Town’s lawyer, investigator lobby board for more code enforcement staff

Riverhead Town doesn’t have a sufficient number of code enforcement officers to keep up with the number of complaints that need to be investigated and prosecuted, according to town’s investigator and the deputy town attorney who handles the prosecutions.

The town receives 10 to 15 new code complaints every week, deputy town attorney Dawn Thomas told town board members at yesterday’s work session. There are currently 300 open code complaints, she said. Many of them are serious, Thomas said, such as overcrowded housing and building code violations.

The town has just two code enforcement officers: investigator Richard Downs and ordinance inspector Nicole Buckner, Thomas said. And the code inspector, Buckner, actually spends about half her time doing rental permit inspections.

“We need to add staff,” she said. The town is especially in need of a Spanish-speaking code enforcement officer, according to Thomas.

Thomas, the former town attorney who left town government to clerk for a State Supreme Court justice in 2011, was hired back as a deputy town attorney last year specifically to focus on code enforcement actions. She is about to move into a new post — interim community development director, to fill the position being vacated by Chris Kempner.

She told the board the town currently has 10 code enforcement actions pending in state trial court, with an additional four authorized but not yet commenced. Most of the pending actions are against homeowners allegedly violating the short-term rental ban.

“It’s important to continue on this course,” Thomas said. But with two people covering the whole town, it’s impossible to keep up, she said.

Supervisor Sean Walter said he would include another code enforcement officer in the 2018 budget, but the town is not in a position to hire one in the current year.

“We’ve already overspent the 2017 budget by $100,000,” he said. The $100,000 is what the town had to spend for repairs to the gasoline facilities at the municipal garage, he explained. That expense was unbudgeted.

“Code enforcement officers will pay for themselves,” Councilwoman Jodi Giglio said.

Walter disputed that and advocated training and utilizing the town’s part-time police officers as code enforcement officers. He got pushback on that suggestion from both Downs and Giglio. The councilwoman said code enforcement officers are required to have formal training and must be certified by the state. Downs said there were technical aspects to the job that police officers aren’t trained in.

“When I first started [nearly two decades ago], we had two housing inspectors and two code inspectors,” Downs said.

The supervisor was insistent about using part-time police officers. “You can have 10 more people on the street immediately,” he said.

The board did not resolve the question, opting instead to have Giglio, liaison to the code committee, Councilman Tim Hubbard, liaison to the police department, and Thomas meet with Police Chief David Hegermiller to discuss it further. Meanwhile, Downs will provide the board with information on certification requirements for code enforcement officers.

In an interview after the meeting, Giglio said she thinks the town needs to hire two part-time code enforcement officers to supplement its existing staff.  The councilwoman also advocated buying an additional software module for the system now being used by the building department and code enforcement division; the new module would incorporate the fire marshal’s office. It would cost just over $18,000.

“It’s not budgeted so you need to find $18,000 in the budget that’s not being spent,” Walter told her.

Incorporating the fire marshal’s office into the network is crucial, Giglio said, because the fire marshals are often called in by local fire departments when fire chiefs find dangerous conditions.

Of particular concern, Giglio said in an interview, is overcrowded housing. “It’s a major issue.”

“People are being exploited by slumlords who are just looking to profit. There are a lot of bad characters in town,” Giglio said.

“Our first responsibility is to make sure housing is safe,” she said. “Our goal to make sure that people living in the basements or in spaces built wihtout permits know they’re at risk,” Giglio said.

Thomas estimated the code enforcement office has 35 active overcrowded housing complaints now pending.

She said she expects the town board to authorize the commencement of court actions in connection with four overcrowded homes at the next board meeting, May 17.

“It’s very labor-intensive and time-consuming to build an overcrowded housing case that can be brought to court,” Thomas said. “You have to document that the people are actually living there in a way that will stand up in court. And people’s constitutional rights are involved. We’re really mindful of that also.”