Schenectady official ordered code inspection as retribution for comments Tuesday, March 25, 2008 By Kathleen Moore (Contact) Gazette Reporter
SCHENECTADY — A city official sent code enforcers to a resident’s house in retribution for the resident’s critical comments at a city council meeting, officials confirmed Tuesday. They said Zoning Officer Steve Strichman sent a code inspector to James Livingston’s house at 1096 Gillespie St. after Livingston criticized him at privilege of the floor during a city council meeting. Four days after Livingston’s comments, the inspector cited Livingston for house numbers that were about two inches too small and for peeling paint on his porch eaves and soffits. Mayor Brian U. Stratton said Livingston’s house was the only building cited in that neighborhood that day. Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden said he immediately launched an investigation to determine who ordered the one-house inspection. He was furious because he seemed to be the one at fault — he responded angrily to Livingston’s comments at the council meeting and had a verbal altercation with him after the meeting. “Damn straight I wanted to know who’d done it when my name was in the middle of it. I’m the one who goes around City Hall yelling at people who do this kind of thing,” Van Norden said. “I have better things to do with my time than chasing them around for benign code violations like peeling paint which they can’t deal with in March anyway.” He said he determined quickly that Strichman — who he declined to name — had ordered an inspection of Livingston’s house. “I got an answer within 20 minutes,” he said. He gave his answer to Councilwoman Barbara Blanchard, who said he told her Strichman was to blame. “That’s what he told me. If he in fact did this, there should be an apology,” Blanchard said. “It appears to be an act of intimidation of someone who spoke at privilege of the floor and that needs to be a sacrosanct privilege.” Livingston said he would be satisfied by an apology and a reprimand. He emphasized that he’s not contesting the code violation citations and has already installed larger house numbers. But he noted that all city code violations warn of substantial fines and jail time if the owner does not make the required repairs. “That’s pretty scary. Anything of this sort has a chilling effect,” he said. “The message would be, the public shouldn’t come out and speak. I see this as retribution for public criticism of a city official. The aim is perhaps to scare or intimidate a resident who has simply asked a city official to do his job and do his job well.” Livingston said he was particularly frustrated because he had been criticizing Strichman for not thoroughly enforcing city codes in the Union Triangle historic neighborhood. He said he wouldn’t have minded the citations if the inspector had only continued down the street and issued citations to every other violator. “We’d like to see fair and equal enforcement of the law, and it falls on the zoning officer,” Livingston said. Strichman did not return a call seeking comment.
SCHENECTADY Mayor sorry for code incident Citizen who complained is cited for violations BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
James Livingston got more than he bargained for when he complained publicly about the lack of code enforcement in his Union Triangle neighborhood. Zoning Officer Steve Strichman sent a code inspector last month to cite just Livingston’s house, leaving the resident with two tickets for minor issues. Under criticism Tuesday, Strichman insisted that the code enforcement was not intended to punish Livingston for his comments, but Mayor Brian U. Stratton apologized to Livingston and directed Strichman to call the resident as well. “I apologized for the infraction,” Stratton said. “It wasn’t done with vindiction ... but the bottom line is I think things got out of hand here. Perhaps tempers or some other things got in the way ... That’s not something I support. That’s not how things are done in this administration.” Strichman confirmed he ordered a code inspection of Livingston’s house after reading the minutes of a City Council meeting. “I read, ‘Mr. Livingston complained about the lack of code enforcement on Union Triangle,’ and I said, ‘but he’s got a deteriorating porch,’ ” Strichman said. “But it’s impossible to give a notice to Mr. Livingston without it seeming like it’s in retaliation to something. He’s always got an issue. This is something I have not been sending to code enforcement because of that issue, the timing.” But this time, he called code enforcement and directed them to review Livingston’s house. Four days after Livingston’s comments, an inspector cited Livingston for house numbers that were about 2 inches too small and for peeling paint on his porch eaves and soffits at 1096 Gillespie St. No other house was cited on that day in that neighborhood. Stratton said that was wrong. “What we want to do is not individually cite people but try to do things in a comprehensive fashion,” he said. “We’ll do a neighborhood-wide sweep in the spring. That’s the right way to do it.” Livingston and City Councilwoman Barbara Blanchard have been asking for a code enforcement sweep of their neighborhood for years. They said the citing of Livingston’s