How is this for a forum letter..... just sent. Blinded by the blight ! May 6th a neighbor and I cleaned up the yards alleys and streets in our neighborhood. We reported several properties for code violations to the city. Yesterday July 8th one of these absentee landlords showed up to cut his grass that was over five feet high. Well most of it he did half the yard. Another property has hedges twenty feet high and so overgrown that they engulf the city sidewalk making it impassable. Now he cut some when told by the codes officer about five of the forty feet . The clippings which are truck loads have laid in his yard since. The codes department is a epic failure in Johnstown. I dont see how they can drive by the homes occupied and unoccupied in this section of moxham and not write up and fine these owners. The system in place says fifteen days to address a violation if they choose codes can give another fifteen. then legal action is to be takenI assure you it does not work this way. Why not? A hundred feet down the alley a house owner had let their property go so long that the roof collapsed in February. Codes came out the owner and codes said it would be fixed in spring. Not one thing has been done since. Blight destroys property value and community moral and need to be addressed in a serious manner. With a city department that is systematically broken why does council and the city not do something to fix it? This issue is why houses dont sell. Who wants to move to a community that has no standards and look like Berlin in 1945? City hall and our officials have given up on doing what they are charged to do. Welcome to johnstown clean? Safe? And friendly? Those signs are a joke just like the people running the city they are in.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 16:26:53 +0000