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Authorizing the City Council Committee on Licenses and Inspections to hold hearings on ways to increase the speed and disposition of property code violations, the violation process, the efficacy of parties responsible for enforcing, administering, and adjudicating violations and authorizing the committee to issue subpoenas as may be necessary to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents to aid in its investigation to the full extent authorized under Section 2-401 of the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter.
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WHEREAS, The City of Philadelphia is currently discussing spending $250,000,000 on a blight removal program; and
WHEREAS, Blight is a deterrent to investment, an attraction to crime and can lead to abandonment; and
WHEREAS, Many of the root causes of blight are found in violations of the City's property maintenance code; and
WHEREAS, The current code enforcement process can involve a myriad of agencies including municipal court, common pleas court, the Revenue Department and Licenses and Inspections; and
WHEREAS, Because of the involvement of numerous agencies in code enforcement, citizens are often disappointed with the slow speed of enforcement; and
WHEREAS, Council has taken numerous actions to expedite the code enforcement process including allowing for the Department of Licenses and Inspections to issue tickets for violations and through the proposal of legislation to revoke licenses for properties that have not corrected code violations; and
WHEREAS, Despite the ticketing procedure, the Department of Licenses lacks the technology to track aggregate ticket information in a meaningful fashion; now therefore
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That the Committee on Licenses and Inspections hold hearings on the code enforcement violation process including, but not limited to, ways to increase the speed of the enforcement process through technology, better inter-agency coordination, the role of the courts, and possible legislative remedies; and
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Committee be authorized to issue subpoenas as may be necessary to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents to aid in the committee investigation to the full extent authorized under Section 2-401 of the Home Rule Charter.
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