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Friday, March 27, 2009

SAINT PAUL/ An Ordinance amending Chapter 18 of the Saint Paul Legislative

Please click onto the COMMENTS for the story.

47 Comments:

Blogger Bob said...

There is copy errors.

THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF SAINT PAUL DOES HEREBY ORDAIN

Section 1
Sec. 18.01. Legislative hearing officer.

In order to hear and decide appeals of orders, decisions or determinations made by the enforcement officers relative to the enforcement of health, housing, building or fire codes contained in the Saint Paul
Legislative Code, and in order to hear appeals and make determinations relative to safe pedestrian crossing areas under section 156.05 and newsracks under chapter 13 1 of the Saint Paul Legislative Code, there shall be and is hereby created a legislative hearing officer. The legislative hearing officer shall be a city employee appointed by the president of the city council. The legislative hearing oficer shall have take authority to hear appeds to orders, decisions or determinations of the enforcement officers or others and make recommendations to the city council. The hearing officer shall not have the power to grant
waivers of the Minnesota State Building Code. All matters, orders, decisions and determinations of the
hearing officer shall be fomarded to the city council in resolution form within ten (1 0) days of the
hearing officer's actions. The city council shall have the authority to approve, modify, reverse, revoke,
wholly or partly, the hearing officei's orders, decisions or determinations and shall make such order, decision or determination as ought to be made, &I matters, orders. decisions determinations of the hearing offrcer, being recommendations to the city council, me not subiect to judicial review.
See. 18.02. Hearing petition, filing, fee, notice.
Any property owner affected by any order which has been issued in connection with the enforcement of a health, housing, building or fire code, or any rule or regulation adopted pursuant thereto, or any newsrack
owner dected by any decision made pursuant to section 13 1.70(B) of the St. Paul Legislative Code, may
request and shall be granted a hearing before the legislative hearing officer on all matters set forth in such notice; provided, that such property or newsrack owner shall first file with the legislative hearing officer
a written petition requesting such hearing and setting forth a brief statement of grounds eref for within ten (1 0) days after the date the original notice of code violations, or within ten (10) days after the date on
which notice of the newsrack decision under section 13 1.70(B), was issued,
The filing fee for such petition shall h twenty-five dollars ($25.00) except that where there is financial
hardship, the hearing officer may waive this filing fee subject to the approval of the city council.
Upon receipt of such petition, the hearing ofEcer shall set a time and place for such hearing and shall
give the petitioner written notice thereof. The hearing shall be commenced not later than thirty (30) days
after the date on which the petition was filed.

10:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

under chapter 13 1 of the Saint Paul Legislative Code, there shall be and is hereby created a legislative hearing officer.
Moore city money paid out, the elected cuincil don't do their jobs now.
How much will property tax go up next year---$$$$$$$$$$$

12:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So after this hearing officer has been barbequing property owners for years, they finally get around to making the job leigt?

12:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"not suject to judicial review?"

Looks like they don't like people taking them to court when they do wrong. Is this legal? What happened to the due process these DFLrs pride themselves on all the time?

12:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wikipedia definition of due process: (legal descriptions also available on the internet).

Due process (more fully due process of law) is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law of the land, instead of respecting merely some or most of those legal rights. As developed through a large body of case law in the United States (U.S.), this principle gives individuals a varying ability to enforce their rights against alleged violations by governments and their agents (that is, state actors), but normally not against other private citizens.

Due process has also been frequently interpreted as placing limitations on laws and legal proceedings, in order for judges instead of legislators to define and guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty. This interpretation has often proven controversial, and is analogous to the concepts of natural justice, rule of law (as used in a constitutional rather than a philosophical sense), and procedural justice used in various other jurisdictions.
*

It seems the city wants to legally take away accountability, after they have been doing it for years. And how about these short notices, where they send letters dated two days before their desired actions.

