FAITH — A few months ago, the city council in this ranching town in remote northwestern South Dakota decided to join dozens of other communities across the state and hire an outside contractor to enforce property codes.

But in a pioneer town built on a rugged history of cattle ranching and as a stop on the state’s early railroad, the code enforcement crackdown has led to a (so far) peaceful revolt.

After years without any property inspections or code enforcement, residents here are hinting at taking up arms to force their elected leaders to rescind the code enforcement contract and undo an ordinance that put in place a strict new set of codes that could allow an inspector to enter someone’s property without permission.

About 50 residents attended a city council meeting on July 2 to air their grievances.

As the crowd filed in, one man asked another, “Did you bring your pistol?” The guy said he had not.

A while later, former city council member Rae Shalla warned the council that, “I promise you that if you start violating peoples’ Fourth Amendment rights (against unlawful searches and seizures), you’re going to have citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights (to bear arms).”

1 in 4 properties warned

Contracted inspector Joel Johnson of Code Enforcement Specialists, sent out 53 warning letters to Faith residents after visiting this spring.

The town’s population of 300 lives in roughly 200 housing units, according to the U.S. Census. Johnson owns the company, based in Burke, and said he has more than 80 cities under contract and a waiting list of a dozen more municipalities.

Johnson, a former fire chief and city council member in Burke, said he approached his job in Faith just as he does in any other town, without bias. His contract typically includes a $1,500 annual retainer fee with $75 an hour for work performed plus mileage and expenses.

Johnson said code enforcement is badly needed in many South Dakota cities and towns that have lost population, jobs and commerce but which hope to attract new residents and industry.

“If they don’t (enforce codes), they eventually lose control of their communities,” Johnson said.

But in a rural town of proud people who don’t like to be told what to do, and where the housing stock is aged and many residents are elderly, disabled or live beneath the poverty line, his enforcement letters have drawn people’s ire.

Sudden worry

Loretta Passolt, 70 years old and living on Social Security and part-time wages, was told she had to repaint and install new windows in a small vacant home next to hers that has sat idle since her in-laws died 30 years ago.

Passolt, a widow with no local family, estimated it could cost $5,000 or more to hire someone to do the work. “It’s a big worry about how to get this done,” she said.

The letter to Dan Nolan, a 72-year-old carpenter, informed him he had find a new place to store a few 2-by-4 boards and sheets of tin he hid behind his house after high winds blew down a shed.

“You have to drive down the back alley to even see it,” Nolan said.

Working as a property code enforcer is not a job for the thin-skinned or faint of heart, according to Dave Smith, president of the South Dakota Association of Code Enforcement, a nonprofit trade group.

Smith is the director of planning and permitting and the lead code enforcement officer for the city of Sturgis and has spent 15 years in the field after formerly working in law enforcement.

“I would rather arrest a 300-pound fighting drunk than tell a 90-year-old lady she had to mow her lawn,” he said.

But Smith said code enforcement is necessary in municipalities for several reasons, chief among them the “broken window” doctrine, in which allowing one broken window in a community can lead to more broken windows that go unfixed.

Inspector gets death threats

Johnson, who bought CES in 2019, said he and his staff have extensive experience and training in identifying code violations and working with property owners to make needed upgrades.

Johnson said he has received death threats during his enforcement career. “It’s rewarding work but you do take a lot of butt-chewing, that’s for sure.”

While he is sometimes scorned by those whose properties are cited, he said he also receives strong support for his enforcement efforts.

Johnson said one city council in South Dakota, bowing to public pressure, canceled his contract at one point but then hired him back a year later after voluntary enforcement efforts fell short.

“Some people feel like if they bury their heads in the sand, it will just go away. But I haven’t seen that,” he said.

On the eastern side of South Dakota, the city of Volga has contracted with CES for code enforcement for a few years and has a good relationship with the company, said Michael Schulte, city administrator in the city of 2,300 located 7 miles west of Brookings.

The city has spent about $9,600 to use CES for its code enforcement work over the past three years, Schulte said. “They (CES) have been really great to work with, and I don’t have the feeling they’re nitpicking or trying to find any little violation,” Schulte said.

Faith Mayor Glen Haines told News Watch that the council members believed the city needed to get cleaned up but that he is now unsure if they didn’t go too far.

“They’re upset, and they have a right to be upset,” he said of residents. “To me, he (inspector Johnson) got a little carried away. And maybe that code enforcement book is not meant for small towns like ours.”

At the July 2 council meeting, Haines told the gathered residents that the council will likely place an item concerning the new code on the agenda of the next meeting on July 16.

This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization. Contact Bart Pfankuch at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.