Group addresses Florence property, downtown issues

Neglected properties and the search for a downtown manager were two agenda items of interest to the Florence Neighborhood Council on Thursday night during its quarterly meeting with city officials.  

The Neighborhood Council, which consists of the presidents of Florence’s 16 neighborhood associations, met with Mayor Stephen J. Wukela and the city’s director of community services, Scotty Davis, to get updates on the city’s stance on specific neighborhood issues and to offer suggestions.  

With economic development being one of the main concerns for the area, homeowners are concerned vacant homes and absentee landlords are a turn-off for businesses, developers and homeowners who might want to invest in the area.

“We have concerns that when there are houses that are abandoned or vacant, they often aren’t taken care of. People are less attracted to a neighborhood when they see homes like that,” said Alicia Connelly, representative for the Timrod Park Homeowners Association.

Neighborhood council members agreed one of the ways to combat this type of delinquency would be to develop a registration system that collected the information of the property owners and the people responsible for the upkeep of the property.

“The city is spending hours trying to find who these owners are through management companies. We need contact information. It’s a must, and they need to register their property,” Connelly said.  

The owners of many of the neglected properties in neighborhoods like Timrod don’t live in the city or state, so warrants can’t be served on them when issues arise with the property, Connelly said. These places become havens for the homeless or drug users, or fire hazards or eyesores.

“By having who you are and the number of properties you have listed, and who’s the responsible entity taking care of the property, we’re hoping to hold these absentee property owners more accountable,” Davis said.

Although city council members have conflicting opinions, Davis said the city is looking at ideas for ordinances concerning upkeep of property.

“We do have poverty-stricken parts of town and high-end parts of town, and putting the same rules and regulations on both will sometimes create some differences in opinion and some dynamics there we have to work through. We haven’t found that medium yet,” he said.

“Timrod Park, for example, there are certainly a lot of people in the community shouting and fighting for stronger ordinances, and to a certain extent I definitely agree with what they have to say, but we have to be mindful that there are others who may not be able to afford the stringent rules and regulations that we put on them,” he said. “And often times you look at people who can barely keep the lights on and we tell them they can’t have chipping, peeling paint, which is something that we’ve actually looked at in one of our ordinances. Well, that’s a tough pill to swallow for them.”

Community Development Block Grants are often used to help development for homeowners in neighborhoods where funding for redevelopment isn’t as available, Davis said.

Wukela also provided an update to the search for a downtown manager, saying council plans to look for someone “experienced” and neutral who can start from a position where “no one sees them as someone from someone else’s camp.

“We wanted a position dedicated to the development of downtown,” he said. “When these big companies make their decisions about where they are going to locate, they’ve often got a wide variety of possibilities. Many times it’s the guy who’s there with all the information that they need, when they need it, that helps make that decision.”