In the only item to be shot down on Monday, the Syracuse Common Council voted 5-4 against an amendment to the “Rental Registry,” which would require rental properties to be inspected after consent from the owner is given or a judicial warrant is presented.

Councilor Khalid Bey introduced the item without any further discussion before the other four councilors chimed in on the issue. First Councilor Joseph Nicoletti offered his “reluctant” vote for the amendment, addressing his concern that the funding for the house inspections needs to be improved. Majority leader Steven Thompson and Councilor Helen Hudson echoed those sentiments, before Councilor Jean Kessner was the first to express her vote against the amendment despite her belief it is headed in the right direction.

In total, four of the five district councilors — Joseph Carni, Chad Ryan, Susan Boyle and Nader Maroun — voted against Bey’s amendment along with Kessner.

“Predictable,” Bey said of the result. “You can kind of watch the behavior and tell that people are going to vote in the opposite direction. They kind of stay away from the whole talk. I had a councilor just apologize to me. I said, ‘Don’t apologize to me. My house is fine. Apologize to the people who live in poor conditions.’”

All four councilors seated on Bey’s half of the room didn’t voice opinions on the amendment but voted against it.

Bey has been working on improving the quality of living for families in these underdeveloped homes for five and a half years, he said, while groups such as Syracuse United Neighborhoods have been working to upgrade certain homes for about 25 years.

The reason he brought the amendment to the table on Monday was because the community was pressuring him to finally push it even if the odds were against him. The main problem Bey voiced after the meeting was that funding to improve poor housing is lacking and inspections don’t happen in a timely manner even when the money is in fact there to support inspections.

And even though he expects more pushback from the community, he called it a constituent-driven item, so the effort to pass the amendment will remain firm.

“You don’t stop investing in police because they can’t stop murders,” Bey said. “Do you not fund them to do their job simply because we can’t keep up?”

On the other side of the room, Hudson and Kessner seemed to disagree on the severity of some conditions in the houses in discussion. Hudson brought up the topic of lead poisoning in these houses, to which Kessner objected.

“All of these homes contain lead that children are sucking in on a daily basis,” Hudson said.

“This doesn’t touch lead, which would be arguably one of the most horrible things facing our city,” Kessner responded.

All of the councilors expressed some level of approval for the amendment, even Kessner, because the basis of the idea is headed the right way. Funding detailed inspections of homes in poor shape will evidently improve the living conditions of less wealthy members of the city, but the drawbacks expressed were that the lack of execution and timeliness of these inspections are doing more harm than the good intentions on the surface.

“For all the successes we may have,” Nicoletti said, “We probably have twice as many failures.”

On Monday, only three other items of the 81 were met with a disagreement. There were objections to items regarding surveillance camera funding, canine unit funding and funding surrounding police-community dialogues. Those objections were brief, and only consisted of one councilor opposing.

Bey anticipated his proposal would be shot down, but he felt it his duty to finally bring it forth. He also added that it’s nearly impossible to secure a warrant for an inspection if only two or three people express concern about a house because the process to inspect a house is more drawn-out than is perceived since it involves official court orders.

Even so, he didn’t express disappointment but rather understanding, and vowed to keep pushing the efforts to fund inspection efforts and hope that they are eventually executed.

“The community is tired of me holding it, so they said to push it just to see how people voted,” Bey said.

Published on September 13, 2016 at 11:17 pm

Contact Matt: mcschnei@syr.edu | @matt_schneidman