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HomeMy WebLinkAbout07/11/2007 MINUTES OF THE MAPLEWOOD HOUSING AND REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY 1830 COUNTY ROAD BEAST, MAPLEWOOD, MINNESOTA WEDNESDAY, July 11, 2007 7:00 P.M. CITY HALL CITY COUNCIL CHAMBERS I. CALL TO ORDER Chairperson Pearson called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. II. ROLL CALL Commissioner Jeffrey James Chairperson Gary Pearson Commissioner Joy Tkachuck Vice-Chairperson/Secretary Beth Ulrich Present Present Present Present Staff Present: Dave Fisher, Building Official Tom Ekstrand, Senior Planner Michael Samuelson, Code Enforcement Officer Michael Johnson, Planner Intern III. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Approval of the HRA minutes for June 20, 2007. Commissioner Ulrich had an addition on page 4, in the 1st paragraph, at the end of the paragraph. It should include that Commissioner Ulrich said that the Ramsey County Grant Guidelines and the MHFA link should be on the website. Commissioner Tkachuck moved to approve the minutes. Commissioner Ulrich seconded. Ayes - James, Pearson, Tkachuck, Ulrich The motion carried. IV. APPROVAL OF AGENDA Commissioner Ulrich moved to approve the agenda. Commissioner Tkachuck seconded. Ayes - James, Pearson, Tkachuck, Ulrich The motion carried. V. COMMUNICATIONS Code Enforcement (Michael Samuelson) Housing and Redevelopment Authority -2- Minutes of 07-11-07 Mr. Samuelson introduced himself. He has been working with the City of Maplewood since April 2nd Mr. Samuelson reported the statistics on case loads since he has started. Mr. Samuelson summarized the city's procedures and processes for handling code enforcement complaints from residents. Mr. Samuelson went over the abatement process and procedure. The first abatement was done on July 10 and more are scheduled for the upcoming weeks. He handed out copies of forms and notices that are sent to residents and went over them. Commissioner Tkachuck asked if notices ever go out to commercial properties. Mr. Samuelson responded that currently the planning department and code enforcement are working together on commercial properties. A letter goes out to commercial properties, instead of a notice, when a complaint is made. Mr. Ekstrand said that the planners get involved in the on-going upkeep of the commercial properties. Mr. Samuelson then showed a copy of a general sweeps letter and went over it. The city doesn't have the manpower to do sweeps of neighborhoods yet but we have sent out a couple letters that notified a neighborhood of a general complaint. Mr. Samuelson reported that the City Council updated the city code to state that trash cans must be stored out of view, either on the side of the house/garage, inside the premise or at the rear of the house, and 10 feet off the property line. Commissioner Tkachuck asked where the information is at. Mr. Samuelson responded that the information can be downloaded off of the website www.ci.maplewood.mn.us code enforcement link. Commissioner Tkachuck asked what percentage of cases are citizen opened. Mr. Samuelson reported that citizen opened cases are in the 80% range, maybe higher. Eventually they will be tracked by who opened it. Now an online complaint form is on the website for people to fill out. Commissioner Tkachuck asked what the service level agreement is in getting out and addressing the complaint once a call has been received from a citizen. Mr. Samuelson reported that the ideal response time would be 3-5 working days to respond to a complaint. However, the type of case may change the response time, for example open trash takes precedence over long grass. Commissioner Tkachuck asked what happens when a property is foreclosed or abandoned and an abatement is done then how do we collect the charges for the abatement. Mr. Samuelson answered that the owner is billed and if bill payments are not received then it is assessed to the property tax. Typically, an informational hearing will be held, and information will be sent to the property owner via the Ramsey County records. Then, Ramsey County will put the charges on the next year's payable taxes. Chairperson Pearson said that it would be evident to a call to Ramsey County Tax Assessment office. Mr. Samuelson agreed that it would if it reached the assessment stage. Housing and Redevelopment Authority -3- Minutes of 07-11-07 Commissioner Ulrich asked iflhere is a grace period or circumstantial exception. Mr. Samuelson said that exceptions are granted and said that we will work with people who cooperate with us. VI. UNFINISHED BUSINESS Follow-up Information from Previous Meeting . Other Cities Property Maintenance Code or Rental Housing Maintenance Ordinances o Mr. Fisher went over various codes other cities use. Most cities have changed the chapter 1 for the administrative section of the International Property Maintenance Code because it doesn't match exactly what is done in Minnesota for state statute, and because of weather differences from other states. Chairperson Pearson said that the main task would be getting all the buildings registered with a person with strong authority to represent owners not local to the twin city area who can act when there is a problem. Part of the problem with rental properties is that the manager on-site may not have authority to make decisions. Chairperson Pearson said that many of the people's concerns are police calls to apartments, but the statutes don't allow a landlord to use the number of police calls as a means to remove a resident. There are certain ways you can use the no trespassing laws to affect the resident. Chairperson Pearson said it would require a specific adoption of a code. It would take a lot of staff time in order to go through all of the information and determine a particular code that would be proposed. Mr. Fisher agreed. Chairperson Pearson said that he likes the Woodbury STAR approach but recognizes that it would be heavy on staff time to manage that program. Mr. Fisher said that the city of Saint Paul has a new program that is a point system, which the landlords seem to like. Mr. Samuelson said that it is