6:57 AM  
Anonymous Marcia Moermond sec.18.01 said...

MAY
request and shall be granted a hearing before the legislative hearing officer on all matters set forth in such notice;
The Yellow Postcard, if you volunteer for hearing confers Jurisdiction, I would not sign therefore the City and its Legal Council Gerald Henderickson are illegally passing resolutions,subject to fee's,assessments without Authority,Jurisdiction to Steal your propertys
THANKS FOR POSTING.
Good Faith Intent is to expose City Government exceeding their Jurisdiction and Authority, Once challenge they cannot legally proceed.......

8:46 AM  
Anonymous Legislaive Hearing Officer sec18.01 said...

pdf Lantry Author Green Sheet #3068056
approved by Council LawyerGerald Henderickson

http://stpaul.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=37&clip_id=1252&meta_id=59975

9:16 AM  
Anonymous Jeff Matiatos said...

I would assume that this NEW hearing officer will be very qualified in the areas of housing, building and fire codes and health codes. Whats the annual cost ? It must be a full time position.

Is this really what we need to do ? Hire another full time city employee when Coleman is talking about laying others off ?

Hell, the city council members rely on who's already there in terms of its respective department heads for efficient and proper enforcement. Which by the way, have done nothing but get the city in trouble with lawsuits.

Why, if the city council has the last word, do we even need a hearing officer ?

Why not just cut from the budget, the department heads of inspections and fire, who should be the ones taking responcibility for the write ups of its enforcement agents ?

Instead, the city plants a hearing officer who has the authority of a baby sitter and no final authority to over rule the enforcement agencys orders.

As it states, the hearing officer only has the authority to hear and make recomendations to the city council.

The hearing officer cannot himself, reverse the orders of the enforcement agencys.


What a fucking waste.

I am sure the city council and the city attorneys office has an ulterior motive for planting this NEW officer .





Jeff Matiatos

11:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is this ordinance trying to legitimatize moermond or get a new hearing officer?

3:58 PM  
Anonymous henry said...

Just like this City Council to try to strong arm their way to the ends they want without any regards to constitutional rights. What a bunch of S--t heads.

4:05 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the lawsuit Nancy Lazaryan brought against the city of St. Paul, the city attorney argued that the ordiance that says the party has the right to judicial review was "wrong".(Lazaryan had brought an appeal of the legislative hearing officer to the district court.)

The judge agreed, and it is now on appeal.

Looks like the city council had to "fix it", because their own city attorney argued that the ordinance was not valid.

8:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nancy Lazaryan is the third stooges of Bill, Sharon and now Nancy.

What ever happened to her getting the legislature to discipline judges?

8:48 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The city council is not appointing a new hraring officer. This is the same stooge that's been there for years doing the council's bidding.

10:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

jeff can't read. Nothing new.

7:49 AM  
Anonymous Kaardal's Senate Testimony file 70 said...

If you people did your own forensic research, Nancy is working in conjunction with the lawyer erick kaardhl, Name calling ie: Stooge is not conducive to a professional site

http://www.neopopulism.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=291&Itemid=1

10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It looks like Nancy Lazaryan really caught the city council with their pants down in this critical area of inspections.

What are the qualfications of Marcia Moermond - can we list them here? Being as she has replaced an entire prfoessional board, how many years does she have as a master electrician? How about qualifications in plumbing, homebuilding, legal qualifications, engineering?

Then what is there to ensure impartiality that her decisions protect peoples' due process rights?

This is worded as if she is just a political appointee. What are the qualfications of her political handlers?

What did the old law say? Do all the homeowners have a legal claim, if the city has been handeling this illeagle'y?

2:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Marcia Moermond has a degree in Urban Planning.

6:32 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is a huge hole in the inspections process. Moermond canot begin to have the code expertise to make the sometimes life and death decisions in that position (such as the suicides).

