THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 21, 1995 TAG: 9509210409
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
The Suffolk City Council resurrected its ailing housing inspections program on Wednesday with a monthly report and a recommitment to battling blight.
As part of the initiative, Suffolk officials created a neighborhood time line geared towards inspecting Suffolk's most blighted neighborhoods by the end of this fiscal year. The neighborhoods of Huntersville, Pughsville and Belleville will be the first to undergo the systematic inspections next month.
Once a neighborhood has been inspected, city officials said housing inspectors will be assigned to individual boroughs to help handle future complaints.
In addition, city officials have found they get the best results when they clean up the areas themselves. And under this new inspections program, the vast majority of violations will be handled outside of the courts, according to Suffolk's city attorney.
The city also issued the first in a series of monthly housing-inspections reports Wednesday, a house-by-house listing of violations.
Assistant City Manager for Development William E. Harrell, who has been charged with overseeing the program, said the new program is still governed by state law, which prevents the city from acting when citizens sometimes want them to act.
``And it can be maddening,'' said City Manager Myles E. Standish. ``Grass sometimes looks horrible before it gets to 15 inches. But the law says 15 inches and we have to abide by the law.''
This new initiative comes two weeks after Suffolk city officials admitted that a ``personality conflict'' scuttled their year-old housing inspection program, delaying it for more than nine months.
During the delay, Suffolk City Attorney C. Edward Roettger Jr.'s office was accused by two local black leaders of scuttling the inspections program for allegedly racist reasons.
The memo itself stated no reason for the conflict.
City officials did not respond to the delay or Roettger's accusers for weeks. Two weeks ago, they said they had investigated the matter and found it was a personality conflict and not tinged by racism.
At the same time, city officials publicly recommitted themselves to the inspections program, changing course by giving more responsibility to local neighborhoods.
``It is a priority of this council,'' said Mayor S. Chris Jones at the last meeting, ``and will continue to be a priority with this council.'' by CNB