City beefs up dangerous property code

NUISANCE PROPERTIES

City adopting International property code to address dangerous structures

Attorney recommends adding language to city code

The IPMC gives us a chance to go in now with a code violation and, if it's abandoned and they walked away from it, we can get it off there and taken care of.”

Pat O'Connell, Fort Madison city attorney

FORT MADISON – The City of Fort Madison is tightening its grip on dilapidated and nuisance properties.
At Tuesday’s regular City Council meeting, the council heard a recommendation from City Building Director Doug Krogmeier and City Attorney Pat O’Connell about an update to city code that gives the city quicker remedy times for buildings considered a nuisance or dangerous.
Krogmeier said the city has been using outdated code language and it is hampering the city’s ability to secure the buildings and either demolish them or get them in the hands of private investors for rehabilitation.
“We’ve been using 1997 Dangerous buildings code from the Uniform Code and it’s just dated. There are other, better tools in the new code that we want to update to,” he said.
O’Connell recommended the city go to a code similar to language used in Clinton.
“It should give us better tools when we go to abandoned properties and dilapidated structures to make sure we define better what the actual problem is. The other code was either on or off.”
Krogmeier said the move will also allow the city to update code for Uniform Property Maintenance Code that would go along with the Dangerous Buildings code.
“They work hand-in-hand and Pat felt it was best to bring those along at the same time,” Krogmeier said.
The new code will integrate a 2018 International Property Maintenance Code into the city’s code language.
O’Connell said the new codes cross reference each other. He said that will be the best tool the city will have in combating dilapidated and dangerous structures.
"That gives us things that we can prove that are violations of our code that dovetail into Iowa Code. The way it was before, unless the building was literally falling down as was the case with the Humphrey Building where there were instability issues, we didn't have the tools," he said.
He said the new code and the IPMC will give staff the legal tools that have been in place since 2018.  He said the city isn’t going to new language later than that because cities are still testing that language in court cases. The 2018 IPMC language has already passed legal scrutiny.
“These are not outlandish or new ideas. These are ones we’ve seen at work in other cities,” O’Connell said.
Right now, the city doesn’t follow the IPMC, so that’s a huge improvement and O’Connell said that gives the city teeth with things like leaking windows and holes in roofing.
“We can argue that it’s a nuisance, but good luck with that. How’s that a nuiscance to the neighbor? So, the big change is the IPMC. The dangerous building change is pretty moderate. It doesn’t change a lot, just draws on other sections of the code,” O’Connell said.
Krogmeier said the IPMC adoption gives the city more teeth when it takes property owners to court to fix nuisance problems.
“The IPMC gives us a chance to go in now with a code violation and, if it's abandoned and they walked away from it, we can get it off there and taken care of,” O’Connell said.
Fire Chief Joey Herren said it eliminates the requirement of having an engineer come in and create a report that is admissible in court.
“This just saves us that step,” he said.
Property owners would have the right to appeal the decision to the city’s Construction Board of Appeals. The new code language gives property owners 20 days upon receipt of the nuisance complaint to file an appeal with the Construction Board.
The council approved the recommendation on a first reading, but it will still require two other readings to allow the community to react to the new code language.
In other action the council:
• voted 7-0 to rezone the property where the new PAW Animal Shelter will sit to General Industrial District.
• voted 7-0 to approve a change order on the Hwy. 61 reconstruction project from 10^th to 18^th streets. This is the 3^rd change order on the project and was for $43,764. The increase was due to an increase in thickness of concrete as sampled by the Iowa DOT.
• set a public hearing for Nov. 6 at 5:30 p.m. for the sale of property at 1730 Avenue H, the former Jiffy Lube.
• approved a resolution changing the scope of the reconstruction of Hwy. 61 from 20^th to 30^th Streets. The project will now be a full mill of the surface to be replaced with concrete instead of an asphalt overlay.
• approved a motion to hire current city employee Justina Cullen as transitional City Clerk to eventually replace current City Clerk Melinda Blind who is planning on retirement.