Volunteers to enforce codes is a smart idea

Pasco County government has a message for the public as it tries to meet a growing demand for services with a state imposed cap on property tax revenues: Pitch in.

This week the commission smartly embraced the idea of volunteer code compliance officers to supplement its paid staff. The move comes after the Code Compliance Division lost two officers through attrition in a 2007 hiring freeze.

It's not a unique idea. The Pasco Sheriff's Office also plans to expand its successful 34-person Citizens Service Unit. In 2007, its third full year of operation, the unit answered nearly 7,700 calls for deputies regarding traffic accidents, abandoned vehicles, parking violations, missing person searches and some misdemeanor crimes in which there was no immediate suspect. The Sheriff's Office calculates the unit saved the department more than $250,000 worth of personnel time last year.

Likewise, the county's Code Compliance Division, which relies on citizens to be the eyes and ears of the community, is seeking to formalize that arrangement by using civilians to bolster the dozen officers assigned to 12 individual zones around the county. The Code Compliance Division answered more than 15,000 complaints each of the past two years and manager Richard Ortiz said the county is on a record pace in 2008.

The department will train volunteers to look for trash, unlicensed or inoperative vehicles, illegally stored RVs and boats, and to make checks on chronic offenders. Violators will be issued notices to comply and the information will be forwarded to the zone officers who will be responsible for issuing formal citations if the problem is not resolved in a timely manner.

Some individual neighborhoods already do their own policing. In 690-home Magnolia Valley, for instance, a pair of volunteers patrols to enforce both neighborhood deed restrictions and county code violations including boats stored in front yards and overgrown lots. They take pictures of the violation and send a copy with a letter to the property owner. As many as 80 percent fix the offense voluntarily, said Roger Bogers, president of the homeowners association. The others are turned over to the county for more formal enforcement action.

Code compliance is a key components of maintaining older, more modest neighborhoods that lack active homeowner associations or accompanying covenants to ensure proper upkeep of property and a viable stock of affordable housing.

The proposed volunteer program is a sound way of asking people to invest their time, not just their money, to help make individual neighborhoods, and Pasco County as a whole, a more appealing place.

[Last modified January 9, 2008, 20:34:24]