The Odessa Mayor and Town Council unanimously denied an ordinance at their Feb. 1 meeting that would require owners of vacant buildings in Town limits to either rehabilitate their buildings or pay increasing fines.
Ordinance 2009-4 was up for its second reading and a vote at the meeting, but the council decided to scrap the ordinance and start over once those who opposed it at the Dec. 7, 2009, meeting returned to contest it.
The ordinance states that owners of vacant properties in Odessa are subject to fines of $500 for each property that is vacant for six months to two years; $1,000 for properties that are vacant for two to five years; and $2,000 for properties that are vacant for give to 10 years, plus an additional $500 for each year in excess of 10 years. Owners would also be subject to fines if they do not register buildings that are vacant for 60 days or more.
There are approximately six to eight vacant buildings out of 160 structures in Town limits.
Attorney Mike Cochran raised several concerns about the ordinance, which has been hotly contested at previous Town Council meetings. He spoke on behalf of his client Lacy Holly III, who owns a building at 609 Main St. in Odessa, across from his law office.
Cochran reiterated his statements from the Dec. 7, 2009, Town Council meeting where he brought up the issue that it wouldn’t be economically feasible for Holly to rehabilitate the vacant building. He said that if something must be done with the property, the Town should allow owners of vacant buildings the option to demolish the buildings if the price is too high to refurbish them. The option to demolish buildings was not in the ordinance, despite that municipalities such as Smyrna and Wilmington do allow vacant building owners to demolish their structures.
Cochran said with fewer than 10 vacant properties, the Town does not have the sort of vacant property problem that the city of Wilmington had.
He said if the ordinance passed, Holly and other vacant building owners would be required to either pay the rehabilitation costs, estimated at $260,000, or the Town’s fines.
Cochran said it would cost $160,000 to demolish Holly’s structure and build a new building in its place.
“We can’t be stuck with a property that we cannot afford to rehabilitate and can’t knock down while having to pay your ever increasing fees,” he said. “If this passes tonight and we’re denied the demolition permit, we’ve got not choice; we’ve got to litigate it.”
Cochran also said Holly was willing to donate the structure to the Town if the town would like to move it to another lot, or if they were permitted to demolish the structure they would give a grace period during which time others could come forward to take ownership of the structure.
Councilmember Betts Jackson said she appreciated Cochran’s sensitivity to the historic significance of the structure, as the house was the first African American parsonage for Zoar Church, located on that street.
What’s next
Mayor Kathy Harvey said the issue wasn’t a matter of having an unsafe building, but rather the cosmetics of vacant houses within the town and \ what would become of the vacant buildings if the ordinance didn’t pass.
“If you had an unsound structure that was unsafe, the building inspector would call for the demolition of that structure,” she said. “Our idea was we’ll give you the time to restore it. We were looking at do we need to tweak something in our building code that was more simple than this.”
Bob Grove said he wasn’t content with the ordinance as written.
“My main feeling is what’s arrived at our table is not what I expected,” he said. “I think it’s gotten off track and it’s not the ordinance I expected to see.”
Councilmember Lindsay Rice said he agreed with a lot of the things Cochran said.
“The fee schedule to me is not something that’s rational for many reasons,” he said. “I am for a vacant property ordinance, I’m just not for this vacant property ordinance.”
Jackson said she thought the ordinance needs more clarification and that they’ve learned a lot through from the public’s resistance to it.
“I think the challenge is going to be finding a fee schedule to make people adhere to the ordinance,” she said. “If you don’t put a fine out there, how do you get people to follow the law or the ordinances the town has passed?”
Grove said the council should start fresh with a new ordinance.
“I think it makes more sense to put a vote to this and put this [ordinance] to bed,” he said. “It sounds to me that this ordinance makes its vote tonight and the slate be clean.”
The Mayor and Council did not put a time limit to when they would bring another ordinance to the table.
