Tall grass, disabled cars and dilapidated buildings are a few of the codes violations that litter some DeKalb County neighborhoods and Gil Turman wants to see that change.
During a presentation to the board of commissioners Tuesday, Turman pleaded for help in enforcing the county’s codes.
“I don’t mean to sound like I’m scolding,” he said. “But I’m emotional about this. We are citizens who want to live in decent surroundings, but for a number of reasons some of us don’t.”
Turman is part of a group advocating for a volunteer citizen board of compliance, which could address some common neighborhood violations in a timely manner.
But the problem isn’t as simple as enforcing the existing codes, said Commissioner Larry Johnson. He said many of the laws are tough to enforce because they are poorly written. Those issues need to be addressed first, Johnson said.
“ (A citizen board) is only part of the equation, not the whole equation,” he said.
The proposal of the volunteer board comes from the CEO’s Advisory Council on Code Enforcement, which Turman chairs. In August, county chief executive Burrell Ellis established a code enforcement task force, and from that came the advisory council.
Presenters said such boards currently exist in Fulton County and in Alpharetta.
As proposed, the board would help alleviate the caseload borne by the Reorders Court, where code violations are heard, said Andrew Baker, interim director of planning for DeKalb. The citizen board would review common violations such as parking on unpaved surfaces, inoperable, unregistered or unlicensed vehicles, overgrown grass and unsecured structures.
The commission understands the urgency for change, but cautioned the petitioners not to move too quickly.
“You won’t be an effective code compliance board if there are laws that need to be examined,” Johnson said.
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