Citizens in Visalia may find it easier to understand what City Hall wants and how soon it wants it after a major retooling of the city’s code enforcement rules. They should also find a more flexible attitude at the city’s Neighborhood Preservation Department when it comes to getting violations fixed.
“We found some errors in the ordinance that we’re correcting, as well as making some changes so that the ordinance reflects our best practices,” said Tracy Robertshaw, the department’s manager.
The updates to the Visalia Municipal Code Section 1.13 were unanimously approved by the City Council on April 20 in a first reading. The council reaffirmed the change during a second hearing on May 4.
“I think the changes are more resident-friendly,” said Councilman Brian Poochigian. “It’s more fair. It makes things a lot more clear.”
60 Working Days to File an Appeal
Perhaps the most significant change in the city’s formal approach to enforcing city code is clarifying how long a resident has to appeal a decision once a violation has been identified and a notice of correction issued. Robertshaw said understanding the previous wording of Section 1.13 was nearly impossible.
“I had difficulty making sense of it, and that’s what I do,” she said. “It was like ‘15 days before this,’ and ‘30 days after that,’ and it was a mess. Now it’s just 60 days.”
And it’s not a hard deadline for either side of a code enforcement issue.
“If there’s a reason we can’t give you the 60 days, we can work with that,” Robertshaw said. “If there’s a reason you (a citizen) can’t have the hearing in 60 days, we can also work with that.”
They also clarified what remedies are available and what government codes are in play, mainly by getting references in the city code to match the state’s.
“There were also some typos in the ordinance in regards to the California Civil Procedure Code, so we changed that,” Robertshaw said. “In one area it was just a typo completely. It had the wrong number. In the other area it actually left off the second part of that California Civil Procedure.”
The city’s ordinance also referenced Government Code 11513, but did not describe what that law says. That code governs rules of evidence and sets the informal nature of an administrative appeal hearing, and its wording is now included in the Visalia City Code.
The changes also allow objections to the city’s selection of a hearing officer.
Avoiding Casual Civil Rights Violations
The updated portions of the city code also correct against a potential violation of due process in the appeals process.
The new wording removes a financial barrier to requesting redress that the old code allowed. City Hall, at least on paper, could demand part of the anticipated administrative fees in advance of an appeal. Without that deposit, a hearing would not be scheduled. Robertshaw said such deposits have never been collected by the city, and removing the language prevents them from being demanded in the future.
“The ordinance was written where if you had, you know, $500 in fines, you had to pay a $250 deposit on those fines to even ask for a hearing,” she said. “Code enforcement has never done that, and so we’ve made that change to pull that language out of the ordinance.”
While requiring a deposit from citizens who request an administrative appeal hearing is legal in California, the opinion at Visalia City Hall is that the practice poses a potential violation of due process. State law requires a hardship deposit waiver option for those who cannot afford to pay a deposit, however, the updated code eliminates the deposit entirely, thus removing the possibility of having to pay for legal review and the civil rights violation that may pose.
“That’s just to make it fair to the community that’s requesting the hearing,” Robertshaw said. “It’s pretty harsh you’re requesting a hearing, and we’re going to make you pay for a portion of the fines up front.”
More (or Less) Time to Correct Violations
Also eliminated from the updated code enforcement rules is the requirement all violations be fixed within 10 days of the city sending out a notice to comply.
“Our complaints vary from the simple fence to substandard housing, so we’re not going to require somebody that has to get a building permit (to do it in) 10 days because that would set them up for failure,” Robertshaw said “You cannot get a building permit in 10 days.”
Instead, the city will try to take into account the context of the violation, its seriousness and the threat it poses to safety, before setting a deadline for compliance.
This was a problem with the city Mayor Brett Taylor had encountered in the past.
“Long before I was on the council, I had an encroachment permit issue, and there was no way I could get anyone to come out and lay a new sidewalk in a 10-day period,” he said.
He got an extension from the city and was able to avoid fines or further escalation, but city code didn’t require that cushion. It didn’t even require a reasonable response. Now it does.
“I appreciate the fact we’re actually doing this in writing,” Taylor said.
But this approach will also mean some violations will be given a far shorter time for correction.
“On the flip side of that, if you have a broken sewer line and sewage is running down Mooney Boulevard, we’re not going to give you 10 days to fix that,” Robertshaw said. “You have to fix that now.”
The time allowed, however, won’t be arbitrary.
“We have a standard. If it’s a life safety issue, of course it’s less time,” Robertshaw said. “If it’s not a life safety issue, of course we’re going to give you more time to fix that. Ten days is not workable for most violations.”
When Is a Person Not a Person?
As it stood before the updates, the city’s code about code enforcement had no definitions of key terms. Now it does.
“Oddly enough, we did not have a definition of an ‘administrative citation,’ ‘person,’ ‘responsible party’ and ‘violation,’” Robertshaw said. “So we’ve added those definitions to clarify that.”
While these terms are easily understood, it might not be clear that “person” doesn’t just mean a person, at least not in the eyes of the civil code. It now means “any person, firm, association, business entity, company, corporation, government entity, organization, partnership, joint venture, limited liability company, trust or estate,” or at least it does at City Hall.
And not all days of the week are days, at least not for City Hall’s purposes when it comes to deadlines. This attitude is meant to give citizens more time to fix alleged violations or to appeal the city’s decisions.
“There were some places in the ordinance where it said ‘working days,’ and some where it said ‘calendar days,’” Robertshaw said. “Code enforcement has always used working days because it gives the public a longer period of time than calendar days, and so what we’ve done is just gone in there and made it all consistent throughout the ordinance to use working days.
That means when city offices are closed, that day doesn’t count against the deadline, something that wasn’t fixed in the city code.
“We also called out when the offices are closed,” Robertshaw said. “Because a lot of the city offices are now closed on Fridays, that is a day we would not count against the public when we’re making the determination on them to request an appeal.”