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Tuesday, July 06, 2010

A Letter To The Editor

SALISBURY SHOULD PAY FOR ITS ABUSE OF PROPERTY OWNER

A City property owner was recently forced to pay more than a thousand dollars in legal fees to defend her rights because of Jim Ireton’s war on residential landlords. After embarking on a major renovation of her premises and getting a permit for the work from the City, she was cited for having an illegal apartment. She hired an attorney and got the zoning board to shoot down the citation. The board determined that the apartment was legal because it had already made that ruling some years ago.

The result: both the City and the property owner have legal bills that are entirely unnecessary. It’s outrageous that the owner had to defend against a completely bogus charge that the City should have investigated and dropped before issuing the citation. The first ruling by the board was filed in the City’s records.

There is no excuse for this abuse of the property owner. If Ireton would direct the City’s code compliance personnel to cease making up lists of “slum property” to post on the City’s website and instead determine whether so called illegal apartments have been approved by the zoning board, episodes such as this one would not occur. In this instance an apology (assuming Ireton has offered one) is not enough, and the City should pay the owner’s legal bill regardless of whether the oversight was the fault of Ireton or someone else in the Government Office Building.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a real "All America City"!

Anonymous said...

Ireton should be spending his time on the Police and Fire Departments, starting with the appointment of the permanent Chief.

Anonymous said...

Wait until Stu Leer lets Ireton have it in the face about this outrage.

Anonymous said...

It might help to avoid an another asinine waste of taxpayers money and screwing a property owner who has played by the rules if Ireton would just sit down with landlords representatives for a full and frank discussion.

Anonymous said...

5:09 written by a slumlord who is no longer getting their way! lmao! It's about time someone addressed this situation, where the hell do you think all of the crime is coming from? Those neighborhoods where the tenants are just using welfare funds to get by. Run them all out of salisbury, maybe the city ought to just start condemning some of these properties!

Anonymous said...

6:35-

Hey genius, that's a great way to get rid of the Perdue plant:

"the city ought to just start condemning some of these properties

Anonymous said...

If you think someone is going to get fired for this you're crazy! The engineers for Salisbury checked off on an $80,000,000 design for the wastewater plant that wasn't worth $.80 and NO ONE GOT FIRED! No one! Not Wilber who ok'ed the $1 million damages cap or anyone from the engineering department that ok'ed the terribly flawed design. The City can blame the design firm all they want, they could have, and should have had an independent evaluation of the design. Better yet, they should have someone on staff or a paid consultant that is an expert on wastewater plant design. Add to this, Ireton hired a new director with NO WASTEWATER EXPERIENCE!!!! I submit humbly that this new design has a high risk of failing. BUT nobody cares!

Anonymous said...

This is sick! Also, did anyone stop and think how the poor child must have felt when her mommy ripped it off? Not good! Probably took part of her skin w/it or left red marks. What a poor excuse for a parent.