Agenda - Planning Commission - 12/02/1997

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Procedure. Once they complete their training, citizens can get to work. The programs have various procedures on how citizens work the neighborhoods and how they detect, report, and follow up on violations. Once they volunteer, citizens in Minneapolis survey the streets and alleys of their neighborhood. Working in pairs, they look for exterior housing maintenance code violations, such as tall grass and weeds, garbage, broken windows and torn screens, and graffiti. They also seek out zoning code violations regarding illegal parking of inoperable vehicles and commercial vehicles and trucks. ~'hen it detects a violation, the neighborhood association sends a letter to the owner and/or tenants expressing concern about the particular situation and asking for the recipient's cooperation in improving and maintaining the neighborhood. At a later date, citizen inspectors return to see if the situation has been resolved. If the violation has been corrected, the association sends a thank-you letter. If not, it refers the situation to the city qousing inspections office for enforcement. Standard forms are used for doing initial inspections, follow- up inspections, and direct referrals to the inspections division. Standard flyers are also available to say a property looks great or to thank sojneone for correcting a violation. Residents in San Mateo also use standardized forms, which identifY the homeowners association involved in the inspection. These forms are used to contact the property owner directly regarding the situation. They requeSt correction or removal of the violation within 10 days of receipt of the notice. (For extensive problems such as house painting, a longer deadline is usually allowed.) Uncorrected violations are forwarded to the code enforcement division. There is also a standard form for the property owner or tenant to send to the code enforcement division, indicating that the violation has been corrected, does not exist, or can be corrected or removed if more time is granted. In contrast to those in San Mateo and Minneapolis, volunteers in San Diego are asked to work within their community but not in their own neighborhoods. They wear city photo identification badges that indicate they are city volunteers. San Diego volunteers address various violation issues. Some groups may/emove illegal signs from public rights-of-way, others may have to, canvass identified problem areas for a variety of violations. I;irst contact with a property owner is through a letter, identifYing the violation and requesting voluntaty compliance with the code. If that does not happen, the case is submitted to the NCCD for enforcement action and implementation of appropriate remedies. /1lStitutional Support. The San Diego program provides support to the volunteer groups on an ongoing basis. They meet monthly with an NCCD representative, where groups can turn over priority cases so that the city can send administrative citations, and they can also ask questions about specific ordi- nances or violations. At these meetings, the NCCD also updates the groups on the status of cases referred to it for fllrther aCtion. Groups receive staff support from the program coordinator, who administers the program, attends monthly meetings, and coordinates training sessions, and from NeCD investigarors and clerical personnel, who provide support in case processing. Success Rates. In Minneapolis, the inspections division has had a high success rate with its program, with approximately 75 percent of those contacted by citizen inspectors making the requested improvements without involving the inspections department. In San Mateo, Leon Nickolas estimates that half of all forms issued by homeowners associations result in immediate 4V ~ "f... .~ . code compliance. Since San Diego's program began, volunteers have achieved 75 percent compliance and have closed more than 1,000 cases, primarily through letters sent to violators and through direct conversations. As Ty Rogers, program coordinator, says, "The purpose of the volunteers is to inform and educate the public. (Their) job is to be the nice guy. The city of San Diego's job is enforcement." :::~~:.' ',~:: ;:~'; +c: .:: t. 1~,the,1I!orkS;~?-~~~~ ',>:: '!~?:;;,~~<'~.' . :;-- Just underway in Atlanta, the housing inspections division is creating a citywide Neighborhood Deputy Program, an expansion of a pilot code enforcement program conducted by the Atlanta Project (TAP). Created in 1991 by former President Jimmy Carter, TAP's aim is to help Atlanta's poorest communities gain access to needed resources to solve their problems. According to TAP's World Wide Web site, the Brown Village area pilot program has helped empower residents and restore community pride. By canvassing the community, volunteers reported more than 300 code violations to the city. Still in the development stage, the cirywide program will focus on housing code violations, such as peeling paint and yard debris. The volunteers will make courtesy citations to residents, warning them that violations exist and need to be corrected. It is anticipated that the project will be Funded in rhe next budget cycle beginning in Januaty 1998, with the program expected to start in March 1998. When the program is ready, it will have three components: a brochure, a monitoring program, and a computer software program to track violations. The brochure, to be distributed to the neighborhoods, will inform residents of their rights and describe the procedures to be followed and agencies to be contacted to enforce city ordinance violarions~ Current issues of concern include abandoned cars, deteriorated or vacant buildings, dead animals, broken fire hydrants, and srreets in need of repair. The monitoring program, a supplement to the brochure, will promote resident and community participation in identifying violations. The computer program, a joint endeavor berween the city and TAP, will track violations to encourage neighborhood code enforcement efforts. .~~ ..~-..' " . 'i.":' ; :-~,~~~ San Diego presently has 130 volunteers from 30 community planning groups. In 1996, volunteers donated more than 3,000 hours to the city, saving San Diego $45,000 in code enforcement staff salaries. :". , The Real World While volunteer programs can result in better compliance, they can also dramatically increase the workload of enforcement departments. In San Mateo, the four-person code enforcement department will be hiring an additional person by the end of this year and anticipates growing to six people in 1998. Vonnie Linnell says Minneapolis breaks even on workload changes, with rubbish and grass-related violations decreasing and issues such as housing maintenance increasing. Programs do not always run smoothly. Some communities have encountered fake inspectors. Minneapolis has experienced incidents where persons were ringing doorbells, passing them- " 4: -. ""'~~ :;i~:. . 3 ;~. .'.;