Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Code Enforcement topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
County staff propose hearing-examiner budget and abatement fund to tackle long-running nuisance properties
Summary
After reviewing a large backlog of longstanding solid-waste and nuisance cases, county staff proposed that commissioners consider dedicated funding to cover hearing-examiner costs and an abatement fund; commissioners asked staff to wait until the legislative session ends and to return with a formal proposal.
Mason County staff used the Feb. 24 briefing to describe a persistent backlog of solid-waste, sewage and nuisance properties and to propose two fiscal tools intended to accelerate enforcement and cleanup.
Staff said environmental-health and community-development casework includes many multi‑year matters — dozens of open files older than five years — and presented examples of heavily contaminated lots, vehicle yards and encampment properties that have resisted voluntary cleanup. Existing enforcement paths include administrative fines, district-court (class C) infraction processes, hearings-examiner adjudication and county abatement. Staff said administrative fines rarely resolve the worst cases, hearings-examiner proceedings require substantial preparation and expense, and county abatement has no dedicated fund.
To address that, staff proposed two county investments for commission consideration: (1) approximately $180,000 to cover hearings-examiner costs and related case preparation (the staff estimate modeled one contested hearing-examiner matter per month handled by five code-enforcement staff), and (2) a $250,000 abatement fund to pay the immediate cleanup/contractor costs when the county must remove hazardous materials or perform a court-ordered abatement. Staff emphasized that using liens and tax-foreclosure powers can transfer responsibility to the county and trigger expensive remediation, so an abatement fund would allow the county to resolve selected properties while preserving options for recovery.
Commissioners asked staff to wait until the state legislative session concludes before bringing a formal funding request, and asked staff to investigate the county’s current contractual relationship with the hearings examiner and whether any restricted DCD or abatement funds could be repurposed. Staff will return with a written proposal after the session and with an inventory of long-running cases and their fiscal implications.
