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Originally Posted by 1487
Unless you have been under a rock you should know that a lot of stuff was changed and panels were convened to recommend major changes to permitting, procedures and city governance structure.
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More fun L&I news:
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The Market Street collapse was supposed to trigger major changes in the department of licenses and inspections. . . . . But L&I, a beleaguered unit charged with enforcing building codes, issuing licenses, and inspecting construction and demolition sites, requires far more dramatic investments to right itself — and in Philadelphia, that kind of investment seems unlikely.
Some of the reasons are strictly practical . . . . Budget season too often looms as a series of tough choices, with schools, libraries and rec centers on the chopping block. L&I is an easy loser in that conversation, its workforce of building inspectors largely invisible unless something bad happens.
The other primary reason L&I remains the underfed child of city government is less savory. “There’s no political will to change it,” says Glenn Corbett, a code enforcement veteran who chaired a commission organized after the collapse to investigate the department. “There’s a political incentive to keep L&I weak. Because to any mayor or Council member, this is the unit that developers and businesspeople are going to complain about. And so a lot of moves were made after the collapse, but not a lot changed.”
. . . . [a] man who fell to his death [while on a fire escape at a Center City party] should have been safe; the fire escape wasn’t overloaded. But L&I is. New agency commissioner David Perri admits his inspectors currently shoulder workloads about two times too large, and the limited new funding Kenney proposed will only keep the agency running in place. One of the most important functions L&I performs is demolition, knocking down buildings deemed “imminently dangerous.” But Perri can’t demolish dangerous buildings as fast as he discovers new ones, given a backlog of about 250 all year long. . . . . .
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http://www.phillymag.com/articles/th...tU8XRf8tmCU.99
As the article points out, the issue isn't really a question of administration. It's a question of scale. When you have a tiny (necessarily, for budgetary reasons) squad of inspectors and tens of thousands of blighted properties - there is no way, even with the addition of an elite force of highly trained Swiss civil engineering commandos, that the City can ever keep up with the problem. It's not a question of manpower. It's a question of a system that incentivizes poor behavior, neglect, reckless speculation.
This is the definition of a
systemic problem, a structural problem. The city can't reasonably address this problem with a few procedural changes and a couple new civil service hires.
The
only way for the City to be able to seriously tackle the pervasive problem of dangerous buildings is to impose a regime that imposes meaningful, substantial financial penalties on speculators and neglectful property owners.
Yet there appears to be virtually no political will in Council or Brilliant Jim Kenney's office to do this.
But, sayeth the defenders of the City,
OPA essentially just imposed a land tax by raising land assessments!!!!! Beest that not a proof of good intention going forward?
Yes, indeed they did impose a land tax. With irony bordering on comedy, they imposed it on people who built nice new buildings on empty land, yet - goest thou and figureth - they left the taxes of the speculators alone. No land tax for them.
But they'll do that next year!, thou doth protest.
Yes, of course they will.
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