BREMERTON — Owners of vacant commercial buildings will soon have to register them at city hall, under an ordinance passed last month by the Bremerton City Council.

Empty space along the city's commercial thoroughfares isn't hard to come by. In an effort led by council President Eric Younger, owners of buildings that are completely vacant will soon have to fill out a city form, providing officials contact information in case their structure falls into disrepair.

Younger was motivated by the safety risk and unsightliness of such empty buildings. City officials can't always reach the owners when properties are vandalized, broken into, or otherwise damaged.

"You board them up and all of the sudden it becomes an attractive nuisance," he said.

Drawing on an ordinance from Everett, the council voted 7-0 on Dec. 19 to create the registry. Landowners are not required to pay fees, but failure to register would be a code enforcement violation.

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Though he did not propose the ordinance, Mayor Greg Wheeler supports it.

"I think it will be mutually beneficial," Wheeler said, for both the property's owners and managers and the city.

The tricky part for the city: If the property is maintained by someone other than the owner of record, the city might not have a contact, according to Bremerton code enforcement officer Janet Lunceford.

"So if I don’t know that, it takes a long time to ferret out who I should be contacting for problems on the site," she said.

Younger and others believe the program could help keep vacant buildings safe from fire by "streamlining any communications with the building owner, were something to happen," said Pat McGanney, the city's interim fire chief.

In 2017, the city added a fire inspector position with the goal of inspecting all commercial structures in the city. That effort has largely been completed. The city is hopeful the result is less fire danger. So far, the numbers are bearing that out — McGanney noted that the city's fire department was called to fewer such fires in 2018.

"Our commercial structure fires were way down," he said.

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Younger said the council will monitor the registration program to see if it's successful at signing up owners, who have 10 days to do so once a property becomes vacant. City officials are still putting together an online form and have yet to debut it on Bremerton's web site.

Younger was also successful in 2013 in passing a landlord license for city residences. Ultimately, he'd like to ditch boarding up buildings altogether in exchange for a new kind of Plexiglas siding that would look less conspicuously vacant and allow officials to still see inside. Some cities around the country have begun using the material. For now, a registry is a good place to start, he says.

"This is a first step," Younger said.