Harmar declares war on blight, officials vow to rid town of dilapidated buildings in 3 years

Harmar Township officials have decided it’s time to wage war on blight.

Supervisors Chairman Bob Seibert said that the township can, and will, do better when it comes to ridding the township of deteriorating buildings.

“The township will be undertaking a systematic program against blight,” Siebert said. “We want to show the public that we’re working on it and we’re going to try to see if we can get some grants to help with that.

“The goal is to completely eliminate blighted housing in Harmar Township within three years,” Seibert said.

He said the township has tried to address blight in the past but not in the organized campaign that he and the rest of the supervisors envision.

“We’ve done it before,” he said, “but we’re really going to go after it aggressively this time.”

He said the township will use every tool at its disposal, from code violation citations to condemnations and sheriff’s sales of abandoned properties. If that fails to get the properties brought up to code, then the last resort would be demolition.

“If nobody wants to buy these structures through the county, we’re going to tear them down,” Seibert said.

The township has tried to encourage residents to buy such properties if they abut theirs through the Allegheny County Vacant Property program. That can be done for a nominal sum. But Seibert said the complaint township officials hear about the program is that it involves “too much paperwork” and people give up on it.

The enforcement plan will start with a property-by-property review to screen out the worst buidings and target them for condemnation and eventual demolition.

He thinks that a property review can take about three weeks, then the township can start filing code violation citations against the property owner at the district judge’s office.

Residents who have received citations in the past will be given notice when the program is about to begin in order to give them a chance to get their properties into compliance.

It may be a month or two before that happens, however, as the township just lost its part-time code enforcement officer.

Seibert said that the township will look at all options in filling the position, including hiring a company that specializes in code enforcement.