Minding Your Business; 362; LC Codes Enforcement

We must not punish this one ― Minding your business is provided by support from Seal Levitino of Emerick Realtors, proud to be associated with the quality programs and community service projects of PBS and K-R-W-G-T-V. By Camino Real Builders, a committed partner with K-R-W-G Broadcasting providing educational, informative, and entertaining programs to our region. And by the New Mexico Humanities

Council, working with local groups to bring programs about culture and the human experience to all communities in New Mexico. K-R-W-G-T-V presents Minding Your Business, a look at the people, places, events, and issues that impact the business and economy of Southwest New Mexico, with your host Charles Comer. Hello and welcome to Minding Your Business to show where we explore business, economic development, community resources, and events, and issues that impact our region. This week on Minding Your Business, as part of our series of shows featuring local law enforcement, we have, and at times, misunderstood, division of the law's forces, police department, codes enforcement. Here to tell us about more about what they do is Officer Vince Pettis

and our key plus crew's beautiful coordinator Craig Vinsky. Gentlemen, thanks so much for showing up. You're welcome. Sorry, I funneled that a little bit. Nobody's fault but in mind on that one, but hey, let's get on with the show. As we always start our show, let's start out by finding out a little bit about you guys, where you grew up, where you went to school, and how you ended up working for the codes enforcement department. Let's start with you, Officer Pettis. I grew up in Compton, California. It's been most of my time there. Moving around after I got old enough to move away from home, went to high school there, Compton, senior high school, graduated from there, and moved on to different places around the country. So you're straight out of Compton, like the song says? Well, Compton by the way of Alabama. There you go. I spent many years in Northern Alabama. Actually got lost in Compton once and stopped at a gas station. About four people came out of the woodworks to try and help

me find where I was, actually seemed like some fantastic people. And how did it end up as a codes enforcement officer? Well, when I came here, I was hired in as the city's park ranger. At one time, the city had a park ranger program. We went around and looked after all the parks. We were the eyes and ears of the police department. After a period of time, I was offered an opportunity to come to the codes enforcement, and I took it, and here I am now. Now as a park ranger, I'm just curious, when did you take that job? What year was it? That was back in 96. Oh, okay. So kind of a short-lived position, but so what do you like better? You've been a codes officer for quite a while now, so. Well, it's more exciting than it was being in the parks. I don't ride my bike as much as I used to because I was on the bike most of the time, but I'm still busy, busy, busy. Well, that is a very interesting story. And as someone who moved here 30 years ago, Las Cruz is always glad to have people from other communities. Could I gear turn?

I grew up in Iowa. I'm a small town, Iowa boy, and went to Iowa State University. And when I graduated looking for a little adventure, and I went to the state of Washington, and I was there for a little over 30 years, and we were on the rainy side of the state, and our son came down here to go to school, and he told us about the sunshine, so we moved here about two years ago. Really, and so I mean, we actually have transplants that head up to Washington State. What do you like better? Well, I'm a silly question. I enjoy the sunshine. Now, how did you end up working for codes enforcement? What'd you do in Washington that may be led up to this? In Washington State, I worked for the land grant university, and since Mexico State University is a land grant university here, I was attracted to that. But I worked with volunteer programs, and this program with Keep Las Cruz is beautiful, works a lot with volunteers, and that's what intrigued me is doing the community development and working with volunteers in the community.

So let's get going with the nuts and bolts, and we'll address the first portion of questions here, tofs or pedas, but please, Craig, as I had said earlier, feel free to jump in, if you'd like. What's the mission of your department? Well, we're charged with creating a clean and safe city. Many cities are working in that direction to attract more people, attract businesses, and the more that we're able to help citizens to adjust their living and to make the areas and the neighborhoods cleaner, the more people are attracted to the area. What are some of the nuts and bolts? Where's the office? How many people work there? How many officers work for codes enforcement? We're located at 1085 Med Park, which is right off of Idaho, you know, where the Catholic Diocese is, and we're right on the street from that. There's about 26 individuals that are in our office, including animal control and also secretarial staff, and among the

codes officers, there's 14 of us at this time. I bet you're looking forward to that city center getting built, and everybody getting to be there in the center of town. Now you said you're with animal control, is it part of your organization, or are we talking about two divisions of the police department in your words? Well, we're under the same umbrella. We work out of the same office, and we work hand-in-hand together. We trade off information on residences. If there's animals that are loose, we call them. If they find that is needs of care, they call us. And so we work hand-in-hand. So we're bumping in each other all the time in the office. So when the other's out on a call, or out on patrol, you act as the other divisions eyes as well, and pass information back and forth? Yes, we do.

