New Huntingburg Code Enforcement Officer using Mayberry tactics

Steve Collett has been the Huntingburg Code Enforcement Officer for about three weeks now. On Thursday he presented the Board of Public Works with three pages of code enforcement violations he was currently working on. Most of the people on the report were slated to meet with Collett or had already met with him in person to fix their violations.

He told the board things were going well and that his goal was to get people in compliance; not count the number of citations issued.

He said the citizens were being very easy to work with. “You can get a feeling when you talk to these people and how serious the violation is as to how long it will take to get a problem taken care of,” he said.

Collett is approaching each violation by first talking with the property owner and giving them adequate time to fix the issue. He feels that communication and checking up on the property owner is the key to success  getting them into compliance with the new ordinances.

Huntingburg recently strengthened its ordinance in regards to the allowable height of grass and weeds. They have also increased fines for offenders (that story here).

The board also discussed three properties slated for demolition.

City Attorney Phil Schneider informed the board, the owner of 711 Seventh St. has been ordered to demolish the home there and has not acted on it yet. Schneider recommended the board have Rich Hazlewood solicit bids for the demolition of the building in anticipation of the home owner not completing the demo.

The board agreed to allow the code enforcement officer to solicit bids for the work to be done on the property at 112/114 North Jackson across from the Maple Park School. The city would like to attempt to save money on the bids by repairing the embankment that is collapsing onto the sidewalk itself.

The owner of the property at 1019 North Main (the old tattoo parlor) will be reminded the demolition needs to be complete by August 5.