Code Enforcement Speech to the State Legislature
March 2007

Good morning; I’m Carl Redus, Mayor of the City of Pine Bluff.

Experience has shown that our physical environment greatly influences public safety, economic and community development, and our overall quality of life.

Pine Bluff is a city with between 100 and 250 vacant, abandoned residential structures. These houses negatively affect Pine Bluff in a number of ways.

They provide havens for people engaged in illicit activities. In fact, many of the most recent homicides in Pine Bluff have occurred in close proximity to such properties.

Abandoned houses are also a direct physical danger to the people who live near them. Curiosity draws many people, mostly our children, to such properties where they can face any number of dangers.

They drive down property values not only in the neighborhoods in which they can be found, but throughout our community. They inform the misperceptions of outsiders about our community and, even worse, begin to negatively affect how Pine Bluff sees itself.

The effects of abandoned properties are real enough to stifle investment in a community. They are real enough to encourage people to leave their community. Of course, that means there are more properties left behind to contribute to this vicious cycle.

This is something with which I’m sure most elected officials of municipalities are both familiar and concerned. We’ve all approached it from various angles. Pine Bluff, for example, has taken the lead from the City of North Little Rock in implementing the SAFE Team concept, a method that fosters communication and integration amongst such departments as police, fire, code enforcement, zoning, animal control and any other agency that can contribute.

Pine Bluff has had some success with the concept, but we still encounter the same obstacles everyone else faces in trying to address this issue: We need more money and less bureaucracy to be effective.

It could cost the City of Pine Bluff anywhere $300,000 to $1.25 million to simply tear down the abandoned houses there…and we just don’t have that kind of money to spare. Besides, we would love to do more than just tear down, we need some investment and rehabilitation to build our city back up.

These bills before you today, then, have the capability of allowing municipalities to recoup their costs associated with abandoned houses in a timelier fashion and to approach the issue with a future friendly—rather   than purely destructive—perspective.

I know I am not alone among the other municipalities of Arkansas in asking you this morning for your support in our efforts to improve our neighborhoods, develop our cities and create the kind of quality of life for our residents that you want for yourselves and your children.

Thank you.