Enabling Proactive Code Compliance in Littleton, CO
Littleton, Colorado is a municipality of almost 50,000 that sits within the Denver metropolitan area. Its Code Compliance team, which operates out of the Community Development division, features two officers and a supervisor.
When Jeremy Kovinchick joined the team as the Code Compliance Manager in January 2024, it kicked off a new era for the code team. From implementing new enforcement mindsets to procuring software that enabled greater efficiency for the team, Littleton Code Compliance has experienced some major change in the last few years. We sat down with Kovinchick recently to review the department’s success.
Improving Efficiency, Proactivity with a New Start
With the combination of extensive previous experience and a fresh perspective, Kovinchick was ready to tackle the challenge of a new department when he joined Littleton.
Early into his tenure, Kovinchick sat down with his team to get a feel for current operations and ask them what changes they wanted to see moving forward. “And one of the changes they brought up was the ability to not have to take an hour to manage a case,” Kovinchick said.
Before joining Littleton, Kovinchick worked for Longmont, a city in the nearby Boulder metro area. At Longmont, Kovinchick was used to having all parts of the process, including evidentiary storage and notice generation, within a software application. “When I got to Littleton, the City was using SeeClickFix to intake submissions, but the officers were having to write up every notice by hand in Word. It wasn’t very efficient.”
The team utilized templates, but it was a time-consuming task to manually customize the template with details for each new case. Uploading and saving photos to a shared drive was another pain point for the team. “So one of the first things I said was ‘we’re going to find us a new software and make this more efficient.’”
In addition to persuasion from below, Kovinchick was also receiving pressure from above. The team wanted to make their jobs easier – but leadership was also making requests of the department that added incentive for everyone to find a better solution for day-to-day operations.
“[Leadership] wanted to push more towards a proactive approach instead of the reactive approach that this department has always been. And I said, "That's all good and dandy, but we can't do it if we're only able to do X amount of cases per day because we have to invest so much time in all this other stuff.”
The increased capabilities that a software solution would lend helped Kovinchick convince leadership to sign off on the decision – as did the cost-effectiveness of code enforcement software in general. “The price for a code module from all the softwares we looked at wasn't too bad, so they were on board pretty quick,” Kovinchick said.
Priority List: Efficiency, Integrations
A tool that was going to make work faster and easier was top-of-mind during the search process. “For me it was all about the efficiency in evidentiary storage and notice generation, because those were the two biggest time sinks with the way that they were doing it,” Kovinchick said. “So we wanted to correct those issues.”
Kovinchick reached out to other code professionals in the state via association forums, Facebook and LinkedIn to see what solutions other Colorado code enforcement teams were using.
He narrowed it down to a few different options, and after the demos leaned toward Comcate. “I liked the software layout better,” Kovinchick said. “I liked the fact that it was something that was web-based so the guys could get to it from the field easily. We didn't have to have a separate application or anything like that.”
A code solution that would integrate with SeeClickFix was also a must-have for the City – an integration that Comcate was able to provide where other software companies did not.
Moving Toward Proactive Enforcement
Despite available technology that makes it easy for the community to submit a code violation, complaints aren’t a big driver of code enforcement in Littleton. Submissions via SeeClickFix can fluctuate anywhere between as few as two or as many as 10 per week.
The department also has a general phone line and email inbox, but these produce more a trickle than a deluge of submissions – an apt analogy considering the area’s lack of snowstorms this past winter, resulting in fewer snow removal cases than normal for the team.
But under Kovinchick’s management, Littleton Code Compliance doesn’t wait around for cases to come in.
Operating solely on a reactive-based model, Littleton used to only process around 500 cases a year – while Kovinchick said he was handling around 1,500 cases a year by himself at Longmont. A large part of the difference relied on reactive vs. proactive methods.
“When I first got here, that was one of the things I hammered into them, that you don't have to just sit here and stare at the computer and wait for that one complaint to come in for a week. Go drive around and actually look for stuff.”
Kovinchick brought a proactive mindset to the department, and with staff turnover during the last two years, he was able to bring in like-minded team members to continue fueling that approach.
“[Since starting] I got two new officers, and both of them came from other jurisdictions who were very heavily proactive,” said Kovinchick. “So our process has changed a lot just because the mentality of the three of us on the team has changed. We're all experienced, we all know how to go out and find things – especially as this year we haven't had many snow complaints, so we've had to get creative. My guys are good at knowing that when they have a couple hours with no meetings or nothing to do, they’re going to go out and find new cases.”
Managing Proactive Practices
Part of Kovinchick’s proactive approach also includes combining proactive practices with reactive, complaint-driven practices.
“I've trained my guys that if you get a complaint, you do a visual around the whole area,” Kovinchick said. “Don't just drive down that street, pick out that one house and call it a day. Drive around the block, drive around the next block. Make sure you're getting all the issues. That way nobody can say, ‘Well you're just picking on me.’ ‘No, we got 10 different houses in that same area for the same thing.’ So my guys are very good about when we get a complaint, they kind of hit a whole area.”
While some municipalities use “beats” or neighborhood assignments for proactive enforcement, Kovinchick hasn’t found that a necessary practice in Littleton. When he first started, the previous team had divided up the city’s almost 14 square miles into distinct sections with specific officer assignments. But the team wasn’t a fan of that approach as the cases weren’t well-distributed among sections, likely due to Littleton’s diverse mix of neighborhoods. “You have super expensive neighborhoods right next to neighborhoods that have been here since the 40s and have older homes.”
With the new team in place, Kovinchick did away with the neighborhood assignments and let his officers search for violations on their own wherever they wished. “I said, "All right, we'll just kind of do a free-for-all system and I'll let you guys decide where to go and when to go there."” A move that works well when dealing with veteran officers who are good at their job. “My guys know where to go and when to go,” Kovinchick said.
Having a shared tool that increases team visibility has also been helpful in managing the proactive approach.
“That’s another great thing about Comcate, is the searchability of it: being able to pull an address and make sure [no one else has been there]. Ben and Wyatt are very good about making sure they're not opening duplicate cases or stepping on each other's toes that way.”
Improving Capacity
With all the changes combined – new manager, new officers, new software, and the incorporation of more proactive techniques – Littleton Code Compliance has dramatically increased the number of cases it handles on a yearly basis.
In 2023, the year before Kovinchick joined the City, the code team processed 580 cases; last year, they did around 1,300 – almost double previous capacity.
Overall, Littleton has been happy with the additional capacity they’ve gained from using Comcate.
“I appreciate the software. It makes our lives infinitely easier, and a lot more efficient. And my guys are happy with it. That to me is the most important part, is that they enjoy using it and it helps them do their jobs at a much more efficient pace.”
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