MONROE — The city is becoming more attractive and safer thanks to an ongoing, more aggressive code enforcement push to bring properties up to existing standards, officials say.
Jeff Neises, the Contact Code Enforcement Officer for the city who has been inspecting for the past year or so, said over 500 properties were initially identified as not being up to code for a numbers of reasons.
City codes regulate everything from peeling paint to structural integrity issues. Paint, in fact, is a major issue because of the number of wooden frame structures in town.
Nieses told the Monroe Common Council recently that he and his department have inspected “countless” city properties, made 1,500 site visits and took hundreds of photographs of non-compliant properties.
The inspections are triggered when citizens complain, or when city employees — such as police, fire and other departments — refer properties for suspected violations. No one area of the city is to blame, as code issues exist throughout Monroe, officials said.
The city, he said, has taken a proactive stand toward code enforcement and it’s making a big difference, he said.
“Our ultimate goal is that everyone will come into compliance voluntarily,” he said, adding that the department also has incorporated a “tolerance for special cases” into its mandate to give people struggling time to make or pay for changes to property.
After the 2015 building code was approved — and the subsequent resignation of the Monroe building inspector in 2021 — the city looked to Lakeside Consultants to help with enforcement and zoning. The job though was massive, and so the city later recruited Neises, a local contractor, to oversee the department’s efforts.
During his first wave of inspections, the city sent over 230 violation notices; and within a month about 139 of those were fixed, he said. But there are still plenty more to deal with, he added.
“This is not an easy thing to do,” said Mayor Donna Douglas. “It’s been a real group effort.”
They say they are trying to avoid the process from being confrontational and the perception that any one homeowner is being singled out, which is why they will eventually look at all properties in town. Previously, city code enforcement was lax and uneven across the city from year to year.
“It was like trying to play whack a mole,” said Ald. Josh Binger, of the old process.
During a recent presentation, Nieses showed the council a number of examples of the code issues they have recently been able to address — everything from a mattress on city terrace property to missing siding and even a disabled van buried up to the axles.
What’s more, he said, much of the city’s housing and building stock is very old and thus in need of repair inside and out.
“We have a very old housing stock in the city,” he said. “Some of our properties are 160 years old but without maintenance won’t make it to 200.”
He said that since the code enforcement push began there has been a “snowball effect” of neighbors seeing others bring their properties up to code and then deciding on their own to do something about their own property issues.
“The whole thing is about compliance at the end of the day,” said Nieces. “Our goal is that everybody would comply voluntarily.”
Homeowners are usually notified before their property is inspected. Then, if Neises or other officials identify a problem, homeowners receive a notice advising them of the issue and giving them a period of time to correct it.
Douglas said the city will work with code enforcement to identify any city codes that are outdated or need to be updated. For example, she said, a homeowner can struggle to get rid of a larger item due to cost.
“People don’t have a way to get rid of things,” and the city wants to help, she said.