Jamestown Director of Development Crystal Surdyk presents on ordinance to City Council Housing Committee (July 17, 2023)
A new ordinance that would allow Code Enforcement Officers to directly fine homeowners for quality of life code violations could alleviate some housing issues.
Jamestown Director of Development Crystal Surdyk presented the latest draft of the ordinance to City Council members Monday night.
She said the ordinance will allow Code Enforcement Officers to immediately issue a ticket upon inspection, “For animal maintenance, so waste and feces clean up; junk and debris (on the) exterior; high weeds, plants, or grass growth; dangerous trees, unauthorized motor vehicles, which includes parking on front lawns or illegally parked vehicles, as well unregistered vehicles; and then illegal burns or prohibited burns.”
Surdyk said the fines amount have not been set yet. She said homeowners, landlords, and tenants can all be fined depending on the situation, and that additional fines can be levied should there not be compliance, “If they don’t mitigate the issue within the designated period of time, we can then go and remediate it ourselves and then bill it back to them. And, we know there’s an issue of ‘We’ll just apply it to their taxes and file a lien,’ and then they don’t pay their taxes. So, the way we have it written is that this will actually be something that we can refer to a credit collections agency.”
She said the city looked at various other municipalities that have similar ordinances to create the one for Jamestown.
Surdyk said procedures for collecting fines still needs to be developed, including how it’ll affect the City Clerk and City Court.
Housing Committee Chair Marie Carrubba said housing complaints take a lot of time and energy to get resolved and the ordinance may help alleviate that, “They (Department of Development) do have a lot of complaints, as you can hear, 75 in one day from a weekend, makes it very difficult to be responsive. But they do have an anonymous complaint system to address it if people do have complaints. I’ve filed many for people who have contacted me, many who don’t even live in my ward who I will file the complaint for them. They don’t have to give me their name. I don’t put their names into it if they’re afraid of being harassed or bothered by a neighbor, they will never find out who filed it.”
Carrubba did request that an added penalty not be assessed if the ticketed person can show they’re making a good faith effort to resolve the issue, especially in cases where a company has been hired to take care of a nuisance issue but can’t make it there within a certain time period.
Surdyk said she hopes to have all questions answered and language finalized for the ordinance change to come before Council at its July 31 voting session.
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