Englewood City Council engaged in a lengthy discussion about
code enforcement during the Feb. 25 study session.
Englewood Police Chief Tom Vandermee and police Cdr. Sam Watson
talked about how the staff managed the code enforcement
workload.
Watson said there are four full-time code enforcement officers.
Each officer is assigned to a specific quarter of the city. The
officer’s first priority is to investigate code enforcement
complaints from residents, council members or other sources. When
the investigations are completed, the officer patrols the streets
and alleys in his or her district and takes action if there’s a
code violation.
The first action is a notice of violation. The notice lists the
violation and provides seven days to correct it. The officer tried
to personally deliver the notice to the resident of the
property.
The officer does a follow-up inspection after the seven-day
notice period. If the violation isn’t corrected, the officer issues
a citation of violation, which allows 14 days to correct the
problem.
If the violation still isn’t corrected, the officer issues a
summons and the property owner is required to appear in municipal
court.
The process keeps the code enforcement officer busy. Last year,
they issued code enforcement notices for about 9,000
violations.
“Fortunately, the vast majority of Englewood residents are
cooperative and make the job easier,” Vandermee told the city
council. “Our officers issued about 9,000 violation notices for
about 9,000 violations and about 96 percent corrected the violation
within the seven-day window. There were 117 cases that didn’t
correct the violations and were issued summons to appear in
court.”
Councilwoman Jill Wilson said she felt the code officers were
working hard at their jobs but there might be too much work for the
existing staff.
“I know these officers are dedicated to doing a good job,” she
said. “But, doing a good job takes time and that means there might
not be enough time for them to get all the work done.”
Councilman John Moore agreed.
“We know that not all violators are being issued notices. It may
be an issue of the officers just not having enough time to locate
and cite all the violators,” he said. “Most enforcement actions are
in response to complaints. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave code
enforcement officers a lot of time to patrol their
areas.”
City manager Gray Sears noted the code enforcement division used
to be larger.
“A few years ago, the budget was a problem and we ended up
eliminating about 10 percent of the employee positions in the
city,” he said. “Finances are a little better but most of those
eliminated positions haven’t been restored. Code enforcement is
always a difficult issue and it must be a balance between
enforcement that isn’t too strict and enforcement that isn’t too
lax.”
Chronic offenders were another area of discussion.
Vandermee said the less than 10 percent of residents who don’t
correct code violations take up about 90 percent of the code
enforcement officers’ time.
“The council has helped us deal with chronic offenders by
changing the laws,” he said. “Now, when a chronic offender goes
through the notice, ticket and summons process once to the point we
go in and do the cleanup, the next time the violation happens, the
city can immediately do the cleanup. Of course, the cost of the
cleanup becomes a lien against the property.”
Watson said another tool code enforcement can choose to use is
filing criminal public nuisance charges against the chronic
offender.
As the discussion came to a close, Moore noted the main issues
of council concern were chronic offenders, weeds, snow, unreported
code violation and the length of time it takes to complete legal
action against a code violation offender.
Vandermee and Watson agreed the meeting was helpful and provided
them information as they work with code enforcement officers to
streamline and improve the process.
“We’ll meet with the code enforcement officers to discuss what
we learned here tonight,” Watson said. “We definitely want to hear
suggestions on how to make improvements from our code enforcement
officers because they are the ones with the expertise in this
field.”
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