City guilty again !!!!

From Council meeting 9-15-14.  The City of Little Falls has done few if ANY rental inspections since 2009. 

THIS IS SHOCKING AND TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE, and possibly violates state rental housing law.  Rental inspections are done for the safety of renters.  It seems to me that the city could care less about making sure that slum landlords are held accountable for providing safe housing to our residents.

Here is the background:  The City has had a housing inspection program in place since 2002 at which time a license fee was established for rental housing units.  This fee is set at 10$ per unit and is now generating revenue of nearly $14,000.00 per year. In reviewing the past history of the program, it was noted that while the City continues to collect the fee, little has occurred in the area of inspections for the past number of years for a variety of reasons.  The suspension of activity likely occurred due to the desire to update the current housing code and to develop an administrative fine process, both of which were authorized in 2009 and are not yet completed.  staff has had a number of conversations about the program and we feel that it needs to be reenergized. This will include restarting the regular inspection of rental housing units, a review of the City Code pertaining to housing maintenance(owner-occupied and rentals) and the ability to issue administrative fines for violations.  Additionally, I have had a conversation with the Police Chief to have the Housing Inspector work closely with the Police Department to help address blight conditions in the community. 

Mayor Cathy VanRisseghem stated that the police have discovered 4 meth labs during their inspections for blight recently.  Is this legal?   Use blight to get onto property and into homes, and then arrest for drug use?

It is important to note that this was occurring under the direction of the former co-city administrators Jerry Lochner and Lori Kasella.   They obviously didn't do their jobs correctly or this would never have happened.