A Bethany-based landlord was hit with $18,200 in city fines — as part of a rejuvenated quasi-judicial process designed to give the Livable City Initiative (LCI) more teeth when confronting negligent rental property owners.
That was the outcome of a hearing held in a second-floor meeting room at City Hall.
The hearing was presided over Friday by volunteer municipal hearing officer James Cormie, one of seven such non-city-employees whom LCI recruited this past summer in order to satisfy the local and state legal requirement that landlords have an opportunity to appeal LCI-issued fines around residential rental licensing program violations before monetary penalties take effect.
The hearing officer process is a necessary intermediate step between when LCI sends out order letters and civil citations to landlords in regards to such violations, and when the agency can actually start trying to collect those funds — through a direct payment by the landlord, or through a civil judgment in state court…