Very important City meeting: Code enforcement (successes/shortcomings), compliance, and threats to neighborhoods and businesses

The upcoming workshop in Lake Worth to discuss code enforcement is on Tuesday, May 10th, at City Hall beginning at 6:00.

Much has been done to improve code enforcement and compliance since that department was gutted by a previous City administration.* You can read about the many improvements in a recent Worth Noting newsletter by City Manager Michael Bornstein. However, there remain challenges and that's why this workshop was scheduled in response to the very high level of interest by the public.

Whether or not public comment will be permitted is to be determined soon. Nevertheless, public comment or not†, this meeting needs to have a large turnout from everyone in the City: neighborhoods, business community, and everyone interested in solving the challenges that remain. Here is information from the City's website:

Lake Worth City Commission Work Session
Agenda:
1. Roll Call
2. Pledge of Allegiance
3. Updates/Future Action/Direction
A. Discussion regarding Code Enforcement
Summary:
Discussion of the state of Code Compliance in the City and its processes. Presentation will look at the rules governing the code process, our successes and our shortcomings, and the obstacles facing a successful program going forward.
Background and Justification [excerpts]:

• The City of Lake Worth’s Code Compliance Division has undergone many fundamental changes over the past three (3) years including an aggressive Remediation Program implementation and increased compliance initiatives through the Use & Occupancy Inspection process as well as the City’s lien reduction incentives.
• In addition, policy direction on necessary changes to ordinances and programmatic priorities will be sought to address continuing challenges with code compliance and threats to neighborhoods and the business community.

MOTION: Formal actions cannot be made due to the workshop nature of the meeting.

*Susan Stanton, the City's former city manager, later admitted to a resident that gutting code enforcement was 'a mistake but was acting under the direction of certain commissioners'. Read about that using this link.
†If you have a code enforcement issue writing letters to the editor (sans the pertinent facts for the readers) isn't going to help very much unless, of course, you have political objectives. In that case the editor(s) at the Post will do anything to help.