Milford City Council recently passed an ordinance that would strengthen penalties for those who repeatedly violate the city’s building code. The changes increase fines from $50 to $250 for those who commit the same violation more than three times in a two-year period. It would also allow the city to request intervention by the Justice of the Peace courts sooner as well as allow judges to fine up to $5,000 rather than the current $1,000.
“Before this change, we could send out a violation letter or take them to court, but our fines are a minimum of $50, so we could go through the entire JP Court process and get $50,” Rob Pierce, City Planner, said. “This would be after we spent three months or more leading up to the court hearing with our staff, so we feel increasing the fine to $250 and then max it out higher at $5,000 would address the repeat offenders.”
Councilman Dan Marabello questioned who would be enforcing the code. Pierce replied that it would be the current code enforcement officials who were already doing that.
“I think as far as the parking on proper surfaces, I don’t think it should be a violation on the landlord,” Marabello said. “I think the individuals who park over the sidewalks should be responsible. Maybe we need another ordinance to compliment this one?”
Pierce explained that the language related to parking, which generally meant on grass or sidewalks, would be reported by code officials who would issue a violation letter. The issue the city faced was that the violator would move the vehicle, and a few weeks later, the vehicle was back on the grass.
“The officials will now keep track of whether this was the third, fourth or fifth time over the past two years that same address has received a parking violation,” Pierce said. “The issue we brought up before is that we write someone up for parking on the grass, so they move the vehicle. We write them u for rubbish, they remove the rubbish. The violation is closed as being remedied. Then you go another three or four weeks down the road and they put another pile of rubbish there. That’s a separate violation. So, we are basically going through the process with these individuals already. This would just allow us to take them to court after the third offense in 24 months.”
The ordinance change passed unanimously.
