Loudoun County officials handed out nearly $2,000 in fines for zoning violations during a six-month crackdown, but none for home overcrowding, according to a report to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
During the recently completed crackdown, zoning enforcement staff conducted 935 inspections on 234 properties along North Argonne Avenue and Williamsburg Road in Sterling, and found 34 zoning violations.
Common complaints included unlicensed and broken-down vehicles in front of homes and unlicensed home-based businesses. There were no residential overcrowding violations detected by the initiative.
“Essentially, bottom line is, just by your presence on a proactive basis, whammo, all these corrections started taking place,” Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, R-Sterling, told zoning administrator Keith Fairfax.
But Vice Chairman Susan Klimek Buckley, D-Sugarland Run, called for further action.
“There’s a disconnect between what you all find and what residents are telling us with respect to overcrowding,” she said. “There is a problem out there, and if we can’t detect it, we have to find alternative solutions.”
Chairman Scott York, I-at large, said overcrowding would be difficult to detect unless zoning staff members were conducting inspections before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m.
Fairfax said inspections were conducted after 5 p.m. about twice a week, as well as before 8 a.m. The zoning office conducted 2,853 zoning inspections and 1,521 residential overcrowding inspections in fiscal 2008 besides those involved in the initiative.
It received 477 zoning complaints in 2008 — down from 674 in 2007 — and 465 residential overcrowding complaints in 2008 — more than double the 214 in 2007.
