Q Three or four couples bought a house in our neighborhood. With all the children, added traffic and cars parked all over, the neighborhood no longer is the quiet haven it was. Isn’t there a city ordinance defining a single-family dwelling?
A The ordinance defining family affects those situations more than anything.
Kevin Hanlin of the zoning department said that the ordinance describes a family as: “One or more persons related by blood, marriage or adoption or pursuant to legal guardianship, living together as a single housekeeping unit or a group of not more than four unrelated persons living together as a single housekeeping unit.”
“That’s how we’ve always addressed it is if they’re related by blood, they’re considered a family,” Hanlin said. “It’s sometimes rather difficult when I get that type of complaint to really investigate it.”
Enforcing the ordinance is simple when college students are involved, he said.
“But you go into a household where it’s owned by someone who’s living there and they have their parents and maybe a cousin or what-not living there as well,” he said. “You’ve got a blood relationship living there ...There’s really nothing much I can do about it.”
Q Will the city have an outside agency run background checks on each finalist for police chief?
A “The city is aware of the responsible nature of this position and will take whatever steps necessary ... to satisfy any concerns they might have about backgrounds of the final candidates,” said City Manager Matt Zimmerman.
The candidate’s current position could eliminate a need to run a background check. Zimmerman commented that if the head of the state police became a finalist, for example, it may not be necessary to run a background check.