The latest version of the city’s rental inspection ordinance is expected to be released to the public when the council meets Monday.

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.

Councilman Brent Sheldon, R-Ward 1, said he prefers the city use the more stringent of the ordinances. Surdyk, according to minutes posted on the city’s website, said the local ordinance is likely to be more stringent than the state ordinance.

As discussed earlier this year, the rental inspection ordinance would require rental properties 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 just crazy what we have allowed, what past administrations have allowed, to happen,” Bill Reynolds, R-Ward 5 and Housing Committee chairman said in March. “The rental inspection, we spent a lot of time on that part of it. We’ll work through the nuances of that and work on the details as we glean more information on what’s going to work and make it more expeditious instead of years and years like so many other government initiatives take.”

Surdyk presented several housing-related statistics to council members in early June. There were 61 new code enforcement cases presented in May, with eight interior cases and 53 exterior cases. There were also 53 code cases closed in May, 13 of which involved interior cases. As of early June there were 866 open cases and 449 closed cases thus far in 2023. Code officers were handling an average of 289 cases.

The number of cases each code officer is handling have increased with the departure of one code enforcement officer. Surdyk told Housing Committee members that interviews have begun to fill the open position, while Development Department officials are working on a plan to manage code officers’ workload and processes. That includes an analysis of how many code officers are needed to effectively conduct business.