After attending last night’s meeting with tenants from Connolly Properties, it has given me the opportunity now to sit down with the Department of Community Affairs, as well as the Administration and council, to create long-range plans and solutions to their problems.
Unfortunately, when one is dealing with an issue of this magnitude, it is sad to see that the current policies and laws that we have are not strong enough for such a rental market in New Jersey, especially in the City of Plainfield. This is why we are going to have to sit down and come up with new policies, regulations, and laws to deal with this issue in moving forward.
Currently, I am working with the State and the City to deal with some of the immediate crises we are facing with Connolly Properties. There are three major players in this process: the courts, which I am handling through receiving legal advice from Trenton in closing loopholes that allow high-priced lawyers to maneuver through the system, the State via the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) who set policies and fines dealing with some of these issues, and the third party being the City of Plainfield.
The Department of Community Affairs inspects buildings that have more than four units. The inspection then, applying code regulations, really fall under their jurisdiction. The information I have gathered will help us move forward, encouraging hand-in-hand teamwork, avoiding duplication.
Through my research throughout the State, I have seen situations where towns would inspect 4+ unit buildings, and six months later, the State would come in and perform an inspection. The property owner then, wants to know which inspection he/she should honor. In the spirit of progression, I want to avoid these sorts of problems, which breed confusion.
Thus moving forward, I want to work with the State and Plainfield to deal with the immediate problems that the public brought to our attention last night, allowing us to create long-term plans and solutions, disarming such problems that may arise in the future.
As I stated last evening, this is not the time to point fingers. The time now is for ALL parties to come together and do RIGHT for the City of Plainfield. Anyone who has ideas, recommendation, and/or suggestions, I would be happy to sit with you and put those good ideas to use.
The issue of rent control came up last night, and I shared with the public that rent control is an issue that the Mayor and Council should deal with; it is not a State issue. I chose not to comment one way or the other because that task should be left to the local officials.
Also, it was mentioned by one of the bloggers recently, that there was a plan and a taskforce put together to deal with these problems and that I took part in dismantling it. That is not true. I am looking forward to working with everyone on this. However, let us stop pointing fingers and making assumptions, but let us move forward with fact-based conversations toward strengthening our City.
The tenant association the Mayor suggested the tenants create is not a direct solution to the problem itself, but is a giant step in the right direction. The association would give residents the chance to meet and discuss issues uniformly. This structure thus sets a vehicle in place that would defeat the problem tenants have in not knowing how to communicate their concerns to local and State officials. There is a huge lack of communication, but such a vehicle will defeat this problem.
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