Appointments Committee - Regular Meeting

I'm calling to order the Community Vitality and Safety Committee meeting for 05/14/2026. Colleen, can you call the roll, please? Councilmember Palmer? Here. By doctor Scott, absent.

Council member

Walker? Here. Sure, madam. Here. As far as public comment, do we have anyone here for public comment? No one's in person minutes. Any hands raised. Okay. Great. Then we will move on to our briefing item. Okay. So our one briefing item today is strengthening code enforcement options and fiscal impacts. Mindy Weber, assistant division manager, planning and development services. Alana, This is your moment, Oh,

I oh, he's sitting right here. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure I'm on committee. My name is Cindy Weber.

I'm the assistant division manager with planning and development services for the regulatory compliance group. And today, we are here for a continuation of our last conversation in March discussing the different enforcement models that we might want to use. So I have some more information about that to share. Great. So our agenda today, we're just gonna touch on the background of how we kind of got to where we are today, the legal and policy guardrails that we've identified, some key policy choices, potential potential impacts, and then we'll go over recommendation and next steps.

So after March, community vitality and safety briefing, we provided updates on code compliance transferring the neighborhood community services to planning and development services. We also touched on the Acela case management integration. As a reminder, Acela is our is our system that we've used in default services for record management. We discussed three zero one intake and the improvements we are making to routing of those. We reviewed a standards crosswalk of the international property code and municipal code.

We discussed some regional enforcement models and talked about council policy choices around enforcement. Sure. Through that briefing in March, we did have some one on one conversations with council members regarding some of their thoughts and concerns regarding enforcement. So what we heard was stronger response to repeat offenders' priority, faster escalation when compliance doesn't occur, higher penalties for chronic noncompliance, better tools for vacant and problem properties, a clear approach to recurrent private property nuisance conditions, and physical transparency before policies. Currently, today, we do operate in a complaint based reaction manner.

When we issue a violation notice, voluntary compliance does remain to be our first starting point, hoping to achieve that about escalate it further. Right now, we have a limited capacity for any proactive work, and our administrative workload is a significant bottleneck. Over the last three years, on average, we get about 41 clear pieces per year. Again, that's an average of the last three years. We do see it continuing to increase.

When we talk about the fiscal reality of this effort, expanded enforcement, I just wanna highlight this, would require ongoing general fund support. Find revenue from enforcement isn't a reliable funding source. A lot of the vast majority of the cases that we deal with are resolved, before they reach the final stage, but they still require significant administrative work, inspections, notices, for collections process. Collections are variable and is not delayed. When we assess penalties, they're always collected.

Successful enforcement will reduce future fine revenue, and more aggressive enforcement does increase appeals to the hearing examiner and the reviewer workload. Alright. So worked with Steve Victor. We reviewed a lot of sections here, and we've we've identified that we can create stronger enforcement tools, start penalties higher, and escalate faster. Our draft code will need to be a clear, objective, uniformly applied, property condition based, and administratively supportable.

Some of the guardrails that are based on hardships cannot be codified as a personal characteristic exception. So meaning a specific character's individual, you would put that in the code as one of the, like, law firms. They can say alone, and it's not seen as a nuisance. Code enforcement addresses property conditions, not individual behavior, and escalation must be tied to objective. Alright.

So I'd like to walk you through these media tiers of enforcement models just to kind of lay out some options that we have as we expand this. So first tier would be an effort to stabilize our current service level, but I would maintain what we're doing now with modest improvements. It would be sized to hold our our current response type study, but it would still require fiscal impact in order to to maintain it. Our second tier would be a balanced enforcement modernization. So that would be faster faster escalation, repeated funder tools, limited proactive work.

So that would mean we would be targeting to be 25 to 30% faster on our initial inspection on a case and 25% faster towards resolution. So this tier would also give us capacity for a limited number of proactive cases per year. Third tier would be targeted drug enforcement, and that would be a dedicated focus on the council priority problem areas and chronic properties. So that would target a 50% faster initial infection response, proactive team dedicated to those priority areas, and capacity for a larger amount of proactive cases per year. Alright.

But here we have our preliminary fiscal impact for each of those tiers. So each tier would have an initial start up cost, and then it would have an estimated you know, what the the annual operating cost would be going forward after that. The so, again, it's preliminary. Before we go to council, there'll be additional fiscal analysis done on the options here. Do have a

I think she should ask a question.

Okay. This is for the whole program to

take on all of these pieces.

