<div>Friends and neighbors,</div>
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<div>It has been interesting to read back over some of the discussions of housing, maintenance, enforcement, immigration and related issues that this list has hosted over the last week. As I have been very consumed with trying to put together the FY 2011 budget proposal and preparing to explain it to both the council and town residents I am just now getting caught up a number of past emails--including most of the referenced discussion. Now that I am "semi" caught up, I'd like to ask a courtesy, and provide what I hope will be some useful contributions to the those who are interested. There is way to much to comment on everything, so I'm going to confine myself to things most directly related to town government activities.</div>
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<div>First, if you want my opinion or official position, please address me separately OR in addition to the list so that I know I am being asked to respond as opposed to simply being another person on the list who may or may not decide to read and or weigh in on a discussion.</div>
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<div>Regarding code and occupancy issues:</div>
<div>If there are specific violations, or accusations being made of violations of town code or law it is <font style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">improper</font> for me to discuss them in a public forum. If you feel that a specific violation has/is taking place and you don't feel it is being addressed, or you don't know who to contact, please mail me directly and I will work with you to get the situation addressed. </div>
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<div>Regarding immigration, residency and citizenship, I will restrain myself to a common understanding of current municipal law (law as explained through Maryland Municipal League, and advice from municipal attorneys). The United States has citizens. States, counties and towns have residents. Therefore, except in a few fairly well defined exceptions like felonies, direct employment and voting rights, a person's status as citizen (or registered or unregistered alien) is very rarely an issue for us to consider. Certainly in cases of code enforcement and use/occupancy such status is simply not relevant.</div>
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<div>The town is a home to residents and a workplace for persons from a wide variety of backgrounds and it is our policy to actively engage us ALL in making our town safe, clean and beautiful. Because our homes are greatly impacted by the actions (or lack of actions) of others in our neighborhoods, residents before us were granted a charter and then created town code to insure a certain minimum standard of upkeep. We work diligently to encourage compliance with town code and when necessary take actions to penalize those who do not obey the code. Because the accused and or cited have legal rights too, it is often frustrating to see clear violation go unabated for what seems like a long time but we in municipal government must follow our rules too. </div>
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<div>I find that almost always--though not quite--when I receive complaints about a particular property our code enforcement office already has an open case on the property. Because we have found that our code is sometimes overly cumbersome,we have moved in several instances to streamline the process of either penalizing, or moving to cleanup violations and bill the owners. This is an ongoing process and feedback from the community about your opinions and any frustrations will help us fine tune the code.</div>
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<div>Multi-family uses of single family homes is definitely a complicated issue for code enforcement. Until a few years ago this was exclusively an issue for the county, but in about 2006 our council adopted segments of county code on occupancy so that we can now address these matters too. We are still heavily dependent on the county for support in these cases, but since we can initiate such cases we are handling them better than in the past. </div>
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<div>The basic rule is there can be no more than 5 unrelated families/persons in a house, but this is rarely the real problem threshold. Problems of overcrowding usually include members of only two or three unrelated families. What we find is usually the best way to address difficult crowding situations are if there are clear violations of other types--illegal parking, violations of yard or trash disposal, etc. </div>
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<div>The threshold for throwing people out of their house is of course high, as it should be. </div>
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<div>I'm running out of time as I have tonight's meeting to prepare for. In closing please know our town council work session is tonight at 8 PM and next Monday night's Legislative session where the business of the town is actually transacted. One item on the agenda--may or may not be discussed tonight, but that will almost certainly be acted on next Monday night--is a reform of the code to allow for more vigorous enforcement of overgrown lawns.</div>
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<div>Best wishes to all,</div>
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<div>Vern</div>
<div><br>-- <br>Vernon Archer, Mayor<br>Town of Riverdale Park, Maryland<br></div>