The Sheriff’s Office Must…

  • Answer the phone
  • Take complaints about specific properties from neighbors, leaders and the Philadelphia Police so that special attention is paid to process these properties through the Office as quickly as possible.
  • Create an active notification system so that anyone who is interested in a property that is up for sale in any particular area of Philadelphia can subscribe and get notified the instant the property has been scheduled for a sale.   This will allow community members to know about a Sheriff Sale action as soon as possible.
  • Make itself available to the media at all times.  If records are too cumbersome for staff to prepare for reporters, media will be allowed access to search the materials on premises.
  • Not refuse reasonable Pennsylvania Right To Know Law Requests nor excessively ask for extensions of time for minuscule requests
  • Slash costs by ending crony-contracting.   All new contracting for services will be put out to bid and vouched.  All expenses for routine materials and supplies will have receipts which will be made available for inspection.
  • Triage incoming foreclosures to identify which ones have homeowners living on the premises, and reach out to those homeowners with homeowner counseling to connect these homeowners to services:
    • Legal Aid
    • Instructions for filing for bankruptcy
    • Instructions for setting repayment plan agreements for tax foreclosures (halts the foreclosure)
  • Work with the First Judicial District to extend the length of time a writ is expected to be returned for homeowners in the process of making arrangements to halt foreclosure
  • Pay for all deputy employees that require a PA Act 235 license to receive proper training and instruction before they are permitted to work in any position that requires guarding the courts or handling prisoners (for those employees who are required to have licenses outside of Act 2)
  • All deputy employees who guard the courts or handle prisoners must be members of the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge #5
  • Expose all property ledgers and datasets under the Open Data Initiative
  • Publish financial records of the Office enumerating all contracts, expenditures and who is invoicing the Sheriff for work.
  • Return a foreclosure report to all City creditors enumerating the monies collected at settlement along with a certificate voucher to property buyers that the Sheriff has forwarded monies collected to cancel debt.  The certificate can then be introduced as evidence should a legal proceeding occur.  A copy of this report will be given at the time of settlement to show which municipal debts were addressed by the closing of the sale.
  • Propose to City Council a plan to bring all title insurance work in-house so that properties sold at Sheriff’s Sale truly carry the guarantee of “free of all liens and encumbrances”, which would make Philadelphia more attractive to those seeking to buy distressed property.

All these things are required to have a Sheriff’s Office that the public can trust.    I am the person who can make this happen.