Committee approves vacant property ordinance

Editor’s note: This corrects the job of Samantha Clawson.

The Havre City Council Ordinance Committee advanced a proposal to regulate vacant property in the city after a number of people voice support at its meeting Monday.

"You just move forward one step at a time and maybe baby steps," council President Terry Lilletvedt said.

The committee sent the proposed Vacant Property Registration Ordinance to the city attorney for review before it goes before the full council.

The topic of vacant properties in Havre has been a hotbutton issue for several years.

After Samantha Clawson, now director of Head Start at District 4 Human Resources Development Council, asked the council to consider creating an ordinance to regulate vacant properties if owners were not doing anything to maintain them, rent them or sell them, Mayor Tim Solomon appointed an ad hoc committee including Clawson and her husband, council member Caleb Hutchins, to look at the issue.

Several public meetings have been held about the proposal and the ad hoc committee drafted an ordinance which the ordinance committee has been reviewing and revising.

Lilletvedt said Monday during the Ordinance Committee meeting, which followed the regular council meeting, that it makes good sense to start with something and hopefully move the community forward and get rid of some of the problems from properties that are not representing the kind of place Havre is.

Hutchins said he has updated since the last meeting the definition of vacant to exclude buildings like garages and sheds, because they were designed to be unoccupied. He added that he also modified the language regarding multi-unit properties so they are only considered vacant if every unit is vacant.

He said, after hearing some of the arguments in previous meetings, he also updated and fixed some of the languages in the expemptions to clarify language and include exemptions for properties that have active construction or renovation.

Council member and committee member Lindsey Ratliff said that she was happy with the changes Hutchins had made.

"I think you've done a good job in taking comments from the public," she said. "... Thank you for putting the work in."

Council member Erik Meis said that he still opposes the Vacant Property Registration Ordinance. He said it is the committee trying to micromanage private property owners and what they do with their properties.

"I still don't agree with where this is heading," he said.

He added that if the ordinance was going to pass it would take a full-time position to enforce the ordinance. Meis said Havre police indicated at the last Ordinance Committee meeting that the city does not have the staff, funding will fall short and the ordinance - if it is put in place - will have no teeth because it is unenforceable.

Lilletvedt said that she disagreed with Meis. The duty of enforcing the ordinance falls on any city employee who is available after a report is made. She added that people are not going to report homes that are recently vacated and are still in good condition but those that are in extreme conditions and are a hazard to the community.

"Does it mean that the vacant property problem in Havre is going to be completely taken care of? No, it's like anything we do, we are just trying to make things better," she said.

The ordinance is not an act of big government, but an effort to make the community a better place to live, she said. Property owners have told her that vacant properties should not represent what Havre is. She added that event if some property owners will only pay the fee and do nothing to improve the property it is still worth pursuing.

"I don't think it figures out every problem," she said. "I think it begins a process of trying to make our community a better place to live. ... I think the biggest complaint is that they are not doing more."

Meis said that in the past meetings there has been little support for the ordinance, with only one person of 12 speaking in favor, a person who was part of the ad hoc committee that written the ordinance. He added that if the ordinance was something that people wanted for their community they would attend the meetings.

Lilletvedt said that she doesn't question people's support, adding that a number of people have contacted her and the other council members voicing support outside of the meetings.

State Rep. Jacob Bachmeier, D-Havre, said that many working-class people are unable to attend the meetings because of commitments elsewhere, but that was why they - as public officials - were hired, to bring their voices to the table.

"Something I've observed in my short six years being involved in politics is that it's hard for working class people to get involved in politics and that's why they elect people like us to get involved," he said.

He said the issues of vacant properties was one of the most common things he heard while campaigning in Havre.

"People are frustrated, people are tired and they want us to do something about it," Bachmeier said.

He added that he was also on the ad hoc committee and saw it as an opportunity to make the corrections people wanted to see.

"Out of all the VPROs I've read, there isn't one that's as thoughtful as the one that we have before us today," he said.

Sheila Neuwerth said that she supports the ordinance. When a vehicle is parked in the same spot for five days it receive a yellow stripe and a note; for weeds that are too tall someone sends a letter requesting they are taken care of, but cars and weeds are less danger and an eyesore than a strip of neglect that is on Fifth Avenue, she said. It is dangerous and unsafe for the community.

"There are already great people in place enforcing city ordinances," she said.

Samantha Balemba, a criminology assistant professor at Montana State University-Northern, said that with her background she wanted to express her support for the ordinance because of it's potential effect on crime rates. She said that she knows multiple theories why crime increases but most of them are connected to social disorder. The "Broken Windows Theory," she said statistically proves that abandoned vacant buildings directly connects to a rise in crime rates.

"It's true that if we want to reduce crime and make our community safer and just a better place to live, this is one fairly easy way to go about doing it," she said.

Brad Lotton said he opposes the ordinance but understands that something needs to be done about the vacant properties.

"Everyone in town agrees, we need to do something to clean up the town," he said.

Havre has many challenges facing it and the ordnance cannot solve all of them, he said, Montana, especially Havre, has a meth epidemic and in that environment people don't want to invest in neighborhoods.

The city should look into how to encourage builders and contractors to build or renovate homes rather than focus on penalizing bad land owners, he said.

Vineé Thompson, who said she owns a few properties, said she usually doesn't attend council meetings but came because she thought it was important that she voiced her support for the ordinance, adding that she wishes it was more aggressive.

"I support you and I don't think you have enough teeth in it," she said.

Ordinance Committee member Lindsey Ratliff said she wanted to thank all the people who spoke up and made their concerns heard.

Council member and committee member Karen Swenson said after the meeting that good points have been made on both sides during the process to get the ordinance written.

Hutchins said he wants to also look into positive reinforcement for property owners in the future to pursue making improvements in Havre.

"I think, ultimately, in the long term, we want a balance of positive incentives and enforcement," he said. "We need both, so I think that's moving in the right direction."

Meis said he will wait and see.

"We will wait and see what the city attorney says about the ordinance," he said. "The state of Montana has some pretty strict private property rights and we need to get legal council to look at this ... I appreciate the people that showed up that have concerns about it."