Council approves job description, pay scale for code enforcement officer position

The City of Fernley is now recruiting two code enforcement officers following City Council approval of the job description and pay scale on Oct. 1. The new positions aim to relieve the building department, which has seen code enforcement demands quadruple over the past five years. The entry-level roles pay between $28.23 and $38.25 per hour. Applicants must have a high school diploma or equivalent, relevant coursework or experience, and the ability to obtain an International Code Council certification within a year of hire.

Kerry Lyman
10/09/2025 08:39 PM

Council approves job description, pay scale for code enforcement officer position

With the city council approving the job description and pay scale at the Oct. 1 meeting, the City

of Fernley is now actively recruiting two code enforcement officers.

During budget work sessions earlier this year, Charity Birkel, the city’s building official, almost

pleaded with the council for a code enforcement division within the city because, as she said,

code enforcement was taking up far too much time of the building department’s five employees

who should be spending their time on site plan reviews and inspections.

“We spend probably 70 percent of our time on code enforcement when we should be spending

almost 100 percent on the building side because that’s where our revenue is coming from, and

that’s where safety issues come in,” Birkel had said.

Due to the city’s growth, the time spent on code enforcement issues has increased fourfold in the

last five years, she added.

Birkel said she would have preferred to hire a code enforcement manager and one code

enforcement officer so her department could concentrate just on building issues. But in the

budget the city council adopted, the council opted instead to fund two code enforcement officers.

As a result, code enforcement will remain under the building department, she said.

For the first five days after council approval of the two new positions, recruitment was limited to

existing city employees. After that five-day period, the positions would be open to anyone,

Birkel said.

The two open entry level code enforcement positions pay between $28.23 and $38.25 an hour.

High school graduation or its equivalent is required, supplemented with some college level of

course work in building, planning, criminal justice or a related field and one year of work

experience working with regulations or a related field that would demonstrate the attainment of

the knowledge, skills and abilities required for the position.

At least one year experience with frequent heavy public contact in stressful or confrontational

situations is also required. In addition, applicants must possess or be capable of obtaining a

Property Maintenance and Housing Inspector Certification issued by the International Code