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Item No: Meeting Date: Feb 13, 2007 Type of Business: Discussion • Administrator Review: City of Mounds View Staff Report To: Mounds View Charter Commission From: James Ericson, Community Development Director Jeremiah Anderson, Code Enforcement Officer Item Title/Subject: Discuss Potential City Charter Amendment to Allow for the Certification of Certain Unpaid Fines and Fees to Property Taxes Introduction: We would like to discuss the possibility of a City Charter amendment which would provide a mechanism by which unpaid fines and fees associated with property based nuisance code violations could be certified to one's property taxes. Presently the City has the authority to certify unpaid assessments, emergency response fines, false alarm fines, abatement costs and diseased tree removals to the property taxes. Such an amendment would provide City Staff the ability to be more responsive concerning nuisance code enforcement and be more flexible in how certain nuisance code violations are processed. • Discussion: The process for dealing with problem properties and repeated code violations can be quite extensive and resolution may not occur for many months if not a year or more. This is frustrating for staff, but particularly even more frustrating for the neighbors who live next door to or near the offending party. For most typical violations, staff makes an attempt to speak personally with the property owner or resident to let them know about the violation and what would need to be done to correct the situation. While many of these informal first meetings result in compliance, it is often the case that a written notice of violation (which simply articulates the nature of the violation) is sent to the responsible party with a request for correction in a certain period of time. Some property owners comply with the written notice while others seem to ignore the notices and remain in violation, much to the understandable displeasure of neighbors who are subjected to the continued violations. In the cases where a property owner ignores an order to remedy the noted violations, an administrative citation (otherwise known as an Administrative Offense, or, AO) may be issued to the responsible party. An AO is a municipal tag which carries a potentially lesser fine than a Ramsey County Court Citation. if the responsible party however chooses to not pay the fine associated with the AO and has not corrected the violation, a Ramsey County Court Citation is then issued. By this time, perhaps as much as 45 days has passed. The County Citation is forwarded to the clerk of courts who schedules a hearing before a judge. • Unfortunately, such hearings are often months into the future and in the meantime, the violations persist. Factor in the potential for delays, continuances and plea agreements and judges who believe nuisance codes are a low priority, many more months pass before a final judgment is rendered, often times with very lenient consequences.