Informational Update to City Council related to City Code Enforcement

Transcript (~14 min @ 36:20)

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▶ 36:18 Maya Jamaleddine: This order will be held in committee, uh, next on our agenda ID number 12 33 8, informational update to city council related to city code enforcement.

▶ 36:31 Speaker 2: And, um, do we have anyone

▶ 36:35 Speaker 2: from, uh, we have

▶ 36:41 Speaker 2: city solicitor and, um,

▶ 36:45 Maya Jamaleddine: and member of the, uh, administration, um, Ms. Kreek? Goodnight.

▶ 36:50 Speaker 1: Hi, good evening. Good evening. Um, nice to see you all again. So, um, we're here. Just, I think, um, the mayor wanted to provide just a general kind of overview and update regarding code enforcement of the city's ordinances. I think, um, some counselors around the tables, um, either get calls or questions from residents and then sort of ping it to the mayor's office. And so this was the start, I think, of getting, um, everyone on the same page with regards to, um, what departments can enforce what ordinances and what the capacity is, um, of the administration and of our staff to enforce, um, those ordinances, whether it's, um, snow shoveling possibly, or, um, leaf blowers, animal concern, um, you know, yeah, concerns around animals. And so, um, what the mayor did was, um, in the summer kind of convened all of the departments that are, um, do have some enforcement authority, um, bestowed upon them per the city's ordinances to kind of understand, you know, their challenges, enforcing those ordinances. Um, decided that, you know, a good start would be for everyone to have the same, um, we, we call them ticket books, but citation books so that, um, every department head that's responsible for enforcing ordinances would be coming from the same touchpoint with a resident, um, that might be in violation of something. Um, we've issued those and we're in the process of kind of working with those department heads to see if that's working to enforce the ordinances. Um, I know a lot of our staff do a lot of more proactive outreach when there's, um, concerns in around, um, people who are violating ordinances. But, um, yeah, so that's sort of the overview of the in info order.

▶ 38:42 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Um, I can either open it for, um, uh, this ser ser, um, to share any thoughts and then we can open it for my colleagues with questions.

▶ 38:53 Speaker 8: Sure. Thank you Madam Chair. Um, I do have a memo that was submitted with this order. Um, so I'll just, I can briefly outline some of that if it would help the council. Um, so under, um, 20 1D, so 40 section 20 1D, that's our local enforcement mechanism that we have in the city currently. So, uh, like Ms. M**k said, we have, um, ticket booklets that have, that have recently been issued to various enforcing agents, which are defined under the city ordinances that I've also cited in my memo. Um, so as you can see, it's various department heads. So that would be the mechanism for enforcement. Um, currently what that would entail would be to issue the ticket. Um, and I, I do wanna add, this is not the only mechanism for enforcement. Like Ms. Gimmick said, you don't have to jump to fine, it is in the discretion of the enforcing agent. Um, obviously the first time written warning, then they might jump to fine after that, and then the fine can escalate up to $300. Currently we have it going up to one 50, um, for I think every violation in our ordinances. I think last time it was updated was 2009. Um, I will say, so once the ticket is issued, um, what would happen is they pay it within a certain time period that's labeled on the ticket under 20 1D. Um, if they failed to do that, you can have a clerk magistrate's hearing. Um, and at that point they decide whether they've failed to pay or not. If they have, then you have a show cause hearing. Um, then if they still haven't paid, they issue a criminal complaint, obviously. Usually the clerk ma magistrate likes to try to work it out between the city and the person before that to get some fine paid in a number of days. But that is the current process. It's a little difficult for cities and towns, as you can imagine, a Massachusetts to collect fines that way. So a lot of cities and towns that have had trouble collecting fines have adopted 40 U, which is a, um, a statute that this council could accept, which would just give an additional ability to be able to collect fines. I don't think we have enough information at this point to determine that we've had a problem collecting fines. I think we kind of need to start, um, from the basics, um, give the tickets. I think that's what we're doing now, and see if there is a problem with that other piece, and then potentially bring it back to council to see if 40 U makes sense, uh, to help with the collection.

▶ 40:59 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. And we were talking about collection in the collection, uh, office is through that.

