Code Enforcement Office Adds New Official
July 6th, 2022
A new official has joined the City of Dalton's code enforcement office. Josh Burgess, a veteran construction worker and former building inspector, recently started work as a new code enforcement official. The City's code enforcement function is no longer handled by officers from the police department and instead is a civilian function of City Hall.
"I come from a construction background. For 20-something years I’ve been working in construction," Burgess said. "I was a building inspector for about three and a half years for Whitfield County."
Burgess is part of the City of Dalton's new approach to municipal code enforcement that moved the function out of the police department earlier this year and put it into civilian hands at City Hall. The City of Dalton is still serious about improving the “curb appeal” of our community through better enforcement of the municipal code – everything from maintaining yards and other measures to keep Dalton beautiful to ordinances that govern building safety – they’re just changing who is assigned to the job.
“We’re not law enforcement,” said Jake Hollis, another Dalton code enforcement official. “We’re not there to arrest people or put them in handcuffs, our job is simply to say, ‘hey, this is in violation, it needs to be corrected and it’s a civil situation, it’s not a criminal situation between you and the city.’”
"I’m one of those guys that likes to see things followed through and I like to see things neat and tidy and have everything look good," Burgess said. He's already working on several cases despite being new on the job. "For the most part it’s just trying to clean the city up."
"There’s a lot of property that needs to be taken care of," he continued. "People just let things go for so long and then it just kinda gets overwhelming for them. So part of our job is just offering resources to them. There are companies out there, churches out there that will help. They’ll come in and they don’t charge, we just try to get them in touch with those people to help them out if it’s something they can’t do on their own. I do like we can work with them and offer them resources to help."
The code enforcement office's goals are to make the city look great and to improve the city's "curb appeal" but also to make the city safer. Much of the municipal code deals with safety issues as well as cosmetic issues. Overgrown properties for example can foster infestations of snakes or rodents that can be a problem for neighbors. Rundown buildings, likewise, aren't just eyesores, they can also be dangerous for people to be inside.
There are several ways to contact the code enforcement office for complaints or to alert them to issues facing neighborhoods in town. The office can be contacted online using the See Click Fix function on the city’s website or the See Click Fix app on iOS or Android. Residents may also call the code enforcement office at 706-281-1312. Josh Burgess can be reached via email at jdburgess@daltonga.gov and Jake Hollis can be reached via email at jhollis@daltonga.gov.
