Code enforcement using wireless technology

These days it takes more than thick skin and well-honed people skills for city officers to get homeowners to clean up trash, junk cars and safety hazards on their property.

In Spokane Valley, code enforcement officers and permitting officials have the advantage of wireless technology, massive databases and aerial photography to track just about everything city and county governments have done concerning a nuisance property.

“Any city staff member has access to all this information,” code enforcement officer Chris Berg told the City Council Tuesday night.

County assessment data outlines property boundaries, lists the owners and details information on sales and foreclosures. Another system records notices sent to property owners and tracks city permits. Information from code enforcement, the city’s permitting center and county databases is continuously updated and shared among city departments without any paper changing hands.

None of that record keeping is new, but instead of accessing files from desktop computers or racks of folders at City Hall, code enforcement can call them up on laptop computers from the field.

Berg’s only complaint is that because it uses Sprint wireless network, it’s subject to the same service interruptions as cell phone users.

“When we get dropped from a call we cannot get logged back on,” he said.

There is also some concern that most of the data isn’t stored in Spokane Valley, which contracts its database management to Spokane County.

“Our system runs off the county servers,” Berg said.

Overall, though, City Council members and city employees said they were impressed with the system.

The example presented at Tuesday’s meeting involved an illegal mobile home. Someone interested in buying it asked people at City Hall if there were any outstanding issues with the property. With a few clicks, they were able to tell them that the building sits five feet over the property line. Its owner had never gotten the proper permits for it, and code enforcement earlier had to remove several vagrants living there in squalor.

Complaints on that property were likely among the 1,084 code violations residents reported to the city from August 2005 through August of this year, according to a recent report to the City Council.

The data the city uses that comes from county assessments is also available to anyone online http://www.spokanecounty.org/pubpadal.