On Tuesday, Statesboro’s City Council proposed a new property and maintenance code that will affect the city’s residents.

This new maintenance code would be a change to the city’s nuisance code in the hopes of better ensuring and enforcing a safe living environment for all Statesboro residents.

This will be accomplished through the adoption of the International Property Maintenance Code (IPMC) which has been adopted by other cities in the state and has been approved by the State of Georgia’s Department of Community Affairs. 

The idea behind the adoption of IPMC is not to fully replace the existing code but instead to fill in the existing gaps and allow more guidance for code compliance officers as they do inspections. This would allow them to record in better detail where building owners could fix any violations as well as provide a detailed record for the court if necessary. 

For example, in the case of pests it includes the requirement to get rid of any factors that might allow reinfestation which works with the already existing requirements to eliminate sources that might attract rodents. 

This would predominantly affect Statesboro residents and Georgia Southern students living in off-campus housing within the city. 

The George-Anne has reached out to GS officials regarding whether this would affect on-campus housing, and we have not yet received a response.

For the current and proposed IPMC you can find both on the City of Statesboro’s website.