Keeping it clean
Kelly Sammeli’s desk at Spokane Valley City Hall displays her softer side. A rose-covered calendar. Pencils topped with Disney’s Tigger character. A quote posted about her life philosophy. But as one of Spokane Valley’s two code enforcement officers, Sammeli must stand up to angry homeowners and frustrated neighbors.
“I’ve been called everything, and not all of it was nice,” she said.
Most important, Sammeli said, she must push aside preconceived notions about the people she meets.
“You can’t be judgmental,” Sammeli said. “There’s a circumstance behind every situation.”
After the Valley incorporated in March 2003, the City Council made enforcing the city’s codes and keeping its neighborhoods clean a top priority. It adopted Spokane County’s codes immediately and later last year wrote its own laws against keeping “junk” cars in residential areas and accumulating other nuisances, such as garbage.
More than simply adopting new laws, the city was quick to begin enforcing them.
“I think the biggest accomplishment is actually getting up and running and making improvements for our citizens,” said the city’s building official Tom Scholtens.
On a typical day, Sammeli and Chris Berg, the city’s other code officer, begin by reviewing open cases. Their operation is complaint driven, so before they can investigate whether a property owner is violating the code, they must receive a phone call, e-mail or formal complaint from a citizen.
In May, the most recent period for which statistics are available, the city received 113 such complaints. The officers found that 28 of those complaints were unfounded, 31 involved solid waste issues, and 25 concerned junk cars. The remainder dealt with dangerous-building situations, sign-code violations, septic tank problems and other possible code violations.
City Council minutes indicate that the city inherited “hundreds” of unresolved complaints made to the county before Spokane Valley incorporated. Files of open cases surround Sammeli’s and Berg’s desks, indicating the weight of their workload.
“We’re working our way through the complaints,” said Scholtens, their supervisor. “We’re speaking with our citizens. I think they’re seeing an improvement.”
Sammeli said the code enforcement officers tackle the most dangerous situations first.
On a recent Wednesday morning, Sammeli completed paperwork, organized her files and then jumped into a city-owned truck. She spends the better part of her day behind the wheel.
“Look at this. What is that?” she asked while slowing down in front of a house that wasn’t on her list to investigate. An older blue car — its carcass, anyway — sat near a 5-foot-high pile of junk. The sedan’s roof and doors had been sawed off.
But no one has filed a complaint about the yard.
“Look at the beautiful house next door,” Sammeli said. “The people living there could be elderly and scared to death of their neighbor.”
Unable to take action without a complaint, Sammeli pulled away. She cruised past dozens of Spokane Valley’s tidy lawns and well-maintained ranchers. Her eye, though, was always scoping out worst-case scenarios. A refrigerator, for example, can be a safety hazard if it’s left outside with its door unlocked. Curious children could climb into the refrigerator and get stuck and suffocate, Sammeli explained.
“Wouldn’t that be a sick and awful thing to read about in the newspaper?” she said.
Later that morning, Sammeli reached a duplex on East 10th Avenue. One half of the shared lawn was groomed, but an unofficial dividing line down the middle of the yard, where the weeds and tall grass started, showed the side where the negligent resident lived.
Lived, because the landlord evicted that renter the night before.
“It’s a glorious day on 10th Avenue,” neighbor Marilyn Cline, 59, told Sammeli at the car window.
Cline and other neighbors filed a complaint about the mess the renter had kept on the property – a downed basketball hoop, a grocery cart, mattresses and countless other items strewn about.
“It gave a new meaning to the word garbage,” she said.
Most of the trash was cleared by eviction day, although a blue tarp covered what appeared to be leftover items in a carport. Still, the neighborhood planned a block party to celebrate.
“I (filed a complaint) to prove to other neighborhoods that you can take back your street,” Cline said. “You don’t have to live with this.”
But behind every neighborhood victory, there’s a story, Sammeli said as she drove away. The woman evicted from the duplex had four children who lived in that mess. In many cases, the homeowners are just trying to get by – financially, mentally and physically.
“It may be a good thing for somebody, but it could be a really sad situation for somebody else,” she said.
Plenty of Spokane Valley residents feel the city intrudes on their rights by telling them how to maintain their homes, their cars and their property.
In response to a Spokesman-Review e-mail inquiry regarding the new city’s performance, resident Misty Zumwalt wrote, “What happens on (your) own property is (your) own business.”
“Instead of focusing our time and money on drugs, gangs and drug dealers, the new city has spent its time harassing old men for their restoration project, first high school car, or their dream car not quite finished,” she wrote. “As long as they are on personal property and not on the street, it is nobody else’s business.”
At the June 22 City Council meeting, Ron Allen, the manager of Lucky U Auto Sales, complained that the code-enforcement department’s approach to a possible violation on his property was rude and abrasive.
“Is this the normal greeting small-business owners can get from the city of Spokane Valley?” he asked the council.
Sammeli said codes are written and enforced to keep people safe, though. She talked about the tragic lessons cities learned a century ago when citizens often became trapped in buildings during fires.
“Through time, things have evolved to benefit the citizens of communities,” Sammeli said.
And Scholtens reiterated that building and fire codes promote “life safety.”
“None of our codes address keeping a pretty manicured lawn,” he said. “It’s not about that at all.”
Sammeli estimates that 90 percent of the people with code violations come into compliance after simply receiving a letter from her department. Another 5 percent ask why they need to resolve the issue, and then they do it. The remaining cases often go to a hearing and, if found guilty, the violator can be charged a $250 fine.
More than anything, Sammeli said she tries to educate people about why rules about junk cars and other hazards exist.
“We want people to understand why we regulate things,” she said. “In the big picture, things are in place to help the community grow and prosper and be healthy.”