Will higher nuisance fines matter if no one collects them?

Automatic captions

Speech-to-text from the recording, unchecked.

a councilmember So I think, you know, what I'd like to hear, I can raise the fees to fine you, but who is gonna go and collect the fee

a councilmember Code enforcement.

a councilmember So we we have code enforcement officers who impose fees.

a councilmember We all of us just got an email a couple of days ago about a smoke shop that was shut down because of the fees that we'd assessed.

a councilmember We don't have enough code enforcement officers.

a councilmember I would like to add more in the next budget.

a councilmember I believe they're in a hiring process to hire more.

a councilmember But the fact is we are collecting fees, not as much as I'd like to, but this sort of enforcement is what deters bad behavior.

a councilmember So I don't think that the argument that we don't have enough people to collect fees suggests that we should keep our fees at a level that is fifty years out of date.