More inspectors considered

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By Tory Brecht | Monday, February 19, 2007 11:49 PM CST | () comments

(Kevin Schmidt/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Code enforcement officer Jean Jaeggi looks over a property on Washington Street in Davenport, inspecting for code violations. The Davenport City Council is considering adding four employees to help handle rental inspections.

The Davenport City Council will be asked to take a first step toward restructuring its rental inspection program this week when it votes on adding four new fire department employees and revamping the fees and fines paid by landlords.

In the eight months since the city scrapped its old Neighborhood Enhancement Office in a budgetary move, fire personnel have been tasked with inspecting the 14,400 or so rental units scattered across the city. Early on, it was determined the program needed to be improved, and volunteers from the Davenport Action Initiative began meeting with landlords, neighborhood associations and city employees to come up with a workable plan.

A central part of the system is is a comprehensive, Web-based rental registry.

On the registry, data about landlords, tenants, past and current complaints, inspection records, criminal complaints and a host of other information will be stored and easily accessible to inspectors.

“Now we have to do all that a la carte,” said District Chief Mike Ryan, who has been heading up the inspections office since last July. “Everything is out there in separate pieces, and this would put it all together. What we’re proposing will be more like a Happy Meal.”

The system will be interactive, with landlords required to update the registry any time a tenant changes.

A more detailed license application is also in the plan. Currently, a simple phone call and minimal information is enough to get a license — and many landlords are known to the city only by a corporation name or a lawyer’s phone number, making accountability difficult.

Under the proposed plan, landlords would have to provide their name and a contact number, proof that they do not owe delinquent property taxes or outstanding municipal infraction fines and agree to a criminal background check.

In addition, any unpaid fees or fines could lead to a revocation of the license, which currently is not the case.

The heart of the program is changing the fee structure to make it more equitable to small-time landlords and to provide incentives to landlords who do not generate environmental and behavioral problems at their properties, said Tom Carnahan, a member of DAI who has been working on the program for most of the past year.

“The whole philosophy behind this is we want landlords to succeed,” he said, adding that the vast majority of good Davenport landlords are tired of their reputations being sullied by a handful of bad peers. “You can beat someone over the head every day, and they’ll eventually do what they want you to do, but they’ll never do more than just what you want. We want everyone to want to improve the housing stock in Davenport.”

Thus, annual license fees for all rental properties will be set at an across-the-board $25, but new per-unit inspection fees will be instituted. Currently, the license fees range from $30 for a single unit up to $60 plus $6 per unit for any building with 5 or more units.

Currently, landlords do not pay when their buildings are inspected, but under the new plan they will be charged $35 per unit.

The incentive comes in by reducing the time in between mandatory inspections, determined by the number of environmental or behavioral violations properties rack up during the year. The best properties will be inspected every four years — with a possibility of pushing out to six — while problem properties will be inspected annually.

“The challenge it to get those landlord who aren’t good to bring their properties up to minimum standards,” said Fire Chief Mark Frese. “And doing that in a pro-active rather than punitive way, we feel will bring more positive action from those landlords.”

Walter Skovronski, head of the newly formed Landlords of Davenport organization, is still upset that the NEO office was abolished, but thinks the new program is a step in the right direction.

“This is bringing the city back to protecting the tenants against vulture landlords,” he said. ” Personally, I don’t think it goes far enough. I think the penalty fee structure is not strong enough.”

The city council is scheduled to vote on the resolution at its regular meeting Wednesday.

The four positions — a program manager, two inspectors and a weed program facilitator/investigator — would have an average salary of about $54,0000 a year, Frese said.

The changes in the fee structure are expected to generate an estimated $200,000 in additional revenue per year, which would cover about 80 percent of the additional expenses, he added.

Tory Brecht can be contacted at (563) 383-2329 or tbrecht@qctimes.com

What’s next

* The Davenport City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on adding four employees to do rental inspections and revamping fees and fines paid by landlords.

* The four positions — a program manager, two inspectors and a weed program facilitator/investigator — would have an average salary of about $54,000 a year.

* The changes in the fee structure are expected to generate $200,000 in additional revenue per year, which would cover about 80 percent of the additional expenses.