Claiming it costs $15, 551 a year to monitor and provide emergency services to a single boarded building, city leaders recently raised fees dramatically for boarded buildings while creating a civil fine process for building code violators.
Aimed at deterring rogue actors in the building industries and real estate ownership, elements of Title 18 in city code have been significantly revised.
Besides intending to recoup its costs, the city is also trying to make bad actors feel the pain in their pocketbook – thanks to the new tools of civil enforcement created for the division of Building Services.
Building code noncompliance will now cost owners by the day, and the city is willing to let those fines rise to $14,000 yearly (the cap set by small claims court).
The problem
What if a contractor built an addition to an existing structure that exceeded the scope of permits and encroached on an adjacent property? Can the city do anything about it?
What about a boarded building that’s getting broken into again, or a big construction project that isn’t controlling its dust?
Prior to code changes initiated by the city council in 2022 and approved earlier this month, building officials could only resort to “enforcement by stop work order and criminal proceedings,” according to city council staff reports. Apparently criminal proceedings have not been pursued very often.
Until now the city had no other way of enforcing its entire building code.
Now Title 18 has enforcement teeth based in civil fines, including a schedule where penalties accrue daily, modeled on the city’s zoning code provisions for dealing for non-compliance in Title 21A.
With the addition of increased administrative fees, the city can now hope to recover its costs. Accountants at City Hall claimed that only 5% of service costs for boarded buildings were being covered by the old fee structure. The latest sum shows a boarded building costing the city $15,551 a year to monitor and provide emergency services to.
New Building Services chief Troy Anderson, speaking at a city council work session, said he didn’t know when Title 18 was last revised but that he had been looking at a copy of the code printed in 1996.
Anderson joins the city as Building Official at a momentous time, gifted a handy new civil enforcement tool to get compliance from builders and property owners.
The new enforcement regime
In city council presentations, Anderson was flanked by Antonio Padilla, manager over the city’s civil enforcement process. Padilla led the Council through the Administration’s changes in fees, fines, and process that sought to meet the council’s desires to recoup expenses, deter negligence from owners of boarded buildings and persistent code violators. The council approved all of the proposals.
Boarded building:
Previous registration fees (yearly):
$902 for the first year and $1,546 after the first year
New registration fees:
Years 1+2: residential $3000; non-residential $6000
Years 3-5: residential $600; non-residential $9000
6 years or more: residential $9000; non-residential $14000
For a contributing structure in a local historic district or a landmark site: $14,000
If the city has to hire a contractor to board a building after 10 days of non-response from owner, it passes on the contractors’ charge (usually ~$500) as well as a $500 administrative fee, costing the negligent owner in the neighborhood of $1000 just for the boarding.
New civil enforcement fines for violations of building code (Title 18):
$100/day for each violation; violation of stop work order is more serious, at $250/day.
In addition, revisions to Title 18 stipulate that no building permit will be issued if the applicant is subject to enforcement proceedings in Chapter 18, building code, or chapter 21A, zoning code. (18.20.100)
The city’s process consists first of a Notice of non-compliance, and an Order to correct it. If not corrected and the city has to pay to bring the property up to code, cost recovery will be pursued in court and an abatement lien can be placed on the property.
Here’s the old and new fee schedule. Old is struck through, new is underlined. From the Legislative Draft of Title 18.
City council staff reflected confidence that increased fines will increase compliance: “Implementation of the assessment of daily fines for civil violations will make the fines high enough that they will not be ignored by the property owner or contractor. This will give us a better enforcement tool for future construction violations and decrease the number of violations not rectified.”
Addressing rogue neighborhood infill
Neighborhood infill was also on the mind on the council, particularly Avenues representative Chris Wharton (D3). His frustration with the broken system was apparent in the May briefing.
“I think about construction projects in my district that have been sitting and have been issues for the neighborhood since before I was elected and now I’m in my seventh year and they’re still there,” he told Padilla and Anderson.
Commenting on the inability of the city to correct malfeasance by rogue neighborhood-scale projects, Wharton continued: “I still don’t know why we didn’t have the process in place for the civil side. I don’t know why it’s an either-or [civil or criminal] because there was the fact that they had exceeded what the permit was for and there was the fact that they were trespassing on the other person’s property and we wouldn’t do either. We wouldn’t address either.”
Building officials explained that they stay out of civil suit proceedings between private parties (in this case neighbors). Not satisfied with the city’s scope of action, Wharton returned to his example: “They exceeded the permit and they trespassed on the other person’s property [then] they come into compliance by stopping trespassing but they still have a permit that exceeds it. Or they get a permit that expands the scope of what they’re doing but they don’t have to fix the damage caused by their trespass.”
“Do you see how it could be like you’re coming into compliance but you haven’t actually solved the problem that you caused to the abutting property?” he asked.
What triggers an inspection? Call it in
No new enforcement triggers were added to the code – they remain complaint-generated.
While the city inspects buildings that are boarded once a month, there is no regular inspection of construction sites.
Anderson, the new head Building Official, told us in an email: “Our inspectors visit permitted construction sites when the permit holder schedules inspections or on a complaint basis. For non-permitted construction, we visit the sites on a complaint basis. With the large amount of work going on in SLC, it would be difficult to maintain a scheduled revolving presence for all construction projects.”
Padilla, manager of civil enforcement, noted to the council at its briefing in May that his team does quadrennial apartment inspections.
The city receives complaints at its Civil Enforcement Division at 801-535-7225, or civilenforcement@slcgov.com. It also encourages people to use its smartphone app, MySLC, to report noncompliance.
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