modeled after a program by the City of Minneapolis. It includes rental properties being given a point system based upon negative aspects of that housing. Mr. Samuelson said that he can get copies of the program in Minneapolis and St. Paul. These programs have an inspector that periodically inspects the rental properties to assign points. Chairperson Pearson said that one aspect of STAR program is the positive aspect of the fee schedule giving a break to those property owners who maintain their properties and fees applied to those who do not. The HRA board decided to discuss the Woodbury STAR program at this point. Mr. Johnson, the planning intern, introduced himself and thanked everyone in Maplewood for giving him such a good experience. Mr. Johnson went over the program and explained the different levels of categories. Chairperson Pearson asked if their program is specifically non-homestead properties or if it covers any structure that is not homesteaded (single-family home, Housing and Redevelopment Authority -4- Minutes of 07-11-07 duplex, four-plex) as well. Mr. Johnson replied that they only include non- homesteaded properties, but they plan to expand it. Chairperson Pearson asked how the program handles the properties that do not participate in the program other than they pay the maximum fees. Mr. Johnson said that he does not have that specific information but assumes that they just pay the fee with no other penalties. Mr. Samuelson pointed out that $12 per rental unit is a fairly common fee to be charged and Mr. Johnson agreed that he found that in his research. Mr. Johnson added that the owner does get rewarded if they reach the A level; the owner will receive a plaque that can be displayed on the building and the city pays for it. Commissioner James asked how many people manage this program. Mr. Johnson responded that the City of Woodbury employs an investigative aid and 2 police officers that take care of all of the paperwork and track all of the calls and what they are for. The police officers are full time and perform other police officer duties as well as tend to this program and the investigative aid is full time as well. Mr. Samuelson added that this program is part of the crime prevention program. Chairperson Pearson asked Mr. Johnson if he had an opportunity to sit in on any of the management assisted resident crime prevention meetings. Mr. Johnson responded that he did not go there as all of the research was done from the office. Mr. Johnson added that it is fairly obvious that the crime rates in those rental properties are on a steady decline from when they adopted the program to now. Chairperson Pearson asked Mr. Fisher if the staff would go forward with developing a proposal from some of the materials given. Mr. Fisher responded that the staff is asking for direction from the HRA board. If the board chooses to work with the STAR program, then other departments would need to be involved (the police department, fire marshal, and apartment complexes and their management) in the process. Chairperson Pearson said that he would like some input from multi-housing on what areas they feel would get the best participation. Commissioner Ulrich said that if we want to replace an existing code, that should be done first. Then move on to possibly the licensing portion of program, which would get people involved, then develop the crime prevention piece, which would give the discount. Mr. Fisher agreed that path would be the best way to address this. The ordinance should be updated first to clarify the ordinance. Depending on which direction is taken, there may be a staffing issue. Ifregistration is done, then that might require clerical staff. If inspections are needed, then an inspector might need to be hired, and fees to cover that cost would large. Mr. Fisher suggested that a schedule be put together to get this program going. Housing and Redevelopment Authority -5- Minutes of 07-11-07 Mr. James asked if any communities indicated the cost of running this program and whether or not they are able to self-fund. Mr. Johnson said that communities said that they are working in small steps to get their programs running. Some communities expressed cost as an issue, but if it is phased in slowly then it works well. Mr. Fisher said that it depends also on how often the inspections would be done. Mr. James asked if this is something that could be taken on by the Code Enforcement during the slow months of the year. Mr. Samuelson responded that even though Code Enforcement does slow down during the winter, there will be other tasks, such as updating the city code, which will take up this time. Mr. Samuelson then went over the different types of costs that might come with this type of program. Commissioner Ulrich asked if it would be feasible to start looking at a registration process at the same time as updating the code. The registration support would be heavier in the administrative support. Mr. Fisher responded that he does not know how much more can be given to current administrative staff here. The quantity of hours for these administrative tasks has not been calculated. Mr. Fisher will look into finding out how much the total cost would be. Chairperson Pearson said that the city code does need to be updated and registration needs to be done. Then a decision will need to be made on who should be the contact person when it comes to licensing and registration. Mr. Fisher said that a similar registration process is currently happening in registering all of the businesses in the City of Maplewood. This could be a possible resource for the rental housing registration. Mr. Fisher will look into that. Chairperson Pearson would like to have input from the police department, fire department, multi-housing and landlords. They could possibly attend a few meetings to express their views. Mr. Fisher advised that the City of Maplewood adopt the 2006 International Property Maintenance Code with amendments. We should also look at our ordinances versus that ordinance and see what the changes and differences are between the two, which will take staff time and eventually be brought to the Council as