SPEAKING IN CODE – HOW BUILDING OFFICIAL CARL CONLEY NAVIGATES A SEA OF SPECIFICS TO KEEP HOPE IN GOOD STEAD
Planning to build a new home? There are codes for that. Got your eye on a piece of rental property? There are codes for that too.
Say hello to Carl Conley, the Building and Code Enforcement Official for the City of Hope. He is the one who navigates a sea of specifics and their meaning to our lives when we, the public, receive his guidance and sometimes discipline.
In a wordy definition, Code Enforcement is the prevention, detection, investigation and enforcement of violations of statutes or ordinances regulating public health, safety, and welfare, public works, business activities and consumer protection, building standards, land-use, or municipal affairs.
No, Conley doesn’t drive around in his own Batmobile, but he does see that property nuisances, noise infractions, dumping and other violations that require his direct response are made right again.
But mostly it’s keeping buildings and structures up to their proper standards and requirements which can sometimes change from year to year.
He has a combined 50 years of experience in working in city services and is currently semi-retired after serving more than 10 years as the Public Works Director for the City of Texarkana, Arkansas.
It’s a job that seemingly could have a webwork of issues and problems, literally and figuratively jumping from one fire to the next.
“It’s kind of the nature of the position,” Conley says with a chuckle from his desk at the Public Works building on the edge of town on West Third Street.
Thankfully, Conley quickly sets one at ease after thinking you know something about the wide world of codes but truly don’t have a clue.
“I use this philosophy about zoning codes,” Conley states. “Every citizen doesn’t know very much or anything about them.
“When Catherine Cook hired me here, I told her that my job would be 80 percent educational and 20 percent enforcement.
“The codes come from a standpoint of safety,” Conley continues. “We are looking for building safety, or making sure the structure has the proper electrical loads that it is designed for.
“And, with zoning for example, you don’t want a junkyard business located right next to residential housing. So, we set aside different tracts of land for different types of uses.
“So, every use has its place,” Conley tosses out to sum zoning up quite nicely.
Conley must work together with other city agencies such as the Fire Department to establish and make changes to the codes over time.
“We are currently working with the 2012 codes,” Conley states. “We are getting ready to go to the 2021 code. It’s been approved by the State Fire Marshal with the revisions.
“We are going by the International Fire Code, the International Building Code, and the International Residential Code rolled into one ICC Code.”
According to the Global Alliance for Building and Construction website, the International Code Council is the “leading global source of model codes, standards and building safety solutions that include product evaluation, accreditation, technology, training, and certification.”
That’s a mouthful of codes right there alone.
It can be quite worrisome to us average citizens who take it for granted that we have a safe place to sleep at night and don’t have to wake up to some other man-made disaster downtown.
“That ICC code is always reviewed by the State Fire Marshal, and they adopt certain revisions to the Code that involve state law.
“When we do receive it, we will review it and bring it before the board to adopt.”
Ok, now that he has convinced us readers that he knows his codes, let’s rewind the tape a bit on Conley.
“I actually grew up in Missouri,” he begins.
“I always say that Mark Twain’s claim to fame was that he was born only 16 miles from where I was,” Conley says with a laugh. “Twain was born in Florida, Missouri and I was born in Paris, just down the road.”
Conley received an Engineering Degree from the University of Missouri in their school of Mines and Metallurgy in 1964. His first job was with a consulting firm out of Kansas City and into his third year while working out of Shreveport on a project came great news.
“One of those years I was sent to Shreveport for a study and when I was about to head back to Kansas City, the City of Shreveport called, and Mayor Clyde Fant offered me a job.”
And he stayed for 25 years.
“I was later retired and picked up the newspaper one morning to see there was a job opening for a building official and Public Works Director in Texarkana (Arkansas). I thought to myself that I was made for that job, Conley continued.
And he was, in fact, the man for the job.
“I was hired by Barrett Jones who was City Manager at that time, and I proceeded to stay with them for 10-1/2 years.”
Codes and Code Enforcement must now be second nature to Conley which is a gem for any City Manager.
Conley truly puts the best interest of the citizens first and how to effectively work with everyone on both sides of the table.
One would have to wonder if there are quirky codes that Conley must tackle. How does he put that knowledge to the test?
“For example, we are working with a warehouse and are trying to determine what the contents of the warehouse will be,” he says.
“What would be the code requirements? So, we are trying to determine how it is classified? It just so happens that this particular material is a poly-vinyl which can be classified in three different ways. We must determine if it is a moderate or low hazardous storage facility.”
It mostly boils down to whether the warehouses would have to be equipped with a sprinkling fire system or not.
The codes, he states, reflect a consensus of experts from every angle of virtually every building issue as the result of extensive meetings and conferences locally, nationally and even globally.
New products are constantly being reviewed for their safety, what type of hazard it can present and conduct testing in order to make notations.
Is your head spinning yet?
Instead of the well-known phrase “trust then verify” better make that verify then trust.
Many thanks from us grateful readers to a man who probably can’t sleep at night unless we are safely sleeping at night.
Want to learn more? Simply visit the Building Services and Code Enforcement web page at www.hopearkansas.net.