Lisa Schmidtfrerick-Miller, Chautauqua County Healthy Communities consultant, speaks in support of the city’s rental inspection ordinance during Monday’s City Council meeting. The council approved the ordinance.

A long-discussed rental inspection ordinance has been passed by the City Council.

Rental inspection has been discussed off and on for years The initiative picked up steam again last year when state lawmakers approved rental inspections statewide and attached funding to counties to help administer the program.

Lisa Schmidtfrerick-Miller, Chautauqua County Healthy Communities consultant, spoke during the public comment portion of the City Council’s meeting Monday in support of the new ordinance.

“I think you are aware that the county is being tasked with a lead inspection ordinance for the 14701 ZIP code,” Schmidtfrerick-Miller said. “The time is really ripe for this. It would make no sense not to take advantage of the funding coming for that program to the county and the work that is being done by the county and the staff that would provide to leverage that and start a rental inspection program in jamestown.”

Crystal Surdyk, city development director, said during the City Council’s Housing Committee meeting in mid June that Development Department staff members have worked with officials from the Real Estate Investors Association to gather comments and questions. Development Department officials will also be working with county officials to implement rental inspections since the state is rolling out its own inspection program to help deal with the prevalence of lead paint in homes across the state.

As discussed earlier this year and reiterated in the city Development Department’s staff memo that accompanied the rental inspection ordinance in the July City Council work session information packet, the rental inspection ordinance would require rental properties with two or more units to be registered with the city and to receive a certificate of occupancy. The registration form would include the address, name and address of all rental units on the property, name and contact of the current owner, a local contact representative, the name and phone number of the person a tenant can contact when repairs are needed and the date, location and type of violations for all units at the property for which the owner has been cited over the past two years.

The program would come with a $50 fee to pay the costs of inspection and enforcement and a $25 reinspection fee. Failure to register would result in a fine of $50 per unit for landlords who don’t register within a year of the ordinance taking place.

“It’s long, long overdue,” Schmidtfrerick-Miller said. “Properties should never have gotten to the point where we see them now and the conditions people are living in. It’s not always through the fault of the landlord. (It’s) definitely not always through the fault of the tenant. It’s very hard to maintain a property when you have exposed electric and non functioning plumbing and toilets that just don’t work and they’re just not being repaired.

This doesn’t all fall on the tenants just like it doesn’t always fall on the landlords, but I’m looking forward to trying to stop the decline and deterioration of housing in the city of Jamestown. I applaud Crystal and her team for the work they’ve done on this.”