Citizens Speak Out About Property Maintenance Code

The Minden City Council surprised the more than thirty in attendance by including public comment on agenda items and additional seating at Monday night’s meeting.
Council President Ted Griess chaired the meeting in the absence of Mayor Roger Jones.
Public comment has not been included in the order of business at city council meetings since January of 2007, when the consent agenda format was adopted and Section 2-27, pertaining to the order of business, was repealed.
Griess opened the meeting by explaining the procedure for public comment to the audience.
“The city council will take public comment on an agenda item if it is deemed necessary before the council begins discussion of the agenda item,” said Griess.  “The chair will recognize from the audience anyone who wishes to speak on an agenda item this evening.  Try to keep your comments to three minutes.  I strongly urge you if you wish to speak one way or another toward an agenda item that you keep your comments within the three minute period or this could go on forever and that’s basically the parliamentary rule. And once you have said your piece we will recognize any and all members of this body that wish to address.  Before you make any comments please recognize and identify who you are for the record and I don’t need to remind you that we want to keep a civil and an organized meeting here.  So, now we are open to public comment.”
Mary Ann Jurgens was the first to take advantage of the opportunity to address agenda item 5, the International Property Maintenance Code.
“I guess I’m wanting to know about the property codes that you have on the agenda. Are you going to apply this to all houses, rentals and businesses or is this just for rentals. And what’s the inspections going to be?  Are they going to be whenever someone moves out of the rental property or will it be one time and then it’s been inspected. How many times does it have to be done?  There are already codes in place for this and there is a paper here, there are already codes in law and so I was wondering are they different codes than are already in this one?

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