Unified Effort: County, City Collaborate on Planning Codes

This article was in Sunday’s (October 15th, 2017) Herald and News

Written By: Stephen Floyd, H&N Staff Reporter 

City and County officials have begun working together to improve their code enforcement policies, with both sides saying such cooperation is a change for the better.

During a joint workshop last week, the Klamath Falls City Council and Klamath County Board of Commissioners detailed a plan to update their individual codes and, while they’re at it, find ways to make city and county policy more uniform.

“They’re two teams working together moving toward the same direction,” said Commissioner Donnie Boyd of the opportunity to combine efforts.

Currently, the city and the county have separate policies regarding land use, including how structures will be built, what land can be used for which purposes, and how these rules are enforced. A code violation could include garbage piling up on a property, a building in disrepair or substandard building practices.

Because the city limits and the suburbs are so close, officials said they want to look for ways to consolidate policy. Though not every rule can be made the same, councilors and commissioners said they don’t want one resident in the city and their neighbor in the Urban Growth Boundary to play by vastly different rules.

City Engineer Scott Souders said this task may not be as complicated as it sounds. He said some of the biggest differences are not a matter of regulation but a matter of wording, as some policies simply use different technical terms to detail the same concepts.

“It was very encouraging to see how close our community development ordinances are,” he said.

Souders said one of the first steps in bringing the policies together would be through a consultant to examine existing codes and recommend areas for improvement. The city had already begin looking for such a consultant and on Thursday Souder recommended using Portland-based Winterbrook to perform an initial assessment.

“Winterbrook really took the effort to go through and study things, and that really impressed us,” he said.

Initiation fee questioned

Souders said the initial assessment would look for areas where development codes need to be improved. He said Winterbrook would also consolidate existing codes into a simpler, more accessible document rather than the current system of trying to keep track of three decades worth of ordinances and changes.

“They’re providing us with a service to clean up this conglomeration of codes we currently have,” he said.

Souders said Winterbrook would charge $5,000 for the initial assessment, while a more thorough overhaul of development codes would cost closer to $100,000 or $200,000. Souders said part of the goal of the initial assessment would be for Winterbrook to take a deeper look at the state of city and county policy and come up with a more accurate estimate for the overhaul.

Boyd expressed concerns about this approach and said it would be like paying a car salesman $100 before he would recommend an appropriate vehicle.

“I think a business should invest in that on their own and then sell it to us,” he said.

Souders said the assessment is not merely research for a recommendation, but will result in a tangible product in the form of the consolidated codes. He also said the $5,000 assessment would not commit the city or the county to any further services.

During a vote to contract with Winterbrook and share the cost of the assessment, both the council and commissioners were in unanimous support.

Not all land use the same

Despite agreeing to move forward on code updates, officials were clear that many of the rules separating the city and the Urban Growth Boundary would stay in place.

Boyd said some residents who choose to live within the UGB do so because of their ability to keep livestock and larger animals on their property. He said these types of codes would stay in place for the county and not change just to conform with city code.

“We’re being sensitive to realize the citizens that live there that have animals — it’s important to them,” he said.

City Councilor Bill Adams one of the bigger problems he could see with crafting uniform codes would be signage requirements, as signs within the city are not allowed to be as large as in the county. He said business people and property owners should not be concerned about someone up the road suddenly erecting a 300 square foot sign as rules like this will likely stay in place.

“That’s one of the big ones, I think as far as some of that stuff goes,” he said.

Enforcement the key

City Manager Nathan Cherpeski he expects the changes will apply more to building codes including setbacks and heights. He said there would also be clearer language defining nuisance violations such as what constitutes illegal dumping.

And with uniform codes comes the idea of uniform code enforcement, namely the possibility of one person or group of people to enforce policy within the both city and the UGB.

Klamath Falls Police Chief Dave Henslee asked if the county would be interested in sharing the costs of a joint code enforcement employee and commissioners said, while this is not something they have discussed, it is not something they are opposed to.

“That’s probably a good idea, we should probably continue down that path,” said Boyd.

He said commissioners currently have one code enforcement officer for the entire county, who is assisted by a team of volunteers. Boyd said it is the county’s goal to see problems fixed rather than hand out tickets, but said the significant amount of paperwork to process just one violation can create a significant backlog.

“They do one day of investigations and they do four days of paperwork, which blows my mind,” he said.

Attack on blight

Henslee said his department sees a similar challenge in completing paperwork. He said they are also of the mindset that cleaning up blighted property is preferable to issuing a citation.

“We don’t want to write a ticket,” he said. “Compliance is the best option.”

In that vein, Henslee shared some of his experiences during a community cleanup event in Mills Addition in August when residents were offered a chance to dispose of refuse rather than let it accumulate. Henslee said the event became much larger than anticipated and volunteers did not have enough time to complete all their work.

Henslee said his lesson learned was, “Don’t take too big a bite of the apple,” and said any future cleanup events would need to be done in stages.

“We would probably do it a couple more times in that neighborhood,” he said. “It’s a lot.”

But aside from the large task that is code enforcement, councilors and commissioners both said they are encouraged by each other’s interest in cooperating.

“I’ve been around a long time, and this is somewhat of a rarity,” said Councilor Dan Tofell. “…I really appreciate the work that you’ve done and your cooperation.”

“I think both sides are using every tool they can,” said Boyd.

Any changes to city or county code would need to be approved through the open meeting process. Boyd said residents with concerns or input are always welcome to contact officials directly.

To read this article and others on the H&N website, please refer to the link below:

Unified Effort: County, City Collaborate on Planning Codes (H&N)

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