Many Jamestown residents will feel it is about time the city did more to deal with nuisance properties.

Crystal Surdyk, city development director, said the city is working on a nuisance ordinance that will detail what constitutes a nuisance property. The goal is to help the police, fire and development departments deal with nuisance properties.

It’s a good idea. As the ordinance is developed, though, city officials should keep in mind other areas’ experiences with nuisance property laws. Targeting the owners and tenants of properties where police officers spend most of their time makes sense, but can have unintended consequences if the ordinance is written incorrectly.

Some cities and towns have passed nuisance property ordinances that result in fines against property owners if police respond to a property too many times. Such systems have been found to keep tenants from calling police for serious issues, like domestic violence, because they fear eviction if they call police too many times. And carving out domestic violence from nuisance property ordinances can be difficult because the types of charges that result from some domestic violence calls aren’t categorized as domestic violence in police databases. There is no notation for domestic violence when someone is charged with something like stalking, disorderly conduct or criminal mischief, but all are common charges in domestic incidents.

Jamestown should do more about nuisance properties. People who take pride in their home and neighborhood get discouraged dealing with these sort of properties. At the same time, many situations require police intervention — and a poorly crafted nuisance property ordinance has been shown time and again to dissuade people from calling the police.