City officials explain how nuisance complaints work and why they take so long to address

QUINCY — Alderman Jeff Bergman (R-2) called Director of Inspection and Enforcement Michael Seaver and Director of Central Services Kevin McClean to the podium near the end of Monday night’s Quincy City Council meeting to discuss the delays of addressing nuisance complaint.

Specifically referring to uncut grass and garbage issues, Bergman noted he often receives phone calls and complaints.

“We turn in the complaint and the address to the inspection department … but the problem is for the public, two, three, four weeks go by and nothing’s been done,” he said.

“We send a notice to the owner of the property, as well of the resident of the property,” Seaver said. “We give them (seven days) to abate the nuisance … Once that time expires, we go back, re-inspect. If the violation continues to exist … we refer that as an abatement action to Central Services.”

If the public wants to check the status of a property online, look through the iWork program on the city’s website to check if a complaint has been registered with a specific address.

Once Central Services receives the address, McClean says his staff does their best to handle them in the order they are filed. He said around 80 properties are in the queue waiting to be cleaned up, with around 177 properties that have open cases and will be sent to Central Services shortly.

Mayor Linda Moore explained part of the reason for the delays is deciding which ones should be immediately abated rather than going to court.

“Instead of them just sitting on that list because he’s not going to get to them for a month, if we can start the court process, then in a month, we can do what we need to do,” she said after Monday’s meeting.

Only three men work on the nuisance crew.

“There’s three guys trying to clean this entire city up because there’s a lot of lazy people out there who don’t want to be a good neighbor,” Bergman said.

For bigger jobs, such as Tuesday’s planned cleanup of 624 Spring, the goal is to remove the trash from the property. To do so, Central Services often pulls additional employees from other crews.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to have two tandem trucks, a backhoe and a skid steer to clean this one property,” McClean said.

“That’s incredibly frustrating,” Bergman said, “because we’re taking resources and manpower from other crews to not get stuff done in the city, and it’s costing the taxpayers dollars.”

Bergman referred to the people failing to maintain properties as “lazy” three times during the meeting.