Little Rock code enforcement officials gave a presentation this week to their Pine Bluff counterparts about best practices for maintaining a clean and safe city. Victor Turner, director of the City of Little Rock Department of Housing and Neighborhood Programs, and Edward Garland, manager of the department’s code enforcement division, spoke to employees of the City of Pine Bluff Quality of Life Division and several public officials.
The Quality of Life Division is overseen by the Pine Bluff Police Department. It enforces all building and residential codes and ordinances. The ordinances cover issues such as abandoned junk and inoperable vehicles, overgrown lots and abandoned homes and buildings.
Turner and Garland, both Pine Bluff natives, talked about ways to educate citizens on the city code, ways to enforce violations and how to streamline the complaint process with computer-based technology. Little Rock has seen a large improvement in quality of life issues since voters passed a 2009 sales tax to boost funding to the city government, Garland said. The four Pine Bluff code enforcement officers, who oversee a 46-square-mile city, laughed out loud when he said his department’s budget was $3.2 million.
“But it wasn’t always like that,” he said. He added that Pine Bluff “didn’t get in the condition that it’s in overnight,” and not to get discouraged.
Turner said the City of Little Rock began placing doorhangers at citizens’ homes several years ago. Printed on them were the top five code violations routinely committed by citizens.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
“We’re starting to see results,” Turner said, as residents know what to look for. “If I [as a citizen] know there’s an ordinance about grass, all I want to do is handle it so I don’t hear from code enforcement.”
Evelyn Horton, who was recently named head of the Quality of Life Division, said a town hall meeting is scheduled for July 10 to educate citizens on code enforcement. Garland said his division several years ago separated the city into different code enforcement areas. Code enforcement officers were assigned to particular areas, which was a change from the past when all officers drove all over the city. As a result, the employees began to know problem locations better, and citizens began to recognize them more often, he said.
Garland suggested Pine Bluff might consider doing the same thing.
“Every day you’re going to have high grass, an abandoned vehicle, a dilapidated structure, somewhere,” he said. “If you can carve out sections of the city and manage it [it helps.]”
Garland’s code enforcement division also employs a staff of part-time workers to cut overgrown lots and board up and secure abandoned buildings. When issuing citations to property owners, Garland said the workers take a photo of the code violation with a time stamp. The added specificity provides documentation in case a property owner submits a photo from later in the same day showing a yard that has been mowed, for example.
Grass is required to be no higher than 10 inches in the City of Pine Bluff. Alderman Donald Hatchett asked how much Little Rock charges to cut an overgrown lot. Some Pine Bluff residents allow their property to become overgrown, figuring that it will cost less for the city to cut it, he said. Garland said Little Rock used to charge $100 to clear a lot. Then they doubled it, and “we don’t have that problem anymore.”
“We felt four years ago that the cost for the city and the taxpayer to cut a lot, some citizens viewed it as a way out,” he said. The city’s code enforcement division leadership then calculated the actual cost in labor and material to the city. “We determined that $200 per lot was a reasonable price per lot for the city to justify.”
A $50 flat fee for processing costs is added on top of the $200 fine, Garland said. Hatchett asked how Little Rock deals with property owners who may not be able to pay a fee. Garland said they refer payment issues for people on fixed incomes, for example, to the city’s finance department.
The Pine Bluff City Council voted in February to reduce processing costs for a code violation after property owners complained they were too high. Processing costs were reduced from $125 to $30. The council also voted to reduce payments by the city to contractors for correcting a “nuisance condition” from $137.50 to $33.
Finally, Garland said the city plans to soon begin using an app that allows code enforcement officers to access complaints instantly using iPads. The system is expected to help the officers be more efficient in addressing complaints, he said. An existing telephone option allows citizens to call in code violations by dialing 311.
Cynthia Hines, the City of Pine Bluff’s marketing and communications director, said a request for proposals will soon go out for a project to redesign the city’s website. She hopes the updated website will have the capacity for citizens to submit code complaints online and view a map of locations that are the subject of code complaints, she said.