Posted on December 11, 2017
Author Jacque Ryan, WKVI
North Judson Code Enforcement Officer Joe Leszek provided an update about the code enforcement program that was implemented in mid-July.
Leszek said that they’ve seen good results and they continue to make improvements. He alerted council members that Town Marshal Kelly Fisher is currently working on a procedure to “put a little more teeth” into the abandoned vehicle policy.
He also mentioned that for the first few months, they were being more lenient by giving warnings and allowing people a few weeks to deal with citations. However, he said now that they’re more than six months into the code enforcement program, they’ll cut that down to 48 hour warnings and then ticketing if the issue is not handled.
North Judson’s town photographer Peggy Bohac presented a concern that she received from a fixed-income resident who was worried that stricter code enforcement could result in fines that would potentially be unmanageable.
Marshal Fisher responded, saying as long as citizens are making a noticeable effort to correct the violation, then they will not be continuously fined. Fisher and Leszek agreed that there is a difference between an individual who is obviously making an effort and someone who is blatantly disregarding the violation notification.
Additionally, Leszek suggested that the town council members go through the existing codes and pick out any that seem outdated. He proposed removing or amending irrelevant ordinances to avoid having people doubt the legitimacy of ordinance enforcement.
Leszek explained, “I’d hate, as we’re really cracking down on some of the ordinances, some of the ones that are very out dated, get somebody that wants to kind of start really being picky and say well you wrote a citation for this and not for that.”
Council President Wendy Hoppe asked him to look into towns of a similar size and compare their existing ordinances to North Judson’s in order to get some inspiration on what to add, remove or edit.
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