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Council members consider condemned homes, lodging tax increase ahead of public hearings

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Photo by Jeff Thompson

The Homewood City Council will be deciding whether to condemn several homes at its December meetings, but first, members of the public safety committee discussed the status of those homes at its Dec. 4 meeting.

There will be public hearings for 10 homes, which were identified by the abatement board due to neglect or unsafe structures and did not respond with plans for corrective action within 60 days of notification.

The following properties will have a public hearing for condemnation on Dec. 11:

The following properties will have a public hearing for condemnation on Dec. 18:

There was another home on the list, 2535 18th Place S., but City Attorney Mike Kendrick said at tonight's meeting that the address was incorrectly listed. The actual home being considered for condemnation is at 253 18th Place S. Since the address was not correct, a public hearing for the right property cannot be held until January, after new notices are sent out.

The public safety committee sent most of the properties to the Dec. 11 and 18 council meetings without comment. However, Wyatt Pugh of the city's inspections department said that the Yorkshire Drive property has been bought by a new owner, with plans for bringing the home into compliance.

Pugh said the owner had come in Monday asking for a building permit, and he got support from the council to give this permit and carefully oversee work on the house. The Dec. 18 public hearing will still be held, and Ward 1 Representative Britt Thames said they would like to get an update from Pugh and the home owner at that time on progress that had been made.

“A property owner who wants to do something with the property has every opportunity to do that," Kendrick said. "The last thing we want to do is condemn property.”

Jeremy Love, a member of the abatement board and advocate for Rosedale – where many of the homes being considered for condemnation are located – attended the Dec. 4 meeting with concerns about the abatement process.

Love's concerns included whether the abatement board was legally formed and public notice given of meetings, whether there was a quorum when decisions were made to move forward with the condemnation process and whether property owners had received proper written notice of what parts of their properties were not meeting city codes.

Thames and Pugh said that everything about the board had been set up and operated legally, that a quorum had been present during meetings and that all homeowners received notices before they moved forward in pursuing condemnation. However, Thames said the city would look into the rules surrounding abatement and condemnation ahead of the meeting.

When asked why he did not address these concerns during the meeting where the abatement board chose to consider condemning these 10 homes, Love said he was not informed that there had possibly been noncompliance until after that meeting.

Additionally, the city council will consider a 2 percent increase to its lodging tax. Ward 5 Representative Peter Wright has brought up the idea at multiple finance committee meetings as a way to increase revenue and bring Homewood's tax in line with other municipalities.

“This will put us in the middle of the pack. It’s certainly an improvement,” Wright said.  

The 2 percent increase would bring the total lodging tax up to 20 percent, of which Homewood would receive about 9 percent. This would be about a $600,000 per year increase in revenue, based on estimates discussed at the Oct. 16 finance committee meeting.

Wright said part of the desire to raise the tax is to offset the cost of additional police presence at the 19 hotels within Homewood's city limits. From Jan. 1, 2015, to Nov. 15, 2017, there were roughly 3,400 callouts for police at these hotels, in addition to regular patrols, Wright said. This averaged to about five callouts per day.

If the council approves the increase, it would not take effect until the new year, though Kendrick said they couldn't set an exact date until he was sure of what steps would need to be taken.

Finally, the council also began discussing sidewalk priorities for the 2018 fiscal year. A list of projects has not been approved, but council members did add a new sidewalk project to their high priority list: Shades Creek Parkway from Rumson Road to Yorkshire Drive, which would be paired with a crosswalk across Shades Creek Parkway that Ward 5 Representative Jennifer Andress said ALDOT has agreed to.

They also moved a sidewalk project on BM Montgomery Street, from 26th Avenue South to 28th Avenue South, from medium to high priority, and Pugh discussed having a more formalized engineering process to make decisions about the look and placement of sidewalks easier. Pugh said having this would likely mean sidewalk projects would be completed in "a more orderly fashion.”

City planner Vanessa McGrath said the next step will be for the Building, Engineering and Zoning Department to take the high priority project list and start getting cost estimates from contractors to see what can be accomplished.

She said medium priority projects are more likely to be considered next year, as there are 16 projects considered high priority. Two of those projects are under construction and three others are in the design and engineering phase.

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