Inspector: more than half of recent Frostburg rental inspections lack compliant smoke alarms; council to consider code wording and phased notice

A city inspector reported at a Frostburg work session that more than half of recently inspected rental units do not meet the city's smoke-alarm requirements, and urged the mayor and council to clarify code language and approve a phased compliance approach.

"Of those 56 inspections, 50% or more of them are not in compliance with the smoke alarms," the inspector, Jake, told the council. He said the in-house inspection program has identified a long gap between inspections — an average of about 9.5 years — and cited multiple rental-unit fire fatalities in the city's recent record.

Jake provided examples cited in the inspection packet: 158 East College Avenue (1984, two fatalities), 82 East Main Street (2010, two fatalities), 115 Bowery Street (2014, one fatality), Braddock Estates (October 2021, one fatality) and a July 2024 fatality on Welsh Hill. He said all of those properties were rental units.

Code issue and options: Jake said Frostburg's rental…