AGENDA #12
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TO: |
Roger L. Stancil, Town Manager |
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FROM: |
Lance Norris, Director of Inspections |
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SUBJECT: |
Rationale for Addition of Full Time Code Enforcement Officer Position |
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DATE: |
April 18, 2007 |
The purpose of this memorandum is to explain the request that one (1) full time code enforcement officer position be added to the authorized positions in the Inspections Department. The additional personnel would be used to enforce the Land Use Management Ordinance and portions of the Town Code of Ordinances and to decrease our response time to complaints.
The Chapel Hill Inspections Department enforces the Land Use Management Ordinance and portions of the Town Code of Ordinances within the Town of Chapel Hill and in the extra territorial jurisdiction (ETJ), which encompass 21 square miles.
Article 7.2 of the Town of Chapel Hill Comprehensive Plan, Housing Quality, requires all housing development to meet applicable local, state and federal standards and guidelines, including design quality, safety, health, and energy efficiency. The requested code enforcement officer position will directly address and work to satisfy this directive.
A challenge currently facing the Department, and more specifically the code enforcement officer, is enforcing specialized zoning regulations such as Neighborhood Conservation Districts Ordinances. This, while continuing the enforcement of the Land Use Management Ordinance and the Town Code of Ordinances, will be a challenge in the future.
Four neighborhoods have established Neighborhood Conservation Districts; these standards impose regulations similar to the existing neighborhood covenants and, in some cases, propose regulations beyond the neighborhood's restrictive covenants by creating new standards. It is important to acknowledge this increased level of Town regulation and the implications of the increase. Therefore, these new Town regulations will likely result in a higher demand for Town intervention and subsequent higher costs in staff time and legal fees.
The Inspections Department’s objective in requesting a second code enforcement officer is to increase the effectiveness of enforcement measures by improving the response time to citizen complaints, improve the follow-up time on active complaint files, and increasing the number of times the Town contacts and documents communication with the property owners and occupants of property in violation to ensure success for the complaints taken to court.
Code enforcement efforts directly contribute to the issuance of Planning and Inspections Department permits when violations are confirmed. Revenue is produced by the application fees for permits and by penalties. The dependability of this revenue in conjunction with the requested position is assured by the enforcement process. When the Inspections Department receives a complaint and the code enforcement officer confirms that permits are required for the work being performed, a Stop-Work Order is issued. Applications must be submitted to each department as required and the work cannot continue until the permits have been issued. In enforcing the permit requirements the officer is able to fulfill Comprehensive Plan goals by protecting the safety, health, and social fabric of the community while generating otherwise lost revenue. The captured revenue includes the doubled after-the-fact application fees as a penalty for the violation, as well as the revenue from the Certificates of Appropriateness, Community Design Commission approvals, Zoning Compliance and Building Permits, Board of Adjustment applications, and the re-inspection fees associated with the Building Permit inspections for each such violation. In the fiscal year 2005-06 the revenue from the Zoning and Building Permits obtained to comply with enforcement actions totaled approximately $8,854 with one Code Enforcement Officer. We project $16,000 in revenue from this source with two full time Code Enforcement Officers.
We request a Code Enforcement Officer position be added to the Inspections Department with salary and benefits funded at $63,566 for 12 months. There will be additional cost for computer equipment, vehicle and fuel, which totals $8,520 for a grand total of $72,086.