So or is there in the the main slides, there's more examples of what can be included for policy choices. So that's what I would include. Great. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. So alright. So some of these key policy choices, these were highlighted in our conversations with with counsel. Repeat offender thresholds right now. So for these policy choices,

I'll go through current what

we currently do and what the recommended direction would be for. So for the repeat offender thresholds right now, it's tracked by the personal owner, and two violations in a twelve month period would constitute a repeat offender. It's recommended that we maintain that as a base trigger. Wait. So can I

ask a question? I just wanna say two violations makes you repeat offender right now. So how's, like I was thinking, like, repeat offender is, like, three or two. So, like, if I have just bear with me. Sorry. If I have like, there's a person on my street, like, where I walk, and they haven't cut their bushes back, and they're running over on the sidewalk. Basically, if that they get two violations on that. They're considered like like, we haven't gone out yet to

inspect because we haven't put

the time yet.

Sure. Once they get out there and you send them a notice, they don't do anything about it, then another three one one complaint comes in, and they need to do another one. That's that's somebody who's considered a repeat offender.

So it's I'll explain it a little bit. No. You're fine. So so a a violation from beginning to end. Right? So we issue that violation. The different measures are taken to resolve that. It's closed. K. Three months later, that other one pops up. Okay. That's what you know, being so it'd be separate cases. Not like we received a complaint, we have a case, and then a week later, we got another Oh, okay. So Thank you

for explaining that. So it has to be closed, and then it's there. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much. Mhmm. Yep.

With that, we would recommend keeping that as a base and adding a chronic tier for three or more violations in the control, period. Right now for compliance windows, we the code allows us to reinspect every eighteen days till compliance is met. Sometimes we, you know, have to go past that period depending on the sourcing. It would be recommended that for repeat offenders specifically, can tend to go to a ten to fourteen day finance window. And you see here that it's thirty days standard.

That would be for your everyday type of violation, not not a repeat factor. For penalties, right now, penalties are issued in the same cadence as those compliance records. So eighteen days reinspection, additional penalty issued, almost more so on a, like, monthly basis, suggested that it would be a monthly to daily escalation after extended period of noncompliance. And then for chronic cases, the offenders doing penalties from the first day of the violation. So as far as escalation triggers go, right now, we don't have a formal framework for escalation triggers, and a lot of it is a case by case judgment situation.

But we it would be recommended to move toward an impact based escalation tied to objective property conditions. As far as resource support, you know, we have the the issuing of extensions for resolution can be inconsistent and as well as referrals. So having a uniform with neutral extensions and resource referrals would be the the recommended direction here. The patient plans. So currently, if we have somebody with violation, whether it be standard or chronic, any of those for the offender, we don't require a site specific mitigation plan for their violation.

We recommended that at that chronic tier, so three violations in a twelve month period, we would require a a written mitigation plan from the property owner. So some special focus areas. And first, I would like to highlight that at the last CES meeting, council member Palmer referred us to the Spokane code as it relates to how the buildings are are addressed or in a building. So I just wanted to highlight that there. Thank you for that recommendation.

That's helpful. So right now, we have limited tools to act vacancy alone, boarded, unsecured, deteriorated conditions marginally case by case, with new other nuisance and property maintenance provisions. It would be recommended that this force that would be tied to some objectives. So, property is an example. Property has been boarded up for twelve months.

There's no new conditions, but the fact that it's boarded up for twelve months could have been a violation. So so that's, like I said, boarded, unsecured, safe unsafe, unfit, all of those different classifications. And then for recurrent incantment related nuisance conditions of private property, as I was kind of mentioning before, each recurrence requires a full enforcement cycle to restart. So we have as an example, let's say we have an encampment. We get to the point where it's taken care of.

Violation is resolved. We would have to if we got another complaint about that, we would have to start the process over. So it wouldn't be you know, we'd be able to accelerate it. We would have to start the process over each time. Recommended direction here would be a recurrence of the defined window. So follow-up period. And that would trigger an accelerated pathway, so shortened to compliance windows and faster escalation for properties with documented recurrent conditions. K. So is requesting committee recommendation on the following six bullets you'll see on this slide. So I can I can go through each one of those here?

And then after we've gone through those, our next steps be to work with on a recommendation letter to the board of council, work on refining our ordinance language, continue to complete additional fiscal analysis, including legal resourcing, and then move forward.

Hey. It's all fine. I'm gonna start with council member Langer.