house was infuriating because the inspector would have had to pass by so many other houses with serious violations. RETRIBUTION WORRY They also complained that the action seemed to be in retribution for Livingston’s critical comments about the lack of code enforcement in the neighborhood. “It appears to be an act of intimidation of someone who spoke at privilege of the floor and that needs to be a sacrosanct privilege,” Blanchard said, adding that Strichman should apologize. Livingston said he would be satisfied by an apology and a reprimand. He emphasized that he’s not contesting the code violation citations, has already installed larger house numbers, and would have had no objections if the inspector had continued down the street and issued citations to every other violator. “We’d like to see fair and equal enforcement of the law, and it falls on the zoning officer,” Livingston said. He noted that the citation he received could easily be viewed as an intimidating message. All city code violations warn of substantial fines and jail time if the owner does not make the required repairs. “That’s pretty scary. Anything of this sort has a chilling effect,” he said. “The message would be, the public shouldn’t come out and speak. I see this as retribution for public criticism of a city official. The aim is perhaps to scare or intimidate a resident who has simply asked a city official to do his job and do his job well.” Van Norden said Strichman was doing his job when he directed an inspector to check Livingston’s property. He said Strichman — like all city employees — is supposed to report code violations to the inspectors. Even though Strichman’s account of the situation makes it clear that Livingston would not have been cited if he had not spoken at a public meeting, Van Norden said Strichman did not misuse his authority. The code enforcement action was not legally retaliatory, he said, because there were problems at Livingston’s house. “You’re thinking of the layman’s definition of retaliatory. I’m talking the legal definition. It’s not retaliation if the violations exist,” he said, but added, “The timing was not the best.” Stratton also said Strichman did not intend to use his authority in a punitive manner, but said all city officials have to have a thick skin. “We’re not in the business to be complimented constantly. We have to take the flak,” he said. Strichman said he has a thick skin. As proof, he listed many recent occasions on which Livingston criticized him without any repercussions.
This is clearly an abuse of power and he should be fired with NO excuses!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Of course.....duh.....if not then it all truly is a sham........if the government cant clean it's own house then those in the government house cannot call themselves the keepers of the peoples house.......the thread of truth and justice is very fine.......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
EDITORIALS More nonsense from a Sch’dy public servant
Shame on Schenectady Zoning Officer Steve Strichman. He should have ignored Union Triangle gadfly James Livingston’s rant at a recent city council meeting about how his neighborhood could benefit from a code enforcement crackdown. Or at least Strichman shouldn’t have taken the criticism — which was, in part, aimed at him — so personally. As he and many other Schenectadians know, Livingston is something of a crank when it comes to life in his neighborhood. Instead, as a story in Wednesday’s Gazette made abundantly clear, Strichman took the bait: He gave Livingston what he was asking for, all right, dispatching a code enforcement officer to Livingston’s Gillespie Street address with orders to give it a good going-over. Four days after speaking at the council meeting, Livingston was presented with two citations, one for having numbers about two inches too small and another for peeling paint on his porch eves and soffits. It would have been one thing if Livingston’s citations were part of a neighborhood sweep, but he was the only one in the neighborhood cited that day. And it certainly wasn’t because no other code violations were apparent. Violations of house number rules, perhaps the most picayune of all on the city’s books, abound; and after a long winter, peeling paint is also fairly common. But it’s still too cold out to do anything about it, so citing someone for it seems unfair and petty. The message from City Hall to Livingston — and, by extension, all Schenectady taxpayers — couldn’t have been clearer: Make noise about the quality of city services at your peril. It’s the kind of message that caused Michael Casadei, the homeowner whose house was robbed of $130,000 in cash, to hire a private eye instead of calling police to track down his money. He did so, he said, because he didn’t trust cops to investigate. Stories like this are an affront to all Schenectady taxpayers, and they would have a right to feel outraged even if they didn’t shoulder one of the highest property tax burdens around. Apologies after the fact are better than denials — Livingston did at least get one from the mayor. But when is Brian Stratton going to instill the kind of work ethic in his employees that makes behavior like this simply not an option?
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