HomeMy WebLinkAbout20070507 - VIII-C-5VIII-C-S
MEMORANDUM
TO: Honorable Mayor and City Councilmembers
FROM: Dave Osberg, City Administrator
DATE: May 3, 2007
SUBJECT: Building Safety Department Activities
Building Official Tom Bakken will be in attendance at the meeting on Monday May 7,
2007 to address three items with the City Council, and answer any questions the City
Council may have regarding the following:
a.) Attached First Quarter Report from the Building Safety Department
b.) Pending adoption of new building code provisions
c.) Recap of the Apri128,2007 Spring Clean Up Day
No action will be requested of the City Council, as Tom Bakken will be in attendance to
briefly address these items, and answer questions.
David M. Osberg
City Administrat5
First Quarter Report, 2007 City of Hastings Building Safety Department
The first quarter of 2007 has seen a slow down in construction permits in Hastings, reflecting
construction trends in the entire state of Minnesota in the last year. Commercial construction
hasn't slowed as much in Hastings as it has in some cities but residential construction has
definitely seen a down turn from the hectic pace of the past 12 years. Building Permit fees
collected in the first quarter of 2007 ($97,159) are less than half of the quarterly average of 2006
($218,395).
Typically winter construction is slower than the other seasons so these months give our
department time to catch up on open permits, to inspect and close, or send notices to check on
their status. Our Permit Technician Jane, Toenjes, does an awesome job of tracking open permits
and sending out notices to remind contractors and homeowners of the requirement to do final
inspections or notify us of project status. Other than permits issued prior to 2006 that are on going
or have been granted extensions all old permits have been finaled or closed. Jane is very good at
scheduling inspectors to open inspection time slots with unclosed caning and building permits to
inspect as the weather allows. A]1 of 2006 zoning permits have been closed as of the end of
March. Many siding, roofing, and window permits have been inspected and closed this winter
also.
To gain final disposition on a project, we send a letter to the owner. If we do not get a response, a
second letter is mailed, followed by a phone call. If we get no reply, we send out an inspector to
the site. If the project can be inspected from the exterior, we make a determination to "final" or
write corrections. If, after all these measures have been taken to gain a final disposition on a
project we get no response, the file is closed with `No Final Disposition' recorded on the permit.
This is rare occurrence as we usually get a good response from the letters.
Our department's inspectors have stayed busy with inspections, plan reviews, in-office customer
service, and onsite consultations. As of the end of March the inspections that were entered and
recorded were as such; Paul Swett 182, Ron Langer 147, Mike Anderson 156. While these
numbers are a useful indicator, they are not totally accurate because many onsite consultations
and re-inspections that occur on same day are not always recorded by our computer program. To
help with the process that the Building Official had performed in the past, Ron Langer and Mike
Anderson are now helping with the load of Commercial Plan Reviews. They have proved to be
competent at this duty helping us stay within our Guidelines for Plan Review turnaround time.
Our goal is to receive, review, and gain all needed information to be able to approve a set of plans
for a project within two weeks. Depending on the complexity of the job many times the review
time is much less.
Some of the projects we are currently reviewing and/or inspecting are:
- Wal Mar[ Expansion
- Coburn's Grocery
- Veterans Home 30 unit apartment building
- Hastings Office Building II
- 66 Unit Apartments Building
- Lions Park Shelter
- RJ's Tavern Expansion
- Con Agra Retaining Wall
- YMCA Building
- Sister's Coffee & Deli Shop
- Sunkist Tan (Remodeling the old Quizno's building and moving)
- Hastings Water Treatment Plant
- Midwest Products Industrial Park Building
Our Code Enforcement Officer Dawn West has been on 68 various Rental Housing Inspections
this quarter. This involves sending out notices and tracking down landlords, scheduling
inspectors, doing the inspection, writing corrections if needed, following up on for re-inspections,
and licensing. In addition, Dawn did approximately 61 inspections for City Code violations of
Property Maintenance this first quarter. Since late last summer Dawn has used door hanging
notices to alert homeowners that she stopped by there property if there was a property
maintenance violation. She usually gets a telephone response from the violator which saves a lot
of time from of the old method of writing letters when the person cannot be consulted on site.
Dawn does a good job of tracking and recording all properties within a data base with pictures,
inspection findings, inspection results, and all correspondence activity. Citations to Appear in
Court are sometimes issued by Dawn when compliance to City Codes cannot be met in a timely
manner.
The inspectors, Code Enforcement Officer, and Building Official all spent some time with
attending the Annual Building Officials School in January at the University of Minnesota and the
International Code Council Seminars in February in Brooklyn Park earning required continuing
education credits. I received very good response from our inspectors on the subject content and
instructors of these sessions. They found them most informative about their trades. The Building
Official attended the week long class put on by the Carlson School of Business Management and
found this to be very beneficial and applicable to the duties and profession.
