By Thor Jourgensen / The Daily Item

REVERE - Property owners who neglect their buildings could face a $25 hourly cleanup fee assessed by the city to cover contracted upkeep costs.

Ward 4 City Councilor George Rotondo’s proposal is the latest in a string of city initiatives aimed at keeping a growing list of vacant properties from turning into rodent dens and fire traps.

Bank foreclosures have made abandoned property a concern nationwide for municipal officials who, like city Inspectional Services Director Nicholas Catinazzo, are worried about sanitation and safety concerns posed by overgrown lawns, abandoned swimming pools, broken windows and neglected plumbing.

City inspectors periodically check on vacant buildings and bill their owners for administrative costs ranging from $500 to $3,000. Only $9,250 out of $40,500 in fines was collected last year but Catinazzo said the fines are meant to motivate owners to fix up their property or replace it.

Two-thirds of the buildings on a list of 45 vacant properties compiled by Catinazzo’s office in 2007 were vacated within that year.

Rotondo’s fine proposal is aimed at covering city expenses incurred in fixing up vacant property. The administrative fine system already in place is modeled after a system adopted in Wilmington, Delaware where municipal officials charge building owners an annual “registration fee” ranging from $500 for a building vacant for less than a year to $3,000 for a building vacant for three years or more.

The city signed an agreement with a Chelsea homeowner counseling organization last February in an effort to stem the tide of local foreclosures.

Chelsea Restoration Corporation estimated at the time that 358 Revere homes were in foreclosure with mortgage lenders threatening to take the properties away from 1,147 other owners.

The agency sent Mayor Thomas Ambrosino a letter last December indicating that 1,147 other homeowners are on the brink of seeing their low introductory mortgage rate escalate.

Chelsea Restoration counsels homeowners on their options for refinancing loans or selling their property.

The foreclosure crisis reflects the steepest slump in housing in more than two decades, a severe downturn that followed a five-year boom that saw home sales and prices both hit record levels, only to come crashing down over the past two years.

Homeowners who had counted on being able to refinance their adjustable-rate mortgages before they reset to sharply higher rates have been caught in the sharp downturn as home sales and prices have plunged in many parts of the country.