(La Porte, IN) - The city of La Porte’s approach to code enforcement over the past four years is turning heads throughout the state.

 

La Porte Code Enforcement Director Jeff Batchelor spoke Wednesday at an Indianapolis conference for local governments attended by nearly 700 newly elected municipal officials from across Indiana. He was invited to share the best practices for code enforcement within a city.

 

“Not only did state officials recognize that we are doing something right when it comes to municipal code enforcement, but the City of La Porte is now a model for other communities to try and emulate,” said Mayor Tom Dermody.

 

Batchelor said the keys to cleaning up the city are going out to look for violations and then enforcing the codes.

 

“When we started four years ago, there was a lot of stuff not being enforced,” he said.

 

Batchelor said communicating and working with violators by giving them time to come up to code on their properties is also important, especially if the expense is going to be costly. He also explained how follow-up visits to make sure progress is being made is also a key ingredient. Without progress, Batchelor noted, that’s when fines and even legal action to condemn a property are among the next options to pursue.

 

He also pointed to La Porte's free dumpster program, allowing residents to go to dumpsters to discard unwanted items.

 

“That’s helped tremendously and it helps clean up the neighborhoods,” he said.

 

The code enforcement department has grown from two to four employees after a more aggressive approach to code enforcement was taken following Dermody's election in 2020.

 

Batchelor said slightly more than 1,000 code violation citations were written the year before the mayor hired him for the job.  Close to 16,000 citations have been written by he and his crew ever since.

 

“Thanks to Jeff Batchelor’s leadership, we are cleaning up La Porte. We got more work to do, but the standard he has set is second to none,” Dermody said.