By China Cassidy Holbrook City Manager Ted Soltis addressed the topic of blight in the city and his approach to resolving a problem that has become a concern for residents who have seen little change over the years. After a public records request revealed that no citations have been issued for property violations in the last six months, Soltis was asked if there is a plan to address the offenders. Soltis said that he believes that working with property owners is a better approach to resolving the issue than proceeding through code enforcement violations. “I take a different approach when it comes to blight. My approach is to work with the property owners. The typical technique for a small town is to hire a person, he goes around and writes tickets, you end up in court, you usually don’t get very far with that. The other approach is to work with the property owners.” Soltis said that he’s seen it happening here with the improvements at the old LDS church on First Street, located one block south of city hall. “The property owner was in town, we worked with the property owner and got everything cleaned up, and we feel very effective, much more effective than sending them a notice. Do we do that, yes, but it generally doesn’t work. The problem I have with the blight issue is it’s a property by property situation.” It should be noted that the boarding up of the LDS church came one day after The Tribune publisher went to the city offices demanding the situation be addressed after discovering the front door to the building was left wide open with the lights turned on and no one on the property, an apparent homeless living situation in the bushes in front of the building and each window of the building broken and uncovered. A call was also made by the publisher to the police department to come and secure the building to ensure no one entered the building and was harmed. Aside from working with owners to clean up their properties, Soltis claims that there are many things going on at the moment, most of which he was not at liberty to discuss as no final commitments had been made. “There are a whole lot of things going on behind the scenes right now. There’s a lot of interest in our community. There are people buying properties. There are people who want to invest in our community. And we are taking a proactive approach. Where are our properties, what do they look like, what are the costs, who are the owners? And as people call us, we work with them carefully.” In discussing Jason Foutz, who was hired on as a code enforcement officer and a community development director, Soltis stated, “What Jason does is he works in the morning on whatever he has to do, then in the afternoon is when he works on his code enforcement stuff.” According to Soltis, Foutz wears many hats in the city. Soltis said he assists the levee superintendent and airport manager with most of the maintenance that needs to be done throughout the city because they do not have a maintenance crew. As for the numerous properties along the city’s main streets that were addressed with administration in a news story at the beginning of the year, Soltis said he was not aware of some of them but will address them with Foutz to try and resolve the issues. Moving forward, he’s asked that any violations be reported so they can be addressed by calling the city office at (928) 524-6225, or by emailing Soltis at ted@ci.holbrook.az.us.
