Understanding Rochester’s Code Compliance Score for renters

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — Following a weekend vacant structure fire at a home on Remington Street, News 8 looked into the public property records using the City of Rochester’s newest system. The ownership of the site of the fire on Remington Street is listed under an LLC, which also shows approximately 341 other linked properties. This prompted News 8 to look further into how it all works.

Officials with the city say Rochester’s Code Enforcement is among the first departments to rollout the new tech. It’s all been in the works since 2017, as part of a grant provided by the NYS Attorney General’s Office called ‘Cities RISE.’ The tech is called Infor and utilizes software called ‘BuildingBlocks’ from provider, Tolemi. Rochester’s Grants Management and Research Coordiantor, Henry Fitts, describes the overhaul as a massive undertaking.

“Prior to May of 2023, almost all of the city’s operations for Code Enforcement and a lot of other areas were in our main fram, IBM mainframe system; which is a 1980’s custom, in-house built tool that operated and did what we needed it to do but certainly had some limitations in terms of what you’d expect from modern software,” Fitts explains.

In terms of the ownership listings and how the tool works, Fitts notes since Rochester is one of the first cities to incorportate these tools across the city’s own systems, there can be growing pains but the companies are receptive to any suggestions on improvements.

“The system — and this is something we’ve worked on with Tolemi to refine — but their system uses an algorithm that links together different owners based on the tax bill mailing address primarily. If two different LLC’s are using the same tax bill mailing address – we’re considering those entities to be doing business together and considering them a single ownership group for the purposes of this platform and computing the score,” Fitts explains.

The score he is referring to is called the ‘Code Compliance Score’, desigend not just for the general public, but also for prospective tenants to have ample information to make an informed decision. First each property is scored based on a scale of 0 – 100, factoring in several elements based upon an algorithm. The owner and/or property manager is then scored based upon the average of the entire portfolio.

On the BuildingBlocks website, in the top left corner, users can select the ‘Add Filters’ tab, which expands the page to several subsets of information about to be extracted. For example, under ‘Renter Tools’, users can access a property score, owner score and/or manager score.

In regard to the ownership group listed in association with the vacant structure fire from this weekend, officials say there is still some ironing out with the new system which may be at play.

“As far as we can tell with the property that you’re referring to does not seem to be linked to many other properties and owners. It seems to be a smaller LLC that has a few properties in Rochester and other cities; I think there’s some in Cleveland as well with another iteration of this LLC. It’s not to say it isn’t one common owner who’s been able to hide through different LLC’s but as far as we can tell here from the data that we have — it doesn’t seem to be linked to a larger portfolio,” says Mike Furlano, Rochester’s Housing Attorney.

“This is an example — there are a few property managers who have the practice that they have their owners that they work for assign the tax bill address to them so that all of it, tax bill and any official correspondance from the city would then go to the property manager. So that’s what happened in this case and why they’re getting linked to othe properties managed by that manager,” Fitts adds.

The Code Compliance Score is not to be confused with the new tool for property managers or owners, which is called ‘Civics.’

“They create an account online. They associate themselves with their properties. Once they do that they can do all the records assosiated with them and submit new records, digital applications, pay fees and pay their taxes eventually, pay their water bills,” Fitts differentiates.

Another change along with the new tech: a new law. Following action in March of 2023, the City Code added additional requirements related to LLC owners. As of January 1st 2024, any revised Building Owner Registry must be submitted within 10 days of any change in contact information, or whenever a property is sold.

Right now, users can only search a property using a exact address, however officials say you will be able to search by property owner name or group in the future.

When asked if the city has or would be hosting any type of workshop or session to help acclimate the public to these new tech-forward tools, Fitts notes it is something they are looking to consider for the future.

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