Fairfield council updates building maintenance code

FAIRFIELD – The Fairfield City Council has updated its building maintenance code.

At the council’s meeting on Nov. 27, the council voted to approve the second reading and waive the third reading of an ordinance relating to building inspection procedures.

Fairfield City Engineer and Public Works Director Melanie Carlson said the city has had a property maintenance code for many years, but that code applied only to rental properties. The new code takes the standards laid out for rental property owners and applies them to all properties. The new code also allows the city to inspect buildings if there is an apparent danger to the occupants’ health and safety.

When the council first considered updating its building code in August, the topic attracted attention from some Fairfield residents who appeared before the council to voice their worries. In response to this feedback, the council amended its ordinance to clearly spell out the rights that property owners and tenants have and the procedures the city must follow in enforcing the code, such as how the city must obtain an administrative search warrant to inspect a property.

Fairfield City Administrator Doug Reinert said the main concern the city was trying to address was about city officials’ right to enter a property to perform an inspection. The new ordinance states that administrative search warrants should be granted without both parties present (except in emergencies), and that tenants must be given the opportunity to be heard and to advocate for reasonable restrictions on the warrant.

“We had the city attorney review it and add language to make sure the city is not being intrusive,” Reinert said. “Our city staff has to give the property owner written notice, and there has to be an appointment.”

Reinert said one of the main reasons for updating the building maintenance code was to ensure that all structures are safe, so they don’t pose a danger to their occupants or to neighboring properties.

Carlson said another reason for updating the code was to address nuisance properties before they become health hazards.

“We have a nuisance code, but it doesn’t address all the issues we’re seeing with the housing stock,” Carlson said. “Under the old code, the building had to be a clear and present danger, and it had to be obvious from the street. But we would get complaints from neighbors, or complaints from other agencies, about things that we couldn’t see from the street. Maybe the building had nice siding, but the actual structure was not good.”

Carlson said one of the city’s priorities is improving its housing stock. It is an issue that comes up over and over in discussions with the town’s employers and from members of Fairfield Economic Development Association that the town needs better housing.

“We recognized that our code was not allowing us to do that,” Carlson said. “We’ve got to look at our rentals, and we’ve got to keep bringing up the level of our housing stock from multiple directions. That’s the core of the ordinance, to bring up the condition of our housing stock.”

Carlson said she hopes Fairfield residents understand that the point of the updated ordinance is to ensure that structures are safe.

“I don’t want to go through what Dubuque did with its building collapse,” Carlson said. “There are true building safety issues with this that I try not to think about because it would keep me up at night.”

Carlson said the city wants to help people whose homes are in bad shape, not punish them. She mentioned that former code enforcement officer Scott Vaughan discovered one property where the owner was using a propane tank to heat the home.

“For those people, we’re going to work with them to get them a better situation by putting them in contact with an agency to fix their central heating,” she said. “It’s dangerous for them and their neighbors to use that heat source. That’s just one example of many we’ve seen.”

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com