Taos staff outline proposed vacant-property rules and enforcement, including registration and fines

The town's code-enforcement team and public-works director presented a proposed ordinance to establish standards for vacant properties, a registration requirement, inspection authority and escalating fines for noncompliance.

Public-works Director Bill Evans and Deputy Planning Director Dina Gonzales described the draft as built from a review of several other municipal models and existing town enforcement steps. The ordinance would require owners to register a property that is vacant for an "appreciable period" (staff asked the council whether to set that threshold at 45 or 60 days rather than the 90 days in the draft), provide a local contact, and agree to exterior maintenance. Staff said registration would include a fee and that failure to register, refusal of inspection or failure to correct violations would trigger fines that increase over time.

Evans described enforcement options that already exist in the International Property Maintenance Code and said staff would prefer an inspection on registration to document conditions. "We're looking for the ability to inspect the exterior and, if there is evidence of a hazard, to have a legal basis to pursue interior inspection with appropriate warrants or owner permission," Evans said. Legal counsel on the call, Marcus Royal, cautioned that requiring interior inspections without owner consent risks Fourth Amendment challenges and possible statutory attorney-fee awards; he recommended careful, narrowly defined language that ties interior access to demonstrable health-and-safety concerns or to owner consent.

Code enforcement officer Chris Cordova described operational problems with current practice: red-tag notices (a step in the 5-step enforcement process) have been removed from properties in some cases, sometimes by occupants or passersby, undermining enforcement and public notice. Staff proposed adding a specific municipal fine for tearing down red tags to discourage that conduct and to preserve the public notice function.

Council members raised questions about how the ordinance would treat guest houses and secondary casitas, whether unpaid utilities or utilities turned off would automatically indicate vacancy, and how liens or town-funded abatement would operate. Staff said they would refine the draft, reduce the proposed vacant-time threshold to 45–60 days, clarify appeals (staff recommended following the land-use code appeal path), and return with legal language that makes interior inspections subject to constitutional protections while allowing documented, safety-based inspections and lien/abatement remedies where necessary.