Rental, vendor, among ordinances on TM warrant

NORWAY — Town ordinances including a rental occupancy ordinance and a street vendor ordinance will go on the town meeting warrant.

Other ordinances include an electrical ordinance and a demolition notification ordinance.

Voters at town meeting June 18 will choose whether to enact the ordinances, said Town Manager David Holt at a public hearing June 7.

Holt said poor rental housing conditions in Norway as well as a series of articles published by the Advertiser Democrat last fall on the issue are what triggered the changes to the rental ordinance.

"This is a way to respond to those issues and make housing conditions better," he said.

The town's rental occupancy ordinance has not been updated since 2000.

Code Enforcement Officer (CEO) Joelle Corey-Whitman said the revised ordinance will have more rigid standards for rental inspections.

An alternative inspection method, she said, essentially left it up to landlords to inspect their own units by following a checklist.

"Nobody was really following up to see whether or not they [units] actually met the standards," she said.

The rental ordinance also indicates that the CEO will have the power to issue, enforce or revoke the occupancy permit for lack of safety standards, she said.

The number of days a landlord can be without a permit before a hearing takes place has been lowered from 30 to 15, said Corey-Whitman.

If landlords are not responsive, they will face a $100 fine – instead of a $50 fine – per day until the unit is no longer occupied or the unit passes inspection, she said.

"It's unfortunate, but it's the nature of the beast," she said.

The Norway Electrical Ordinance 2012 would require an electrical disconnect [switch] on structures, said Norway Fire Chief Dennis Yates.

Disconnects are generally mounted below the electric meter on the side of a home, in order to disconnect power from the home from the outside.

In other words, the fire department would be able to disconnect the power without having to go inside a burning building to do so.

"It's a safety issue," he explained. "When we come to a fire scene, the first thing we have to is get the power disconnected. ... and sometimes we can't access the basement because of the fire."

The Demolition Notification Ordinance would notify the assessor when a taxable building in town is removed, said Holt. "We don't want to tax people for buildings that aren't there," he said.

Voters will also enact the new Street Vendor Ordinance to repeal the 1936 Hawking and Peddling Ordinance.