Report 2015-134 Recommendation 14 Responses

Report 2015-134: Residential Building Records: The Cities of San Rafael, Novato, and Pasadena Need to Strengthen the Implementation of Their Resale Record Programs (Release Date: March 2016)

Recommendation #14 To: San Rafael, City of

To ensure that property owners correct violations in a timely manner, San Rafael should develop a work plan by July 2016 to identify and address its enforcement backlog by April 2017, so that the city is up to date with its enforcement actions, such as issuing notice letters and monitoring property owners' actions to resolve violations. San Rafael's work plan should also include updating the completion status of the violations so unresolved violations can be identified and monitored for subsequent correction.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From November 2017

As previously reported, all violations from 2017 (to date), 2016 and 2015 have been documented. For these three years, all violations have either been resolved or are being tracked for compliance through the City's Code Enforcement process. Due to the limited staff and the goal and need to keep current with the recently issued resale reports, the City has not addressed the 2014 violations. At this point, the City does not plan on proactively pursuing the violations identified in the 2014 reports, except for those violations that are specific to life safety. For non-life safety violations cited in the 2014 residential resale report, our permit tracking program (Trakit) will place a "restriction" on the property. Therefore, in the event the property owner requests a permit(s) or another residential resale report, the violations will be required to be addressed and corrected at that time.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

San Rafael subsequently demonstrated to us that it has a process in place for addressing the backlog from 2014. It determined that an overwhelming number of violations have been addressed and resolved. Those remaining (about 10 percent) are being addressed through the Trakit permit tracking program.

1-Year Agency Response

All violations from 2017, 2016, and 2015 are current. That is; all are either resolved, or being tracked thru the code enforcement process. Due to the high volume of current and ongoing violations, and limited staffing, we have not begun to address the 2014 violations as we had hoped to do.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Partially Implemented

Although San Rafael is up to date with its enforcement actions for violations from 2015 and later, it has not yet developed a work plan to address violations from previous years.

6-Month Agency Response

Procedures have been developed for City staff to implement follow-up and enforcement. The procedures will be submitted once finalized. Currently, all violations are followed up with a Notice and Order within 10 business days. Further, as discussed in the May 21, 2016 memorandum submitted to Myriam Czarniecki, enforcement for the backlog of violations for 2015 has been initiated and many cases have been resolved. We are now commencing with the enforcement of the 2014 backlog.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Partially Implemented

Although the city states that it has fully implemented this recommendation, it has not finalized its procedures for addressing its enforcement backlog. The city has also not developed a work plan, although it reports having made some progress in addressing its backlog.

60-Day Agency Response

As noted in the response to recommendation #10 and as outlined in the May 12, 2016 memorandum forwarded to Myriam Czarniecki, enforcement for the backlog of violations has been initiated for 2014 and 2015. The work plan is in process.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Partially Implemented

All Recommendations in 2015-134

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.