▶ 41:05 Speaker 8: So, um, the tickets would be filed with the city clerk's office. There's a mechanism under the statute. Every ticket right now that's issued should also be copied to my office, so I'm made aware It also goes to the clerk magistrate at the, at the district court. Um, but therefore, you know, sanitary code violations, uh, housing code violations. Mm-hmm. Um, snow and ice like we talked about, and then any other municipal ordinance, so noise violations, et cetera.

▶ 41:30 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Any question from my colleagues? Councillor William?

▶ 41:36 Ryan Williams: Are there any other voting members that I, I raised my hand pretty quickly. That's

▶ 41:40 Speaker 2: Okay. Just wanna check. No problem.

▶ 41:40 Ryan Williams: Go ahead. Okay. Um, so I read in the memo that you started, someone started the process of, um, doing something over the summer and you said you weren't sure where things were sta were stood at the moment. So I guess my, my question is, at what point can we expect to learn how many citations have been issued? How many of those have been successful, um, across all departments, including police? You know, are we, are we expecting some kind of report or a document that has like a chart that says, you know, here are the departments, here are the citations they issued, and here are the ones that have been collected over the course of a certain amount of time. Is that the expectation with this? Or what are we, what are we doing?

▶ 42:21 Speaker 1: I, i, I would give that to the will of the committee if that's something you'd like, or if that's your expectation to, to receive that. We're happy to provide that. Um, if that's something that would be helpful, I, I'll just point out, um, which I said, and, um, solicitor Phillips echoed, what we won't capture is sort of the not, you know, the touch points in which these departments are all taking care of issues without having to issue somebody a fine and be, you know, have it totally, um, a penalty.

▶ 42:48 Speaker 9: I would, I would, um, suggest

▶ 42:51 Ryan Williams: that people could record that, you know, in the same way that the police record written warnings when they don't result in a ticket. Just because the only, um, thing it can do is make the department's efforts look more robust to, you know, I mean, certainly if the building inspector comes in here and says, I gave three fines out last year, it's a different thing from coming in and saying, I did a hundred visits. Um, and, you know, resulted in three fines tells a very different story. So I think it would be helpful to have that information. Sure.

▶ 43:23 Maya Jamaleddine: Second Councilor Vandiver,

▶ 43:25 Kimberly Vandiver: Uh, through the chair, I would, I would echo and I would love to see that type of information as well. I, as a ward counselor, I, I feel like, feel as though we have very little in our toolkit sometimes and, and we hear a lot, we hear some frustration with, with people bringing an issue again and again and, and not seeing where that's going or, or how they could pursue it further. So I would, I would love to be able to better, um, you know, have, have a more robust process and, and, and, or give people more detail about what is being done and the broader picture. Thank you.

▶ 44:01 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you. Councilor gpe.

▶ 44:05 Mark Garipay: Um, thank you Madam Chair. I think I've might've looking at this might've answered my own question, but in the, uh, in the information you gave us, you, there are certain categories, parks, playground, cemetery, public works, who's responsible for, for, uh, giving out fines. Like for example, just take, take the cemetery, right?

▶ 44:27 Mark Garipay: Um, they're only there a couple hours a day dog. No dogs are allowed in the cemetery. Is it up to them to find, or is it, uh, who, I mean, do we have a, um, animal control officer that would, would be the second person that would go out on that? Or same, same with no dogs and say the athletic or the high school, you know, we see that a lot. Would it be the athletic department or is it just specific to these,

▶ 44:53 Speaker 6: to these categories? You know what I mean?

▶ 44:55 Speaker 8: Yes. Uh, so through the chair. So it is it the enforcing agents defined in, um, 1 21 of the city ordinances. So cemetery would be the superintendent, but off, off duty hours, like you mentioned, um, the police department is the enforcing agent for all city ordinances. So currently that's how it exists is off hours, off regular business hours. It would be the police department would be the second option.

▶ 45:17 Mark Garipay: Now, on school property where the school department's a separate, separate, um, department, we, we don't have any control over them. Would that be similar or would that, how would that be handled there?