Is there any way the villagers can mobilize and take their spades and torches and pitchforks to stop this law from going through. This would put Moermond out of commission, as a key part of the inspections process.

7:27 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And not a word from Eric and Chuck.We all now know what the ricomen were saying about the slippery slope!

7:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OK, so, this is all I know if this is a new ordinance, it must be to codify what was done years ago.

Only the City Council can "hear" the appeals of issued orders. Back in the 60's to 80's the hearings were held during the regular City Council meetings. Starting in 1990 the hearings were moved to a committee of the City Council, and then the full Council would vote on the recomendation of the committee.

In 1994 the voters made the City Council part time and cut the legislative aides to one person. At that point the City hired "research" staff to take on some of the administrative functions that the Council did itself when it was full-time. Out of that one staff person was assigned to "hear" the appeal and make recomendations to the council. The citizen has the right to still discuss the issue in front of the council at a public "hearing", but about 90% reach an agreement with staff in advance.

If this is a new ordinance it does nothing but make clear what was the council's intent from the begining... assign a staff person to resolve as many of these as possible before they come to council and to make it clear that the person has no real power other than to recomend to the council what they should do (that is why no judicial review, because it has no power other than to recomend).

JMONTOMEPPOF

Chuck Repke

8:45 PM  
Anonymous Jeff Matiatos said...

If this law is intended to go around the courts and deny citizens rights to judicial review, it will not work.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that before government takes property, it must permit the citizen the normal course of appeals before the court will entertain any appeals of administrative action.

You want the case I'll be happy to cite it.





Jeff Matiatos

9:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If this law is intended to go around the courts and deny citizens rights to judicial review, it will not work."

It will work perfectly Jeff. They make the law like this on purpose because they know most people don't have the money to go to court, so the city acts with impunity with whatever they wnt to do to you.

Sure you have rights......the question is, do you have the money to buy them at the courthouse?

1:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For all of you green horns out there.The city has been using a complaint based system for sometime.When Dawkins came around it was a more aggressive system.They had sweeps,(ff)which stands for field finds and so on.Field finds were a problem from the start due to the fact that the Mayor,city council and or Dawkins could give a inspector a hit list to target.Now you start adding in code enforcement because of behavior.Then say you target a house owned by Joe blow on University because behavior then decide to target all of Joe Blows property and in the end Sally over on Thomas gets screwed because of Willy on University.If you don't think this happens, wake up.This is the problem.


And by the way I've noticed a 100% improvement when Fire and Safety took over interior inspections.So I'm not against inspections and noticed under Dawkins and Kelly we had huge problems that violated many peoples constitutional rights.

In the end I'll take the complaint based system.Thank you much!


Ed

7:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff did you read what I posted?

Let's do this step by step.

1. Orders are written by City Staff people from DSI (agents of City government).

2. Property owner disagrees and wants the government to change/amend/delete the orders. To do this they "appeal" to the City Council (the government that DSI wrote the orders for).

3. The City Council sends the issue to one of its employees to review/resolve/or recommend action on. (You meet with Marsha).

4. The City Council takes action. (You get a hearing if you don't like Marsha's recommendation.)

5. You can appeal the action of the City council to the court system if you don't like their action.

Those are the steps.

Jeff you are saying that there ought to be "judicial review" available between steps 3 and 4.

Somehow the courts should be in between an elected City body and its staff recommendation.

It makes no sense. They don't have to follow the recomendation and her actions can't stop any potential action of theirs.

The Council isn't doing anything with the ordinance other than bringing clarity to Marsha's lack of power to do anything other than to speed up the process for the council.

Many times all that the property owner wants is a little more time and this process allows her to extend the time period a month or two while people get work done.

JMONTOMEPPOF

Chuck Repke

8:19 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chuck,

There's something missing in your grand scheme of things. Neither Moermond nor the city council have the ability to interpret code, except along political lines, or are you telling me they have the extensive experience in the trades to begin to do so. And another thing, why don't they just replace the zoning board with a hearing officer.

