On Tuesday, June 21, 2022, Comcate hosted a webinar with Ron Dudelston, City Council Member of Hartford City, IN. Kolten Keeney, VP, Growth, Comcate, and Ron discussed how blight impacts your agency and the community. We also reviewed a 3-step plan to tackle blight, starting with updating your municipal codes. Keep reading to learn more!

Why is Blight Important to Combat? 

Blight is an eyesore in the community and creates dangerous conditions and environmental contamination for citizens. Examples of blight can be inoperable vehicles, overgrown lawns, uncollected litter, inadequate street lighting, and other signs of neglect. Blight can occur on vacant lots, abandoned buildings, single family houses, or entire towns.

Blight decreases the morale of citizens and makes the community an unsightly place to be. Blight can bring down property values and encourage long -term relocation. At the end of the day, the goal is to create a welcoming, safe and beautiful  place for citizens to live. 

Blight, also known as minimum property standards, has an impact on the entire agency - economic development, planning, zoning, and public works. However, many  municipalities are overwhelmed with the steps that it can take to set up committees to talk about and eliminate blight proactively. 

“Success is not a destination, it’s a journey”

The framework we present to combat blight is not a quick fix, but a long-term journey. Below we outline three steps that you must take to properly set up a blight program.  

Step 1. Revamping Municipal Code and Ordinances. 

The best place to start when tackling blight is by reviewing your current municipal codes and creating a plan to modify, review and publish updated versions. 

42% of agencies that attended the webinar have not updated their municipal codes in the past 10 years or longer. 

Outdated municipal codes set you up for failure. As your community changes through the years, your municipal codes need to be updated to reflect changes to the community. If you are running your blight program off codes from years ago, employees won’t have proper guidelines to enforce issues and uphold fine schedules. 

Ron Dudleston shared  that the codes in his municipality at Hartford City, IN had been vague at best. Ron collaborated with the zoning director and they considered  a Vacant Property Registration Ordinance (VPRO). A VPRO is a law enacted by a local government that requires a landowner to register vacant properties. However, a peer gave Ron a tip that strong residential ordinances go further in combating blight compared to VPROs. Ron’s peer was kind enough to share the current ordinances they had enacted as a starting point for Ron and Hartford City.

Step 2. Establish Committee and a Dedicated Officer

54% of webinar attendees stated that they do not have a property standards committee. 

Once you have updated municipal codes, you need people who are proactively enforcing them, as well as examining effectiveness. The next step in your blight clean up process is to  build a property standards committee and designate a code enforcement officer. 

Ron shared that the Hartford City property standard board consists of 5 unpaid voting members: Ron, the City Attorney, and 2 police department representatives. The board regularly holds open door meetings that anyone can attend. They proactively go through all active violations and invite violaters into the meeting to discuss issues openly. This has helped build faster compliance throughout the community.

In the beginning, it might not always be feasible to have dedicated code enforcement officers on staff. Some agencies will use volunteer, part-time or utilize another department to staff their code enforcement officers. 

Hartford City goes through the police dept to enforce code currently, but is looking to hire dedicated officers now that their department is up and running. 

When officers are sending out violations, automated courtesy letters are mailed out at 30, 60, and 90 days. This is done to initiate dialogue and compliance with the ordinance violator. Code enforcement officers timestamp pictures in the Comcate software to show any changes in property across a 90-day period. Code enforcement went from a manilla folder operation to software that allows for evidence based conversations. 

Ron and Hartford City, IN have a very clearly established workflow aimed to achieve compliance with property owners. Each letter has Rons email and phone number to encourage communication and establish a two-way dialogue.

Step 3. Track Activities and Measure Results

If you don't measure it, you can't manage it. 

60% of attendees on the webinar doesnt currently have dedicated software to support their blight or code enforcement program.

Dedicated software can help save time, improve retention and document (AND, manage!) all activities. Dedicated software can also increase visibility with the city council and the committee. Reports can be shown to leadership to measure department success. Ron loves that during committee meetings, he can pull Comcate software up on TVs to showcase reports and individual cases to the group. 

For Hartford City, software was purchased around the same time as the minimum property standards board was created. The plan to combat blight was an initiative to remediate issues around the community, and software that can track and measure was a big part of that overall initiative. Ron was previously in the auto industry before entering politics and data was everything. He views software as critical for making more informed decisions.

Conclusion

At Comcate we believe there's power in simplicity and transparency, both in code enforcement as well as the design of software. Software is often viewed as a nice to have, but software is more affordable than ever. Comcate has packages that are as low as $100 dollars a month for smaller municipalities. 

Creating a new code enforcement case in comcate software can be completed in less than 90 seconds and in a few clicks. You can see property history, as well as details on the property owner that are automatically prefilled. 

Ron shared that he is on the property standards board and also enforces, which is common in municipalities where resources may be limited. He echoes that it's very easy to perform inspections and add photo evidence. 

To hear the whole conversation about eliminating blight in your community, rewatch the webinar at the link below. 

Webinar Recording:

https://event.webinarjam.com/login/yvx7qtq9clwi9qirsq

Blight Toolkit:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GFLMQzBwGpPt9vSgV-dx_5CNBTiW3A9A?usp=sharing

Schedule a Meeting with Comcate Today!

Learn how Comcate can help make government delivery simple, and offer a modern digital experience to help you increase transparency, efficiency, and performance across your departments. If you have any questions about implementing our software, please fill out the form below or call us directly at (415) 632-1248.

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