Sumpter Township ordinance officers’ goal is compliance

Sumpter Township ordinance officers show off pictures on their cameras of the way properties look before and after cleanups — the way others would show pictures of their grandchildren.
A stretch of grassy property with no blight is a beautiful sight of which to be proud. The Google Earth picture of the same property when it was filled with rusting vehicles is alarming.
On Friday morning, the Independent sat down with Ordinance Officers Peter Gregory and Kevin Scott, along with their boss, Sumpter Police Det./Lt. John Toth, to hear the story of their ongoing efforts to clean up the rural township.
Det./Lt. Toth, who has taken charge of the ordinance activities, said that the three of them meet every morning to plan the day. He said they have divided the township into quadrants and each ordinance officer concentrates on one quadrant for a week and then moves to the next quadrant. They follow up on ongoing situations and are proactive when they see something amiss, he said.
Toth stressed that the goal of the ordinance department is compliance, not punishment. He said he has learned a lot from Gregory and Scott on ordinances.
He said recently 34th District Court Chief Judge Brian Oakley held a meeting to discuss ordinance court cases. Toth said each community’s representatives were to explain their enforcement activities and the judge said he would hold Sumpter off until last and he would introduce them.
Toth said Judge Oakley introduced Sumpter with, “They’re about compliance” and he praised the township’s activities to bring compliance about, rather than just levying a fine and moving on.
Toth was asked about selective enforcement and said that does not happen. He said, for instance, they read in the Independent about the township supervisor having blight on his property and immediately went to see him about it. Supervisor John Morgan took care of it at once, Toth said.
Toth said sometimes people don’t know how to get rid of their blight and the ordinance department can get a scrapper to come out and clean up the blight and sell the metal collected for his fee.
The township also has a new agreement with Republic Waste, which will supply ten, 30-yard dumpsters a year to the township and will pick them up and dump them without charge. Toth said the ordinance department uses those for people who do not have the financial means to clean up their problems but want to comply. One property used two of those dumpsters, Gregory said.
Toth said they also are team building and have a meeting each month with the building inspector, building department, and Karen Woodington of the supervisor’s office to see what responsibility each person can assume to help with the specific cleanup projects before them.
Toth said the ordinance officers take pictures of everything and give them to him with information and he creates documents that are given out at the meetings so everyone is on the same page.
Toth said he asked the ordinance officers to find ten buildings that they thought needed to be demolished. He said they found ten and then got to work. He said all ten were either brought to code or demolished.
Toth said dealing with homes is a more difficult job. A house on Sumpter Road was demolished and now a new house is being built. A home on Bemis was taken down after a warning. A lot more are coming down, he said, adding just one is in court.
Gregory said they give so many chances to property owners to clean up their blight that sometimes the township exceeds the 180-day court limit to complete enforcement of a misdemeanor and they have to dismiss the original complaint and then start over. Toth said they are looking at making some civil infractions instead of misdemeanors.
They do have problems waiting for DTE to disconnect electricity and/or gas from buildings. That’s the problem with the burned-out house on Willis Road that has everything ready for demolition except the shut-offs. As soon as that is done, the house will be demolished, Gregory said.
Gregory said DTE will furnish electricity to areas no matter how far out if the people will pay for it. Some buildings need to be demolished, but DTE won’t cut them off because the people are still paying for it.
Peter Gregory was hired as an ordinance officer on Jan. 30, 2017 and he walks to work from his home just around the corner on Dunn Road, property that he bought from the surveyor who owned it. He said he had been in customer service in the corporate world for 25 years. When this job came open, he started reading the township ordinances to figure out just what he could be doing and decided he could do this. He liked people and he could help them, he said.
He and his twin brother were adopted in Detroit after spending time with foster parents Teresa and Cindy Murphy in Sumpter Township. He said he went into the service, married, worked, retired, and got a new job as an ordinance officer.
He said he got a week’s training from Randy Lynch and then he was on his own. He said he carried the thick book of ordinances in his truck to refer to until he was comfortable with the rules. Since ordinance enforcement was transferred to the police department, he got a tablet that makes finding and keeping information much easier.
He said he recalls people saying, “Who are you and why are you bothering me?” when he tried to enforce violations of the ordinances. He got run off porches. He started to educate people about the ordinances.
He said now he gets people thanking him for helping them clean up their properties and some are the same people who resisted his efforts at the beginning.
Gregory is proud of his marriage and his two daughters, 24 and 20, who are pursuing their educations for their careers – one aiming to be a doctor and another in the nurse’s program at University of Michigan.
Last spring the township board agreed Gregory needed help with his ordinance duties and Kevin Scott was approved as the new ordinance officer and went to work June 1.
Scott said he had retired from being a corrections officer and one of the inmates in his prison was Candice Diaz of Sumpter who was serving 30-60 years for killing her four-year-old daughter on New Year’s Day, 2018.
He said he was a dispatcher in Belleville for four years, starting in 1998, and then decided he wanted to work with kids and worked with Covenant House of Michigan, the Methodist program for wards of the state and then he served as a youth pastor.
“I never wanted to be in corrections,” he said, but one day he said he heard God’s voice as clear as if he was standing next to him and he said, “I need you to go to corrections.”
He said he had spent more than 20 years in marshal arts and he wasn’t afraid. He did what God wanted him to do. He said he has two kids, a wife of 24 years, and a granddaughter.
“I have a normal demeanor most of the time,” he said, noting he grew up in the ‘hoods and had a troubled youth, with drugs and other problems. He said they moved to Rawsonville Woods in the 1990s and it was so nice with all the trees and the rural atmosphere around them.
He said his motto is “No matter where you are, there you are.” He said he tries to bring the best out of people and he treated the inmates with respect.
He recalls his supervisor told him, “You’re too nice.” When the supervisor was retiring from the state, he thanked Scott for teaching him how to handle others.
“The inmates all adore you,” he said, adding whenever Scott is on a shift, it is calm and other employees want to work with him.
Scott retired from the state and he made more in that job than he will working for Sumpter, but that’s all right because it never was about money, he said.
Both Gregory and Scott do more than ordinance enforcement. Last week Scott saw 15 bags of garbage that someone had dumped and he asked the DPW to help him pick it up. More shots on a picture phone showed mattresses they had just picked up from the side of the road.
Toth said there was a man who wouldn’t talk to him or Gregory because he said they were trying to kill him. One time, when they came out to cite him on an ordinance matter, an ambulance came and took the man away.
Scott said that same man loves him and they are working together. Both Toth and Gregory shook their heads and agreed that Scott has taken on that project successfully.
Gregory said it’s wonderful when owners thank him for helping them get property cleaned up. “You don’t just throw it at them and walk away,” he said, referring to citation. He is proud they say he is fair.
Gregory has worked with high school students at Trinity Episcopal Church in Belleville for 25 years and has taken them all over the world on mission trips.
He said he, too, heard God’s voice telling him, “I want you to do this.”