In the job description for hearing officer, why don't they specify sensitivity, integrity, and human values, so they don't end up being a toady. Hell, a hearing officer can even end up looking like a toady.

8:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

8:35 - The City Council is not required to have technical expertise in all areas that they write laws. No one would ever be elected to anything if there was a requirement that they know everything about everything.

The inspector writes up the building and issues orders. If they appeal that to the Council the value of the Council is to determine if following the letter of the law is appropriate or if someone should be given additional time or is there an error.

That is all the hearing officer tries to do on the front end for the council. For every one that you see in front of the council, there is probably twenty that Marsha has given additional time or helped resolve confusion with the property owner.

The difference between the hearing officer and the zoning committee of the planning commission or the board of zoning appeals is that they have real power given to them in the legislative code. If you disagree with the BZA or the Planning Commission, you have to pay to appeal the action to the Council.

Again, as this ordinance clearly states, Marsha is trying to help people resolve their situation before/instead of having a full blown hearing at the council. She is just advising them.

JMONTOMEPPOF

Chuck Repke

11:55 AM  
Anonymous jeff matiatos said...

So the council isn't supposed to have technical expertise in the areas of laws that they write and adopt ?

Do the laws that they create get checked by the city attorney or another law firm before they go to vote ?

Have local city laws and rules ever been found to be unlawful, vague, ambiguous and in contradiction of state law Chuck ?

The problem is that when local government adopots and passes laws without expertise, we run into problems like Morris vs. Sax and a host of other cases.

You seem to deny the obvious that city council members are not wholly qualified to adopt half the rules and laws they adopt.

Rules and laws affect all of us so even if we have an intermediate like Marsha trying to head of a confrontation with the city council, most of the times she sides with enforcement and folks end up in court any ways.

I am all to familiar with how local governments and the courts tie up citizens resources until they can't fight no more.

Cities involved in litigation are always protracting hostile litigation until they can get the case before a corrupt judge or in other ways, tap you out so you wil give up the fight.

Citizens ought to go right to the city council with their issues and appeals.

What we have now is kind of like how the state has created all these administrative courts that handle child support so on and so on.

Of course the cities ultimate goal is to make citizens resolve their issues so it doesn't end up costing the city actual court costs.

Sometimes, what the city will do is unfairly and unlawfully work over the landlord, then when they get caught in the act, the city can hopefully detour its behavior by resolving the matter before it gets to court and becomes a scandle.




Jeff Matiatos

12:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The city council and 'the person who is only trying to help' Moermond have no technical expertise on code interpretation. They rely entirely on arbitrary and predatory code interpretation by bureaucrats.

1:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

More examples of how a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Jeff displays a proud lack of basic government knowledge. Stuff we learned in grade school.

jeff matiatos said...
So the council isn't supposed to have technical expertise in the areas of laws that they write and adopt ?

---
The point of a representative government is that you don't have to be well-educated or an expert in some discipline. You have to display a enough common goals with the people you're representing to get the nod from a majority of them.

What world do you live in that elected officials are experts in the dozens of areas they make decisions on? It never was.

jeff matiatos said...
Do the laws that they create get checked by the city attorney or another law firm before they go to vote ?


Long before they are 'laws' they are bills or proposed legislation that is submitted to Council Research, or Legislative Research, or Congressional Research for drafting into a legal/Constitutional piece of legislation. They check current law/codes/ordinances for duplication or contradiction as well.

jeff matiatos said...
Have local city laws and rules ever been found to be unlawful, vague, ambiguous and in contradiction of state law Chuck ?

---

Yes of course. Federal legislation has been over turned and found to be unconstitutional as well. Constitutions and Charters are vague so that they remain living documents. You'd never need the higher courts if everything was in black and white.
The real question is how often does it happen to a certain council/legislature/congress? A clear pattern would indicate a problem. A few cases here or there does not constitute a conspiracy. Smaller towns with fewer resources (like research staff) may find themselves in more peril than bigger areas.

jeff matiatos said...
The problem is that when local government adopots and passes laws without expertise, we run into problems like Morris vs. Sax and a host of other cases.

