The Meridian City Council is considering adopting a new ordinance that will help address poorly maintained rental properties.

In a work session Tuesday, city code enforcement officers presented the proposed language and explained to the council what they hope the ordinance will accomplish.

Community Development Director Craig Hitt, whose department includes code enforcement, said the ordinance will help identify where rental properties are at, who owns them and allow for periodic inspections. Code enforcement officers have been contacted by several renters looking to resolve maintenance and upkeep issues that the property owners are not addressing, he said.

“These guys have discovered we have several properties that are not sufficient to be living in,” he said.

Hitt said the proposed ordinance drew from other Mississippi cities that already have such an ordinance in place along with feedback from the community.

Code Enforcement Officer Terrell Thompson said the city currently does not have a system in place to keep track of which properties are rentals or who owns them. A good number are owned by out-of-state companies that aren’t interested in maintaining them or simply don’t pay attention to their property needing work, he said.

Under the proposed ordinance, landowners will need to register their rental properties with the city and include contact information for the property owner, Thompson said. That way, if issues do arise, code enforcement knows exactly who to call to get them fixed.

“We just want to have some accountability to continue to make sure we don’t have slums in the city of Meridian,” he said.

Councilman George Thomas asked what the course of action will be if, after contacting the property owner, the situation still isn’t fixed. What happens if the owner just refuses, he asked.

If a property isn’t habitable and the owner refuses to bring it into compliance, the city will have to shut it down, Building Inspector Scott Sollie said.

As for holding the owners accountable, Thompson said there are a few different ways to go. The city could take the owners to environmental court, which is held as part of the city’s municipal court under Judge Dustin Markham. Markham could impose fines or other penalties for failing to comply with the city’s ordinances.

In researching ordinances from other cities, Thompson said he also learned the city of Natchez goes through a process to set fines against owners’ state income tax returns. While Meridian already has a system in place to assess fines as liens against property taxes, collecting those fines is dependent on people paying their property taxes, which some don’t do. Residents are much more likely to file income tax returns than to pay property taxes, he said.

City Attorney Will Simmons said however the council and code enforcement decide to go, a process will need to be established to hold owners accountable.

Hitt said the ordinance will also apply to group homes, which will also need to register with the city and allow for inspections.

The council plans to review the proposed language and decide how to move forward.