ACTION REQUESTED:
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Communication from the City Manager and the Community Development Director with a Request to ADOPT an ORDINANCE Amending Chapter 5 and Chapter 32 of the CODE of the City of Peoria Pertaining to CRIMINAL HOUSING MANAGEMENT.
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BACKGROUND: During the City Council meeting on January 26th, Councilwoman Jensen asked why the current ordinance regarding Criminal Housing Management is rarely used. (As indicated by staff in the Council Communication.) The current ordinance states that that correcting the violation constitutes a valid defense and thus the fine is dismissed. Thus, putting the property into the Hearing Officer and citing the code violations have the same result. The current change allows City staff to impose a fine on a property owner for the violations existing and leaves the fine in place even if the violations are corrected.
The Community Development Department continues to look for ways to strengthen ordinance language to decrease blight in neighborhoods and provide safe housing options for citizens in the City of Peoria.
The current code has a section on criminal housing management that is rarely used. One of the major flaws in the current language is that the prosecution process involves sending it to the Hearing Officer, as defined in Chapter 5 of the Code of the City of Peoria, Illinois. One aspect of this prosecution process states a viable defense is that the violation has been corrected. While often the goal is compliance, there is occasion where Staff feels conditions were so poor that simply allowing the conditions to exist in the first place constitutes criminal housing management, and the property owner should be punished. By strengthening the language and changing the prosecution process to what is identified in Chapter 32, property owners who create situations that endanger the health and safety of the inhabitant can be fined accordingly. These cases will be presented to the Administrative H...
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