"Hey Glenn, in a meeting with the City Controller last week, he told me
80% of the issued trash citations are dismissed by the Board of
Adjudication when there is a hearing."
Dear neighbors,
Craig has exposed another important indicator of the failed enforcement
policy of the Streets Department/UCD. The Sweeps program and part of
the department of Administrative Adjudication needs to be eliminated
with the savings transferred to libraries and recreation centers!
If 80% of tickets are known to be "flawed" for a variety of reasons,
these bogus trash tickets can not be supported as a revenue enhancement
or for the purported reason for existence, cleaner and safer
neighborhoods. The harm and cost are far too great with little to no
benefit from the program!
It is unfair to the elderly, overworked low wage workers, poorly
educated, and others who can not defend themselves at a hearing when
they receive flawed tickets from a flawed program. (It is reasonable to
predict that at least 4 of 5 of their tickets are flawed too.)
The ill feelings, which continue for uneasy months, arise from
citizens who win at hearings and from the cheated citizens who must pay
these fines. Threatening liens against people's homes by calling them
dirty violators is a serious wrong for a city government to arbitrarily
inflict on its citizens! The fines hurt people who can't afford it, and
the psychological damage and insecurity is worse!
(An elderly recently widowed resident of 40 years described the pain
and fear from the harassment over many months prior to appearing before
a municipal court judge. I previously reported this incident on the
public listserv.)
Whether the department is primarily an extortion operation or
Philadelphia's Keystone cops; the harassment can not be defended.
Thanks for this important data Craig,
Glenn
PS: Have you forwarded this leak to any of the newspapers?
