The City’s ‘Rat Pack’

Here is one thing former President Richard Nixon and former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover might have in common if they were alive today: They would love Roswell’s city code enforcement policy.

Both men tried to use legitimate government programs to harass their political nemeses. Nixon attempted to use the IRS to audit those on his infamous White House “enemies list.” Hoover supposedly investigated those he believed to be foes of the Bureau and was accused of keeping extensive files on their personal and professional lives.

The city’s code enforcement approach, long thought by many local business owners to be overzealous, does not have the manpower to comb the city for legitimate violations. There are five code enforcement officers covering a city of 85,000 people with over 3,200 businesses. The code officers themselves are not the problem. It is the system that’s broken.

Because they are undermanned, the city’s Department of Community Development, under Director Kathleen Field, depends on an old fashioned “snitch line” and anonymous complaints for tips to pursue unsuspecting city code violators. Their policy is to follow-up on all complaints, regardless of their frivolity.

In fact, when you call Vicki Barclay, director of code enforcement at City Hall, her voice mail in part says, “If you would like to register a complaint or check on one, please leave the address of the location you are calling about.” Talk about encouraging a “rat out.”

The power of the snitch line is that if done properly by people in the know, it is completely anonymous, so the snitch can’t be identified.

Field’s department has an internal policy to follow-up on every complaint, no matter how meaningless or outlandish it may be. This is not an ordinance or a Roswell law. It’s just a policy, set by city bureaucrats and apparently condoned by Roswell elected officials. Your tax dollars at work!

Here is the problem with such a barbaric, antiquated and intellectually corrupt process: Because the city has chosen to pursue and investigate every complaint, this form of tattling encourages dubious agendas and harassment. For example, if one business is competing with another, they can register a code violation complaint against their competitor and revel in the fact that the city will go after it. The same can be said for political opponents. They can, in effect, use the city’s very broad code enforcement guidelines and staff to bedevil their opponents or to “send a message.”

Think this is not being done? Guess again.

(The Beacon experienced this first hand when it was hit with a city code violation directly stemming from an anonymous complaint filed the same day someone the Beacon was investigating became aware of it).

This Neanderthal policy of reacting to all complaints takes reasonable subjective judgment out of the hands of the code enforcement professionals. Remember the Flag Day and war memorial truck debacle at the Carl Black dealership that caused such a huge uproar with local veterans?  Both investigations were spurred by an anonymous caller on the city’s “fink” line.

Did some anti-war radical-type file an anonymous complaint about U.S. flags being put on Hummer antennas on Flag Day? The horrors! Or maybe it was a competitor car dealership up the road that was losing business to Carl Black. Whoever it was, it was ludicrous to give out citations on Flag Day, but the code officer’s hands were tied.

It’s time the City Council change this archaic style of enforcement and put some common sense and accountability into the city’s code enforcement procedures.