Valley wants extra worker to keep eye on eyesores

The city of Spokane Valley hopes to hire an additional person as early as this week to help the city enforce nuisance ordinances that prohibit junk cars, garbage-covered lawns and other eyesores that elicit complaints from frustrated neighbors.

The position has gone unfilled since January, leaving only one city employee to check into the complaints that grow in number as the weather improves.

“It’s a rather difficult position to fill,” said Tom Scholtens, a city building official who oversees code enforcement.

Three people interviewed for the job Monday. A background in law enforcement or other municipal work is helpful, Scholtens said, but the most important skill for someone charged with resolving often bitter neighborhood disputes is a knack for diplomacy.

“By and large, it’s all in your approach,” said code enforcement officer Chris Berg.

Oral complaints and forms available on the city Web site go to him. He visits the suspect property to determine if the owner is in violation of city laws, which turns out to be the case about 80 percent of the time, Berg said.

The city received 84 complaints in April alone, and that number usually reaches into the hundreds during the summer months.

“We try to be as generous as we can,” with time limits and other conditions for cleaning up a property, he said. Often, people just don’t know what they are doing is illegal, and Berg said most complaints are resolved without him issuing a fine. If someone refuses to comply with the law, Berg can issue a notice of violation and a $250 fine that will be waived if the problem is fixed. Fines for repeat offenses and serious health risks can reach $5,000, according to the city code.

In Spokane County, code enforcement duties were passed on to building inspectors when Spokane Valley incorporated in 2003, said Art Erickson of the county planning department.

He said the county gets three to four written complaints per week, which inspectors work into their schedules between their building-related responsibilities.

Spokane Valley caught up with a 273-case backlog inherited from the county about a year and a half after incorporation. Turnaround times for individual complaints vary, but fixing some problems can take months.

In the last year Berg has used mobile office equipment, satellite photography and other technology he said has halved the time it takes to file reports on suspected violations.

“I’m really pleased with the response from the city,” said Gerry Bassen, who lives in an older neighborhood between East Eighth Avenue and I-90. “It’s just so nice to see something done,” he said.

A walk through Bassen’s neighborhood reveals a patchwork of homes in varying states of repair. Tidy yards are mixed in the neighborhood with a few abandoned houses and the occasional row of dead cars.

“I hate to have to be the one to call,” Bassen said, but the area’s attractiveness has diminished in recent years.

“You’ve got people on the freeway who come into the city and see this,” he said, walking along a street that runs parallel to eastbound traffic on I-90.

The 26-year resident points out various places near his home that have improved in the past year, since he submitted a series of letters and e-mails to the city.

“It took awhile but most of them have completely cleaned it up,” he said.

The problem with many properties, code officials said, comes when household garbage piles up indefinitely and begins attracting rodents and other threats to public health. Garbage service is optional in Spokane Valley.

If warnings fail in the city of Spokane, code enforcers can send a garbage truck to the property and charge the cost to the owners’ utility bill. The amount of garbage removed in a typical case averages about 2.5 tons, which costs between $330 and $400 to haul away, said John Henry of Spokane’s planning department.

But if someone in the Valley stores weeks worth of garbage, it is up to code enforcers to convince the owner to clean it up.

Bassen said there are usually legitimate reasons behind the condition of someone’s property – perhaps the owner’s health is an issue or they lack money. But in some circumstances, an area is just too bad for neighbors to ignore.

“I walked by it and it just reeked,” Bassen said, pointing to a weathered house near the highway. The people living there threw their garbage on the lawn until Bassen could smell it from across the street while taking his daily walk.

The house is boarded up now. An engineless school bus sits next to it, but no garbage.

“I know it’s not great, but it’s tidy compared to what it was,” Bassen said.

Seeing improvements like a cleaned-up yard or a fence going up around a collection of old cars is usually a resident’s only confirmation that the city has acted on a complaint. Once it determines there’s a violation, the city becomes the official complainant, and usually won’t contact the person who complained, Scholtens said.

If the code enforcer finds there’s no violation, though, his office will notify the person who brought it to the city’s attention.

“We don’t have a lot of staff” for correspondence, Scholtens said. “We don’t have people leaning on shovels.”