The Riverton City Council held a hybrid work session and regular meeting on August 26, 2025, at 12830 South Redwood Road. The work session began at 5:15 PM (informal) and 6:00 PM (formal), covering code enforcement, Town Days review, 250th anniversary planning, and an AI use policy. The regular council meeting started at 7:00 PM and included a waste management donation, police department presentation, a public hearing on the RM-6 zoning amendment, and a discussion on a new skate park. The meeting concluded with a closed session for litigation and real property discussions.
This is mostly just an introduction to a possibility of having it and it's just going to have some general information. Kind of the question that has come up is if adding an administrative law judge would increase efficiency and compliance, caseload, and cost when it comes to code enforcement. So I was able to meet with the Riverton's city manager, the city attorney, and discuss a few things with the court clerk, as well as I was able to meet with the code enforcement manager of Taylorsville because they um currently have an administrative law judge. So I'll just kind of be going over the positive and negatives of an administrative law judge. Next slide. So a few positive aspects, it can reduce pressure on our current uh criminal court. Um the administrative law judge can take on a lot of um code enforcement cases and more minor cases, and um that can sort of reduce pressure on the court judge. Um it can also be more cost effective. Um administrative law judges can uh be contracted and um maybe have a smaller salary than hiring an additional court judge. Um they can also be scalable for caseload. So when I was talking to the code enforcement manager of Taylorsville, she mentions that when they first adopted an administrative law judge, they only saw about three cases come to the monthly hearings. Um but today they see up to as many as 18 cases. Um so it seems to have uh an increase of usefulness for the city um over the course of time. Um and some also see um an administrative law judge as able to maybe have more appropriate consequences. Um the code enforcement manager of Taylorsville uh just mentioned she didn't like the idea of jail time for uh code violations kind of thing, um, which is a possibility in Riverton, but never has actually occurred in Riverton's history, but it is a concern. Um, some negative aspects, um of course would be an additional cost, and some would say that uh might be an unnecessary cost right now. Our current court judge um he works part-time with Riverton and also part-time with Taylorsville. Um, and so some might argue that because he's not working full-time even with us, that maybe an additional judge isn't exactly necessary. Um another concern that was brought up in some of my uh discussions was um impartiality. Um, just because an administrative law judge is in a very um focused area um within um taking on different cases and such that they um may struggle to be impartial. Um so that is another concern. Um in summary, um it can uh reduce caseload, which can be beneficial, kind of increase efficiency and can dole out what might seem to be like more appropriate consequences um with the different code violations, but again, it would be an additional cost that some may say are is unnecessary, and um impartiality seems to be a concern. Um yeah, that is everything. Is there any questions? I have one question I'll start with, and then if anyone else has a question. My question is did they give you any examples when you were in Taylorsville of where they had found uh the process helpful and positive? Did she tell any stories? Um she has she did mention like there's um a lot of difficulty with um weeds getting out of hand, and so they would you know um issue warnings and fines, um and if the people who are on in violation um do have to come to court, she said that they were able to maybe find a bit more find it easier for people to come into compliance with a more educational approach instead of a punitive approach. Um, but that was kind of uh her perspective on it. Thank you. Yeah. Um let's see, everyone wants to speak. Let's start with council member McDougall, please. I'm over here. Gwen, great job. I appreciate that. Thank you. As you were working with Taylorsville, did you find that by doing this it was able to increase or expedite the trial process? In other words, if someone was not compliant, were they able to get the case handled quicker and faster by doing this versus going through the actual city core system? I believe so because it is so focused, it does seem to expedite the process a bit. Yes. Excellent, thank you. Yeah. Okay, Councilmember Perucci. I didn't have a question, I just wanted to say thank you. I was I I did have a comment though. So I I wanted to say thank you. I appreciate the presentation. I actually like to staff, like this is really helpful to also just have a topic like this to have a presentation like this. So I mean, staff, you guys do an awesome job, but I I just I appreciate having something like this.