▶ 45:28 Speaker 8: If there's a city ordinance relative to enforcement on school property, then police would, I don't know that we have a specific one related to that. I know there are. I think those would be more criminal. Yeah.

▶ 45:37 Speaker 6: Yeah. 'cause I know there are that They would have law Specific signs. No, no, No. Yes. Those fall under

▶ 45:40 Speaker 8: state law for, and

▶ 45:42 Speaker 6: I'm not, I'm just, that's what's coming to my head's not

▶ 45:44 Speaker 8: Yes. That would be police generally. Yeah.

▶ 45:49 Maya Jamaleddine: So, okay. Thank you Vice chair, uh, Romanul.

▶ 45:53 Devin Romanul: Um, Thank you so much for, uh, putting this all together. Super helpful. Um, really excited to learn more about 40 DU and whether or not that's a, a lever that we want to, uh, take advantage of and, and whether or not it's appropriate. I'm, I'm curious if there are, I think there, there are a couple of things that come to mind. Are there other communities that have a reporting system for reporting code enforcement? Not to say, I'm opposed to getting emails from my constituents. Please email me early and often. Um, if there are things that come up in your neighborhoods, um, and, uh, or just say hello, but the, the, um, we get a lot of, you know, hey, there's, you know, um, health code violation or, um, you know, something related to shoveling or something related to noise. And I often feel like work sort of in the scheme of telephone. And I'm wondering if there's something that we could look at other tools that other communities use where we say, okay, here's a, um, a really, uh, simple reporting mechanism that we can certainly be party to, but, um, that maybe is a little more constituent friendly. And it might help with capturing some data on what the departments are already doing. Um, I'm sure it's like a, a whole subterranean herculean effort that we are unaware of, or at least I'm unaware of. Um, and our city is unaware of. And I, I think that having some of that anecdotal and, and quantitative quantitative data will be helpful. Either a number of tickets or warnings or visits. Um, and we can get a, not that we're trying to build a CompStat type of program here, um, or be overly prosecutorial, but I'd be, I'd be curious if there's something that we can point to and say like, let's put a tool online that like, helps people track that kind of thing. 'cause I, I think often people feel like they're kind of shouting into a void and they don't know when things are resolved and, um, you know, I just wanna be a thought partner on, on doing that. And, and then I think the other thing I wanted to, so sort of inquiry number one, the other inquiry is, is there some sort of, um, do we have any data to suggest that we are, have tremendous under, we're we have a lack of capacity around code enforcement that we're, there's a set of behaviors that we feel like are, you know, deleterious to the community that are not getting addressed through code enforcement and there's something that we should be thinking about there. So I think those are Mikes worth. Two, two thoughts. Thank

▶ 48:08 Maya Jamaleddine: You. Thank you. Any other comments?

▶ 48:16 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. What is the will of the committee

▶ 48:20 Speaker 7: Motion to place on file?

▶ 48:23 Maya Jamaleddine: We have a motion to place on file made by, um, president Mali. Second, seconded by Councilor Ro on discussion, seeing none. Oh, Van is there.

▶ 48:37 Kimberly Vandiver: If, if we do, um, vote to places on file, is there a time at which we could expect to revisit this and, and, and receive any of the data that we were discussing?

▶ 48:47 Maya Jamaleddine: Yes. My, um, from my experience and my understanding, we can bring it back. So if you feel that it is time for you to bring it for some reason, you can just, um, uh, propose to bring it back before us and then we can discuss it. Uh, president gl

▶ 49:04 Speaker 7: Madam chair, can I withdraw my motion to place on file? I think we would have to put it on hold in order to bring it back up. And here in here again. Um, to, so I will withdraw my motion with,

▶ 49:17 Speaker 4: I'll withdraw my second and I'll motion

▶ 49:19 Speaker 7: to place this order on. Hold on.

▶ 49:23 Maya Jamaleddine: Okay. So we have committee, Sorry. So, so just to explain for the public, in order for us to bring it back, we are gonna have to, uh, place it on hold, rather place it on file and present regularly. Place, place it on, uh, hold. Uh, so we have a motion, uh, made by President Melli to place it on file. And seconded by, uh, Councillor Fero on discussion. Seeing none. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. This, um, order is now placed on hold.