Now what exactly does code enforcement enforce? We enforce the environmental aspect of the ordinance. Things that have to do with trash, notable vehicles, the smoking ordinance. Just today we had a class at Añati High School concerning the lighting ordinance. Anything that affects the health and welfare of the citizens we address, we can be a conduit also for other state organizations such as the Environmental Department. If they call us, we can be the funneling or the conduit for that. Now I know derelict cars certainly can ugly up a neighborhood. I'm going to go off the page here and ask a question about that. What are the rules about derelict cars, cars out on the street? When are they in violation of city code? If they're on private property, they're given 30 days to get up and running. Each car has to be able to run on its own power, which means the battery needs to be up so they can start the vehicle. And the transmission needs to be operable so they can move the vehicle

back and forth. If it's not on the street, it's 10 days. So a lot less time if it's not on the street. And do they need to be insured and registered with DMV or what's the rules about that? We would prefer that they are. If they're on private property and they can run, it's not necessary that they be registered or insured, but it would be the better way of thinking about it to have it insured. Because anytime somebody can run into your vehicle or anything can happen while it's even on your property. If it's on the street automatically, it has to be insured or registered. Now we're coming up really soon. We're coming up weed season where people's weeds out in the alleys and in their backyards and front yards are shooting up all over the place. I know I have a hard time keeping up with it. What's the rules about weeds? Someone feels maybe a neighbor has excessive weeds. What's the rules about that?

Well, we like to get people to cut them. The reason being is if sometimes people will strip their land. If it's a lot, they'll just strip it of all vegetation. We don't want that. We want them to cut them down ground level because that vegetation holds the ground together and holds down the dust. If it's in a residential area, we want at least have the homes in a comparable state of upkeep. I actually go out and pull my weeds, but I have grass all over my lawn. If we're talking about someone with a front yard that's dirt, you'd rather than just mow them down or chop them up. Rather than just mow them down? Is there a height limitation? Nothing in the ordinance gives a height indication. Let's go back to the page. Are codes enforcement officers commissioned law enforcement officers? You are a division of the police department, so is that a pretty obvious question?

No, we aren't. We are not commissioned. We are sworn in. We're not commissioned like police officers are, but we are sworn in and that gives us the ability to write citations. Now I can't imagine that you as codes enforcement officers ever have to actually arrest someone or just the codes enforcement. They're not arrestable offenses, are they? No, they're not. They're not, but we do issue citations, and if they don't follow up on the citation, they can't be arrested by a commissioned police officer. Because then we're talking about possibly failure to appear, to appear those kinds of things, and then they're under the regular regulations of the law. Who sets codes to enforce? City Council does that. They make adjustments, they add to, take away, so they're the ones that make sure that they're there for the citizens to abide by. No, is there ever communication with codes enforcement and City Council have there ever

been requests for new ordinances or changes to existing ordinances that you know of? Yes, we've done that with the littering ordinance. We made adjustments with that in order to expand it a little bit more, to cover people that throw things out their vehicles. The owner of the vehicle is responsible for what happens in that vehicle. So that adjustment was made so that we can take care of our job a little bit better. No, every once in a while I see somebody tossing a cigarette but out of their window, that's littering, right? Yes it is. What's the fine? Up to $500 and 90 days in jail. My goodness, that is very stiff. The only place I've heard that's tougher is Colorado. I think it's $1,000 for littering on highway if they catch you. That is insane, but you know what? Guess what? Colorado highways are really, really clean. So consequently, where are the officers trained?

We're trained in-house. We have a manual that we go by that sets out how there to be trained, their ordinances are going to be working on. There's a period of time of about two to three months that they're in constant training. After about the first couple of months, they're sent out with a training officer to be trained out in the field for up to four weeks. After that four weeks, if the training officer feels that they're ready to go out on their own, then they let them fly. You set them loose. Now, what are the requirements? What if someone's watching and they think, you know, that's a job I'd like. It's a good government job, good benefits and lots of fresh air. What are the requirements? Three years, law enforcement. Even law enforcement, zoning or codes experience is what's required for a one to be a post officer. Is there any height requirements, any education requirements?

