the Parking Bureau is relying on someone else to do the dirty work of reminding scoffs they owe the city money. We do the same thing with STR registration enforcement (and now overdue property tax collection) - an outside company supposedly makes sure everyone is abiding by the rules and paying what is due to the city. But who is making sure these companies are doing their best at enforcement? And at what point does hiring all these outside contractors get too expensive and just keep us barely above water?
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