Aberdeen Is The City In Mississippi To Adopt The 2012 International Council Of Codes

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ABERDEEN, Miss. (WCBI)-The City of Aberdeen may be seeing some changes throughout it’s city over the next few months. The Board of Alderman voted Tuesday night to adopt new building codes for their town.

Aberdeen may be known for it’s historical homes, but city officials believe their building codes should not be.

“What we have done is just got up to par with the rest of the country,” says David Low.

The city is one of the first towns in the state of Mississippi to adopt the 2012 International Council of Codes. They will be establishing new codes for plumbing, mechanical, and existing buildings.

Building official, David Low says the most important code they are adopting is the property maintenance code.

“It deals with the quality and sanitation in the look of your surrounding environment on your property. For example buckets and cars or just trash laying out there,” says Low.

Another change –Building inspectors now how the authority of criminal action to threaten property owners with

“If you’re in violation and you don’t clean it up we can actually fine you and bring you before the judge and then the judge would hear it and he would set the fine and you would have to pay your fine. As before it took many hours just to try to get one piece of property cleaned up and with all the notices that had to go out it could take up to two months to get one property clean,” says Low.

Low says these new changes may also mean more money for the residents and businesses

“Hopefully if everything goes right with the codes enforcements go into affect it’s going to increase the property value here. It’s going to beautify the city. It’s going to get rid of the blight,” says Low.

By adopting these new building codes it will help make Aberdeen more presentable. And one business owner believes it will bring more visitors to this historical town.

“It’s going to help put if you look around Aberdeen has run down over the last 10-15 years so it needs to be some kind of standard or code that we set to go straighten some of it out because if you clean some stuff up then more people would want to move in here,” says James Terry.

Even though the new codes have not gone into affect, James Terry says he’s excited about the future of his town.

The Board of Aderman plan on discuss the set amount of fines for violators at the next hearing. The public will be notified thirty days before the new codes go into affect.