Inspections fees for rentals, new construction, additions, alterations, etc. go into the cities general fund. The city council then sets the inspections departments budgets. Those programs take in more than they are budgeted to operate on. They make money for the city to spend on other things. If the fees went to the inspections departments then the departments would probably have more than enough money to do their jobs well and efficiently. This information came directly from one of the supervisors of the inspections department during one of my building inspection courses. My memory is not the best, and my notes are not with me, but I believe the city takes in about 13 million in building permit fees, but only gives the inspection department about 8 million to do its job. My numbers are probably wrong, but not totally inaccurate. Ron Leurquin Nokomis East
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 9:48 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Mpls] Who gets inspected? In a message dated 8/4/2003 6:31:11 AM Central Daylight Time, "Jim Mork" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >And doesn't inspections take tenant reports of problems as a way to choose places to inspect and also for possible legal action against false truth-in-housing reports? I hope so because it would be pretty insipid to ignore tenant complaints and inspect "whatever we can get to".< Jim is mostly right here, I think. The Housing Inspections department does respond to tenant complaints about unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Whether or not a property has been inspected for license doesn't matter--they will go out on both. They also work with the building trades inspectors on code compliance issues on owner-occupied housing. The Truth-In-Housing program is separate, and deals mostly with owner-occupied property. As for what they can get to, the Housing Inspections department predates the rental licensing program by many years. Rental licensing is less than 20 years old here. And, there has never been the budgetary commitment required to bring the program up to full speed, so the inspectors do rental licensing along with their other duties. This means that it's going to take a while to work through the many rental units. Now in theory, inspections programs are entirely supported by inspections fees, so I don't know a good reason why there aren't more inspectors doing the work faster. Certainly if the department had more inspectors, they could devote a lot more time to nailing "problem" properties. These problem properties do take up a large chunk of the inspectors' time. Often the owners challenge the inspections, meaning the inspector has to prepare presentations for court. Also, the more problems, the more follow-up work required. --M. G. Stinnett Jordan TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
