A City Seemingly Hitting The Skids!

For the nearly 2 years that the offices of our Code Enforcement Department have been located on Washington Street, there has never been any indication on site what their hours of business are.   No signs on the doors, no helpful info on the sign by the street.  

On the Code Enforcement Department's page of the city's website, however, the hours of operation have always been clear:  8:30 - 5:00.  That's what the page indicates even today.  

FALSE INFORMATION!

Newly installed hours of operation signs currently found on all three doors at Code Enforcement paint a different picture, however.  For the unforeseeable future, the department's hours of business are no longer 8:30 - 5:00. That change was made very recently, perhaps yesterday.

Instead of being available to residents and contractors for 40 hours per week performing basic important duties such as answering the phone, responding to calls, issuing building permits, issuing code violation notices and keeping our sidewalks clear of snow and ice 17 days after the most recent snowfall (hey look, it's snowing again today!), the Code Enforcement Department is on half-time "until full time position filled" (sic).  No longer with 8-hour workdays, it's now just 4 hours a day for 5 days a week.  That's just 20 hours per week at our underfunded, understaffed and obviously unappreciated and unvalued Code Enforcement Department.  Presumably, none of those 4-hour workdays includes lunch.

The Jobs & Volunteering page on the city's website (which is not at all easy or intuitive to find) still doesn't indicate that there is a position available to replace head Code Enforcement Officer Craig Haigh, whose last day as our head Code Officer was this past Friday.  A posting for the position -- a help wanted ad, if you will -- appeared in late January in the Announcements section at the bottom of the main page of the city website, but it lasted no more than 4 days before it got pushed aside by new announcements to wind up with all the other old news and announcements out of plain view and ready for the virtual recycling or garbage bin.

Unlike tomorrow and Thursday mornings, this morning when I visited the Code offices on Washington Street the doors were unlocked and someone was inside. Both Code vehicles were parked in the lot, which means that no code officers were out in the field.  In the offices were two workers: a secretary who was hired recently and introduced herself to me on the phone two weeks ago as the "assistant to Craig Haigh," as well as a longtime part-time officer who was talking loudly on the phone out of my view in Craig's old office.  I heard him say something about "a lawyer."  There was no one else around (the office across the hall with two desks was empty but the door was open and the lights were on).  Craig typically had 3 part-time officers helping him out, and I was told that none of them are able to take over the position he vacated last Friday.  Whether all three of those enforcement officers are still employed by the city is not entirely clear to me right now.  At least one of them is.  For now, at least.

Anyway, if you need to speak to Code Enforcement, be prepared for a slog.  As well as a lot of concern about which direction Hudson is headed.  It sure doesn't seem to be forward.

At the end of Monday night's inaugural Code & Infrastructure Committee meeting, I asked member Henry Haddad why no one from the Code Enforcement office attended the meeting and why no discussion of Code Enforcement Department issues took place at all.  Henry told me -- and I'm not joking -- that until the city's charter is changed, no one from the Code Enforcement Department can be made to attend common council or committee meetings to give a report and take questions. (I believe I also heard Henry say earlier in the meeting that the name of the committee wasn't ideal.)  In other words, if and when the city hires a new head Code Enforcement Officer, he or she will not be showing up to Margaret Morris's new CODE & INFRASTRUCTURE Committee meetings unless the charter is amended to allow it.  Only Rob Perry or his successor will attend the meetings, as Rob did on Monday (in person, if you can believe it!).  And, man, has our DPW Superintendent recently gained some weight on top of the weight he's been carrying around for years!  If I'm his doctor -- if he bothers with one -- I am quite concerned.  While Perry didn't have one in front of him on Monday, years ago, on a few occasions before he stopped showing up in person to meetings for five years, I would see him sipping on a straw stuck into an enormous drink from McDonalds that certainly wasn't water.  (Or was it Burger King?)

One wonders how close the brand-new Mayor's Office is to hiring Craig Haigh's replacement.  And how long it will take for that new full-time hire to get up to speed so that the Code Enforcement Department can resume 40-hour work weeks and get back to its difficult but critical work.  I'm thinking it's going to take several months.