Our city council strategic planning meeting for November 4th to order.

Can I get a motion on the approval of the minutes from 819?

So move.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Minutes will stand without objection.

Council, I want to make you aware that we do have one other item we're going to add to our discussion items.

After code enforcement, we have invited the China Area Food Bank to join us to give us an update on how our community is responding to the withholding of SNAP benefits from the federal government and how we can potentially be involved in the short-term and hopefully hopefully only short-term solutions.

So let's go ahead and welcome code enforcement.

We've got code enforcement.

So I guess I need to hook up here.

Yes, please.

Okay, yes.

I don't know if it'll reach all of these.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

Okay, so um code enforcement addresses property maintenance issues.

More specifically, housing and structure violations, um, litter, overgrowth, and inoperable vehicles on private property only.

We condemn structures that are no longer safe to live in.

But just because the structure is condemned doesn't mean it's going to be demolished because the majority of those actually the owner will hire a contractor who will pull permits and make repairs and get a new certificate of occupancy so that the structures can be occupied again.

For the most dangerous structures, we do go ahead and perform demolition uh after we get demolition orders.

For structures that we find are dangerous to first responders, like maybe an inspector's out and sees that there are holes in the floor or holes in the roof, then we actually provide that information to 911 dispatch.

When tenants request it, we can tow inoperable vehicles off of private property after giving the owner time to take care of it.

Um and we place lanes for the cost of those.

Um is uh inoperable inoperable vehicles on the street, and that would be CPD, uh chicken issues, that's McCaymie, and then of course, homeless camps, that would be homeless initiatives.

We towed 37 inoperable vehicles from private property, and we condemned 148 dangerous structures.

65 of the condemned structures were repaired and livable again because we kept pursuing court with the property owners.

We brought 11,893 code violations into compliance, and 1937 of those cases required court action.

Our cases are tracked in City View.

That's the software that we use, and it interfaces with GoGov.

So we receive our 311 request directly into our system.

It schedules inspections and reinspections for our inspectors.

It populates notices, documents, and uh and summonses, and it requires the inspectors to upload photographs after every inspection, and it provides a daily to-do list for all of our inspectors so that it keeps us on track.

Recently, we've taken some steps to shorten compliance.

Basically, we are no longer granting any time extensions.

So if someone is given uh a notice to cut their grass or clean up litter, they have two weeks at the end of that two-week period, they're cited to court.

They don't they are not granted any time extensions, even if they provide an excuse, which is fine.

Um, the Judge Paddy can grant additional time extensions if she feels it's warranted.

We are also increasing the use of daily fines.

Judge Paddy has been supporting that very well, but an owner is simply not willing to correct the violations, but has the ability to do so.

And we are also abating occupied properties now, which um if the if the property has been problematic and we have not been able to bring it into compliance any other way, then we can get a court order and actually go on to the property, clean up the litter, whatever is required.

Um, of course, there again, it is limited to litter overgrowth, um, you know, or removing inoperable vehicles, and then some not so recent changes are um in the past we also took unoccupied properties and vacant property violations to court before we abated them, but we changed so that we were only required to post a public nuisance, mail a public nuisance, and then we were allowed to go ahead and continue with abatement and place the lien for the cost with just those notices.

So timelines.

We we know that sometimes it takes a while to bring properties into compliance, but we are also need to give property owners due due process so that they have an opportunity to make their required repairs.

Our public nuisance notices again.

Since we're going to be abating it ourselves and placing a lien on the property, we do give them 10 days to bring the property and into compliance before we proceed.

For violation notices on occupied properties, they have 10 business days for litter overgrowth and inoperable vehicles, or 30 business days for structure violations to bring those into compliance.

And and if those are not in compliance, then they are cited to court, and the hearings are three to four weeks after that reinspection.

For demolition hearings, we are required to provide a minimum of 30 days' notice to the property owner and all interested parties.

Once a demolition order is issued, we're required to wait an additional 60 days to allow the property owner to file a temporary restraining order in chancery court if they want to prevent the demolition of their structure.

So, what should you expect if we're doing a systematic inspection or a blitz in your district?

Okay, so our entire inspection team will be performing inspections in your district for two days looking for code violations.

Yellow violation tags will be posted as at addresses that have violations after two weeks or six weeks for structure violations.

The properties will be reinspected, and if violations remain, owners of occupied properties will be cited to environmental court.

Vacant properties will begin the abatement process.

Are there questions?

Yes, ma'am.

Okay, we've got a lot.

Okay, okay.

Councilman Burns, did you raise your hand also?