Herriman City Code Enforcement Tackles Encroachments and Other Issues in Rapidly Growing City
Located to the southwest of Salt Lake City, Herriman City, Utah sits on some of the last undeveloped land in the Salt Lake Valley, making it a prime area for urban expansion. When the city incorporated in 1999, it was home to fewer than 1,500 people. Today, it sports a population upwards of 60,000 – and rising every year.
Rapid growth can bring with it a variety of challenges for a young government. For code enforcement, quick construction coupled with limited oversight and several undocumented agreements resulted in property line mishaps, leaving Herriman CIty with a crop of encroachments they’re still untangling today.
We sat down with Brent Adamson, Operations Commander for the Herriman City Police Department, to discuss the city’s challenges with encroachments and how modern code enforcement software is empowering the team to manage enforcement activities better.
Problems with Encroachments
After breaking with the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake, Herriman City formed its own police department in 2018. Code enforcement was housed under civilian administration at the time, but following his appointment in 2021, the new city manager made the decision to move code enforcement under police supervision to keep enforcement units centralized in one department.
With the change in oversight, the new code enforcement department inherited a list of 85 properties with open encroachment cases: garages, retaining walls, driveways, fences, etc., all built on city property. In some cases, the error was due to limited oversight in a quickly burgeoning city. Others were the result of city employees or officials allowing property owners to expand landscaping without any written agreement to document the conversations. Whatever the cause, all needed addressing.
“Some of these cases, the people say ‘This is weeds. It's sagebrush behind me. It goes into a gully. Why do you care if I take two feet?’ Well, if we give you two feet, then why wouldn't we give everyone two feet?” said Commander Adamson. “There are unintended consequences to that kind of reasoning, and it becomes a significant issue.”
After determining a course of action with elected officials, city staff, and the city's legal team, the city began contacting the property owners requesting removal of the encroachments. During that process, the city identified several properties where, due to factors such as employee knowledge of a previous verbal agreement, they opted to issue a revocable encroachment while preserving the city’s property rights. The remaining properties, however, would need to be brought into compliance.
Achieving compliance on encroachment cases is no small effort, however. As many of the property owners that Herriman City deals with are having to undergo major construction and expense, the city is taking a cooperative approach and working with property owners on timelines. “We told people, ‘You drive this. As long as you are working toward compliance we will give you a reasonable amount of time to complete the project given the size and scope of work. . We just need to know that you’re doing something, that you’ve reached out to a contractor, that you’ve set a date. We're not going to hold your feet to the fire. We're just going to ask that you comply,’” said Adamson.
Seeking a Dedicated Solution
Once code enforcement transitioned into the police department, it quickly became apparent that the unit would need its own tool for managing cases.
“As we moved forward, we recognized having our [code enforcement] folks using our police records management system wasn't very efficient,” said Commander Adamson. “It didn't have a lot of the tools that we needed to give them reminders to go do inspections, and it just didn't flow as fast. It worked great for police stuff, but not necessarily for what [code enforcement] was doing.”
Faced with the onerous task of managing the back-and-forth with the encroachment properties (in addition to dealing with day-to-day ordinance enforcement), the police department set out to find a tool that would enable its officers to better track cases and give them reminders of when to follow-up.
After exploring three or four different software solutions, Herriman City ultimately picked Comcate’s Code Enforcement Manager solution. Its notification features, case overview dashboard, and document generation were all big selling points when making a decision.
“Probably our single biggest issue with our police software versus Comate was the notification process,” said Commander Adamson.
The ability to set a new inspection date and have the software notify the assigned officer was helpful. “Our police software doesn't do that,” said Commander Adamson. “You can set a diary date, and it will change the flag on the side of your case to a different color. As a supervisor, I could just see a whole page of red flags and I have to go in and click on every one of them and try and figure out ‘Why is it a red flag? What's happening with it?’ Whereas Comate's much more efficient when it comes to that side of things.”
Managing Court Activities
A natural part of the evolution of code enforcement in the city led Herriman City to establish their own administrative law judge. After conferring with a sister city and evaluating their procedures, Herriman City contracted with an administrative law judge to handle hearings for violations that have been moved into forced abatement.
While the judge and his paralegal have been handling the administrative side of notifying property owners about hearing, the department is working on moving those tasks to an internal position in order to maximize cost efficiency. While the details are still being ironed out, Comcate’s Code Enforcement Manager facilitates some of the paperwork portion of the process.
“Even our administrative law hearing notices we can generate out of Comcate,” said Commander Adamson. “We’ve programmed those in there, and now we’re in the process of having the paralegal and our internal person work together so our internal person can take over the paperwork part of that. She can go in and just say, ‘This one’s ready for court’ and hit a button and print the letter out.”
Everyday Enforcement
While the journey to handling the 85 properties with encroachments is not yet finished, Herriman City has been able to get through almost three-quarters of them so far. “We really started from the ground up, but of the 85 cases, almost 60 of them are now resolved.”
In addition to tracking encroachment cases and managing administrative law documentation, Herriman City also uses Comcate for the day-to-day code enforcement needs of a consistently growing city. To ensure success in the field, the department equipped officers with both field-ready software from Comcate and mobile printers. This allows officers to conduct an inspection, document a case, and print a notice of violation while on-site, helping them to move efficiently through inspections and casework throughout the day.
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