By Stephanie Prokop, Staff Writer
BORDENTOWN CITY — A task force intent on bringing city buildings up to code is hard at work, according to City Commissioner Jim Lynch and code enforcement officer Charles Gant.
Sparked by residents’ complaints, the City Commission and Police Department created a task force including themselves, police officers, and two part-time code enforcement officials aimed at bringing city buildings up to code.
The task force issues citation notices to landlords who refuse to clean up their properties.
Mr. Gant said violators get two citations, and if they still fail to clean up their properties, they are issued a summons to appear in Municipal Court.
At a meeting in early May, many residents complained that landlords have not been properly maintaining residences, degrading the curb appeal of other city residential units.
Residents urged the commissioners to hire additional help for the city’s one part-time building code enforcement official, a request Mr. Lynch said commissioners have acknowledged.
“We feel if we learned one thing from that public hearing in May it was that the residents are not happy with the (unmaintained) properties in the city,” said Mr. Lynch.
The task force will examine which properties need to be cleaned up or demolished if the owners refuse to perform maintenance.
Commissioners have acknowledged that code violations are scattered throughout the 1-square-mile town.
Mr. Lynch said Monday that there are currently five properties the task force is focusing on.
“To date, we haven’t had to do anything too drastic to get these properties cleared up,” he said.
Mr. Gant, hired as the part-time code enforcement official, said the process is “going well,” and that the most important thing the task force is focused on is issuing citations.
“We really try to work with them (the landlords and homeowners) and give them time to clean up,” he said Tuesday.
He acknowledged that with the high cost of energy, gas, and food, it may be a task that proves a bit difficult for some property owners.
“It’s tough today, with the economy the way it is,” he added.
He said compliance with some landowners has been easy, while others will likely end up with a summons to appear in Municipal Court.
A 30- or 60-day timeframe in which landowners have to clean up isn’t necessarily applied to every case, he said.
Instead, the code task force looks at multiple factors in determining the length of time given to each particular landowner.
“If someone has tall grass growing in their yard, we look at the reasons why that might be occurring. Do they have an illness or another reason why they can’t immediately get to that?” he asked.
He added in that example the code officials may be more lenient than to a landlord whose structure is dilapidated.
“These are the decisions you have to weigh,” he said.
A court summons would be issued after two notices, he said.
“I’d much rather settle with someone out of court, because the money that they would have to come up with to go to court could be money used to repair the properties,” he said.
Mr. Gant declined to comment specific neighborhoods that needed to be cleaned up, citing potential litigation for some specific property owners.
He added that he was working on issuing court summonses for landlords who have refused to comply with the zoning officials’ warning notices.
On the whole, he said he is pleased to be enforcing code in the municipality, and stressed that he and the other zoning officials are “not villains,” and they “much rather work with homeowners than go to court with them.”
Mr. Lynch said previously that if the buildings are not suitable for demolishing, the city would likely bond for the value of the buildings and recoup the money once they are sold.

