When it comes to inspecting residential rental property in St. Paul and making sure it's safe and habitable, the city's Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI) is facing a major backlog. The numbers of rental properties in the city are clearly growing, and DSI is not.
"The backlogs are too high. Huge. Almost insurmountable," said Tom Ferrara, a DSI inspector and president of AFSCME Local 1842, the city's technical union.
The question being debated by the city's labor unions now is whether firefighters should be called in to help.
Following a series of fire deaths, the city began inspecting all rental property in 2007, even one-family and two-family dwellings. Before that, it had only inspected residential buildings with three or more units. The expanded fire Certificate of Occupancy (CFO) program was recognized by Harvard University's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation in 2012.
As a result of adding dwellings, however, DSI's caseload more than doubled. The department now inspects more than 70,000 residential units in 21,000 buildings.
And with rental properties still growing in number, inspectors have been unable to keep up.
Mike Smith, president of St. Paul Firefighters Local 21, noted in a recent interview that the city's last two fire fatalities occurred in buildings that were overdue for inspections. The guild has offered to use on-duty fire companies to help the Department of Safety and Inspections (DSI) with its backlog. Smith said DSI has turned the offer down twice.
In a recent budget memo to the mayor's office, Fire Chief Tim Butler said he, too, was concerned. “The city is facing a public safety crisis due to the number of under-inspected / uninspected buildings,” Butler wrote.
But not so fast. Ferrara, the DSI inspector and local 1842 president, says there's good reason why his department should not rely on firefighters to issue fire certificates of occupancy (CFOs).
"It's a specialized piece of the code different from firefighting," Ferrara said.
He expressed concern about added "soft costs" such as cross-training and customer service, on top of pulling fire rigs and firefighters away from the fire stations. He foresees firefighters cutting their inspections in half so they can rush out the door to emergencies.
Instead, his local is asking for more "boots on the ground," Ferrara said. They estimate they need 8 to 11 new inspectors to clear the inspection backlog, but even 3 or 4 would at least make a dent.
"I think it ought to be a priority item." Ferrara said.
"If there's cuts, there's cuts. But this is a priority item. Put more boots on the ground rather than (adding) another study or middle management."
Together with the AFSCME clerical union Local 2508, the technical and clerical bargaining units represent some 900 city of St. Paul employees, and their contracts are almost mirror images. Ferrara said his department, DSI, has faced withering cuts to clerical staff, and many inspectors now do much of their own paperwork, deal with customers at the front desk and mail their own notices, tasks that also take time away from the actual act of inspecting homes and businesses.
How will the city respond to the residential inspection backlog challenge? We may soon find out. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman will give his annual budget address Wednesday at the Schmidt Artist Lofts.
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