City ponders permit office for new homes
The Olney City Council discussed whether to use the money earned from the sale of 10 foreclosed lots to fund a building permit department that could expedite approval and inspections for the building boom expected in the City this year.
The City received $52,000, minus payments to other taxing entities, from the sale of 10 foreclosed lots from Crombie Properties of Olney LLC, which plans to build homes and duplexes on them. Cara Crombie said she would consider building more housing in Olney if things go smoothly.
The Council also recently approved using funds designated for a new police officer to allow Officer Joe Logan to become a full-time code enforcement officer to tackle the City’s efforts to clean up dilapidated and abandoned houses and lots. The question, Mayor Rue Rogers told the Council, was what to do with the funds.
“I think we need a central place for builders and rehabbers to get resources,” Mayor Pro Tem Tom Parker said. “We’ve got to develop some professional services that we don’t have. We need to grease the skids to make it easy for builders to come in and build.”
The new permitting department would handle inspections and permitting and requests for variances, and bring recommendations to the Council rather than having citizens petition the Council directly. Councilmember Harrison Wellman said the Council needed “to let everybody know that this is the direction we’re going.”
Olney Police Detective Dustin Hudson, who will soon hand over code enforcement duties to Officer Logan, suggested that a new permitting department should let builders and rehabbers know through flyers, mailings, and social media posts that “you have to be licensed, bonded and insured to work inside the City.”
“Graham has this stuff. They went through this when they got a fulltime code enforcement officer,” he said.
The Council also considered amending an ordinance that prohibits living in recreational vehicles inside the City but outside an RV park to accommodate residents who are rehabbing homes in response to a request for a variance by Clifford Williams who is remodeling 814 S. Avenue C. “We need to create an ordinance to make sure that wastewater [lines are] being inspected,” Mayor Pro Tem Tom Parker said. “We ought to have a rule that everybody has to follow.”
The Council agreed to write an addendum to the existing ordinance to encourage residents to fix up homes that otherwise might be torn down yet prevent people from “living in RVs in their driveways,” Mr. Parker said. The measure will be presented at the April 10 City Council meeting.
The City is having trouble finding a surveyor to redraw lot lines at Lake Olney. The Council has been struggling for nearly two years to redraw lot lines and modernize lease agreements at the recreational lakeside lots, where several residents had set up permanent homes in violation of city ordinances. As of March 27, 21 lots remain leased and 16 were vacant, Mrs. Pagsuberon said. “We have quite a few empty lots but I don’t know if we want to encourage people to pick them up before the survey is done,” she said. Assistant City Attorney Dan Branum said he had a few surveyor contacts that she could try.