When the Councilperson says it, it is OK. When a residents suggests it

MR. KRASIENKO:   We have been having issues with contractor registration and have been  having meetings about permitting for the building being done in the city. We are running into, what I believe to be, a bigger problem of the ‘weekend warriors.’  They come in, work all day Saturday and Sunday, are in and out, and know the building inspectors are not working.  Can you investigate if it is possible for the police department to issue tickets or summons if there is not a permit displayed or when they cannot produce a permit.  It is problematic for someone to call on the weekend.  Come Monday morning, they are gone and we get the same old song and dance, we can’t prove who was there, etc.  We are missing out on permit fees and income taxes as well as the local contractors that are legitimate pay their taxes, insurance, workers comp, etc.  They are being excluded from those jobs because they cannot compete with an unlicensed, unscrupulous contractor. On that same note, we ran into that situation this weekend at a job site. The building department had been notified of this job prior, actually back in January and there has not been any action by the building department to locate that contractor or put a stop work order on the job to bring that contractor into compliance. There was material on the roof and they are working on weekends.  Of course, Mr. Desvari’s response was that they needed to catch them working.  In my opinion, once that material is on site and we know work is commencing, if there is not a permit for that address, we should by law slap a stop work order on them.  I would like the law department to investigate the address I spoke with you about earlier and involve the police in that investigation.   Find out if there was any criminal wrongdoing or fraud at that site. It was also brought to the building department’s attention the misrepresentation of a building permit at that same site that was considerably devalued and in my opinion, cheated the city out of several hundred dollars of permit fees for that job.  The building department as of this date has not followed up on that and I would like you to include that in your investigation. In my opinion, when they sign that application for a permit, if they undervalue the job to get a cheaper permit, that is fraud.  We obviously need to bring in an outside entity to do that investigation, get to the bottom of it, and find out why nothing was done over the past three months on those complaints.

Advertisement