Office of Code Compliance June 2010

Office of Code Compliance Audit

Released June 2010

Download the Full Report here

Download highlights here

We undertook this audit because City Council members and code compliance staff have expressed a need for additional inspectors; the city has reduced the number of inspectors since fiscal year 2008 due to budget shortfalls. At the same time, increases in foreclosures and absentee property owners have added to the perception that the code compliance workload has increased.

We found:

• The Office of Code Compliance lacks reliable data to prioritize, track, and manage its code compliance complaints, measure its progress toward meeting performance standards, or determine staffing requirements
• The office also lacks written procedures for calculating and reporting workload and performance data
• Reports underestimated the time it took to complete first inspections, over counted the number of highly hazardous complaints, and over counted the number of complaints generated externally
• Previous directors instructed staff to enter the last day of the month for complaints that had not been inspected,
  which made inspections appear to occur sooner than they actually did
• A lack of written procedures for compiling both hardcopy and electronic data has contributed to incomplete and inaccurate data
• Complaint data migrated from KIVA or entered into Accela are not entirely reliable