Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
QCS Managing Editor
Tucumcari should consider toughening its property maintenance codes and their enforcement in order to spruce up the city, Tucumcari City Manager Jared Langenegger told city commissioners at a work session Thursday before the regular commission meeting.
Langenegger presented ideas from research he conducted on code enforcement practices in comparable U.S. cities on how to toughen the city’s maintenance codes. Some cities, he said, mandate licensing of abandoned buildings. Others require they be insured.
The city’s current building codes have “no teeth,” Langenegger said. “We’ve conditioned people to think code enforcement is no big deal.”
Liens against property don’t result in action, Langenegger said, because they only apply when property is sold, and many properties in Tucumcari remain on the market indefinitely.
The city should consider measures that would enable it use funds raised by increased fines and better enforcement to hire demolition contractors to tear down dilapidated buildings.
Tickets and fines, he said, should be toughened. Citations should be sent if violation warnings are ignored.
The current assessment of $29 in municipal court costs when a property owner appears in municipal court for failure to maintain property does little to enforce building and property codes, Langenegger said.
Langenegger got strong agreement from Commissioner Rick Haymaker, whose Second District includes downtown Tucumcari and surrounding areas where abandoned properties are common.
“There are five Sands Dorseys on Tucumcari Boulevard just waiting for a match,” he said, referring to the Sands Dorsey building site downtown that has sat in ruins since 2007.
“I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere I’ve ever been,” he said of the city’s density of abandoned properties. “It reflects terribly on the city.”
The problem is complicated, he said, by unreasonably high prices being sought on many properties for sale that contain dilapidated buildings.
Commissioner John Mihm said if the city toughens its code enforcement, it should allow “plenty of time” at the onset of tougher measures to allow property owners to make adjustments before they are enforced.
Mayor Robert Lumpkin asked whether the new standards should apply only to newly opened cases or to old code-enforcement cases, as well.
Langenegger said they should apply “across the board.”
Lumpkin also said that acting too quickly on abandoned properties could lead to a “backlash” against tougher enforcement, especially if it lowers property values on sites subjected to enforcement.
Langenegger said the city should instead consider the increase in the value of properly maintained properties located near abandoned sites.
Lumpkin also said that increasing the rate at which derelict buildings are demolished could cause problems with the city’s trash landfill by making it fill up too quickly.
Lumpkin asked whether the city could require business properties to be insured. Langenegger said he would ask the city’s attorneys.
Mihm said it much easier to condemn and tear down a home than a business building.
Business buildings, he said, are subject to rules related to hazardous materials disposal more than most residential structures.
Mayor Pro Tem Ruth Ann Litchfield said, “We should hold them accountable,” about delinquent property owners.
