November 3, 2017 at 4:17 p.m.
Public safety committee discusses inspection complaints
Williams: 'No two complaints are alike'
Public safety committee discusses inspection complaints
Over 80 complaints were filed with the inspection department in September, with 40 of them needing attention from the city health officer, the committee was told.
Williams provided the information as part of a committee request that he submit inspection data as part of his monthly report.
As of Tuesday's meeting Williams said there were 44 zoning and ordinance inspections and 41 health and sanitation situations that need to be addressed by health officer Harry Whidden.
"How much time, on average, would you say each of those complaints takes?" asked chair Alex Young.
"It depends, each one is so different," Williams replied. "We might have one where I have to stop at and talk to the business owner and it would take five minutes and it's taken care of, other than a drive-by followup. We might have one where there is a lack of compliance that sometimes takes days. I just took care of one at a downtown address and it took three days of working through records and gaining compliance, trying to track down renters and owners. Some of them are super labor-intensive, some of them aren't that bad."
In most cases, when someone files a complaint about something that falls under his jurisdiction, Williams said he first sends a letter explaining the violation and what steps need to be taken to bring the property into compliance. If on re-inspection the violation has not been addressed, a certified letter is sent to the property owner.
"To make sure there is no question that the people get it," Williams explained.
If the problem is still not corrected, at some point law enforcement may be called in to issue a citation or the city attorney has to get involved.
"So I can't tell you that they all take 10 minutes or two hours because each one is so drastically different," he said.
He provided an example to illustrate his point. Recently someone took out a building permit to put up a fence in their yard, he began. When Williams drove to check that the fence was no higher then the stated height of 3-feet high in a front yard, he discovered it was 4-feet high.
"So we wrote a letter saying your fence is not in compliance," Williams said. "They took it upon themselves to then drive around the entire city and gave me a legal (size) paper pad of addresses they feel had non-compliant fences. So now I have to address every single one of these, and some of them I know for a fact, because I was at the meetings, have conditional uses. So that legal pad research is going to take weeks."
Williams said the property owners at the center of the matter have told people that they knew their fence was non-compliant.
"Yet when they got called out on it, they took it upon themselves to drive around the city and write down two dozen addresses," Williams said.
When Young asked Williams if he had to treat the whole list as complaints, he answered in the affirmative.
"So, at a minimum, you're having to drive out and look at each one of those?" Young asked.
Williams said he will check to make sure which properties have conditional use permits or other variances that would allow the oversize fences. He added the ordinance governing fence heights ststes that if it a fence is built in the first 30-feet of a front yard, it cannot be higher than 3-feet, unless it is on a corner lot.
"I'm just looking at these rough numbers, and between zoning and health ones, that's close to three complaints a day that you guys are dealing with," Young said. "That is a substantial amount of time and effort. I know we merged the inspection and fire budgets so that they're not tracked separately so I guess what I'm trying to get at is we don't really have a good idea of how much staff time and money this is costing us to do these inspections."
"It's substantial," Williams replied.
Williams stressed that the city is getting a great deal of value out of having Whidden as the health inspector.
"We could never hire somebody to replace him when he retires for what he gets paid to do what he does," Williams said.
Alderperson Dawn Rog said the city needs to do a better job of letting residents know how the zoning ordinances work.
"Maybe something in the paper every other week, an update from City Hall on upcoming ordinances that would affect the public," Rog said. "We'd be getting the information out there instead of having to sit there and search for it when you need it. If it's something that is out there already on a regular basis or people knew where to find it on our website and it was easy to locate, I don't think there would be that many calls."
"The problem I'm dealing with is with people that just don't care," Williams replied.
Alderperson Steve Sauer noted that ignorance of an ordinance is no excuse for not abiding by it.
"Like my fence, I found it very easy to call Theresa (Lassig; at the inspection department) and say, 'Hey, I got a letter about my fence because it is illegal, and I got to rebuild it, what are my options?' And she said come in and get a packet, and I did," Sauer said.
The committee directed Williams to continue providing data on complaints to the inspection department.
Jamie Taylor may be reached via email at jamie@rivernews online.com.
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