One of the bonuses at last week’s town hall budget meeting was a 20-page handout, called a community code compliance neighborhood assessment. It says the city did a fine job during the most recent 30-day period in identifying and correcting code compliance violations.
I don’t mean that to sound as sarcastic as it seems. The City Manager, for all of her other approaches to government, has always seen code enforcement as a priority (and certainly more than most of her predecessors). And I could nitpick the 30 violations that the report discusses, since code enforcement should be more than high grass, watering violations, and stray dogs. But this is progress in a city where the code enforcement department has always been under-staffed, under-funded and under-appreciated.
The other good thing about the report? Eddie Jackson, who is one of the neighborhood’s code representatives, was at the meeting, doing a fair amount of glad handing and well wishing. Putting a name on a face is always a fine way to do business. This part of town is in two code compliance districts; the dividing line is Mockingbird-Abrams-Gaston. If you’re north of that line, you’re in the northeast district (214-670-9703), and if you’re south of the line, it’s the central district (214-948-4088).
