With the critical eye of a dentist examining rows of teeth for cavities, members of the City of Pottsville Blight Task Force visited the 600 block of West Norwegian Street on Thursday morning.
Using a rating system with a scale of zero to 5, with 5 being "poor," they critiqued three vacant homes in numerous terms, including their negative impact on the neighborhood.
While address 616 scored a 2 and 613 scored a 3, City Administrator Thomas A. Palamar, City Code Enforcement Officer Donald J. Chescavage and City Business Privilege Tax Administrator Leo Schwartz gave 608 W. Norwegian St. a 4.
"If you just drove down the street and passed it and just got a quick look, that building wouldn't necessarily stick out," Palamar said.
But a blue tarp covering the west side of the red-brick building hides cracks in the wall and damage to the roof.
In April, Mayor John D.W. Reiley assembled the task force. It's made up of city officials, including police and the fire chief, who will track blighted properties, prioritize problems associated with those buildings, review policy and procedure issues, and implement strategies to deal with them. Its ultimate goal is to abate blight in the city.
In the past three months, the task force has been working to collect a data base of blighted properties in the city. So far, they've seen 152 out of 314.
"The number keeps going up since we've been finding new ones on the tour," Palamar said Thursday.
While eyeballing the blue tarp covering up cracks in a red brick wall at 608 W. Norwegian St. on Thursday, Chescavage, Palamar and Schwartz offered insights into their findings on their blight tour.
While Patrick J. Powlick, Port Carbon, is listed as the owner of 608 on the online Schuylkill Parcel Locator, Chescavage said the Bank of America is in the process of taking possession of the property through foreclosure.
"Basically, we're not going to see much action here," Chescavage said.
"The way the law is written, the bank doesn't have to put the property in their name. So it's still in the original owner's name. The original owner has no real claim to it. And the bank doesn't do anything with it, just cover the problems," Schwartz said.
Chescavage said when he learned the building was vacant in April, he worked the phones in an effort to secure the damaged area.
"It took three calls to different agencies until I finally got someone in to cover that area to keep the weather out," he said. That's when the blue tarp was put on.
He said larger organizations like Bank of America aren't the easiest for municipalities to deal with.
"There are homes in every municipality that are owned by financial institutions, so everybody's facing the same problem. They should have an entity, some vehicle, to help municipalities like ours, but they don't," Palamar said.
The properties the team examined on Thursday are by no means the worst, Palamar said.
A contender for that title is 674 N. Second St., a row home plagued by chipped paint and sustaining constant damage from exposure because its front door is broken off its hinges.
The owner is Attalla Said, Mississauga, Canada, according to a spokeswoman from the Schuylkill County Tax Claim Bureau.
According to the online Schuylkill Parcel Locator, Said bought the property in June 2008 for $8,750. And according to the tax claim bureau's website, $2,316.94 in taxes are owed on the property for tax years 2010 and 2011.
The level to which this building negatively impacts the neighborhood is a solid 5, Palamar said.
John Molin, who owns and resides in 672 N. Second St., which is right next door, agrees.
"No one's lived in there for at least 15 years. Over the years, it's been getting progressively worse," Molin said Thursday night. He said weather damage to the roof over the porch at 674 has damaged his property to the point where he's unable to properly shut his front door.
"My own insurance company told me they can't help me," Molin said. He thinks 674 should be knocked down.
At 6:30 p.m. Sept. 10, city council is scheduled to have its second, and final, reading of an ordinance which will give the code enforcement officer the power to issue code violations on the spot with tickets, like a traffic cop.
"We wanted to identify what tools we currently had to fight blight, determine what tools we needed to create and, right off the bat, we're going to create these tickets," Palamar said.
The current law requires the code enforcement officer to send warnings first, then citations at the magisterial district judge office. Reiley wants Pottsville to have a "Quality of Life" ordinance like the one the City of Reading, Berks County, approved in February 2011, allowing the city to ticket property owners on the spot for violations like high weeds or grass or scattered rubbish.
"And as we continue this process, we may find tools that are available to us that we have not used, and maybe we'll create even more," Palamar said.
"This is also helping us also identify properties that are putting out trash and not paying for it," Chescavage said.