For
the past year, Rockland County has overseen buildings and codes in Spring
Valley – a change made in the wake of the Evergreen Court Home for Adults fire
that claimed the life of a resident and firefighter Jared Lloyd.
Lloyd was also an
employee of Altice, News 12's parent company.
On
Tuesday, county officials shared their findings from the first of their
two-year stint in charge. They say they logged about 7,000 violations among 844
buildings in the village.
"I
cannot tell you how we've dodged countless bullets,” said Rockland County
Executive Ed Day. “If this doesn't change at the local level, it's only a
matter of time before we see another tragedy like the Evergreen Court
fire."
Ed
Markunas, Rockland’s building and codes director, invited News 12’s Ben Nandy
to a war-room devoted to keeping track of Spring Valley inspections and
permits. He says they established an entirely new system for dealing with
violations.
"We
created everything from the administrative court, from hearings to all
new internal processes to issuing violation notices – while facing
challenge after challenge," he said.
Day
says Spring Valley's building safety problem won't be fully fixed unless
residents vote out officials who are allowing the problem to continue.
News
12 asked Spring Valley Mayor Alan Simon about Day’s comments. He declined to
comment until he could speak with his attorneys.
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