Lansford Borough Council last week heard from another engineering and consulting firm regarding taking over the rental inspection process for the borough.

The firm is ARRO Consulting of Orwigsburg, which the borough contracted with to assist former code enforcement officer Jim Dean with some of the larger properties in town. The firm is also doing zoning for Lansford.

Bill McMullen, office manager and senior project manager, introduced himself, and two staffers, Shannon Darker and Ray Swartz, who have worked in the borough.

He explained ARRO will take the rental inspection process from sending out the annual registration, letters for the inspections, send copies of the notice of violations and follow through to the magistrate.

“That’s where we excel,” he said. “We take it from step one, and we finish the project.”

The whole idea is to get people to comply, McMullen said, and the people that always comply aren’t the problem.

“The people that never comply are the ones that are a heartache and cost money for the municipality,” he said. “But if you don’t follow through with it, you’ll never get them done.”

McMullen said they’re working with one municipality that was like the “wild west” when it came to rental properties. They had no real database of properties, and did sporadic inspections, and ARRO went in and took over the process.

McMullen asked if Lansford had a rental list and asked about compliance for rental registrations. Borough Secretary Wendy Butrie said they had some 740 rental units and got about 80 percent compliance with annual registrations.

The registration compliance was good, McMullen said, but Butrie said that’s with sending out second and third notices to property owners.

McMullen said the overall process is a lot for a municipality to undertake themselves, and it’s costly.

McMullen noted that fees for services would be in the $68 to $99 an hour, which was based on the hourly rate for the professional need to provide the specific service.

He gave council members a folder with information on the services and fees, as well as a list of 30 municipalities for which the firm works as references.

ARRO would seek to provide the service using fees that borough has in place, such as rental registrations and inspections fees, to cover its costs.

“I think right now, we cover your UCC costs, and I don’t think there is any cost to the borough,” McMullen said. “I think we’re at that point also where we’re covering zoning costs for you. We would love to do the same thing with the rental inspections.”

However, he cautioned that the firm can’t say what the actual costs will be, as they don’t know what will be needed to get up and running, he said.

“In its infancy, we don’t know what it’s going to be,” McMullen said, but noted that both the firm and the borough can look closer at the fees are on the books.

He explained it usually takes a few cycles before property owners are accustomed to the process, know what to expect and come into compliance.

Council members asked about consistency, and if the same person would be doing the inspections, as other firms in the past used different inspectors. McMullen said it would likely be Swartz, with whom the borough is familiar, and the firm follows a checklist to ensure consistency.

Council President Bruce Markovich asked about the paperwork, who owns it, as another firm claimed it belonged to them and not the borough.

McMullen said all the documentation and paperwork that the borough contracts for belongs to the borough.

Residents also asked about the process for cleaning up a property, such as one that doesn’t cut grass or weeds, or general maintenance, and if the borough should do the work.

McMullen said he doesn’t recommend the borough doing the work, because it’ll never get its money back by filing a lien. He also cautioned about condemning properties, because then borough may then have to raze the structure due to an imminent danger.

“If we condemn something, we know we have the funding to go through with it,” McMullen said.

He prefers to post a rental as non-habitable, which would mean tenants would have to vacate and the property owner stops getting rent until the unit it fixed, he said.

Council listed hiring either ARRO or Lehigh Engineering to administer the borough’s rental inspection program on its agenda, but chose to table the move until council members could discuss the proposals further.