BEVERLY — When a fire forced five families out of their Cabot Street apartment the day after Christmas last year, the new city building commissioner's first instinct was to check the latest inspection report for that address.
There was just one problem: The report didn't exist.
As Steven Frederickson soon discovered, that was not unusual. Despite a state law requiring the city to inspect multi-family apartment buildings every five years, Frederickson said only about 20 of the city's 578 multi-family buildings have inspection records on file at his office.
Frederickson, who was hired in July, said the inspections have not been done because the building inspection office is short-staffed, with only one full-time and one part-time inspector, plus himself.
But he said the lack of inspections can ultimately put residents, as well as firefighters and other rescue workers, at risk. He said he is determined to remedy the problem and has mailed letters to 578 owners of multi-family buildings notifying them that they will be inspected.
"You hear all the time about decks collapsing and people being injured or killed, or a fire escape collapsing right under firefighters because it hadn't been inspected," he said. "I'm adamant that's not going to happen here, at least not under my watch."
Property owners and city officials agree that the inspections are long overdue. But some are objecting to the new fee Frederickson has imposed on owners to pay for the inspections.
Frederickson has more than tripled the fee, from $75 to $250, plus a $5 surcharge for each unit in the building. Frederickson said he plans to use the extra money to hire an inspector to keep up with his ambitious program.
By contrast, Salem charges $40 and Danvers charges $75.
Beverly Ward 3 City Councilor John Burke, who represents many multi-family property owners, called the new fee "egregious."
"I don't think an inspector coming into a three-family home can justify charging a homeowner $265 for doing that service," he said.
Burke also said state law exempts three-family buildings from the fee and has advised three-family owners not to pay. Frederickson said three-families are exempt from the $5 surcharge per unit, not from the entire fee.
Burke said Frederickson has the authority to raise the fee, "but there's a difference between being legal and being ethical. It's past the threshold for me."
Frederickson justified the higher charge by saying there's no way to keep up with inspections of the nearly 1,000 properties in the city with his current staff.
"The bottom line is this is a program that will be paying for itself," he said. "It's not intended to generate revenue. It's intended to be self-supporting."
Tom Barrowclough, who owns several buildings in the downtown area, said he is "not thrilled" about the cost of the inspections. He said it cost him $265 to have one of his Cabot Street properties inspected last week.
"But I do think it's a good idea," he said. "Things like smoke detectors are life-savers. If it saves somebody's life, I'd pay $265 every year."
The fact that Beverly has failed to keep up with required inspections is not unusual, according to state and local building inspectors. Although the state mandates periodic inspections, it does not check up on cities and towns or levy any penalty for failure to inspect.
Rob Anderson, chief of inspections for the state's Department of Public Safety building division, said the state has 14 inspectors to check state buildings. Those inspectors provide technical assistance if local inspectors ask, but the inspections are left up to cities and towns.
"The code is written and put into their hands," Anderson said.
Tom St. Pierre, the building commissioner in Salem, said his city is not far off from Beverly in terms of missed inspections. He estimated only a "couple dozen" of the city's multi-family buildings have been inspected.
Salem hired a part-time inspector late last year in an attempt to catch up on those inspections, he said.
"We were so short-staffed the last five or six years," St. Pierre said. "Like everybody else, we prioritize. The priority is large places of assembly, like restaurants, nightclubs, and here in Salem, haunted houses. When you're prioritizing you go where the numbers are."
Inspectors check to make sure exits are not obstructed, stairs and fire escapes are in good shape, alarms and emergency lights are working, boiler rooms are not used as storage rooms, and other safety issues, Frederickson said.
Officials suspect December's fire on Cabot Street was caused by faulty wiring that was never inspected.
"If we had been doing our inspections we might've picked up on something like that," Frederickson said.
Inspection fees for multi-family buildings
Beverly $250*
Danvers $75*
Salem $40
* plus $5 surcharge for each unit