well. Mr. Fisher requested that an initial recommendation be made by the HRA board as to what step should be taken first. Before someone from the Minnesota Housing Association wants to come over to talk, they would like more direction of what you want them to talk about. Chairperson Pearson asked the board to decide what would be brought up for discussion at the next meeting. Commissioner Ulrich said she would like information on the cost to implement a registration and confirmed that it would take a couple of months for staff to review the current property maintenance code and 2006 International Property Housing and Redevelopment Authority -6- Minutes of 07-11-07 Maintenance Code. Mr. Fisher said that the current property maintenance codes are spread out through different chapters of the city code. The staff would like to compile all of the current property maintenance code and then compare those in the 2006 International Property Maintenance Code to get an accurate comparison. Commissioner Tkachuck agreed that she would also like to see an analysis of the cost and time of running the registration process. Chairperson Pearson asked if it would be possible to have a cost analysis available for the next meeting and a property maintenance code and 2006 International Property Maintenance Code comparison by the September meeting. Mr. Fisher said it would be possible to gather the cost analysis by the next meeting. Staff will try to gather the information for the property maintenance code comparison by the September meeting but it may not be possible. Commissioner James asked who handled the Code Enforcement complaints before Mr. Samuelson was hired. Mr. Samuelson said that mostly it has been a combination of people, but primarily Butch Gervais, the current fire marshal, handled the complaints. Mr. Fisher added that Bob Wenger, who was a combination health officer, handled some of the work load as well. Mr. Ekstrand added that Mr. Wenger did most of the Code Enforcement matters. Commissioner Tkachuck asked how the city currently manages the success of the new Code Enforcement position. Mr. Fisher responded that Mr. Gervais had a spreadsheet that he kept his records on that tracked the compliance rate of cases. Mr. Samuelson said he will give a quarterly (April - June) report for the next meeting. Commissioner Tkachuck clarified that she is questioning iflhere is data to show that citizens are more satisfied since a Code Officer has been hired. Mr. Samuelson said that there is no data on that to his knowledge. Once a case has been closed, the complainant is usually happy but will not always communicate that comment to the city. There are surveys that can be given out to track that but that would require time for staff to sort through it. Chairperson Pearson added that it might be possible to give out a survey before the peak season and then afterwards to compare the two. . Data on Multi-Housing in Maplewood including the Police calls and Medical calls . Ramsey County Grant Guidelines on the City's Web o Chairperson Pearson said that the information on the Ramsey County Grant Guidelines are on the website. . Information from Minnesota Multi Housing Association (MHA) - Charge for Police Calls o Mr. Fisher said based on the information from Brooklyn Park, it is not possible. Charging would make people hesitant to call in an emergency. But there are re- inspection fees that are possible. Mr. Samuelson added that it is possible to have a fee for excessive police calls, which is where a property or resident may be charged for excessive police calls to that property, mainly used for commercial Housing and Redevelopment Authority -7- Minutes of 07-11-07 properties. This is generally done through the Police Department or through the licensing department. . HRA Vacancy o The position is still vacant and we are looking for people to apply. VII. NEW BUSINESS a. Rental Housing Licensing - Woodbury's Star Program 1) The discussion was held starting on the top of page 4 through page 6, paragraph 6. b. Comprehensive Plan - Goals and Mission for the HRA 1) Mr. Fisher went over the goals and mission for the HRA that are already stated in the packet of information. Commissioner Ulrich said the HRA could adopt the goals. Mr. Fisher said that it a possibility and would follow what the City Council has done in the past. Commissioner James said that those may not be necessarily applicable for the tasks before the board currently. He asked the board to define the purpose of the HRA in order to decide on the mission and goals for this board. Mr. Ekstrand said he would draft a mission statement to present to the board at the next meeting. c. Proposed Bylaws amendment 1) Mr. Ekstrand asked Ken Roberts to review the bylaws and make any obvious changes to the bylaws to bring them up to date. Mr. Ekstrand submitted the proposed changes to the board for review. Commissioner Ulrich moved to approve the amended bylaws. Commissioner James seconded the motion. Ayes- James Pearson Tkachuck Ulrich The motion carried. d. Maplewood Truth-in-Sale of Housing Ordinance 1) Chairperson Pearson stated that this was brought forward just as an informational item for the new members and a review. Chairperson Pearson added that anytime an open house is seen by a HRA board member, they should stop and check if the disclosure report is displayed. Commissioner Ulrich asked who would be the person to notify if an open house is discovered not displaying the disclosure report. Mr. Ekstrand said to call the main department number and someone will look into it. Chairperson Pearson added that it would be possible to contact the realtor that is the listing agent and let them know you were there and it wasn't displayed. The agent there is not always the listing agent. Housing and Redevelopment Authority -8- Minutes of 07-11-07 VIII. DATE OF NEXT MEETING Date of next HRA meeting is scheduled for August 8, 2007 Mr. Ekstrand asked who is able to attend the City Tour on July 30th at 5:30 pm. 3 of the board members will be able to attend and Commissioner Tkachuck is not sure at this time. IX. ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 8:40 p.m.