Some flood victims have fixed their flood damage; when should City Hall push their neighbors to do the same?

Randy and Laurie Hanson's house and garage on J Street SW are raising an interesting question: Is it time, 14 months after the 2008 flood, to start insisting that property owners finish up exterior renovations of their properties in the flood-hit areas of the city?

This week, the Hansons were in court tussling with city officials who have cited the Hansons with code-enforcement violations for not siding their garage and house and not having alley-facing address numbers on the outside of the garage.

The judge will issue a ruling in the weeks ahead.

At the house early Thursday afternoon, Randy Hanson blamed the squabble with City Hall on the city's NEAT initiative.

Launched last spring, NEAT – Neighborhood Enhancement Action Team – is designed to send teams of city code-enforcement inspectors, nuisance-abatement officers and police officers into select spots in the city looking for chipping and peeling paint, roofs, windows, steps and chimneys in need of repair or replacement, unlicensed vehicles and vehicle parts, debris and  trash in the yard.

Hanson, 50, acknowledged on Thursday that his un-sided, oversized garage – which he uses to support his company, RH Construction – was among the items that caught the NEAT team's attention at his place in the spring of 2008.

Then the flood hit, sending five feet of water into his house and water into the garage behind it.

Now, fourteen months later, Hanson said the NEAT team has returned with only one central interest in mind: Why hadn't he resided his garage like he said he would before the flood?

Hanson acknowledged that the siding issue on the garage is not a new one. He said he built the garage some years ago and never finished the outside of. The City Assessor Office's online records make mention of an “un-sided garage” reaching back to 2002.

Now, though, Hanson said he has his hands full trying to fix the flood-damaged house, the outside of which is without siding and continues to be a work in progress.

Out back of the house is a big travel trailer, where he said he and his wife live, and next to his house, he noted, are three or four small houses slated for city buyout and demolition. The front door of the house next door stands open to the elements. A house behind his is being demolished in the near future.

Hanson said the garage is a bigger problem than it appears. He said he can't put siding on it until he cleans out some mold from inside of it. At the same time, he said he will have to get busy on it if the judge sides with the city and orders him to do so. He has spray-painted his address number on the back side of the garage in hopes of complying with that city requirement.

City Manager Jim Prosser on Thursday said code issues at the Hanson property stretch back some years, and the question now is, has the flood “impaired” the Hansons' ability to put a plan in place to comply with city requirements? Prosser said.

He said flood victims have fixed up their properties all across the city, and he said they now are asking the city to take some action at places where that is not happening.

“We're not trying to use a club,” he said. He said citing someone with a municipal infraction is the city's attempt to find a solution. “Sometimes it takes people being cited before they pay attention.”

On Thursday, mayoral candidate Ron Corbett entered the fray, calling on his mayoral challenger, City Council member Brian Fagan, to use some “common sense” in working with property owners in the flood-impacted parts of the city. He called the city's citation against the Hansons “silly.”

“We need to give homeowners who are making a good faith effort at fixing up their homes a reasonable grace period before bringing legal action against them,” Corbett said.

Fagan, who didn't know the exact details of the Hansons' case, on Thursday pointed out that he had ridden his bicycle to six different neighborhood gatherings on Tuesday evening at the National Night Out event. At four of those spots, neighbors told him their biggest request of city government was “more proactive code enforcement.”

“Code enforcement, that's one of the biggest things I hear,” Fagan said. “People want things done. They want things improved.”