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Does Voluntary Code Compliance Work?
• Margate has its share of eyesores
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Saturday,
July 11, 2009
In response to a Margate resident who questioned why he was being cited by police only now after having a gravel driveway since 1999, city officials collided in a difference of code enforcement opinion at a recent city commission meeting.
The resident told city officials that it could cost him up to $10,000 to install a driveway, in which case he couldn’t afford to pay his mortgage.
Margate Commissioner, Pam Donovan, demanded from Margate Police Chief, Jerry Blough, an answer as to why why it took Margate code officers ten years to give the man a citation.
“They [code officers] drive by this man’s house every day,” Donovan said. “What are they doing? I want to know why it took so long.”
Donovan expressed concern over the lax message Margate Code Enforcement might be sending to residents by waiting so long to issue citations, saying it wasn’t very fair to cite this man now and require him to install a driveway after all these years, especially in light of the man’s mortgage problems.
Blough explained that, as a matter of priority, Margate code compliance officers typically write citations for the most severe code violations first, then move on to writing citations for offenses considered less severe.
Once compliance officers manage to stop a neighborhood from experiencing a significant level of decay in terms of safety and appearance, said Blough, officers begin to focus on the broader details of meeting code, such as driveways, which, according to Margate law, need to be paved unless a homeowner gets a variance allowing otherwise.
The police chief defended his department saying that the current method of prioritization is the only practical way to approach code compliance in a city overwhelmed with residential code violations.
“If I started today writing citations for every violation in the city, I’d be writing citations for the next 45 years,” Blough said.
Margate Mayor, Arthur Bross, said the city has always relied on voluntary code compliance from residents and would like to continue the tradition.
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Copyright Cassius Group 2009
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