No more waiting for complaints in Cheney

Cheney’s updated nuisance code has been in effect since March, and while city officials have an easier way to deal with junk cars, abandoned furniture and other nuisances, they are still in the process of tracking and reporting the problems back to the City Council.

Under the new code, city officials now have the option of spotting problem areas in town and issuing warnings. Before, officials could only act after a complaint had been filed. Warnings can be issued by the building official, fire chief, police chief, police officers, the director of community development, the director of public works, the code enforcement officer, the deputy code enforcement officer and the city administrator.

“The ultimate goal is compliance,” said Brian Jennings, community development director. Jennings said issuing the warnings usually clears up the problems they see. Jennings said he usually spends a couple of hours a week driving through town to find violations.

Jennings said code enforcement violations tend to be seasonal. During the summer months, the problems seem to be overgrown yards. If the grass is higher than 10 inches it is a code violation. Jennings said that if grass is brown and dead, it’s not necessarily a code violation unless it poses a fire hazard.

In the spring, toward the end of the school year, the problem seems to be abandoned furniture and appliances. This time last year, Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Smick said the problem was garbage.

Now that the new ordinance is in place, Jennings said he’s thinking about ways to streamline the enforcement process.

He said that if the problem is an abandoned couch, he can issue a warning to the property owners and give them some time to comply. If he comes back and the couch is still there, he then has to issue a formal notice and begin the process of forcing compliance. It starts to generate a significant amount of paperwork after that.

“That seems pretty heavy-handed just for a couch,” Jennings said. He would like to implement something simpler. He said if the issue was a health hazard or an unsafe structure, that kind of paperwork might be warranted.

He is also looking at other communities that target specific neighborhoods for a certain amount of time, perhaps a month.

“I don’t know that we’d need to spend that much time,” Jennings said, but in those targeted neighborhoods, the city would work on issues that tend to drive down property values.

Mostly, what Jennings has noticed in the last six months is the code enforcement officer’s freedom to go ahead and issue a warning instead of waiting for a complaint.

Residents can still make complaints to the city about code violations. Forms are available on the city’s Web site: www.cityofcheney.org.