DENTON Caroline County officials are working on a new property maintenance code to address dilapidated and abandoned houses they think are blights on the area's landscape and safety hazards for neighbors.
Larry Porter, vice president of the Caroline County Commissioners, has been calling for the creation of a property maintenance code that will help rid the county of homes that have stood vacant for years or are otherwise causing neighboring property values to decline.
Caroline County Department of Planning and Codes Director Katheleen Freeman appeared Tuesday before the commissioners to discuss what such a code could include and enforcement issues.
"This is almost exclusively complaint-driven," said Freeman of the county's current enforcement efforts.
Freeman said her department is grappling with the issue of trash and junk cars in yards and partially collapsed homes. She said the department receives complaints about such properties, but lacks proper legal recourse to handle them.
Freeman said for those properties with junk and litter in the yards, Planning and Codes issues a notice for an illegal salvage yard operation. She said it is the only area of the county code addressing such an issue and letters citing it often cause recipients confusion.
Freeman said the code does address partially collapsed homes, though it only requires them to be boarded up so no one can get inside. She said that does not help address neighbors' concerns about having such a house remain standing next door.
Freeman said the county could look into expanding its nuisance ordinance, which now only addresses dust and noise, and Caroline County Administrator Ken Decker said the law could be amended to include junk, broken out windows and abandoned buildings.
Michael Savage, chief inspector for Middle Department Inspection Agency Inc., gave a presentation about his company's enforcement efforts on behalf of other jurisdictions. Savage showed pictures of various types of safety violations, both exterior and interior, Caroline could add to its code.
"If we enforced every line of that property maintenance code, we'd have a lot of homeless people in Caroline County," said Commission President Jeff Ghrist.
Ghrist said the commissioners' goal is to get rid of homes creating blights in neighborhoods. He said kicking people out, though, because they cannot afford repairs is going too far.
"My theory is if we are going to collect taxes from people based on the value of their property, we should at least have something in place that's going to help them protect the value of their property," he said
Most jurisdictions issue letters requiring a violation to be fixed within a center timeframe, but cases wind up in court and take much longer to be resolved, an issue Porter said he is concerned about. He said he wants to see the penalty phase addressed in any new legislation presented to the commissioners.
Freeman asked for two months to draft a new property maintenance code for the county and said she would bring it piecemeal for the commissioners' review while it is being created.
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