COUNTY CODE ENFORCEMENT IS “PROLONGED AND SECRETIVE”; SPRING VALLEY PLANNERS CALL FOR REFORMS

By Miriam Raftery

August 30, 2016 (Spring Valley) – The County’s process for enforcement of code violations is “prolonged and secretive,” often with no resolution and no updates provided to those who file complaints, states a letter sent by Lora Lowes, Chair of the Spring Valley Community Planning Group, to County Supervisors and to Mark Wardlaw, director of the county’s Department of Planning and Development Services. 

The Planning Group voted 11-0 (with 4 members absent) to send the letter, which calls the Code Compliance Division “absurdly understaffed” to handle the heavy caseload.  A single inspector assigned to the Highway 94 corridor area has an estimated 400 cases, Jim Comeau, a member of the Spring Valley Planning Group, told ECM  

“It appears that Code Compliance Division does not have the infrastructure needed for frequent and comprehensive communication with the public,” the letter states. “We require better, more frequent and more regular communications with and from Code Compliance division.”  

The planning group members ask for updates to be provided at least monthly on all complaints in their jurisdiction, calling status reports “a basic technique of all organizations.”

Moreover, planners find the County’s limit of two complaints per person per month “unacceptable.”  They ask that instead, a person making a complaint be notified if a similar complaint on the same property has already been filed or not. 

To ease that burden of 400 cases a month, the planning group has a proposal. Noting that the Department of Planning and Development Services has been authorized to make 11 new hires, the planning group urges that all of those hires be assigned to the Code Compliance division. They also ask that the division be reorganized to improve both the code enforcement process and communications to report on that process to the public.