Op Ed
My name is Colin Burns and I am a candidate for Watertown City Council. I am not going to shy away from my family being involved in city politics, which leads me to having, for years, hearing the term Zombie Properties. This is an old and archaic term to describe houses that are run down.
I bought a house that was foreclosed on and dealt with the various stipulations that went with closing on the property. We as a City, continue to deal with these houses going into foreclosure and many times, it will take years for these properties to be taxable again.
The major issues that we deal with in this City are the properties that are not kept up. The property next door to me is owned by an outside interest. This has lead to an unkempt lawn, garbage and recycling being kept on the back porch, and a tarp filled with drywall on my property. In addition there is a dilapidated shed, which our codes department said was never registered with the City which means I need to spend approximately $500 dollars to get the situation resolved in the Supreme Court of New York State.
If we are going to clean up our City and take care of issues as I have laid out, we need to empower our Codes department. We need to combine the efforts of both codes and zoning to create a task force, enforcing what we need.
Many candidates will tell our citizens that they want to focus on this, but as someone who lives it everyday, I promise I will tackle this. I can without hesitation, promise, we can shape this City up and it needs to be done. I always knew our population as 26,000, now I see it being as low as 22,000. This is because we need to clean up the properties here and also keep our seniors and youth here. It is time we clean up the streets, empower the people, and make more zoning legislation to fix properties. If elected the days of new business being based on defence and truly old business will be done. It’s time to make this City what it can be, and the “City of the Future.” Let’s work together and actually make change.
Examples of the property I live next door to:
