Ishpeming Police Chief Steve Snowaert, top right, testifies before the Negaunee Committee for Blight Resolution during a public forum on Monday at the Negaunee Senior Center. Snowaert was one of three experts who provided input for the city’s proposed property maintenance code. (Journal photo by Lisa Bowers)

NEGAUNEE — With a public forum on Monday, the city of Negaunee took a preliminary step to combatting blight.

Members of the Special Advisory Committee on Blight Resolution heard professional testimony about blight from Ishpeming Police Department Chief Steve Snowaert, Michigan Municipal League Northern Field consultant Scott MacInnes and Negaunee Fire Chief Ned Cory.

Negaunee City Manager Nate Heffron, who chaired the meeting, said the proposed property maintenance code, which requires city council approval before being implemented, would affect commercial and industrial buildings, and would not have any impact on residential buildings. Rental homes, though, would be considered commercial for the purposes of property maintenance, he said.

“We are taking a different approach than the city has in the past,” Heffron said. “Before the city was kind of heavy-handed and didn’t have a good approach to get property owners to cooperate. Now what we are proposing is having a citizen advisory board for the property owners, to keep them out of the court system and hopefully not obtain any fines.”

He said the proposed regulation would codify a series of existing ordinances pertaining to blight that are already in effect in the city.

“They are all segmented across different ordinances we have,” Heffron said. “In addition to that, we are placing new regulations in there that will help keep properties cleaned up and help get rid of blight. That would consist of curing buildings of broken windows and things of that nature.”

During the meeting the experts were asked a series of questions about the impact blighted properties have on communities from health and safety as well as potential economic and social impacts.

Snowaert told the panel that, in his view, an abandoned building, “by its nature” is a safety concern.

“Abandoned buildings can turn into blight over time. Plus the building, over time, becomes structurally worse by the neglect,” Snowaert said. “With utilities turned off structures can get mold, they could become places of illegal gathering spots for juveniles, they harbor varmints (and) they tend to be targets for criminal behavior.”

Snowaert said a party at an abandoned house in Ishpeming in the last year led to an injury.

“The house was being used as a place to gather, to party and whatever happened, she fell out the second story window onto the cement,” he said. “It obviously was a building that was abandoned; it had been abandoned for a few years. I think the owner had died and then it had just gone unattended.”

When asked if he sees higher rates of crime associated with abandoned properties he said “most definitely.”

Blighted buildings can also cause several problems for the fire department during a fire, Cory told the panel.

He said fire tends to spread faster in an abandoned building because there are fewer obstacles to get in its way.

“Walls are torn open, floors caved in,” Cory said. “It presents problems, if we had to go in because we heard there was a person in there — if we are doing search and rescues and there’s holes in the floor or the ceiling is caving in. Unsafe structures (become more dangerous) when you are in there putting water in the building plus you have people in 100 pounds of turn-out gear on the floor, it’s not a good situation.”

He said junk and debris in a yard can also make a firefighter’s job more difficult and treacherous.

“Any obstacle in the yard would make it harder for dragging hose lines across the yard or getting ladders set up in the yard,” Cory said.

Blight can have an economic impact as well, MacInnes said, especially for potential investors or homebuyers, and particularly in a city’s downtown or business corridor.

“Your commercial district, your downtown is typically the first impression people get of the town,” MacInnes said. “That is what they expect that the rest of the town is going to look like.”

MacInnes said if one neighborhood in the community is blighted, it can affect the whole municipality negatively.

“Blight in your overall community can really affect your home values and your census,” MacInnes said. “Those are the two things you have to be careful of.”

Heffron said he expects further action on the property code within a month.

“The goal is to gain the necessary testimony to uphold the property maintenance code that we are proposing, and once we get all the information and all the input that we gather here, we will take that into consideration,” Heffron said. “Then we will vote on whether to move that document forward to the city council for final adoption as an ordinance.”