Passing on Sanitation Fine
I need the forum’s advice… I have four tenants in a non-owner-occupied home. A month or two ago, we got a sanitation ticket and I paid it, and alerted everyone that if it happened again, I’d split it among the apartments if no one ‘fessed up. It just happened again, but this time it’s $100,…
I need the forum’s advice… I have four tenants in a non-owner-occupied home. A month or two ago, we got a sanitation ticket and I paid it, and alerted everyone that if it happened again, I’d split it among the apartments if no one ‘fessed up. It just happened again, but this time it’s $100, not $25. I’ve asked everyone if it was them, but they all say no. I know there’s a (remote) possibility that it wasn’t any of them. Despite the warning/alert, is it wrong (or petty) to pass on the charge? I’d like them to self-police the trash better. (I do have someone who brings the trash to the curb, but this incident was about putting out the trash on the wrong day, so it’s not on him.)
Thank you!
green garbage bags are not all that common. find the tenant with green bags and you find your culprit.
Sounds like all the ll had to do was open the bags and get his hands a lil’ dirty to see the source of the garbage.
“policing” your trash and paying 1/4 of $100 for nothing was not part of contract for 3 out of 4 your tenants. They probably will be unhappy and do something to make you unhappy in return.
Bottom line you cannot enforce it and this would not work in court.
hire a better super or stop being an absentee landlord. Problem solved.
“Perhaps the sanitation inspector put down the wrong house number”
OR fabricated the “violation”–a common practice.
Comments appreciated. Thanks!
The fact that there’s endless room for speculation as to who/how these bags wound up on your sidewalk seems to me just one more reason why you can’t blame or fine your tenants. I don’t expect my tenants to police each other, nor would I fine all of them to cover the possible violation of just one. It’s a different story if you can trace the violation, or repeat violations, back to a specific tenant (not necessarily a solution, just a different story). Beyond that, you’re going to have to come up with a better system of providing services and maintaining your property and/or chalk up the fines to the cost of landlording from a distance.
That really sounds like one of your neighbors put their trash in front of your house. Maybe someone is renovating? Or, it could have been lawn trash – did anyone do some landscaping recently?
Well, unless someone was doing spring cleaning, it sounds like a lot of trash for one apartment to have put out on a given day. Are you sure that it’s not a neighbor’s renovation trash, etc? 120 gallons of trash (four 30 gallon bags) is a lot. Also, did anyone else actually see the trash there? Perhaps the sanitation inspector put down the wrong house number. I would think someone else in the building would have noticed if another tenant was doing a really thorough cleaning with that much trash. Is anyone preparing to move out (or did someone just move in)?