There’s city council support for a Committee of the Whole meeting to air issues with the city attorney’s project to expand the types of ordinance violations the city will hear in-house. I think the CoW is going to happen, and I’ll keep you posted. If so, it’s an excellent development, and shows council’s responsiveness to…
Tag: code enforcement
County support of Frieders’ initiative?
So as we were saying the other day, DeKalb city attorney Dean Frieders made a pitch for in-house adjudication of local ordinance violations via administrative hearings. To be clear, DeKalb already does administrative hearings, but it’s limited to violations related to the administrative towing ordinance, parking citations, and city-issued licenses. So what we’re talking about…
The hidden agenda item
At the end of last week’s council meeting in DeKalb, city attorney Dean Frieders presented an argument for in-house adjudication of ordinance violations. Currently, DeKalb conducts administrative hearings on very minor ordinance violations at city hall once a week as an administrative branch of the circuit court. Frieders’ plan would detach DeKalb from the county-level…
We don’t need a code enforcement SWAT team
DeKalb city council will discuss its condemnation procedures at committee of the whole Tuesday, May 29, beginning 5 pm. Proposed changes are here. What I like about the proposal are the addition of follow-up steps: to gather contact information on residential tenants for ongoing notification purposes, and to assist evacuees to relocate. One thing that…
The Hooplah in Elmhurst
Sometimes it helps perspective to check out what other communities are doing. DeKalb’s not the only municipality with code enforcement that sometimes looks inconsistent or arbitrary. I’ve been following such a story in Elmhurst for more than a year. A documentary about the Elmhurst controversy is titled “Hooplah” and residents have adopted the same name…
Will DeKalb learn from the departure of Tinez Tacos?
Last weekend I found out that the owners of the Tinez Tacos food truck have worked out a parking spot in Malta, and will serve from 11am to 7pm weekdays this summer at Hickey’s Corner Store. If comments at the City Barbs Facebook group are any indication, residents of DeKalb wish them well in their…
Mayor Smith’s first year
Daily Chronicle offered a recap today of DeKalb Mayor Jerry Smith’s first year as mayor. It’s refreshing to find myself in agreement with much of the assessment of the current situation, though I still have serious concerns. “I think most citizens are pretty much aligned with what we as a council are trying to do…
Sycamore food trucks are lucky trucks
City of DeKalb and the Daily Chronicle are still batting around the food truck issue, which is about whether DeKalb’s regulations and fees are reasonable. Well, you tell me. Sycamore charges a fee to cover the cost of the initial background check plus $50 per year for the license. DeKalb requires a background check fee,…
Lord Stanley’s, FOIA requests, and questions of consistency
It’s a story that won’t die. That’s because DeKalb handled condemnations of Lord Stanley’s and Stanley’s Annex poorly, but officials still won’t admit to errors except to say they should have treated the residents of the upstairs apartments better (i.e., the city should not have threatened them with imminent eviction). This week the Daily Chronicle…
City emails reveal tactics in the condemnation of Lord Stanley’s
Emails obtained by a member of the City Barbs Facebook Group indicate City of DeKalb worked the Lord Stanley’s and Stanley’s Annex condemnations of April 6 in a decidedly business-unfriendly manner, and then blamed social media for frightening residential tenants with impending forcible eviction. As indicated in last weekend’s post, the city failed to follow…