1A, Community Enhancement Program

Home Browse Search

schedule, the City would set an hourly rate or fee for inspections. According to the City Attorney, if those bills aren't paid, they can be specially assessed back to the property owner and applied to the property taxes (Attachment Q. The benefit of this type of program is that it directs the cost of providing additional city services directly back to the user of those services. Typically when a complaint is received, the Code Enforcement Office will inspect the property and verify that there is a violation. If a violation is confirmed the property owner is contacted and given seven days to bring the property into compliance. A second inspection then occurs to verify that the violation has been corrected after the seven day period. If the property has not yet been brought into compliance after the first notification and re -inspection, a final notice is sent. The final notice provides an additional seven days, but then a third inspection is needed to see if the violation has been corrected. At or around this point, the property begins to use an excessive amount of staff time for the purpose of providing inspections related to violations. The costs for these additional inspections could then be billed to the property owner. Additionally, the program could be written to consider a property an excessive user of services if additional violations are found within a certain period of time, such as a 12 month period. If this program is adopted, the code compliance policy would be amended to include these costs. The City of Roseville is currently looking at this type of program. Their code enforcement officers are working with the Roseville Police Department to draft an ordinance that would charge users of excessive service calls. Staff has researched several other communities that have similar programs, such as St. Paul, New Brighton, and Coon Rapids (Attachment E). In order to adopt this type of program, the City Code would need to be amended to include a process for how and when the fees would be billed and laying out due process for the property owner to appeal. Additionally, a definition for "Municipal Housing Code" would need to be included in the City Code that would include nuisance violations. As the City Attorney notes in his letter, the "Municipal Housing Code" could be defined as certain chapters of the Zoning Code. This would allow the process to include such violations as parking, signs, maintenance, and other property violations. Some cities have extended the excessive use program to include those people that submit an excessive number of complaints without any basis for the complaint. For example, a dispute between neighbors can result in many phone calls to the city and visits from the staff or police even when there is no actual violation. In order to deter those activities, some cities charge the person that continues to submit complaints even when there is no violation. While this process is not a fine per se, it has the result of requiring people that violate the code to pay for their impact on the City. The implementation cost would be similar to administrative fines; however, unlike administrative fines, a special service fee is not voluntary and it would allow the City to recoup costs. However, the inspection fees would still not be a significant revenue generator for the City since the fees are meant to cover the actual cost of staff time. City of Arden Hills City Council Work Session for December 21, 2009 C: (Documents and Settings lbecky. brazys lLocal Settings l Temporary Internet FilesDLK15F112-21-09 - Work Session - Admin Fines and Excessive Consumption.doc Page 5 of 6