As for whether or not the city should take care of its own properties, you'll get no argument from me!

I still don't think that's an excuse for allowing the standards to drop.

That way, as has happenes very many times in the past, the city doesn't have to deal with the grueling and cumbersome logistics of trying to serve someone 100 police and political jurisdictions away. It can take years, and often as not is entirely unsuccessful.

First, the city not taking care of its property is not an excuse to allow others to fail to take care of theirs. We shouldn't be agreeing to lower standards further just because the prime standard enforcer is failing to do so.

Second, abatements are not done by union labor in Gloversville. It is one non union individual and whoever the court happens to have available doing community service. The union should not factor into any change that may be considered in the future on this subject.

Third, your Fire Department info is about 3 years out of date. For at least 3 years, the FD has received insurance reimbursement for so-called "ambulance chaser" calls making them somewhat revenue neutral. The reason the FD goes on those calls is because the ambulance service is understaffed. Often one person is in an ambulance and cannot handle a str

Per the City Charter, all finance is the responsibility of the Common Council, not the Mayor. No new debt can be created, or old debt refinanced, without approval of that body.

While I applaud Mayor LaPorta's willingness to make the hard choices to turn this monster around, it was two years into his term before he had a council (the 2004-2007 council) willing to make the hard decisions which eliminated $1.6 million in general fund deficit and created a $1.8 million fund balance (surplus) by December 2007, two years into Mayor Hughes term.

As for the comment on long term employees, it should be pointed out that the current Finance Commissioner is the third to hold that position in 6 years, and was hired by Mayor LaPorta. Yes, his assistant was hired under Tim Hughes. All other Finance employees, other than the Deputy Finance Commissioner, are civil service and have predated both mayors.

The new process would allow fines to be levied immediately, would take the vagaries of court opinion out of the process (while retaining the right of appeal on the part of the homeowner) and would establish a third party provider system for abatements, rather than the current system which misses roughly 1/3 of abatements issued by the Fire Department.

Perhaps having an idea of the scope of the problem would help. The FD averages over 1000 violations/year. In 2008, at least 1200 violations for blight were issued. Of those, 90 called for abatement. Of the 90, only 60 were completed.

As one of the authors of the suggested legislation, I'm not in favor of using it as a revenue stream. Fines should not be used to dig G-ville out of debt. In my opinion, the only reason for the proposal is to strengthen the Fire Dept's ability to combat blight.

The delays are caused by the process. One blight violation takes a single firefighter roughly 6 hours to process. Then there is a re-inspection period a week later requiring almost as much time. Next, the process heads to DPW for abatement and the courts for adjudication. Abatements are conducted by one employee using people sentenced to community service, when available. The court has its own process which can be hampered when temp judges allow repeat offenders to continue to provide numerous extensions. One file I've seen is 4” thick and nearly 3 yrs old for one violation.

I cringe every time I see that someone in law enforcement has been empowered to "create a revenue stream". That's not what law enforcement should be about.

What causes the current delays in issuing tickets? That's an important piece of information that's been left out of the article. I'd like to know if the delays are a result of bureaucratic red tape or some necessary component of fair law enforcement. Also, how much time makes up the "many days" homeowners are currently given to address a blight problem? Hard to know if homeowners are given too much time to fix their problems when there's no information provided about how much time they're allotted.

I'm sorry, but this statement is inaccurate. The DPW of today is roughly half the size of just 20 years ago. Their equipment is geriatric, and there has been little reduction in their mission - basically, doing more with less.

To AdirondackAl, with respect, long term debt is the reason Gloversville doesn't have money for services. That debt has been around a long time and is slowly being whittled away. However, it took decades to make it, and will require a while to eliminate it.

It is, in my opinion, rather partisan to label this "Timmy's" problem, or the individual problem of any previous mayor or council.

What I want to know is why, if Obama is throwing around zillions of dollars, small city's can't simply get absolved of a few million in debt. It's pocket change to