MONROE — Over the past year, the city has inspected, photographed, and logged over 1,000 properties in Monroe as part of a beefed-up code enforcement push that started in 2022.

That is according to Jeff Neises, the Contact Code Enforcement Officer for the city, who has been contracted to lead the effort. He updated the Monroe Common Council on his progress during its April 1 regular meeting.

He said that of about 700 code enforcement cases created by inspections, about 75% of them have been resolved or “closed out,” usually with property owners fixing the building issue. Of the remaining number from 2023, he said, only about 40 resulted in citations being issued by the city.

“That number is very low considering what we are trying to accomplish,” he said.

City codes regulate everything from peeling paint to structural integrity issues. 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.

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 building 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.  

Mayor Donna Douglas praised Neises’ effort and said his demeanor and approach to dealing with the public has helped make the program a success — with very little rancor from homeowners.

“It’s probably not a job everyone can handle,” said Douglas. “You are doing an awesome job.”

New to the department is a reporting tool — “TextMyGov” — that allows citizens to report any issue they see around town by texting the information to 608-336-3336. So far there have been 33 such reports using the new system.

“It’s a point of contact … it makes us accessible to the average citizen,” he said. 

One issue that is causing headaches is the lack of small-job contractors in town to handle the work of bringing some of the buildings up to code, he said. Often homeowners seek more time to complete repairs due to the shortage of such workers, he said.

City Administrator Brittney Rindy also praised the code enforcement efforts overall, saying that while many of the issues are cosmetic — such as peeling paint — there are others that are a safety concern in the city. Indeed, Neises said just about every house in town has peeling paint somewhere, so the city prioritizes the worst cases and the ones that impact health and safety.

“There’s more to it than beautification,” said Rindy. 

In other business, the council on April 1 awarded the contract for the replacement of sections of curb and gutter and related driveway repairs for 2024 street paving projects. The more than $514,000 contract was awarded to Wisconsin-based JW Schultz Construction. 

Money for the curb and gutter work comes from a 2023/2024 municipal bond issue, officials said.