As Building Official, I, Tom Bakken, have been involved with all Commercial Project Finals
Inspections, onsite consultations, and preconstruction meetings for all major projects. I estimate
that I've been involved in 40 inspections since the New Year. Sometimes accompanying building
inspectors, the code enforcement officer, or alone. I still perform many of the Commercial Project
plan reviews but am steadily transferring these duties to the two most senior inspectors, Ron
Langer and Mike Anderson. They have proved to be excellent inspectors and very capable of
handling these added duties. I still oversee the final result of the reviews which have always been
to our department's highest standards. We send an accompanying review letter with Commercial
Plans to make sure all important code items are noted to minimize questions and problems once
the project is started and underway. The Plan Review Process is a vital time to curtail possible
code issues.
Reallocation of these duties has allowed me to spend more time on administrative and
management duties. This quarter I wrote the Disaster Preparedness Plan for our Department and
am working currently with the entire staff of department heads on the city's Pandemic Flu
Preparedness Plan.
Once again I am coordinating the 8`h Annual Hastings Spring Clean Up for the residents to
dispose of items not picked up by regular garbage hauling or recycling. As started last year
Dakota County has agreed to help with the disposal of hazardous waste items at the same time
and location. Hazardous items can be brought to the collection by anyone in Dakota County. We
received very favorable comments and response from the public last year to the clean up effort
with over 500 vehicles showing up to dispose of household items. The city and county workers
that volunteer for this Saturday event have always been a great help and have stayed enthusiastic
(even when it last rained nonstop the through the whole event last year). The Green Mill has
graciously offered to feed the workers this year at a greatly reduced rate. Big thanks to Tim
O'Brien and Pat Regan of the Green Mill for their generosity.
We recently had to deal with a trash house on 18`" Street that was ordered by the city to clean up
their home to provide a safe, sanitary, living environment or the city would seek condemnation of
the property. Through the amazing volunteer help by concerned relatives the home got cleaned
out with 4 - 50 yards dumpsters of items being removed. Several local contractors donated time
and materials to the cause with a real sense of community pride. Inspector Mike Anderson and I
spent a couple of nights there helping with installing new doors, insulating, and dry walling. It
was a rewarding experience for all involved. Several relatives now have keys to the home to
monitor the current and future conditions to help prevent this from happening again.
Code Enforcement, Fire Marshall, a County Social worker, and I are working with another family
at the present time with a similar situation. Unfortunately, properties like this exist and can be
difficult getting immediate code compliance. Sometimes these situations involve dealing with
families that maybe dealing with many problems.
Code Enforcement Officer Dawn West is currently working on two slide show programs for the
city's website. One is for the Rental Housing Program and the other outlines our Property
Maintenance Codes. Both will be very informative with pictures as examples of typical violations
we encounter on inspections. Hopefully this will be a valuable tool for educating landlords and
citizens to enforceable codes in Hastings.
Once again we will be stepping up our Property Maintenance Enforcement this summer. Our plan
is to continue to investigate citizen complaints while also canvassing neighborhoods that have a
history of problems. We will send affected neighborhoods information via mail outlining
maintenance issues we will be looking for before inspecting. Our goal is to get self compliance
through education with out having to issue citations.
As in the past our office operations will be conducted using the same plan instituted two years
ago to help maximize customer service. We try to keep an inspector in office at all times with our
Permit Technician to assist the public and contractors with the permitting process and to answer
questions. This way timely information and assistance can be given to expedite the process.
Our entire Building and Code Enforcement Department has staff meetings every third week to
stay abreast of new projects, changes, and operating procedures. The building inspectors get
together weekly to discuss codes items and things they are seeing in the field to ensure
consistency in code enforcement. These meetings have been beneficial to the good working
relationships our workers share.
Beginning June 1, 2007 as mandated by the State of Minnesota we will be enforcing the new
2007 Minnesota State Building Code which references the 2006 International Residential Code,
2006 International Building Code, and 2006 International Fire Code, as mandated by the State of
Minnesota. We anticipate seeing more restrictive fire suppression codes with the change. We are
boxing forward to implementing these new codes because some codes have been rewritten since
the 2000 versions making them clearer to read and requiring less interpretation by Code Officials.
The entire Hastings Building Department has been educated and prepared to implement the new
codes.
The rest of 2007 should be interesting to see what building projects are proposed and if we see a
shift in the types of permits issued as a result of the market slow down. Our department certainly
stands poised and ready for the summer season.
Tam Bakken -Building Official