Looking around the county, Costa Mesa may have more code enforcement staff per resident than any of the other cities in the county. Past and present councils have made funding this operation a top priority.
There are two ways that a code violation gets into the system. The first way is for a code enforcement officer to drive around town looking for violations. The second (and this is where you come in) are complaints filed by citizens.
Under both scenarios, a complaint goes into the city code enforcement data bank, and it gets a case number. Once the complaint has a number, a code officer follows through by contacting the property owner to rectify the situation.
According to Don Lamm, city development services director, 75% of all complaints get rectified once the property owner gets notice of the violation.
The remaining 25% may get a fine before the problem is rectified. In an extreme case the city can do an abatement procedure, which is to correct the problem and lien the property for the cost of doing so.
The city is not looking to collect fines and in most cases a fine is never imposed if the violation is corrected. What the city is looking for is compliance.
Now let’s look at the second way a violation gets into the system; a citizen-reported complaint. It is a lot more efficient for the citizens themselves to report violations, and have code enforcement officers spend their time getting compliance.
One way to make a complaint is to call the department at (714) 754-5623. A very friendly city employee will put your complaint in the system and create a case file number.
