Seminole County looks at revamping code enforcement
In December 2005, Seminole County code-enforcement officers drove to a home on Ronnie Drive near Altamonte Springs and cited the homeowner for a dirty pool.
The pool hasn’t been cleaned since and the fines — swelling at $350 a day — are piling up. So far the property has racked up nearly $1.7 million in liens, according to county records. That penalty dwarfs the $79,000 assessed value of the home, which sits in a middle-class neighborhood just north State Road 436 and west of Interstate 4, according to the county Property Appraiser’s Office.
County commissioners Jay Zembower and Bob Dallari find that case and others troubling as they recently learned Seminole has nearly $53 million in outstanding Dallari Zembower
code-enforcement liens from scores of property owners who for years have failed to come into compliance with the county’s rules and regulations.
“The code-enforcement thing is broken. Let’s face it. It’s broken,” said Zembower at a recent county meeting. “When we have cases coming before us that are 14 and 16 years old, and homeowners out there calling and complaining about their neighbor’s property….then we either need to do away with code enforcement and not waste our time and energy, or we need to overhaul it.”
Commissioners agreed to hold a workshop in the coming weeks to research Seminole’s code-enforcement program and try to come up with ideas on how to revamp it.
“The system needs to be working correctly, and right now it’s not working correctly,” said Dallari,
who has urged county officials to study code enforcement for months. “So we’re asking: Is there a way we can look at this and correct it?...Maybe we can have an amnesty program.”
As of Friday, Seminole had roughly 375 open codeenforcement cases. Most have liens, which are a claim on residential property for the unpaid fine. When a lien is placed on a property, the owner of the home cannot sell, refinance or transfer title of the home without first paying off the amount of the lien. The county, however, can’t take possession of a homesteaded house with codeenforcement liens and toss out the residents. So the liens continue to grow daily until the fines are paid, county officials said.
Neighboring Orange County doesn’t keep a running tally of the total codeenforcement liens, spokeswoman Doreen Overstreet said.
Perhaps the most egregious Orange offender is the now-shuttered Blossom Park Condominiums on Landstreet Road, tucked between U.S. Highway 441 and State Road 528. The former Days Inn motel property has accrued more than $5 million in liens since 2014 because of structural deterioration, failing walkways along with unsafe stairs, handrails and guard rails.
“We don’t consider code liens as a revenue source for the county,” Overstreet said. “We’re not the big, bad government trying to take away money [from property owners]. It’s to get them motivated — to get their attention — and to come into compliance.”
Dallari agreed.
“I’ve had people say to me that they can’t pay the lien because the lien is worth more than the property,” he said. “So how do we get property owners to clean the pool, cut the lawn?”
The liens on the Ronnie Drive property are not Seminole’s highest. That honor belongs to the notorious Alan Davis, Seminole’s so-called “Junk Man” who for much of the last 25 years has thumbed his nose at code-enforcement officers.
He has currently racked up more than $2.1 million in liens by hauling tons of junk — including broken down cars, plane parts, toilets, lawn furniture, rusty bicycles, toys, appliances and a statue of a human buttocks — on his front yard on Alpine Street. Davis has even spent time behind bars through the years for failing to tidy up his yard.
In September 2015, Seminole deputy sheriffs showed up to Davis’ home just north of the Altamonte Mall with a dump truck and a front-end loader and started clearing his yard.
Property owners often say they want to come into compliance but can’t afford to pay off the lien.
That was the case March 26 when Mark Stopher asked Seminole commissioners to reduce his $70,000 code-enforcement lien to $1,080, which would’ve have covered the county’s total administrative costs.
Stopher’s property on East Lauren Court in Fern Park was first cited in August 2012 for having grass taller than the allowable 24 inches. The fines eventually started accruing by $400 a day.
Stopher wrote to county officials saying that he had recently “lost my partner and was in a deep mourning period. By the time I started to get my life back in order, the lawn had overgrown.”
Commissioners then unanimously agreed to lower the fine.
“It was telling to me that there were issues that this person was going through,” Commissioner Amy Lockhart said. “Everybody has life and life happens . ... But I agree that we need to look at the enforcement, and how we can bring these things to a resolution more quickly.”