The more you have, as far as education, the better. Height? No, because I'm short. I think we're about the same height, and I don't call myself short. I'm just tall enough to not be called short. How dangerous is the job? In general, usually, I'm sure you write some citations, you observe, you know, probably interact with residents. You ever have to deal with, I rate residents and, or danger, maybe, possibly from animals. It's about as dangerous as everyday life. We have to keep our eyes and ears open. You have to watch your surroundings. You have to watch for people coming up behind you, around the sides of you. You have to be aware, dogs can jump out of any place. So, it's just about as dangerous everyday life is. Do you carry any kind of weapon, even self-defense weapon, anything like that? I get training in using the ASP of the time. A lot of times that's used for dogs. It's

called a bite stick training that we get. We get training with the, also with the CO, which is the, they call it, I've lost my thought. The... Perfect for you. Okay. All right. Like, like Mason and Pepper spray. Now, what do they, what does someone do if they see something that they think is in violation of code, but they, they want to try, they want to find out for sure? What do they do? They can call our office. Amy, one of their officers will speak with them. If they want to come by, they can come by and see us and we'll be glad to speak with them and explain them. She even showed them in the book what it, what it says. And online, the city has the municipal code online. If they have access to the internet, they can check it there through the City Clerk's office and look up any one of them one they want. They can even get a copy of it if they'd like.

And how I found out about you folks and, or found out more information about you guys was, the city has a great website at, at, at, at, at, at, Los Cruces, or Los Dash Cruces. It's your turn. That's right. Now Craig, it's your turn. Let's, let's talk more about But it's not only do you guys do enforcement, but also community outreach. You're actually an expert in working with volunteer organizations. So it seems a little strange just at first that you may be with code's enforcement, but you're the coordinator of Keybloss Cruces Beautiful. First, what do you guys do and then explain to me what the three E's are. Read about that on the website. What are the three E's and what does Keybloss Cruces Beautiful do? Keybloss Cruces Beautiful, it really is the citizen involvement or the citizen engagement in keeping our city beautiful and clean. There's just 14 codes officers as officer Pettus explained and they obviously can't keep

our city clean. What it takes is the engagement involvement of every citizen in the city to keep our city beautiful and to take pride in what we have in our community. We're a part of the Keep America Beautiful program and we're also getting some funding from the New Mexico Clean and Beautiful program. So it's a program that has statewide affiliates as well as national affiliates with Keep America Beautiful. The three E's are the education, eradication and enforcement and the officers are involved with the enforcement side of it. The education is what Keybloss Cruces Beautiful does is the education. We work with schools, we have a Keep Your School Beautiful program, we have the eradication is the removing litter, removing graffiti and involving business, community, people in cleanups and for example our next major event is the Great American Clean Up. So it's an example of one of the kinds of events that we organize.

When is that happening? I'm pretty sure, according to my calendar, the show is going to air in mid-March. So remind viewers when the big cleanup day is? The big data we're organizing is Saturday, April 19th and we're expecting over 25 organizations to work where our target is to recruit 500 volunteers. We had about 450 volunteers at the Great American Clean Up a year ago so I know we can reach that 500 Mark and have 25 or more organizations involved with that day long cleanup. Now what kinds of things will be happening that day? Obviously you'll be picking up trash, but it's more than that, it's a big community event, isn't it? It's city wide, we go into every neighborhood across the city to clean up. We organize groups, we ask that they go out from 8 until noon and do cleanup. We provide garbage bags, we provide gloves and we assign areas and if people come from

a neighborhood we try to put them back into the neighborhood in which they live or if they have a business in an area. We have people cleaning up from 8 to 12. We have community sponsors there and we have a community celebration in the afternoon. So the Walmart on Walton is our sponsoring the lunch and all of our volunteers are invited to that hosted lunch by Walmart. We also give out anybody that returns to Walmart, we give them a goody bag with coupons from Mary businesses and we'll give them a raffle ticket and we'll be raffling off items that are donated by community business. How very, very cool. Now information, people want to sign up, what do they do? You can call our office 528-4723 is our phone number, we have our website. You can go to our website by going to the city site that you just described and if you go into departments under police department, key plus crucis beautiful is on that page for the city.

So we have sign up enrollment sheets that you can print from there or if you give us a call, we'll supply you with the information on how to get involved with Great American Cleanup. We got about a minute and a half left to talk, let's do graffiti eradication and adopt a spot. The graffiti eradication is one of the, we have a graffiti crew out almost every day. But if you were to get graffiti on your house, the first thing you would want to do is make a report, you can do a call into our graffiti hotline, it's 528-GRAF and that puts you can leave a report there any time, day or night. An officer go out and make a report and then it's up to the homeowner if it's on the homeowner to abate it and we recommend to highly that you abate within 24 to 48 hours. We find that's the best prevention. Because there's actually a reason, right, taggers like to show off their work and like to go back and check it, right?

