Board seeking county help to enforce code violations

Part of ongoing concern over trash, parking and overcrowding in Aspen Hill

‘‘I think that there has always been an emphasis on the issues we’re discussing,” she said, noting that the civic association last initiated a code enforcement sweep in 2003.

Minckler cited last year’s May membership meeting, where she said 150 people attended to voice similar concerns. The civic association holds two general membership meetings a year, but the board of directors meets monthly.

‘‘The trends seemed to be on the upsweep,” she said.

From last spring’s meeting, Minckler said, the board began to discuss ways the civic association might go about bringing residents’ complaints to not only the county Department of Housing and Community Affairs, but also to the Montgomery County Council and the County Executive’s Office.

‘‘We waited, of course, until after the elections and the dust settled down a little bit,” Minckler said, ‘‘and, really, our strategy was to have this initial meeting with Ms. Praisner, present the statistics as we had, and to see where the next logical steps in continuing meetings would occur.

‘‘We’re not planning on just dropping the point, but we’re going to try and bring it into a constant presence of talking with the different agencies and working with them just to see how we can best approach abating these problems,” she added.

At the meeting with Praisner and Bird, Minckler said she presented statistics on sales of houses advertised with five or more bedrooms. In the past year, she said, 91 homes were sold advertised with five bedrooms or more, and 25 of those were listed as having six or more bedrooms.

‘‘We wanted to impress Ms. Praisner with that information, rather than just the common complaints that we find on a daily basis or as I receive them through the association with neighbors calling about issues, whether it’s trash or parking or overcrowding,” Minckler said.

Praisner said she has been in communication with the Maryland Association of Realtors’ local division regarding inaccurate listings.

As to the rest of the civic association’s issues, Praisner said she was already well acquainted with some of its complaints.

‘‘We were already working on this,” she said.

‘‘These are issues that I had been aware of,” she added.

Former District 19 State Del. Carol S. Petzold, a member of the board of directors and in whose house the civic association met with Praisner and Bird, wrote in an e-mail message that Praisner had discussed creating more cooperation between different county departments.

‘‘We discussed housing inspectors being cross-trained so that they could issue citations that other departments now must issue,” she wrote. ‘‘Mrs. Praisner is working on how that might be done. Whether it is actually issuing a citation for another [department] or immediately e-mailing that [department] that a violation exists and expecting a representative of that [department] to come out and issue it.”

In a phone conversation last week, Bird said she felt the meeting with the civic association went well. She said she plans to continue communications with the group.

‘‘We listened to their concerns and we’re discussing now the issues they brought up,” she said.

Bird said the number-one complaint that her department gets is solid waste, or the trash and discarded materials left in front of houses.

As to neighbors complaining that there are too many people living in one house, Bird said her department’s main concern is that the house is safe for all of its occupants — that the bedrooms fit the county’s square-footage requirements and the need for egress, such as windows and doors.

When inspectors go to a house, she said, they cannot ask the individuals to prove they are related.

‘‘If they say they’re related, that they’re cousins, aunts, uncles, we have to take that as being the case,” she said.

Minckler said she was pleased with the initial meeting with the two county representatives.

‘‘I think that we presented and were allowed to speak in a reasonably casual format, where we did learn some good perspectives on what the county is doing,” she said.

As for the next step, Minckler said the board plans to speak out at the County Council’s budget hearings on April 9, 10, 11 and 16.

‘‘What the board had discussed — and we’re still formulating that — whether it’s asking specifically for more inspectors and more police officers or trying to encourage better communication between the agencies — I think that’s our first step,” Minckler said. ‘‘If the budget disallows more staffing, we’re going to encourage better communication between the agencies to enforce those things which can be enforced. One of the key issues going into the meeting with Ms. Praisner — as our first step of the strategy — was to not look for new legislation, but to see that we find repeated and strict enforcement of the rules of law to date.”

She said the board also plans to invite the four at-large County Council members to the civic association’s next general membership meeting in May.

Minckler also wished to stress that the civic association does not want to act in a disciplinary manner, but is simply looking for the rules to be enforced. That way, she said, neighborhoods continue to look nice and the community feels good about where they live.

‘‘Part of what we’re doing is not just the disciplinary actions, but a good deal of it is also the education for the community, so we want to help,” Minckler said.

The civic association offers a guide to the Aspen Hill community in four or five languages, she said.

‘‘And we’re hoping that the county can also help us help them by providing some educational tools in a couple of different languages to distribute to the community — we’d be happy to do that — regarding the zoning and codes and basic reporting venues that everybody has to use,” she said.

‘‘Help me help you — that’s what we’re really trying to do,” she added. ‘‘We’re not just trying to be the hammer, but we do believe when that hammer should strike, it should. And we want to make sure that everybody is treated fairly.”