Thank you. This is great. I just think I need to think through a few of them a little bit slower because I haven't thought about it Sure. As much

as you have. Yeah. So

on broken windows Mhmm. So the this is the compliance windows. Right? This is the eighteen day or the ten to fourteen days. Am I in the right category?

Is the question what is the compliance unit?

So I guess if I am a business Yeah. And somebody comes along and breaks their window, and I put up plywood

And by a code code

violation.

If you board it up when it actually happens, that's not a violation. If it but what I mentioned about, you know, like, what Spokane does, if it were to sit and board it up for an extended period of time, that'd be isolated, then that would be the issue.

Okay. So

what is compliance with those then? So we issue a notice. On that Window. Yeah. Window. So thank you. Yeah. Sorry. There we go. Yeah. That's a thing I needed. Yep. That makes more sense. Yeah. So just so I need to kind of explain a little bit further, do an issue, notice violation. And on there, they can give a client's window, which is, you know, three days to fix this before we even inspect it. Okay. Great. That makes sense. K.

Okay. So that was the one that was really the windows in general. Yeah. Now I've got it straightened out, and then I I just I think these recommendations all sound good as you talk through them. They make a lot of sense. I just worry about or I just wanna think through the situations in which people are a victim of something versus when they're letting something sit. Right? So just making sure that there isn't, like, a unintentional situation for someone who has, you know, suffered a lot of break ins or something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. You can tell the difference between Yeah. That when you said that there. Is

Can you talk here, Steve? Sure. Say who you are. I'm sorry.

Hello. I'm Steve Victor, the chief deputy city attorney, and I support planning and development services in really almost every other department except for. The the Spokane board up. So, for example, say if we is boarded hard. It's compared front is partially, but it's open. That is not what this this Spokane words targets. But it targets its ability that is effectively a pain. And so that is Thank you. Yep.

Thank

you so much. You're looking into that. Yeah. Super excited to kinda see where that goes. One thing that we kinda talked about was looking at the difference between, like, residential and commercial. And when we're looking at I don't know if that counts as, like, what you're talking about here to, like, the dedicated focus on council priority problem areas. Maybe we

can speak Yeah. To that.

So, yes, it would fall into the category of the council specific priority problem area. The so I looked at what it would kind of how it would work to have a separate, I guess, for residential and commercial. And, really, there's work would be creating two parallel pathways or something would be resolved with nurse for a condition based enforcement. So having using the international property maintenance code and the provisions there, that would regardless of the building type would the way that it's set up would get into resolution quicker. So at this time, we haven't separated.

There's anything old. I don't know if

it was so much if my intent in those questions was so much that the, like, the the co compliance and the checking out if it's compliant would would be different mechanisms so much as, like, the consequences that would be maybe a little bit higher for folks that because the same the same thing across the board is maybe not gonna motivate, you know, somebody to come to compliance as a multimillion dollar building versus a single family residence. So I

guess maybe that's the difference.

And that could that could be worked into the dedicated support for council prior to. Yeah. We could we would have to create some type of, you know, framework.

Thank you.

Yes?

I am just gonna dig in a little bit further, and I guess I'm wondering where the should go Well on the next step.

I think I need to know what your suggestions are, but they also, I think, put together a letter, and we could just have counsel, like, have a chance to make all their suggestions. Like, we could just move it forward to counsel with the with what you have. Yeah. I mean, that might be the best way to do it since there aren't enough voices here. I don't feel like we should be deciding necessarily what level. I mean, I'm hearing from my counsel, they've done a really great job in some of this. I just have some quick questions for you. Sure. When you talk about these issues, like, collections are variable. Assess penalties are not always collected. Successful enforcement reduces reduces future client revenue. Are these things that we can fix? Well, how do we fix those? Sure.

So just don't even wait for it to answer. It's gonna spell. Well

Yeah. I don't

know if she had some ideas. Yeah. Sure. So, well, I'll kind of explain a

couple things a little bit further. Okay. Great. So when we say, like I said, penalties are not always collected. So if you think of, like, a property that he has to eventually, like, go and be on the cities Yeah. For the city's comp. Right? So he could maybe have collection mechanisms. He filed against the property, But against the property really wouldn't mean anything until It's the property. Percent. So that's an example of not not not putting that. So the grass successful enforcement produces future fine revenue. And

I mean, I want I want that, though. Yeah. I want to get to a point for our people. So I don't feel like that's really a problem because I really wanna see people comply. Mhmm. I mean and we haven't been able to get them to comply voluntarily. So I would love to see us do something that has some mechanism that's, like, we're serious about our community and how how people live here. Yeah. Like, the like, how they feel safe in our built environment. So Absolutely. Yeah.

