KINGWOOD — Kingwood Council got advice from an expert this week on what it needs to do, in order to enforce its building maintenance codes.
Mike Stone, director of code enforcement for the City of Morgantown, talked with council by phone Tuesday evening. Council has been discussing contracting with a certified code inspector and contacted Stone for input.
An inspector is required in order to enforce some city ordinances dealing with dilapidated or unsafe properties.
Stone explained the first step is to adopt the International Property Building and maintenance codes. Council believes it did that in 2017. Then an appeals board has to created. That hasn’t been done yet.
As the discussion continued, Stone said it sounds like what Kingwood wants is a building maintenance inspector. A building inspector inspects new construction, while a maintenance inspector could enforce everything from codes on dilapidated and unsafe buildings to those on junk vehicles.
“I don’t know anything that isn’t covered,” by the maintenance code, Stone said.
He said he would ask his staff if anyone is interested in contracting with Kingwood. He also suggested Kingwood contact Morgantown’s acting city manager and said he would send reference information on the appeals board makeup to Kingwood.
“We need to move forward with this. Some of these buildings we’ve been fighting for two years,” to get cleaned up, Mayor Jean Guillot said.
Office assistance
City Clerk Michelle Whetsell said accountants hired to examine city records were in the office last week. They found “numerous things that haven’t been done, so it’s going to take time to get some of these things cleaned up,” in financial records, she said.
That included expenses coded incorrectly, tax distributions not entered correctly and citations not entered into the system.
“They gave us a pretty long list of things we’ll need to correct and then they want to give us the next set of things,” Whetsell said.
It’s going to take time.”
Time is something city office workers don’t have, she said. Everyone has more to do than time to do it, she said.
“I feel like we’re in the situation we’re in because the city clerk didn’t have the time to be city clerk,” Whetsell said.
She asked council to hire another office worker. It voted to allow her to hire a full-time worker through a temporary employment agency. Whetsell said having someone for even three months would be helpful.
Also Tuesday, Preston Circuit Judge Steve Shaffer swore in Tina Turner to fill the council seat vacated by Whetsell when she took the clerk’s job.
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