Code enforcement seen as ineffective by Madisonville

The consensus in the neighborhood of Madisonville is that the City's property and building enforcement program doesn't meet the neighborhood's needs.

This is according to a letter written by Madisonville Community Council president Robert Mendlein to City Council, Mayor Mark Mallory, and City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr, and which was approved by the Madisonville Community Council at their March 20 meeting.

In the letter, Mendlein cites three recent Cincinnati Enquirer articles that highlight the general enforcement problem*:

* Cincinnati building inspectors visited a 70-year-old Westwood man dozens of times over the years, wrote more than 50 citations, and even offered to help haul the junk off of his property.

* A Madisonville resident ignored cleanup orders for six months before being jailed, and the yard is still full of debris.

* City dollars are being channeled into the demolition of several nuisance Westwood properties.

Mendlein questions if these repeated calls, inspections, and cash layouts are the best use of the City's dollars and manpower.

As of one month ago, the City's EZ-trak website showed several hundred open enforcement cases in Madisonville, many dated prior to 2007.

"This is stark evidence that the current enforcement program provides insufficient motivation to comply with property, building, and quality of life ordinances," he writes.

To support his argument, he provides details of a problem property located at 6406 Madison Road.

In a June 2005 order, the owner of the property was given four months to repair the windows, gutters, and exterior paint.

No work was done, even as the property was inspected by the Department of Buildings and Inspections in September and in December of that year.

In June 2006, the case was finally enforced with a $22 fine, which failed to motivate the owner.

It wasn't until the property was sold to a new owner that the problems were corrected and the case was closed.

"The previous owner ignored Cincinnati with impunity, and the inspector wasted a lot of time and effort," Mendlein writes. "The previous owner was in essence rewarded for ignoring the enforcement program, and the lesson to the community was that enforcement orders and even fines are meaningless."

Because of this, Mendlein says that the neighborhood's residents are beginning to question even having a Quality of Life committee.

"The only ones being punished are the conscientious residents and property owners, who have to live next to dilapidation; and the City, paying for teardowns and grossly inflated and ultimately unsuccessful enforcement costs," Mendlein writes.

Mendlein says that his neighborhood's ability to track enforcement cases is extremely limited by the EZ-trak system, which only gives sporadic summary information.

On behalf of the Madisonville Community Council, he's asking the City to perform an annual statistical analysis of its code enforcement database that would be available to the public, and would include:

* The origin of the complaint
* The percentage of complaints found to have merit
* The average times between receipt of complaint, inspection, and orders
* The average time allowed in "order to comply" letters
* The average time between the end of a compliance period and the next enforcement action
* A breakdown of the types of enforcement action, with accompanying timelines
* A report of fines collected, jail terms served, and the status of other enforcement actions
* The percentages of compliance within any given "order to comply" period, or between enforcement actions

Mendlein says that the analysis is "necessary for annual evaluation and management of a successful enforcement program".

A report from the Office of the City Manager is expected before City Council in early May.

* I will not provide the links, as the Enquirer clings to the antiquated business model that requires people to pay for old articles.