City receives around 3,000 code enforcement complaints annually

Council authorizes hire of two part-time code enforcement officers to help

For quite some time, the City of Porterville has received approximately 3,000 code enforcement complaints annually with only one code enforcement officer to handle them. To lighten the load and to better service the community, the Porterville City Council authorized Tuesday the hiring of two part-time code enforcement officers.

“Three thousand complaints and one person is just not feasible,” said Vice Mayor Brian Ward, adding, “I think having two more personnel on board would certainly help.”

Porterville Fire Chief David Lapere said the amount of paperwork for the nearly 3,000 complaints is staggering.

“I would say with the help of those two new positions, it is still a grip of paperwork,” Lapere said.

Lapere said both parttime code enforcement officers will be trained at the same level as the fulltime officer, and noted that the plan is to have them working when the current officer is not.

“That way we could cover a whole week,” Lapere said.

City Manager John Lollis said the city used to have two full-time code enforcement officers, but noted that one of the positions has been left vacant due to budgetary constraints.

Lollis said the hiring of two additional part-time code enforcement officers will not only aid in handling more complaints, but will also save the city’s Community Development Department (CDD) staff time and money.

“Due to the nature of the significant number of code enforcement complaints, community development department staff spend approximately 20 hours per week in the review and documentation of such complaints, with approximately 15 hours per week dedicated to the personal field review of complaints,” Lollis said, adding that the approximate annual personnel expense to the CDD is $30,000. “The addition of more code enforcement officers in the field would greatly reduce the hours needed for field review, allowing for greater productivity of other department responsibilities.”

Instead of hiring one additional full-time code enforcement officer at the approximate annual budgetary expense of $75,000, Lollis said the two part-time personnel will be compensated as community services officers for approximately $40,000, which includes salary, benefits and equipment. He said the positions will be funded between both the city’s general and water funds.

“The employing of the part-time positions would limit additional budgetary expense, as well as provide greater community and schedule coverage than a single full-time position would provide and support more proactive code enforcement efforts,” Lollis said.

Councilmember Cameron Hamilton said employing two more code enforcement officers is definitely needed in the city, but noted that some type of progress report showing how much of an impact they are having is also necessary.

“I like the idea, but I want there to be some type of documentation of the type of success we are having,” he said.

The reason for considering hiring more code enforcement officers is based upon results of the recent resident survey in regards to the city’s code enforcement efforts, Lollis said.

Lollis said city council directed staff to develop options in support of a more proactive code enforcement program.

Beginning with the direction and hire of the city’s first full-time code enforcement officer in 2006, Lollis said the city has utilized a complaintbased system for enforcement, emphasizing voluntary compliance prior to the issuance of citations. He noted, however, that public comments from residents and the results of the code enforcement survey encouraged the city to pursue a more proactive code enforcement program, especially in the maintenance and upkeep of residential properties.

“I am still very supportive of complaint driven, but I think there are areas where more proactive enforcement would be beneficial,” Ward said.

With regard to code enforcement complaints, Lollis said those involving water top the list.

“Those are reports that we receive where there are watering on wrong watering days, water waste, and so we follow up on those,” Lollis said.

Lollis noted that of the 704 code enforcement complaints received between July 1 and Sept. 30 of this year, 444, or 63 percent, were closed, meaning that there either wasn’t a violation to begin with or the violation was voluntarily complied with. He said 95, or 13 percent, resulted in the issuance of an administrative citation.

“I think there is pretty good success in terms of getting voluntarily compliance,” Lollis said.