Council Member Brewer on land bank timeline and ECB debt collection strategies

I'm glad you talked about the land bank.

Thank you.

That was my bill.

How long do you think it's going to take to put the committee together?

Obviously, it feeds off of the individuals who are not paying their taxes, et cetera.

In other words, it has to do with liens and figuring out how to deal with positives so people don't lose their homes, et cetera, sort of alternatives to...

People losing their homes.

But I just, what's the timing on that?

So we're going through the reform process internally with City Hall about what lien sale could look like into the future.

In terms of the land bank legislation, we are preparing our nominees for the working group.

The deadline should be July 28th, and we're happy to work immediately thereafter to formulate the working group, promulgate the rules related to the land bank submitted to the state.

I can't really give a timeline as per se because we don't know how long that process would take.

Just the resolution of the board alone might take a few.

But we're happy to be a constant partner with the city council as we go through the bylaw generation process, the application process with the state.

And then, you know, the process of implementation as we get to future iterations of a new and improved lean sale.

Okay.

I was happy to hear 573 as a possible collection because in the past it was often nothing.

I couldn't get anywhere having worked with IBO, gotten a report that said $2.5 billion was just sitting there.

So my question is, I think you used the word amnesty or maybe you said we're not going to do amnesty.

I wanted to understand if that is possible.

And then just going forward.

Even though hopefully you'll collect the 573, what are the ideas?

Are you continuing to use collection agencies?

Do they come through with what they promise?

How are we going to keep, I mean, there's a guy in my area, he puts up something, I swear, on every single lamppost, right?

And it's really hard to get off.

You can't get it off.

He shouldn't be doing that, and he should be fined, and he should pay you fines.

That kind of thing.

So we did do the 30-day review internally just to see if we could improve any processes so that we can better collect.

One of those things that we have identified is that most of the majority of ECB collections are most responsive when we're able to reach out to them directly within the first year.

So one of the priorities for us is for our account executive unit to do that.

The first year.

Yeah, try to increase the first year outreach as much as possible.

We do still utilize the collection agencies, and that's primarily through mail and phone calls, but it's important that for us internally we start and try to target the first year.

With the uncollectible population, we are right now trying to re-review it.

There are a couple of data.

strategies that we're trying to implement.

The 744 that you talked about.

Yeah, just to see if there are any additional information coming in that would then allow us to restart enforcement on them.

So when you did the great work with Amazon, the 10 million, was that something that had been sitting around for a while or was that something that was like the first year type of situation?

So that has been a violation that's been sitting around for a while and that was the largest ECB, single ECB violation source.

So they were the largest.

And in that instance, we directly reached out to Amazon and their wholly owned subsidiary, Amazon Logistics, and then did the one-to-one,

sort of like how you do with any other constituent, actually.

We did one-on-one review of their idling violations.

We connected it to any questions they might have, any challenges they might have, and worked them through the entire process.

And that was really an example of how we can work sort of in tandem.

Do you think some of the other carriers, there are quite a few of them, have similar violations that could be handled in the same way?

I know the project, I guess it's under parking violations, but the issue is, you know, I'm making this up, you get, you know, 100 violations, you can put them in a pot and you only pay a percentage.

I don't think that's terrible, some people do, but the point is, are they paying it?

It's one thing to get a discount, it's another thing not to even pay the discount.

So I do have the list of the highest, the next highest violations by category.

I don't have them with me right now, but I'm happy to sort of reconnect.

I'd love to hear that because I do think they need to pay.

Some of them are getting discounts.

It's not like they're paying their full share.

Yeah, so right now the strategies that we utilize for Amazon, we're just now going down the list, right?

We're going down the list, right?

Number two, three, four, five, six, just focusing on them right now to do that one-on-one personal sort of work.

I would like to see that list.

Yeah, so we're happy to talk to you more about that and the strategies that we're utilizing.

Thank you.