FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WNCN) — The Fayetteville City Council wants to speed up the process of clearing neglected homes and businesses.

Resolving building code violations sometimes can take days or even months, depending on the situation. The Fayetteville City Council gave code enforcers the task of coming up with options to reduce the time it takes to get dilapidated homes and buildings cleaned up, giving a facelift to neighborhoods.

“That would take additional resources. That would take additional staffing, administrative support, supervisor support,” James Rutherford, Fayetteville Housing & Code Enforcement Manager said.

Each year Fayetteville Housing and Code Enforcement balances a workload of 13,000 to 14,000 cases. It outpaces the number of cases in bigger cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. There are 13 code enforcement employees in Fayetteville.

“Well, it’s not difficult keeping up with them(violation cases). It can be difficult maintaining a follow-up and keeping to standard we like to keep them at,” Rutherford said.

He said sometimes property owners of abandoned buildings and homes don’t comply.

 “And demolition is the last resort,” Rutherford said.

Demolition costs the city on the front end and property owners are billed later.

“The price of demolition has gone up drastically due to the market conditions labor, fuel,” Rutherford said.

He said bottom-line being a good neighbor and taking care of your properties can drastically reduce code violation issues.