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adjoining properties or public streets" (660.05 of the City Code). Although the intentions of this regulation may be good, hundreds of properties may be out of compliance at any given time. Additionally, gaining continued compliance has proven to be difficult. While tonight's discussion does should not focus on rewording City regulations, this example demonstrates the need to revaluate the benefit and purpose of regulations when widespread compliance is difficult to obtain and taxing on staff time. Complaint and Enforcement Policv The City of Arden Hills, along with many other cities, uses a complaint-based approach to code enforcement. This type of program relies on people contacting City Hall with concerns as opposed to City staff actively patrolling for code violations. The complaint-based approach does require residents to get involved by contacting the City with the location of a potential violation, but residents are not expected to supply the City with full details of the potential code violation. The complaint-based approach does come with a couple of ilnportant caveats. Firstly, the City works to immediately act upon health' or safety violations. For example, if a sign is blocking a traffic site line, the City will remove or relocate it without a complaint. Secondly, if the City receives a complaint but notices that multiple violations of the same type in the area, the City will follow up with a reminder letter and/or informational pamphlet of the regulation. As part of this process, staff recommends preparing a more formalized complaint and response policy to ensure that violations are treated consistency and fairly. As part of a complaint and response policy, it may also be necessary to set a policy on anonymous complaints and repeat offenders. Anyone submitting a complaint to a city has a right to expect confidentiality. However, a city can set a policy that favors responding to identified complaints before anonymous complaints. It is important to note that even when a person identifies him or herself, that is still considered confidential information. A city cannot unilaterally ignore complaints from outside the city or complaints from people outside a neighborh'ood where the violation has occurred. Some cities do have a type of active code enforcement program, such as Shoreview' s SHINE program. This type or program typically involves proactively searching for violations in a designated area each year. The designated area is usually rotated to different parts of a city from year to year so that the entire city is inspected of the course of several years. The city also sends out a notice to residents prior to the inspection to encourage compliance before the inspection occurs. Moving to a proactive program would require the City to increase the time devoted to code enforcement, which would involve adding staff. City of Arden Hills City Council Work Sessionfor October 20,2008 l\Ahdocsl\ahIAHdata\PlanningICommuni(v Development \ Community Livability \ A1em os 1102008 - CC .Memo - Community Li'vability.doc Page ] 1 of 12