By KIRSTEN LASKEY
Los Alamos Daily Post
kirsten@ladailypost.com
In the 2021 Los Alamos County code enforcement survey, the County achieved high marks as an excellent place to live. Nearly nine in 10 respondents rated Los Alamos as excellent or good. The public’s regard for the County’s code enforcement was another story.
Only three in 10 respondents felt code enforcement, land use and planning and zoning were good or excellent while seven in 10 graded these areas fair or poor.
Polco National Research Center, which was contracted to administer the survey, randomly invited 5,400 households to take part in a sample survey in December. Of that, 1,207 surveys were completed and submitted, which resulted in a 22 percent response rate.
In addition to the random sample survey, all residents were invited to take part in an open participation survey. This netted 233 completed surveys. The survey was part of an ongoing effort to revise Chapter 18 of the County Code, which is the Nuisance Code. Regarding the nuisance code, four in 10 respondents were not sure the current code requirements are appropriate while a greater proportion felt the existing code requirements were too excessive. Two in 10 said the current requirements were fine; three in 10 felt they were excessive and one in 10 said they were too lenient.
So, what approach did the survey participants think was best to take for code enforcement? Three in 10 said they didn’t know. However, a third of all respondents said code enforcement should continue as it has been, and a quarter felt enforcement should be proactive and compliance driven. About 14 percent felt it should be reactive and complaint driven.
As far as property maintenance issues being a focus for code enforcement, nine in 10 respondents felt actions or conditions that are harmful to public health and safety are essential. The survey did not yield surprises, Community Development Department Director Paul Andrus said. He pointed out that his department encounters folks daily who don’t want code enforcement at all and just as many who want enforcement to be carried out to the “very letter of the law”. Then, there are individuals who don’t have a strong feeling one way or another.
“The majority of the most vocal group seems to be opposed to any code enforcement,” County Planning Manager Bryce Ternet said. “Then there is a much more silent minority that contact us directly to be more stringent with code enforcement. There is that group as well.”
The survey results were presented to Los Alamos County Council Tuesday night.
During the meeting, the survey drew criticisms from the public and questions from council. Councilor Sean Williams and Council Chair Randall Ryti shared concerns that the survey’s questions and photographs were biased toward code enforcement.
Former Councilor Antonio Maggiore criticized the County and Polco for using photographs of his property without permission in the survey. Another member of the public, Elizabeth Daly, encouraged the County to follow the survey results and simplify the code to focus on health and safety issues. The survey results will be discussed again during the Community Development Advisory Board (CDAB) meeting at noon Feb. 28.
“We’ll have a discussion with CDAB and part of that will be to determine how some of the results may come into play for suggested recommendations to changes and improvements to the code,” Andrus said.
“I think probably the most important piece to this survey, and this was the whole point of having the whole survey done, was to get a feel for what people believe is the most important part of the code compliance …,” he added.
Essentially, Andrus said issues related to health and safety in neighborhoods were seen to be a high priority. After that, issues pertaining to weeds and outdoor storage materials may be lower priority items. This is all a delicate balance, he explained. What some people consider aesthetically pleasing, others do not. So, a balance does need to be struck so that the code can be appropriately administered. This is why Polco was hired, Andrus said, to help provide an objective point of view from the community.
“We as staff, want to know what we ought to be doing, what the community thinks is important and how we should go about doing it,” he said.
Los Alamos County’s code enforcement program is not much different than other communities, Andrus said.
“It’s pretty standard with respect to other high mountain, high desert-style towns,” he said; adding that other communities may differ in terms of water use and landscaping.
The County’s code enforcement has been evolving for a couple of years; for instance, Andrus said the process now begins with a friendly letter to a property owner before receiving a notice of violation if the issue isn’t resolved. If still not resolved, it will then go before municipal court. The process to resolve an issue has been extended, too. Andrus reported in 2021, the number of code cases opened were 587. These were instances that generated a courtesy letter. The number of notice of violations in 2021 was 55 and finally the number of citations was zero. No cases were brought to municipal court.
The hope with the work now being done on the County’s code enforcement is to get more clarity and more guidance, he said.
“If we’re going to be stewards of this process then we are hoping to get as much clarity as possible from the community and the council to make our jobs easier and have the code be a lot clearer, lot more understandable and hopefully work better for everyone,” Andrus said.
