(A) The City Council is enacting this chapter to help protect the public health, safety and welfare by establishing a program for the identification and registration of vacant buildings within the city. This chapter also impose certain responsibilities on owners of vacant buildings and provides for administration, enforcement, and penalties associated with the same.
(B) The City Council finds that vacant buildings are a major cause and source of blight in residential and non-residential neighborhoods, especially when the owner or responsible party of the building fails to actively maintain and manage the building to ensure it does not become a liability to the neighborhood. Vacant buildings often attract transients, homeless people, trespassers and criminals, including drug abusers. Neglect of vacant buildings, as well as use of vacant buildings by transients and criminals, creates a risk of fire, explosion or flooding for the vacant building and adjacent properties. Vacant properties often are used as dumping grounds for junk and debris and often are overgrown with weeds and grass. Vacant buildings that are boarded to prevent entry by transients, and other long-term vacancies, discourage economic development and retard appreciation of property values. There is a substantial cost to the city for monitoring vacant buildings whether or not those buildings are boarded. This cost should not be borne by the general taxpayers of the community; but rather, these costs should be borne by those who choose to leave their buildings vacant.
(Ord. 1105, passed 7-26-11)