MORGANTOWN — The City of Morgantown is looking to move to annual rental inspections instead of its current three-year rotation with the July 1 start of the 2021 fiscal year.
The dramatic increase in revenue generated by the uptick in inspections is included in the city’s 2021 budget, which will be up for public comment and second reading on Tuesday.
Roughly 60% of the city’s housing stock is comprised of rentals, according to outgoing City Manager Paul Brake — including some 8,300 apartments and 1,100 boarding/lodging units.
Code Enforcement Director Mike Stone said he approached Brake about the change after seeing the same violations repeatedly showing up on inspection reports.
“To be quite frank with you, I can’t tell you if these smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors and the other violations occurred five minutes before the inspector got there or five minutes after the inspector left three years ago,” Stone told Morgantown City Council. “The time gap is a big concern. The less time they’re unprotected, the better off we are.”
Stone said he believed his office could handle the increased work load, particularly with the addition of a new full-time housing tech position, which is also contemplated in the 2021 budget at a cost of $64,500, including salary, taxes, group insurance and pension costs.
Stone recommended inspection fees remain at $25 for apartments and $15 for boarding/lodging units, as they have been since 1999.
The 2021 budget projection anticipates $215,000 in inspection fees based on the switch. This is up from $94,800 in FY 2019. So far, the city’s has collected $80,000 in inspection fees in this fiscal cycle.
Brake said large apartment complexes aren’t typically the issue as they employ maintenance staff. He said it’s the single-family units and duplexes that tend to be in violation with more frequency.
“One of the issues Mike and I talked about … would be larger complexes being split into thirds. So a third of the complex would be inspected every year. Single family and duplexes would be inspected every year,” Brake said.
If city council adopts the 2021 budget on Tuesday, it will subsequently have to adopt changes to city code altering the inspection schedule.
“So we’d be revisiting this in April or May in order to tee this up for a July 1 implementation,” Brake said.
Tweet @BenConley_DP
