Code violators, beware.
Walker County Sole Commissioner Bebe Heiskell plans to implement a new Codes Violation Court beginning in June that will handle citations from both the county's codes enforcement officer and its three animal control officers.
"We have all these great private property rights, but when you're infringing on someone else's property, something needs to be done," she said of properties throughout the county that are both health hazards and detrimental to local property values.
Currently the county employs one codes enforcement officer to cite violations across the entire 447-square-mile county, said Heiskell. Since the county is so big, she said the officer relies on filed complaints before following up with those property owners who may have a codes violation. Once the officer visits the property, she cites the property owner with a warning if there is in fact a violation. The warning expires after 15 days and the officer can summon the property owner to court if the property is still in violation of the code after the warning period expires.
One of the problems with the current system is the state court that handles Walker County codes violation offenses is already overloaded with traffic, civil and criminal cases, said Heiskell.
"These code violation cases get postponed a lot," she said. "They don't hold priority because it's not a crime; it's more of a misdemeanor."
Establishing the new court with the sole purpose of addressing codes enforcement issues will ideally mean the violations are resolved much quicker, said Heiskell.
"The court will meet every two weeks and will expedite this process," she said. "We need to clean this place up."
State Court Judge Billy Mullinax will be responsible for appointing a part-time judge to preside over the Environmental Court. An estimate for the cost of the court's implementation isn't known at this point.