Lake Worth’s code division struggles

Unit hit hard after ex-official deemed it low priority, gutted it.

LAKE WORTH — This past year, Aino Lautsio, a Lake Worth homeowner for nearly 30 years, became the poster child for everything that is wrong with the city’s beleaguered code compliance division.

On May 9, Lautsio, who takes meticulous care of the two-bedroom home she owns on Bryn Mawr Drive, was issued a yellow courtesy notice because much of her grass died in the winter, leaving a patch of unsightly sand.

“I respect what code enforcement does, but I never thought I would be a violator,” a visibly upset Lautsio told city commissioners at a special work session this past year to discuss ways to fix the division. “I think we need to look at our priorities.”

At another special session Tuesday at City Hall on the same topic, Mayor Pam Triolo referenced Lautsio’s encounter.

“That’s not who we want to be (as a division),” Triolo said.

It’s the worst-kept secret in Lake Worth that the city’s code division suffers from an image problem and that it has been dogged for years by residents and city officials who tell horror stories about it.

“Code enforcement has been an issue for as long as I’ve been here,” said City Manager Michael Bornstein, hired in 2012. “And many years before that. A lot of good things have happened, but that’s not good enough and we all recognize that.”

Commissioner Omari Hardy said no one has a good experience with the division.

“Everyone has something to complain about,” he said.

Mark Woods, the city’s code compliance manager the past three years, recently resigned, taking a position in Boynton Beach as the city’s director of community standards.

He told The Palm Beach Post in February that while it was a challenge working in the cit y,