Would what

are your own injection?

Collections are bigger.

Oh, yeah. So so we do have a a collection set of just four of the. Just get to collections doesn't even real for that.

This is an issue. I have no option

outside of that. Yeah. Well We were just talking about this. Yeah. We have

we could hire collection often. I suppose we could train up some to do collections, clean some. Scars, but we can certainly

Well, I I think it's an important conversation to have, and it's an option to offer our counsel because at this point, we don't do that. And I know that what we do oddity or we make our money back. So I I know maybe I I know that sounds weird, but I feel like there is this point if we say that you're supposed to do something. It's like the accountability part, which that word is overused. But I have people that are students going to UWT who are paying their parking fees and their fines when they get them.

And then there are people in our city who decide they don't need to. And I just think that's that's just a, like, a low level example of where we don't have accountability. I think it's just not fair. We're not treating everybody fairly. Some people who lobby decide to pay their fines, and I don't. I mean, I just that doesn't seem that solved. So when you say hardship cannot be codified as a personal care fixes exemption, does that, like, include people who can't pay the fines? Are they or is it, like, a class like being elderly where where you can't fix something because you have a physical ailment?

The gut's the word. It's it's a question clarifying personal traits in the colon. K. And generally, So that doesn't mean that hard. You can't exercise discretion.

You said. Straight up. Okay. But we could have it administered. Sure. Okay. Because I'm just thinking about the elderly woman who can't go for lunch. Yeah. So

on the

I guess my question is on based on the issues, are we treating all issues the same? So say, for instance, we come over here, and we're talking about the issues and escalation. So somebody like the person on the sidewalk who doesn't have the landscaping cut back, is that person the same as the person who has homeless people camping on their private property that we've been trying to deal with? Are those treated the same, or are they are they different currently or with this with this

proposal? As it's been designed at this point.

No.

It would still be the same across all different or all of the same. It would be the same enforcement for all types. Escalation would would vary depending on nature of the issue, severity, impact of labor. There are Okay.

So those things would be Yep.

So there's COVID and the international part would be to that that as lab kind of solutions. Okay.

I appreciate that. That's all the information.

And confidence. This is I

know this isn't, like I know that's Spokane since we're talking about Spokane right

now. I

know that they have they have just passed something that and I don't think this fits because we're not talking about nuisance, but they started charging property owners for removing nuisance encampments. And so we've we've, for a long time, done this for free. And I'm just curious is could that be something that's part of this code if we're having to remove? Would that be a part of this or not?

Yeah. So I'll actually explain to him how we do it twice a day because we only offer one free. Okay.

Oh, so we do one for you?

One for you. Per person. Yeah. And so after that one time, they can't be accused. There's a violation. Whole whole thing is happening again. We either offer a couple of different avenues. One is called a GPEA, private property. Okay. And that's when property owner consents to us, you know, with their property, gives us access to breakthroughs in every channel to work with individuals, then we would then it outlines some billing and the cost.

Okay. And then if we have a situation with emergency abatement or the explored explored, we maintain a warrant for a removal, that also K. Thank you for

answering those questions. Of course. So are you looking for us to so are you looking for us to, like, agree to send this forward to council, or have what are you looking for? Is there supposed to be an action today?

Yeah. Yes. Do we have So on that last submitted committee recommendation and next steps Yeah. I actually pulled up your. No.

We're good. We're good. You sure? Yeah. Perfect.

Those those different bullets there recommend the dates that we would need recommendation on in order to continue building this out, continue doing fiscal analysis, and refine this language. Okay. So what I think for me,

I I really think that we should just send this to the full council to review. Like, based on it just seems like there's gonna be a lot of if if I don't set if I go through we go through and decide which level, and then we get there and they're like, no. I wanted this level. I I would like some advice from my chair, my people sitting here today on this committee, but it seems like there'll be a lot of discussion that brings back in the other things, and it might be better just to send what you have here to them for a study session to kind of just discuss what they wanna see go forward. Sure. I wanna I'd like to hear from you. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that sending the issue forward to the council rather than a recommendation makes sense, and we'll be doing it one on ones with our colleagues so that they Yeah. Know that. Yeah. You have already so they know the recommendation. Oh, no. No. Not all. Oh, okay. So I think it would be valuable to do

the

would be valuable to have everybody all of our colleagues take some time with it because it does take some time or to to kinda work through this and think through examples. So Mhmm. I support that with moving the whole thing to counsel.

