BTW on Code Enforcement and the Deland article

At the end of the article on challenges to Deland's enforcement of it's "2 unrelated people" limit for families, there was a statement that after June 1 the City would be able to asses their $500/day fines without any further hearings. This isn't really the case.

Those of us who've had to deal with Chapter 162 on Code Enforcement probably have a lot of comments on the limitations of the statute. But it appears that a lot of people are unaware of Massey v. Charlotte County, 842 So. 2d 142 (Fla. 2d DCA 2003) (here's the original 2d DCA original opinion) . It held that the statute has to be interpreted so as to require the Code Enforcement Board (or whatever it's called locally) to hold a hearing to confirm that a violation is ongoing and make the findings required by the statute before actually levying a fine. And while it gave the local governments a lot of wiggle room on the actual process, it makes it clear that there must be one.

Moreover, given that the decision basically says that this is a fundamental due process question, I think there's a strong argument that it applies to any code enforcement action and fine that hasn't yet been finalized into a lien.

Love to hear any war stories from folks who have used this decision to get a hearing from a CEB or against fines that have been levied in contravention to it.