Peotone Building Committee Discusses Options

By Andrea Arens

A discussion on switching plan review and inspection services from Safebuilt to another service led to a Building Committee meeting to discuss options.

Lakeside Consulting, out of Warrenville, was hired to perform code enforcement duties within the village in May of last year. Several residents were not pleased with Lakeside’s manner of issuing citations and had attended board meetings to voice their concerns.

Safebuilt plans on raising their prices in mid-September, and the mayor and Village Administrator Aimee Ingalls both expressed a desire to move in a different direction with a new service.

Ingalls suggested Lakeside be hired for plan review and construction inspection services, but Trustee Todd Sandberg said at the building committee meeting he would not vote for Lakeside.

Trustee and Chair of the Building Committee Gary Hudson offered an option with B & F Inspection Services of Elgin. Hudson said the inspector would be a local resident, familiar with the area.

Sandberg and Trustee Nick Strba were in favor of someone more local.

Sandberg recommended returning to hiring individual inspectors for each building department, such as plumbing, electrical, framing, and concrete, with each doing plan review. Sandberg said both Frankfort and Crete still use independent contractors for plan review and inspections.

“Frankfort has a lot of building that goes on there, and they seem to pull it off without a hitch and using individual contractors. I think it would be a good idea to go that route if we can find the people,” said Sandberg.

Sandberg continued, “I’m not in favor of these companies. These companies go to a seminar, they talk on talking points, and that’s what they go out and look for over the next six months.” Hudson agreed.

Both Strba and Hudson agreed they liked that idea and newly hired Building & Zoning Coordinator Henry Walters could implement coordination of plan review, but it would definitely take more organization. Sandberg also agreed it would take time to get that program up and running. Strba also said he thought it was worth putting it out for contractors, because he believed there would be contractors that would be willing to inspect for the village.

Ingalls thought the difficulty with Safebuilt was based on an individual and not the services the company provided. Ingalls stressed that she and Walters met with Lakeside, and Lakeside could provide the community service based approach the village was looking for.

Lakeside is a newer company, and B & F has been in business for quite some time. Both prices for inspection and plan review services were comparable.

Ingalls was concerned turnaround time for plan review would be significantly longer if contracting individual disciplines to review rather than a service. She also suggested individual contractors wouldn’t know building and zoning codes. Ingalls said she and Walters have been doing it without training. Ingalls receives a stipend for her building department work.

Ingalls listed many positives to hiring Lakeside, but the committee wasn’t sold.

A consensus was made among the committee members that Administrator Ingalls and Coordinator Walters would meet with B & F and afford them the same meeting as Lakeside, and the committee would reconvene to discuss findings.

Sandberg added, at the end of the meeting, that he would like to see creation of a rental ordinance in Peotone. Peotone, being a non-home rule community, has limited power to implement inspections, but Sandberg passed out paperwork to committee members that establishes guidelines for the creation of such an ordinance.

Such an ordinance would create a standard for rental properties and protect both renters and landlords from becoming nuisances in the community.

“I don’t think we have a lot of properties (nuisance rentals) like that right now, but I’d hate to see that come down the road and then, all of a sudden, we’re scrambling to get something like that started up. We’d create a standard of quality for the rentals in town,” said Sandberg.

Mayor Peter March noted it’s definitely something the village could look into. Strba agreed.

Trustee Todd Sandberg is the husband of Editor Andrea Arens. Any coverage of his activity is not an endorsement of such.