Police Chief Jeff Lynn and City Attorney Robert Snyder are working on updates to the city’s chronic nuisance property ordinance that will more clearly establish timelines for compliance with the code.
The ordinance addresses property where three or more listed offenses occur or where police arrest or cite someone at least three times in a 90-day period. It applies to citations and arrests within 400 feet of a property if the activity is linked to the property.
After the second qualifying offense, the police chief will notify the person responsible for the property and set up a voluntary compliance agreement. If the property fails to meet the terms of the agreement or a third offense occurs, the City Council can decide whether to send the responsible party to Municipal Court.
The judge may order the property closed for 30 to 180 days and assess a civil penalty of up to $500 per day for each nuisance activity on or near the property.
The ordinance, adopted in May 2014, has been triggered once, at 1237 Nandina St., an apartment complex, Lynn said. Since then, the property owner has maintained contact with police officials.
“I think there’s been more than just some improvement,” Lynn said. “Is it perfect? Absolutely not.”
But he still communicates with the property owner, and if something comes up involving the apartments, he sends the information to the property owner.
That apartment complex is not the only property that has raised concerns.
“We’ve monitored a couple of properties to see if they would get to that level,” Lynn said. One was a bar, but neither property has triggered the ordinance so far.
Lynn and Snyder told the city’s Public Safety Committee during its regular meeting on May 24 that they were planning to update and refine the ordinance.
“We’re just back before the committee because we’ve used the ordinance once through, and it’s given us some ideas,” Snyder told the committee.
The question is whether the city needs to add time frames to certain parts of the ordinance, Lynn said. For example, the ordinance doesn’t say how long a property owner has to respond to the chief after the property owner has been notified. The ordinance also doesn’t say how long a compliance agreement remains in effect.
“It’s open-ended right now,” Lynn said. In the future, it may be something that gets written into the agreement rather than the ordinance itself.
After developing some proposals for revision, Snyder and Lynn will return to the Public Safety Committee for review before moving the ordinance to the full City Council for possible adoption. Lynn believes that will be in July at the earliest.
During the Public Safety Committee meeting, Justin Cherrington urged the committee to make the ordinance stronger. Cherrington, a Salem resident, owns the apartment complex at 1240 and 1250 Nandina St., across the street from 1237 Nandina St.
“One thing I’ve noticed about this town is it has a serious problem with drug dealers,” Cherrington told the committee. He compared it to cancer, suggesting that it is something that must be cut out.
Not much can be done about the users, Cherrington said, but the city can go after dealers by hitting them where it hurts, their housing. The problem is that some landlords are slum lords and just don’t care.
Cherrington, who has a surveillance system installed on his property, believes that Nandina Street still has dealers selling drugs.
“This ordinance is the cheapest way to clean up this town,” Cherrington said. “You can defeat this problem. You can get rid of these drug dealers. It has improved, but they’re just more sly about it.”
Sweet Home’s ordinance has loopholes, he said. For instance, the compliance agreement is “voluntary.”
“The only thing I like about Sweet Home is they have a high fine,” Cherrington said. He pointed to Salem’s chronic nuisance ordinance as a good example.
Salem’s ordinance has timelines, Cherrington said. He said that in Sweet Home, the chief spent a month calling and calling to start the process at 1237 Nandina St. before it went anywhere.
Sweet Home’s ordinance would be better if the ordinance were strengthened and included timelines, Cherrington said.
Sweet Home’s ordinance is based on Springfield’s.
“We did notice a couple of areas lacking some timelines we need to shore up,” Lynn said, but he noted that Sweet Home’s ordinance is more strict than Salem’s, overall. Salem’s ordinance triggers over three offenses in just a one-month period. In Sweet Home, three offenses in a three-month period triggers the ordinance.
“Working with the agreement is trying to get folks to do what you want them to do,” Snyder said. If they do not comply, they still face fines and the possibility of having their property closed down. “It needs to be looked at with some extra wording to try to come up with some way of working with the person to get what you want done – but always have the hammer at the end to bring it to council (and to Municipal Court).”
Snyder said he liked the idea of a 15-day timeline to respond to the chief’s notification.
Present at the Public Safety Committee meeting were councilors James Goble and Susan Coleman, chairwoman of the three-member committee. Mayor and committee member Greg Mahler was absent.