MOULTRIE, Ga. — Moultrie City Council may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in its conflict over building codes, but council members expressed a desire to keep a closer watch on the issue as it moves forward.

The council passed first and second readings Tuesday of an ordinance to update several building codes, including the International Property Maintenance Code. Enforcement of the IPMC was one issue in a conflict between city staff and property owners that came to public attention early this year.

The ordinance itself doesn’t directly relate to the conflict; city attorney Mickey Waller described it as “housekeeping.” Essentially, the state has updated building codes and the city needs to update its ordinance to use the new versions. Some of the city’s codes have not been updated in several years, Waller said.

Waller said he worded the ordinance so that, if council approves it, it will automatically update the city codes to match state codes whenever the state makes changes in the future.

First and second readings are essentially a vote by the council to consider a matter. The ordinance can still be tweaked before a final vote, which will probably take place at the council’s Sept. 4 meeting.

The connection between the ordinance and the conflict is the International Property Maintenance Code. The State of Georgia mandates several building codes and allows cities the option to adopt and enforce specific others. The IPMC is one of the latter; Moultrie City Council approved it in  2005 to give building inspectors a way to encourage landowners to clean up blighted property.

The city began more aggressively enforcing the International Property Maintenance Code late last year, particularly in its inspection of rental property. The city staff and council members had received complaints that landlords were renting out houses that were unsafe or otherwise inadequate. A new building inspector was hired last year, and the IPMC became a tool not only in the fight against dilapidated, vacant housing, but also a tool to help improve rental housing that people were actually living in.

The conflict began between the city and landlords, but other property owners will be affected too, the city has confirmed. Inspections take place whenever the utilities account changes names — for most homeowners that’s when the home is sold, but for landlords it was every time they got a new tenant in the residence.

As the conflict developed, much of the friction seemed to be less about the code itself than about the way the city was enforcing it. The code is worded in a way that allows significant discretion to the building inspector.

Concerns about that flexibility raised the idea of separating the IPMC from other codes in Waller’s ordinance and possibly removing it from the city code. One council member — Cornelius Ponder III — voted against the ordinance Tuesday after expressing concerns in the work session about the inspectors’ latitude under the IPMC.

In June, the city formed a property owners committee — with all the seats filled by landlords and city staff — that proposed changes in enforcement protocols. City Manager Pete Dillard described those proposals to the city council during a work session prior to the meeting on Tuesday.

The basics of the plan include:

• Landlords were very concerned about the IPMC’s requirement for external electric disconnects. The disconnects are switches on the outside of the house, between the electric meter base and the fuse box or circuit breaker panel, that would allow firefighters to turn off power to the whole house so they can safely fight a fire there. The city staff won’t enforce that requirement so long as there’s no other electrical problem, Dillard said; if the meter base has to be replaced for some other reason, the city will expect an electrical disconnect to be installed at the same time.

• A property owner is expected to fix any life-safety issues the inspector finds before power can be restored to the house.

• If an inspector finds building code violations that are not life-safety issues, the property owner must have a plan to fix them, but power can be restored and a tenant moved in while the property owner works his plan.

• Property will continue to be inspected when the utilities account changes names, but if a property was inspected within the preceding year it would not be inspected again. The property would be inspected, though, if the electricity has been turned off more than 30 days.

During Tuesday’s work session, council members said the conflict with the landlords had taken them by surprise. It had been going on for some time between the landlords and the city staff before they became aware of it, they said.

Councilman Daniel Dunn said he’d like the council to receive a monthly update on how the new enforcement protocols are working. If problems continue, he said, the council may need to revisit the procedures in a few months.

He and Councilwoman Lisa Clarke Hill urged a continuation of the landlords committee, which would continue to give the staff feedback about how things are working.

In addition, Hill asked Dillard for a quarterly update on the city’s efforts to remove dilapidated housing, which is a separate but related issue.