And they're also, they're claiming that space is their space, when you go back and paint over it, you're claiming it as your space, so that's the best way to claim it. Kind of a turf war, in about the 45 seconds or so we have left, what does adopt a spot adopt? And you can do that. Adopt a spot is a new program that we've engaged on the recommendation of our advisory committee and it allows an organization and group or a family even to adopt an area that might be in your neighborhood or in the community that you really have a connection with. The High Range Neighborhood Association is an example of our, the first organization that applied for it and they've adopted the roadway along their neighborhood on Road Winner Parkway, so it's an example, the Las Cruces High School National Honor Society has adopted Frenger Park, so it's people living or working in those neighborhoods can adopt an area that's in their space if they really want to take pride in and then they want to contribute to having a more beautiful Las Cruces. If you can believe a gentleman, we're out of time, Officer Vince Penis, Craig Fenske, from Keith Las Cruces Beautiful, thank you gentlemen so much.

Thank you. It's time again for our weekly piece here on Mining Your Business that showcases some of the hard-working entrepreneurs and business people in our area. We call it the Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce, local business feature. This was just a great honor. I got started at PSL at New Mexico State University and went in the travel office and that's when I got the bug because we were sending engineers all over the world, say shells, London, just everywhere, Africa, because they were doing the satellite things. So that's when it got started and then I worked for AAA for a year, did not like that. They're not focused enough on travel, so then I went to work for the ESTA travel, became the manager within a year, and then in 1976 I became the owner of my own agency. We were first of all on why it drive in huge office, would we have like 20 agents or something

like that. That was the time when airline tickets were purchased only through agents, there wasn't the internet. So you had to have a lot of bodies. So in 1991 we built this building and moved in here and at that time, Bill and I sat down and we talked about it and we said you know what, it's not in tickets. We were selling $49 Southwest tickets and 10% of that is $4. There's no way you're going to make a living off of that. So at that time we decided to focus more on leisure sales and by leisure sales I'm in cruises, tours, Disney packages, Vegas, leisure sales, what people did for fun. More profit in that and it didn't diminish with the internet. First, before 9-11 the airlines cut out all commissions. They decided that they, because they weren't running in the black, was our fault. So I was like, fine, we don't need you anyway, you know. So that's fine. When 9-11 hit, I really thought it was the end of the business because people did not

travel for months after that was devastating. We tooled down, we have four leisure agents that do nothing but that. But it's surprising. About a year ago I read an article that the trend was back to travel agents because people had been on the internet, done that and been disappointed or whatever or ended up, I have people that book on the internet and call me and say, I don't even know what I need to go. What do I do? I need a visa, do I need it? You know, where do you get that information? You don't. It's just a site to sell the product. Just as if you wanted to go online and buy an oven, if you want to know the bells and whistles of that oven or if it's going to fit in your house, you need to go see an appliance guy. It's the same with us. We are a full service travel agency, which some agencies do only cruise as some agencies do only tours. We do airline tickets, we do tours, we do cruises, we do everything. The thing that we specialize in are group tours. What's always hot is Vegas, Disneyland, Disney World, cruises.

Cruises are going to be the wave of the future. With the dollar being so weak, people can get on a cruise, they can go to Europe, they can go to Australia, they can go wherever, all their meals are paid, everything's inclusive, it's the total package and they get to see five or six ports. So that's cruising is a big thing for us. We have one for the third year in a row, the Readers Choice Award, which is awarded by the Sun News Readers, in October we got Chamber of the Month and that puts you in the running for Chamber of the Year where there were 12 awesome businesses obviously and then to be named the business of the year was unbelievable, unbelievable, very rewarding and mental up to me. I've been out of the business for about two years because of personal health issues. When I came back in June of last year, we hit the ground hard, we hit it running. We've received awards in the past but this year is really meaningful to me personally because we really came back with Avengers.

We wanted to come in here, we wanted to do good things and pick up where we left off and we've been able to do that, thank you guys. That just about does it for this week, if you have a question or comment about the show, you can call them in your business hotline at 6467350 or email me at Charles Comer at Yahoo.com. Again I'd like to thank my guest Craig Finsky and Officer Vince Pettis from the Codes Enforcement Division of the Lost Cruces Police Department for coming on the show and thank you so much for watching. I'm Charles Comer, here's hoping you have a great one.