PORT ANGELES – The city of Port Angeles is poised to make one of the first changes to its municipal code since an overhaul of the code began in the last year.

Later this month, the city council will take up a rework of the codes that deal specifically with code enforcement.

City manager Nathan West says council and staff have prioritized which sections to deal with first. He says code enforcement has been the issue the council and public has put at the top of the list.

“One of the things that many of the leadership team members of the city hear about every day as well as Council, are some of our code compliance issues. And we need to have a tool that is efficient and effective relative to code enforcement. And that’s  been deemed by counsel as the number one priority in our first step. And we heard that from the public,” said West.

West says the new ordinance will change up how the city’s code enforcement officers can do their work. He says it aims to streamline enforcement and make it quicker to get results on code violations.

“We have cases today that have been in the works for years. In my opinion, that’s just not acceptable to our community members. It’s not acceptable to the neighbors who are going through those experiences, and we need to turn that around. And that’s what this effort is all about. At the same time, it’s important to share that no code is going to be perfect and the code has to work in concert with resources. And so, we really need to make sure that we continue to invest in Staffing Resources to take on the code enforcement.”

The city will post a copy of the proposed ordinance on its website by early next week. The city council plans to hold two public hearings on the proposal before voting, the first hearing is set for October 19th.

The city is combing through thousands of pages of code to modernize and make the city’s rules more efficient.