Landlord Amnesty or Another Tilghman Administration Foul Up?

If you read Wednesday’s article in the “Tilghman Times” regarding Tuesday’s Salisbury Council work session you would walk away believing that the council adopted a proposal by Councilwoman Debbie Campbell granting the city’s landlords (slumlords plus regular multi-family complex landlords) an amnesty until November 30th to comply with Salisbury’s slumlord registration guidelines. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is yet another example of the favorable bias shown the Barrie Tilghman administration by Salisbury’s local paper.

As usual, there are several key issues that were glaringly omitted from the TT piece which shed a totally different light on what occurred. Originally the city’s landlords were sent a letter by the Salisbury Department of Neighborhood Services and Code Compliance (NSCC) explaining the registration with a deadline of April 1, 2007. At some point, NSCC Director Tom Stevenson arbitrarily extended that deadline to May 18. I would argue that neither Mr. Stevenson, nor the Mayor, have the authority to do so without Council approval. This is yet one more example of the Mayor’s total disregard for the city council. Even though she carries the votes of council members Louise Smith, Gary Comegys and Shanie Shields in her hip pocket she routinely takes that for granted and just acts as if the council did not exist.

It was brought to the attention of Councilwomen Campbell and Cohen that the ordinance involving landlord registration requires that invoices be sent to each landlord. This was never done. Mrs. Campbell’s idea to extend the period until November 30th (for this year only) was driven by the simple fact that since no invoices were sent out AND the law requires it, landlords have a valid, ready made appeal.

By extending the deadline and sending bills to non-compliant landlords the city will now be operating within the bounds of its own law. In addition, any slumlord that fails to meet this deadline and is holding a 4-3 exemption would lose that exemption. This could very well be a minor victory for those residents of neighborhoods blighted by slumlords.

Why did the “Tilghman Times” choose not to cover this portion of the discussion. My belief is that the paper simply did not want to call attention to the incompetence of the Tilghman administration. Let’s see if there is any coverage of the impact fee discussion and how the TT handles Nobel Laureate Gary Comegys’ claim that “capacity fees are not impact fees”. Will the paper’s reporters even bother to research whether or not Dr. Comegys has publicly stated that the Dream Team’s “capacity fee” is in fact an impact fee.

Technorati Tags: Salisbury, politics, salisburypolitics, slumlords, housing, regulation, impactfees, BarrieTilghman, GaryComegys

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