Cactus Village Community

New Chronic Recidivist Enforcement in Effect

Jul 18, 2003

You may have heard that the city made changes to the Neighborhood Services Department?’s Code Enforcement Policy to better deal with properties that continually violate the city?’s ordinances. You may even have heard the new term ?“chronic recidivist.?”

Following is a quick explanation of the new chronic recidivist classification and how the city deals with properties that receive this designation.

The city adopted modifications to the city?’s code last summer.

Included in these changes was a new chronic recidivist classification and designation process. The Policy now provides direction to monitor properties with violations that took over six months to resolve to assure continued compliance after the initial enforcement case is resolved.

A chronic recidivist is a case on a property where within the last 24 months the property has had unresolved notice(s) of violation of the city codes for six months or more. This excludes time for administrative appeals or hardship assistance processes.

A chronic recidivist designation applies until the property has remained in compliance for past violation(s) and any of the common blight violations, for a period of 90 days following the date of designation.

Common blight violations include:

junk/debris, inoperable vehicles, fences in disrepair, outside storage, open/vacant buildings, graffiti, non dust-proof parking/parking in non-permitted areas of residential yards, weeds/vegetation.

Each property designated as a chronic recidivist is inspected at 30, 60 and 90 days following designation.

If any of the past violations and/or any of the common blight violations are found at the time of inspection, a new case is opened and is pursued through the expedited recidivist enforcement process.

The new chronic recidivist policy modification is an additional tool to use in assuring lasting compliance on properties which involved time intensive efforts to resolve. The chronic recidivist policy supplements the existing recidivist classification! enforcement process, which focus on expediting the enforcement of cases on properties that repeatedly are in violation.

For more information on this policy or to report a code violation, call 602-262-7844. . . ☻