---
In government, there is the arm of bureaucracy, where the experts are. Budget experts will probably be in finance department. Planning and Economic Development will have the expertise in land use and development. Public Works will have your civil engineers who know how to conduct studies to calm traffic, how much concrete/blacktop mixture for average potholes, and cost effectiveness of street lamps.

jeff matiatos said...
You seem to deny the obvious that city council members are not wholly qualified to adopt half the rules and laws they adopt.

---

You seem to have worked yourself into a frenzy and jumped to the wrong conclusion. Ironic that you are criticizing the council on not having expertise and you're showing your lack of basic knowledge.

The charter of the city, and the election certificate authorizes the council to vote to adopt any legislation before them. The people gave the nod to them over a 150 years ago.

Catch up why don't you?
-------------------------
Then 1:49pm Anonymous wrote:
The city council and 'the person who is only trying to help' Moermond have no technical expertise on code interpretation. They rely entirely on arbitrary and predatory code interpretation by bureaucrats.

The technical expertise is within the DSI. You challenge their expertise and Moermond just looks over the facts like timelines, number of writes ups/contacts, reasons for whatever, and she makes a recommendation. The council still makes the call. I've seen them turn things back and forth on her. Its case by case as it should be.

My suggestion for many of you is to go to a citizenship class.

Eric

3:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Eric said,

"The technical expertise is within the DSI. You challenge their expertise."

Obviously, and you agree, in this setup everything depends on the information DSI provides. I challenge their partiality and sense of fair play. How do you stop their whims, excesses and pettiness without citizen oversight?

In this setup, a few highly placed rogue bureaucrats can do enormous damage, and no one in government has the guts to stand up to it.

3:39 PM  
Anonymous Jeff Matiatos said...

Eric, you learned about government in grade school ?

I didn't and neither did anyone else.

The city council can create all the laws and rules under the authorities vested in them, but the truth and validity of those laws are subject to judicial review.

Citizens can do many things to stop government in its tracks through the courts, and we don't have to beg the council for an explanation.

Their is no such thing as citizen oversight.

What oversight there is, is at the poles.

By then, its to late, and another politician gets elected and never does what they said they would.

Same shit different day. Hows that for an understanding about government !

Guess I didn't need grade school to figure that out.



Jeff Matiatos

3:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

AAAAAAAAARrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggg

To do what to whom???

DSI writes up something because they think there is something wrong. I haven't seen the case yet where what DSI said was physically wrong with the building was in dispute.

The landlords in the RICO case don't even dispute the physical problems, they just complain that they have been picked on.

If there was anyone in City hall that thought that there were rogue bureaucrats out to get someone, it would be to their advantage to "get them back." Hell, it would be great press.

The randomness of who has been signalled out by this international conspiracy to pick on a dozen problem property owners continues to be the puzzle.

Once you can figure out that...

Then you have your case!

Hmmmm... maybe it was hat size, yeh these guys were all signalled out because they have the same hat size...

JMONTOMEPPOF

Chuck Repke

3:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"By then, its to late, and another politician gets elected and never does what they said they would.

Same shit diferent day. Hows that for an understanding about government !"


I must say Eric......Jeff seems to have it figured out for us! His explanation is so simple that even you should be able to understand it. You educated types like to make it difficult for the rest of us to understand so you can slip all your slimy tricks in there to screw people.

By the way, why don't you learn how to spell the word different?

5:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

jeff said:
Eric, you learned about government in grade school ?
I didn't and neither did anyone else.


Speak for yourself Jeff.
Even in Chicago we had a Seventh Grade Social Studies focus on civics. Local government and how it works. It was one of the classes you needed to pass to go on to eighth grade. I also took a mandatory Constitution test as a high school junior.