K. So I could we make a recommendation to move this forward to counsel, or do we need to have you what's the next step?

Yeah. We don't have, like, a

We don't have, like, a motion.

I mean,

we could do a motion to move forward the, you know, the re the recommendations in full Yeah. To the council for review and a study session.

That's fine. Oh, I'm sorry.

Okay. I didn't forget to call on me, Chair.

What what does that do to,

I guess, your your schedule? How does that change things around?

Well, right now, we were hoping to bring it fully to council this summer. Mhmm. So I that's probably yeah. Don't that wouldn't affect anything. Implementation and public outreach and stuff, I can provide more information on that later when we have a more defined path of this.

Because it sounds like if we made a recommendation today to have you move this forward, you could still meet with other council members to talk about this plan before they go to study session. K. Just make sense.

Are we saying study session in July, and are we saying study session before July?

I'm gonna let them leave

it open. Heard there is no availability Yeah.

Unfortunately open since that you'll know when to take it. Yeah. I think we're just moving it forward to a study session in the near future. Yes. Okay. So I

guess that's my question then is it seems like maybe we were hoping to get a decision then maybe around July.

Yes. We were. But I understand that this requires additional conversation.

Okay. Just occupancy? Yeah. No. Yeah. I appreciate that. I just I think that if we make a decision and then the council has a chance to talk with you and says, no. I want I like this better or this or that. We're saving them time if we just move the whole thing forward. You can go talk to them separately.

Mhmm.

And then we can come together with a study session. But they know that that's what we're we're looking at this that's what's in here. I just I think we're going to get in trouble. This is such a hot topic with our council. I mean, I've heard from several council members, like, when are you getting this here? I think we're gonna get there in July, but I also think we should just break the whole thing for so they're looking at the whole thing. I mean, some of us might think we should be less. Right. You know? And some might be more. I think it'd be good to hear everyone talk about their concerns. And I think it's different, again, based on whether you're a district rep or an at large. Mhmm. So I just wanna be aware there are different issues in every part of our city. Mhmm.

So I I think it'd be good to hear from everybody. Go for it. Chair, I

would recommend that as part of this, that you or a few of us on this committee that it's a matter of, like, swapping in and out language as our council colleagues make decisions That's definitely that we don't become that that piece doesn't become slow down.

Okay. That sounds great. It doesn't have to happen today. Right. That can happen as we get to July. Right? Okay. Right. Does somebody wanna make a motion?

I will move to make a motion to move forward the full package without decisions to the full council for consideration at the first available study session.

All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. K. And as a promise, I will have staff, like Linda, start looking at what the ordinance would look like. Do you have ordinance language yet? Or okay. Great. That's super. And then we could just put in the information as as counsel makes the decision.

Can you send it to the attorney? I would send it to the assistant, and they would feature it to the service.

Just, like, both the assistants. Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Alright. Alright. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And thank you so much for all of your work on this. I know this was not, like, easy, and I know you've probably heard a lot of things from different people that you talked to. And we all have different things we really care about in our city, but I just I wanted to be a safe, beautiful city based on what we could do with COVID plants. So thank you so much. Mhmm. Yeah. Hey. So topics for upcoming meeting. Tony. Thank you, Chair Rumba.

So at our very next meeting on May 28, we have a presentation on improving outcomes with clinical advocates, and that presentation will be with chair Rombaugh and also with us today. We'll look at how court court appointed advocates improve outcomes for victims' symptoms. And then we just today for awareness ticket confirmation for July 11, a presentation from the executive's office on the results of the juvenile justice task force K. Which provides guidance on a new juvenile justice facility to replace that. So excited that they're coming up.

Super. You guys all really enjoy the conversation. Asked if there was public comments. No one said there's any public comment. Yeah. I wish I just didn't hear. Well, no. I wish that one of the people that's here was interested in public comment because there's some great people online They didn't keep any public comment. Thank you. Yeah. It's okay. Okay. So other items of interest. Are there any other items of interest? Okay. I just wanna say that I've been talking with people from the different commissions. Anytime they wanna meet with me, I've meeting people and signed up with somebody from the human services commission, and that was really insightful. Really appreciate. They really enjoy serving on that commission. Find it highly valuable.

I've really felt involved in our cities. Just wanted to share that information. Alright. With that, could I get the last motion?

Move treatment. Second. All those in

favor, signify by saying no. Aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you.