Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, April 27, 2016
City looks to beef up code enforcement, crack down on dumping
The City of Newburgh, looking to beef up its code
enforcement efforts, will be offering training in June to
certify a new class of code enforcement technicians.
The announcement was made
at last week’s meeting of the
city’s Distressed Property task
Force.
“We will be recruiting,” said
Deirdre Glenn, who chairs the
task force. “We would like to
encourage people to participate.”
There is a limit of 20 for the
classes, with in-house candidates
coming from all city departments.
City Manager Michael Ciaravino
will gauge community interest in
any possible vacant seats in the
classes.
The group also discusses
placards for vacant building
srequired by the New York State
Fire Code. The red boxes will be
placed on all of the city’s vacant
buildings.
“This was designed specifically
for the safety of our forces,”
Ciaravino said.
The placards do not mean the
buildings are slated for demolition,
Placards will be
Glenn explained, but are meant for
placed on vacant city emergency responders. A red box
buildings: a single
with a single slash through the
center is a warning for emergency
slash (top) means
proceed with caution; responders to use caution. A red
double slash (center) box with no slashes means the
building is safe to enter. A red
means do not enter; box with two slashes, however,
no slah means it’s
tells responders not to enter the
safe to enter.
building.
Sanitation enforcement
Superintendent of Public Works George Garrison has
been working with the city’s police department on illegal
dumping.
“It’s just never ending,” Garrison said, adding that
he would like to see a full-time sanitation enforcement
officer on duty in the city, but that position was cut from
his budget.
To date, the sanitation department has collected 40
tons of garbage from the streets and vacant properties.
In an effort to better police illegal dumping, the
DPW has been trimming back trees off the curb for
surveillance purposes.
“We’ve had some success,” Garrison said. “We really
want to ramp up what we’ve been doing.”
In that spirit, the city is getting banners urging
residents to “Keep It Clean Newburgh. Don’t Dump
Anywhere.”
City Planner Ali Church said the city has received
a Healthy Orange grant to produce stickers that can be
affixed to recycling bins. Every single household will get
rules for recycling.
“We can’t all solve dumping and recycling issues on
our own,” Church said.
Stickers will be applied to the recycling containers in the city.
The city is also distributing recycling rules.
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