Published: November 22, 2008 08:04 pm      

Posed rental inspection ordinance in Charlestown gets mixed views

Long-time Pleasant Ridge resident says his neighborhood has deteriorated

John Gardner grew up in Charlestown’s Pleasant Ridge neighborhood in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s.

Back then, it wasn’t a fancy neighborhood, he said, but it was always clean.

Now Gardner thinks the area has become a major eyesore in the city — and he hopes a rental inspection ordinance introduced to the City Council will help make it clean again.

“It’s very long overdue in that area,” Gardner said. “That area has been ignored for years. Growing up there, it was never

real fancy but it was always clean; to see it in these conditions now, it’s really sad.

“It’s just unsafe — the wiring, the windows — there’s a lot of updating that needs to be done.”

And Gardner can’t see how anyone would object to an ordinance that would make the housing safe for renters and increase the value of the property for landlords.

But a handful of rental property owners attended the last council meeting to voice their opposition to the ordinance.

The ordinance would require annual safety inspections of rental properties for a $35 fee, and property owners would have to get a certificate of compliance from the city following the inspection.

If the inspection finds unsafe conditions, the violations must be corrected before the certificate will be issued. The property owner has 30 days to fix the problems, and upon passing another inspection, would be issued a certificate by the city.

If the property is still out of compliance after 30 days, the owner would be cited and will have to appear before the Board of Public Works.

“[Charlestown] has issues — all communities do,” said city Building Inspector Tony Jackson. “We’ve got problems throughout Clark County, the older homes are starting to show their age. But we’re not after any one person.”

The property owners who object to the ordinance said it unfairly targeted Pleasant Ridge — in its initial form, the inspections would start in that neighborhood as a way to test the ordinance on a small portion of the city. Jackson, in working with property owners, revised the ordinance to include properties from all the city districts prior to introducing it at the previous meeting.

At the meeting, Councilman Mark Goodlett motioned to table the ordinance for 60 days to “tweak.” Goodlett, who owns a rental property in Pleasant Ridge, said that property owners were simply unsure exactly what the inspections entail and the extra time will allow the council to clarify parts of the ordinance.

“I wasn’t a big supporter of that [original] version,” Goodlett said. “I’ve been working with some of the landlords, the city attorney, the building inspector. All this [ordinance] is going to do is get everybody on the same page.

“A lot of [opposition] is an education problem,” he said. “We’re going to tweak a few things to get a workable ordinance that will pass.”

Gardner accused Goodlett of having a conflict of interest because he is a rental property owner. Goodlett, though, said that abstaining from voting on the rental safety ordinance would be the same as abstaining from voting on a speeding ordinance because he might speed.

“The [ordinance] just needs to be clarified,” he said. “If [property owners] know what inspectors are looking for, renters can point out deficiencies, and it benefits the landlord because they know what they need to do.”

Mayor Bob Hall has said he supports the inspection ordinance. Goodlett said the ordinance is unlikely to return for a vote before the end of 2008.