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Boise code compliance officer outlines enforcement powers, limits and common challenges
Summary
Michael Garner, a City of Boise code compliance officer, told a commission work session the office enforces licensing, permitting and nuisance provisions, handles thousands of complaint-driven cases a year and is limited by statutory language, evidence rules and court precedent.
Michael Garner, a code compliance officer with the City of Boise, told a commission work session that his seven-officer code compliance team enforces licensing, permitting and many nuisance provisions but acts almost entirely on citizen complaints rather than through proactive inspections. "My name is Michael Garner. I'm a code compliance officer with the city of Boise, and I've been doing this for about 25, 26 years," he said.
Garner said the team focuses on Title 11 and related city ordinances covering licensing, permitting and public-nuisance issues and that its authority is constrained by state law and by the wording of local ordinances and conditions of approval. He described the office’s caseload and enforcement tools: "We handle right now somewhere between 3 and 4000 cases a year on average," Garner said, and the team can issue misdemeanor citations or, in limited circumstances, abate nuisances on private property.
The officer described three common practical limits on enforcement. First, abatement is legally…
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