Minutes 01/23/1959 - Laserfiche WebLink

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-2i2 .T~'n~,~a wvr 9qwd. ] At s called meeting of the City Council, hold on January 23rd, 1959, there wore present: B. W. Baker, W. R. Bre'edlove, R. B. Seward, R. Irvine Smith, Geo. R. Walker, E. E. Weisem~n, A.P. Johnson,Jr., City Manager, and J. S. Livesay, City Attorney. The meeting wasopened with prayer by PLr, Breedleve. The following call for the meeting was re-ad: "You are requested to attend a Called meeting of the City Council, in the Council Chsmber, at ?:30 P.M., Friday, January 2Srd, 1959, for the purpose of appointing a co~ittee of the Council, either in whole or in part, to determine, study, inves- tigate and report to the Council, according to law, on the present needs of public housing in Portmp~uth." 59-19 - Mr. Breedlove made the following statement: '~r. President, on January 7, 1959, this Council held a conference with the Commission- ers and some officials of the Portsmouth Redevelopment and Mousing Authority hero in this chamber. At that time, certain factual information on the present needs of housing here in the City was brought to enr attention by the gentlemen of the Authority end I asked that further statistical data be compiled and supplied to the Council. As an aftert~oht of that conference and prompted by Messrs. Cooper's amd Ballance's rem'arks that we could have anything in their files and that they had nothing to hide, I wrote on the following day to Mr. Butler Ballance, Direntor of the Authority, and requested that a copy of a certain consolidated review be made available to me and this was done several days later with the permission of the Authority Chairman,M~r. George Diggs. A~ our last regular meeting on January 13, 1959, I delivered zo each member of this Council, the City. Manager, members of the press, end to Messrs. Diggs and Ballance, mimeographed copies of parts of that consolidated review which I felt were pertinent. The newspapers recently but briefly mentioned portions of the booklet I prepared. M~ny other portions of the review itself have not yet been brought to the public's knowledge. I believe ~is safe to say that the newspaper article and the booklets which I distri- buted to the members mentioned and to some other interested citizens of Portsmouth have aroused not only within this Council but throughout the City, considerable curiosity on the subject of present housing needs in Portsmout~ I personally have received numerous telephone c~/ls on the subject all of which indi- cate that the people of Portsmouth want to kn~W all the facts about the matter. I recognize my duty to 2hem to develop those facts. In deference to the members and the officials of the Mousing Authority and in spite of the personal attack made upon me by o~e of its Commissioaers and by one member of this Council who challenged the motives behind my right to be curious about the matter, I think it would be fair to say that tho Mousing Au- thority has given u~ their side of the question and they have concluded that there is need of further multiple housing in[the City. But Mr. President, I believe that all of us will agree that this conclusion by the Mousing Authority that more housing is needed is based on the single fact that they have on hand more than enough applicants whom they certify as qualified to occu40y ~blic housing units to fill the proposed 178 units to be called Lincoln Park. Mowever, I hasten to suF~gest that meny other factors should be considered before this conclusion is accepted as fact. I believe ii is my duty and that of every member of this body to se'~k all available fae~s en this vital question. I deemit ~ost material to determine a~ongst other things, the n~mber of vacant dwellings throughout the-City which are available for occupancy, the status of those dwellings, and whether they are standard or sub-stendard according to the.City's Minimum Eousing Code and not as determined by the Housing Authority according ~o Standards established by Washington and the home office of the Public Housing Administra- tion. We already have an expression from one segment of our citizenship that they will bring their homes up to the standards of our code. Dr. C~aham's comments on the subject supportLthe f~ct that the av- erage citizen of our City will co-operate ia brimging his property up to those standards. I think further that we should know all of the standards by which those applicants have been declared eligible for occupancy in ~ublic housing a~thority uu~its, and, if appropriate and material, I think each of them should be interviewed f~rthe~. I think it material to k~ow the date when each applicant filed his application a~d the date when the Mousing Authority certified him as eligible. These are but a few of the items which I believe are material to this question. Accordingly, Mr. President, I shall support and vote for the motion and I sincerely hope that my fellow Councilmen will join with me in this quest for all of the facts on the subject for only by so doing c~n we truly carry out our duty and responsibility to the citizens of Portsmouth whem we seek here to repre- sent.'' ~otion of Mr. Breedlove that the Council meet in a committee of the whole and remain session as such, for as long as it may be necessary to determine, study, investigate and report to the Council, according ~o law, on the present needs of public housing in Portsmouth, was edopted, and by the following vote: Ayes: Baker, Breedlove, Seward, Smith, Walker, Weiseman Nays: None ~he Mayor a~uounced that the Council would meez in conference at 7:00 P.M., immediate before the regular Council meeting on Tuesday, January ~7th, 1959, to set a date for the meeting on public housin referred to in the motion, On.etlon adjourned. Ap/~roved - .~ City Clerk.