Albany officials target blight areas

ALBANY — Those who know B.J. Fletcher, whether as a businesswoman or as the Ward III representative on the Albany City Commission, know her as a woman of action. They understand the passion she brings to any project she’s a part of.

It’s not so difficult to understand, then, Fletcher’s excitement as she talks about the city’s multi-agency Fight Albany Blight initiative.

“Here’s what bothers me as a policymaker in our city, and it’s something that I think bothers a lot of our citizens,” Fletcher said. “When I’m involved in anything, I want to do it and then tell the story. Period.”

Fletcher slaps a table for emphasis.

“The bad thing about government,” she says, her voice rising, “is that they do something … and then it’s dot, dot, dot. There’s always that little something else. Well, I’m tired of that dot, dot, dot.”

Fletcher is one of a number of city officials who insist they’ve bought in fully on City Manager Sharon Subadan’s Fight Albany Blight initiative, an attempt to clean up Albany one sector at a time. Based on a plan devised primarily by city/county Planning Services Director Paul Forgey and co-directed by Forgey and Albany Police Department Chief Michael Persley, the city’s Fight Albany Blight program will exit the planning stage Saturday with a day of action planned in a sector of the city that includes an area from Roosevelt Street to Second Avenue and from the Flint River to Davis Street.

That event, which will start at Engram Park at the corner of Society Avenue and Monroe Street, will kick off an intense six-month, targeted program that will involve neighborhood watch groups, volunteers, city agencies, local nonprofits and businesses. When the six months are up, the effort will move to another section of the city, this one in East Albany.

“Our plan is to concentrate on a focus area and move around the city continuously,” Forgey said. “Rather than doing this ward by ward, we decided to divide the city at the Flint and Oglethorpe (Boulevard) into north, south, east and west sectors. Each sector will include parts of two or three different commissioners’ wards. That’s an important component of what we’re trying to do, because we’re counting on the commissioners working to get nonprofits and businesses involved.

“What we’ve done in the past when it comes to blight is respond to complaints, mostly through Code Enforcement. In order to see measurable results, we’re focusing on one area and giving it a lot of attention.”

Choosing the sector near Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital to kick off the Fight Albany Blight initiative was something of a no-brainer, according to Kerrie Davis, who is working with Forgey to coordinate many of the activities associated with the program.

“It just made the most sense to start where there’s already things going on,” said Davis, a transportation planner with the city who had worked with Forgey at the Southwest Georgia Regional Commission. “You look at ongoing projects like the Albany Housing Authority’s Oaks at North Intown and others in that area, and you see layers of activity already in place.”

The plan of attack in each sector will evolve, based primarily on need, and Forgey said convincing residents in the neighborhoods to get involved in Fight Albany Blight is an important component. But the planning director insists the city is in the program for the long haul.

“I’m sure there will be skepticism, and I understand it,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll hear a lot of, ‘Yeah, we’ve heard all this before’ from some of the more pessimistic in the city. But I think there is a level of commitment with this program that starts with Ms. Subadan. I think as long as she’s here, pushing this initiative, it’s going to continue. And I know I have committed to putting everything I have into this.

“There have been failures in the past, and I’m sure we’ll have setbacks with this initiative. But we are not going to let setbacks stop us. This is something we plan to do perpetually, from sector to sector. I think we have a plan in place that will allow us to move forward without losing our enthusiasm.”

Wary residents will, no doubt, ask the one question foremost on everyone’s mind: How much is this going to cost us? They may be surprised at the answer.

“Obviously, there are costs involved,” Forgey said. “But we are going into this initiative with no budget. Every department has a little wiggle room in its budget for contingencies, and, yes, there might be some spending for specific needs. But mostly we are hoping volunteers will become a big part of this and that businesses will get involved.

“It would be great if everyone approached this project with the enthusiasm I’m seeing from people like Commissioner Fletcher and Chief Persley. But we think once people see the level of commitment, momentum will grow and our citizens will want to be involved.”

While volunteers work on the cosmetic appearance of each sector in the community, City Attorney Nathan Davis and his staff will continue their work from the legal angle. With the addition of paralegal investigator Makeba Wright, whose position was created specifically as an offshoot of the Fight Albany Blight program, working alongside Davis and paralegal Stacie Mote, the city hopes to speed up the process of renovating or removing blighted properties.

“People talk about eastside, westside, northside and southside in the city, but every one of these blighted properties that comes down benefits the entire community,” Davis said.

Wright, who’s been on the job for only a couple of weeks, said the key in a program like Fight Albany Blight is to roll up collective sleeves and get to work.

“We have plenty of areas that need help in our community,” she said. “And the plan is to, at some point, address them all. The big thing is to just get started. You have to start somewhere. We’ve got our target area, and now it’s time to go to work.”

While Davis and the city’s legal team work their way through the legal system to expedite the demolition process, a process that requires a considerable amount of time and expense, the city’s managing director of Engineering and Planning says there will also be a more concerted effort to work with the owners of those properties.

“We’re going to find creative ways to work with property owners to encourage them to bring their properties up to code,” Bruce Maples said of the Fight Albany Blight plan. “I don’t think the general public understands the process, but it’s so much easier if we can get property owners to take responsibility for their property.”

Fletcher said she is committed to working with officials in other cities to find best blight eradication practices that have worked. She points to programs in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Memphis that have yielded remarkable results.

“When I ran for mayor (in 2010), I brought up a vacancy tax for all the business owners who were just letting their properties sit and deteriorate,” the Ward III commissioner said. “Some people got angry about it at that time, but I think we’ve kind of come full circle. With billion-dollar businesses looking at possibly coming to our city, blighted property has become one of the primary issues we’re facing. Sure, jobs are still a primary goal, but cleaning up our city is going to help us attract businesses.

“People have always said there’s no funding available for fighting blight, that it’s a local problem. But there are ways to get federal funds. If you’ve got a city of 76,000 people and $30 million worth of property that’s blighted, you can get help. And that’s where we are. We just have to tell our story, and, unfortunately, blighted property is part of our story.”

Kerrie Davis is reaching out to church, nonprofit and youth groups as well as other volunteers to take part in Saturday’s first official Fight Albany Blight action event. Forgey noted that trash pickup, clearing overgrown lots, and trimming overgrown bushes and tree limbs would be part of the day’s activities, which will start at 8 a.m. and end at 1 p.m. Individuals and groups interested in helping are urged to contact Davis at (229) 438-3920.

“We hope we get a lot of volunteers,” Forgey said. “But even if we don’t, we’re not going to be discouraged. It may take us a little time to build momentum, but we’re not going to give up. We’re in this for the long-haul.”

That’s fine with Fletcher. She’s already making plans for how she can best help the initiative.

“One of the things I’ve done in the three years I’ve been a commissioner is ride my ward’s neighborhoods, from Cotton to Hilltop,” she said. “I see people out raking their yards, making their properties look nice, and right next door there is a burned-out house or a property that’s falling down. That’s not fair to the people who take pride in their homes.

“This Fight Albany Blight initiative is something that’s going to impact all of us. We’re talking about hiring different consultants and doing disparity studies and other unnecessary things that cost a lot of money, money that could be used to remove dilapidated structures. I know I don’t want to live next-door to a shot house, a crack house, a whorehouse. Well, no one else does either. We’ve been talking about doing something about this for a long time. It’s time to quit talking and start doing.”