Listening to you and Nancy L., one would think that MN had some horrible schools. She said she was never taught about state Constitutions in high school over in Oakdale.

Too bad for you. However, it explains a lot.


Same shit different day seems to sum it up just fine as far as I'm concerned.

Eric

5:31 PM  
Anonymous Jeff Matiatos said...

You took the bait Eric .

For me, grade school was 1st to
6th.

7-9 was Jr.High, 9-12 ( I graduated ) was Senior High.

Don't try to school me on what I learned because really, you didn't learn and nobody learned of the kind of government we have today back then let alone things as complicated as politics and corruption.

You must have been in a class of your own in grade school to learn all those tough govermnent subjects.

Unless you just graduated from grade school like yesterday Eric, no one in their right mind believes pupils learn about the complicated workings of government in grade school.

7th grade is not grade school. Get it ?





Jeff Matiatos

6:01 PM  
Anonymous Jeff Matiatos said...

Check that Eric, 10-12 was Senior High. Misprint.




Jeff Matiatos

6:06 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

5:31 PM Eric Said!
Same shit different day seems to sum it up just fine as far as I'm concerned.

Your right again Eric, it's the DFL

6:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chuck said,

If there was anyone in City hall that thought that there were rogue bureaucrats out to get someone, it would be to their advantage to "get them back." Hell, it would be great press.

City Hall got tired of standing around being stooges, so they personalized it with their own DFL agenda. Chuck, your version doesnt' work cause they didn't get rid of Magner after all the bad publicity, they gave him a raise.

6:40 PM  
Anonymous Bill Cullen said...

Every couple of years a landlord proposes forming a group to hire attorney's to fight common interest cases. It just happened to me again.

The squeaky wheel always gets the grease and the best way to squeak might be with lawsuits. The associations that represent us (sparl and MMHA) both tend to negotiate rather than fight. And this forum is a great avenue to vent, but I wonder if it will ever cause the change needed.

It is unclear to me how such a group would select cases to please all investors or how to find enough investors to be viable.

Since this topic seems to come up frequently, I wonder if other landlords are pondering the same idea? Are you? If so, are you serious about paying for it? 20 landlords all paying $1,000 to take on some of the low hanging fruit might be lucrative enough to fund the organization for a while.

Regards, Bill Cullen.

6:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

While you seem to pride yourself in your Chicogo education Eric, the rest of us expect better than Chicogo style politics here.

7:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"If there was anyone in City hall that thought that there were rogue bureaucrats out to get someone, it would be to their advantage to "get them back." Hell, it would be great press. "

Part of the problem is that some of the "rouges" are on the city council! They have no interest in anything but their agenda, and the ends justifies the means.

7:49 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Every couple of years a landlord proposes forming a group to hire attorney's to fight common interest cases. It just happened to me again."

This effort is going on right now Bill. I am suprised you don't know about it.

And by the way, sparl has never fought for anything . They just roll over and take it.

7:53 PM  
Blogger Bob said...

Bill Cullen said;
The squeaky wheel always gets the grease and the best way to squeak might be with lawsuits. The associations that represent us (sparl and MMHA) both tend to negotiate rather than fight. And this forum is a great avenue to vent, but I wonder if it will ever cause the change needed.

My response;
Excuse me for being blunt, it is my nature.

Let's see, 20 landlords x $1000 = $20,000. Divided by $300 an hour for attorney fee's will give you guys a whooping 66.2 hours of legal services. The city has an entire office staffed with attorneys dedicated to the defense of housing lawsuits and tax payers money to kick your ass's. What has the current lawsuits cost the plaintiffs? My estimates are over a million bucks. How many of you property investors out there are willing to throw chump change ($66K) at a lawsuit that will go no place because the city will fight you all the way to the supreme court? That is the nature of things in the city attorneys office. Fight, fight, fight, until the plaintiffs run out of money or give up.

