By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
With complaints rising about the limited building inspector service to businesses and residents, the East Troy Village Board discussed Monday night the possibility of bringing the building inspector role back in house.
The village contracts the role of building inspector out to Scott Johnson, who is paid 75 percent of the building permits issued for his duties. Johnson keeps office hours at Village Hall from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursday and does inspections by appointment.
The issue before the board is the complaints from residents and businesses that the current staffing of the position isn’t adequate for the village’s needs.
Village Trustee Ann Zess said she was concerned about the limited service and the lack of coordination for people who are building or renovating.
“Our problem is that we’re not meeting the needs of our residents and businesses,” Zess said. “I think we should look at improving that.”
“Are we big enough for that?” Trustee Dusty Stanford asked. “I don’t want to get too big for our britches.”
Trustee Forty Renucci said that many smaller municipalities like East Troy use the same type of set up because there isn’t enough work for a full-time building inspector and reminded the board that the village used to have the duties in house and it was outsourced to save money.
Stanford said outsourcing gives the village an advantage in that the building inspector has dialog with other communities since they are working with them already.
Renucci conceded that the village was heading toward a time when the job of building inspector would have to be in house again, but that he didn’t think it was there quite yet. He also pointed out that Johnson was only paid for the permit work he did and any consulting with the public and answering questions and coordinating efforts with village departments was uncompensated time for him.
He suggested that the solution to the current problems was to perhaps find a way to pay Johnson for more consulting time.
Village Clerk-Treasurer Eileen Suhm said she had spoken to Johnson about this a little bit and he didn’t seem all that interested in expanding his role.
Trustee Chris Gultch said he was concerned that because there wasn’t enough work for a 40-hour a week employee in the position that the village would have a hard time finding qualified applicants for the job.
“We have enough work for 40 hours if we combine the job with code enforcement,” Department of Public Works Director Mike Miller said.
Miller went on to suggest that if they had a full-time inspector, East Troy would be able to do annual building inspections to make sure they properties were code compliant and safe.
Standford asked if it was prudent to anger the business owners with something like annual inspections and the added cost of those inspections along with the cost of fixing code violations.
“I see your point,” Zess said. “But we might have prevented a square fire with them.”
The discussion then turned to how much more it would cost the village to have a full-time inspector and what type of qualifications would be needed.
The board tabled the matter and instructed Suhm to meet with Miller and do a little research on what the village needs and what it will cost.
“I’d like to see how long it will take to justify this type of commitment,” Standford said.
