Burnsville council wants to beef up property inspections
Country Village has members rethinking past budget cuts
by John Gessner
Thisweek Newspapers
After the Country Village Apartments debacle, Burnsville City Council members are looking to restore building inspections services that were cut during a period of budget retrenchment.
“Hindsight’s 20-20,” Council Member Mary Sherry said during a Jan. 27 council retreat. “I think we really made a big mistake in cutting staff in this area. … I think we have to increase staff.”
Burnsville should enforce its property code more proactively, not just respond to complaints like it usually does, Sherry said.
The city eliminated 1.5 building inspection positions as part of $3.5 million in budget cuts that began in 2009 and continued with adoption of the 2010 budget. The sweeping cuts claimed 20 full-time city positions across departments.
The city now has one full-time building inspection position shared by two staffers charged with enforcing the city’s property maintenance code.
Since last May, building and fire inspectors have spent hundreds of hours on Country Village, the apartment complex near Savage plagued by disrepair, mold and pests.
The effort culminated in the Jan. 18 revocation of the complex’s 2012 rental license after owner Lindahl Properties missed a Jan. 15 deadline for meeting fire codes, which involved mass replacement of doors. The deadline was one of several the city imposed on Lindahl as conditions for keeping its license.
Now tenants of the 138-unit complex must find new homes by March 1.
“I really think we need a full-time housing inspector,” Council Member Dan Gustafson said, noting that Burnsville has some 8,200 apartment units.
“If we had been doing this all along, we’d have found out about Country Village three years ago or more,” he said.
Council Member Dan Kealey said widespread media coverage of Country Village has given Burnsville’s entire apartment stock a “huge black eye.”
He called for inspections of all complexes in the city to get a handle on other maintenance problems but also to demonstrate that Country Village isn’t the norm.
“This Lindahl situation, I think, needs to be put in its place in context of the rest of the city as quickly as possible,” Kealey said.
He defended the staff cuts, saying the city was “under severe financial pressures” at the time.
“We had no clue we had an apartment complex with such horrendous condition,” Kealey said.
Country Village’s problems came to light after residents brought complaints to firefighters responding to a kitchen fire at the complex.
“When we saw those pictures of that place (taken by city inspectors), I was floored,” Kealey said. “It was like another world. That can’t happen in Burnsville.”
It’s not just apartments, Sherry said; the complaints she gets from citizens are aimed at ill-kept single-family properties.
“I’ve not had one that wasn’t right on,” Sherry said. “There definitely were maintenance issues.”
“We’ve got some strip malls we need to have a serious look at, too,” Gustafson said.
He and Kealey called for fees on property owners to offset inspection costs.
Council Member Bill Coughlin said beefing up inspections “sounds good,” but he wants to see “hard numbers” first.
The matter will be placed on an upcoming council work session agenda.
John Gessner is at john.gessner@ecm-inc.com.