We need a viable public platform!We can file the blog as a 501c PAC. A well trusted property rights advocate who all of you know said he would volunteer to be the treasure. I know an attorney who has donated his time to the blog in the past and he said he would help file the blog as a PAC. Our Jeff said he would check into how to go about filing the town hall.

Spend $20,000 on building participation here at OUR town hall and we will have an impact on an election and gain credibility for this town hall as a public venue to be reckoned with. We also need to lobby the legislature to gain support in passing laws to make tenants responsible for many of the behavioral issues they bring to rental properties.

We can add some team members on here. Like you Bill C. Do away with some of the wild antics to build more credibility in the nature of the forum.

Show me another person who has no horse in this race as dedicated to change as I am. You can't there isn't one. And another thing. I have support in this fight. I have volunteers to get the job done. I'm not looking to make any money. Jeeesh, I have spent more of my own cash on bringing these issues to the public than I have had donated. I have lost friends over these issues. My drive is my conscience.

Let us turn up the MIC on the A Democracy Town Hall podium. We will get results.

P.S. I should mention, Bill McGaughey of the Watchdog News said he maybe interested in being a team member here. Bill is a brilliant communicator and would bring another dimension to the town hall.

I hope you all get the jest of what direction I'd like to take this forum.

10:38 PM  
Anonymous Jamie said...

Good one Bob!

As a PAC A Dem could, legally solicit funds from the public.

Pay for a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

Build a legal defense fund for property rights issues.

Solicit public support.

11:28 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bill, where, and how do you expect to be able to fund an organization with the proceeds from law suits?

I can't believe that they have gotten to you too...

The government has certain police powers for issues of health and safety that never go away. The policies that the cities develop all stem from those basic police powers.

It is for the protection of the general community and in the issues of renting or sale of properties, it is to protect the consumer/buyer/renter. As they say in real estate school it is to protect the sheep from the wolves.

You can sue until the cows come home, but there isn't any money in it. Even when a City is found to have been in error, like Sax, there is no "class damages" or punitive damages awarded, because the City was attempting to promote the general health, safety and welfare of the community. (Protect the sheep from the wolves.)

You/I/we are the wolves, when we own property and rent it to consumers. We are in the business. They are the sheep that the government and the laws protect.

You want to change laws?

Hirer a good lobbyist.

Though I don't think you can afford me, but I am sure there are others you could retain.

JMONTOMEPPOF

Chuck Repke

11:39 AM  
Anonymous Bill Cullen said...

I need to apologize to Bob; my post seemed to take a shot at his blog and I did not mean to. I am simply pursuing another avenue and should not have tried to compare it to the hard work and good Bob is doing. Honestly, I am sorry.

A lobbyist? MMHA has two of them. They are great guys, but all a lobbyist can do is educate and encourage votes. I struggle to believe that a lobbyist could convince enough legislators to care about multi-housing issues (we are all slum-lords, ya know). I also don’t see how a lobbyist could successfully work all fronts (state and city). However, Repke’s offer to do the job might be worth serious consideration. He clearly has an in with the most anti-landlord lawmakers. Seriously, he is a perfect lobbyist.

I believe there is some low hanging fruit where an attorney could show damages. I know Sax received no compensation, but according to him that was because he won on all counts EXCEPT the smoke detector. Therefore, the city had the right to pull his license due to that one issue. If the supreme court had found in his favor on all counts, the court would have considered damages.

Hey Mr. annoynmous poster... Who is doing this right now? I am interested in hearing more. Send me a private email if you must.

Bill Cullen.

8:14 PM  
Blogger Bob said...

Thank you for the apology Bill.

Since you opened the door, I too was thinking Chuck would make a good lobbyist for housing issues. I didn't mention it because I thought folks might think I lost my marbles. :-)

10:05 PM  

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