James Goff, the senior code enforcement officer for the city of Bend’s Community Development Department, has added duties these days. He’s been charged with updating parts of the city’s code that deal with the sorts of things that make properties eyesores and unpleasant or dangerous to live near.

While the impending expansion of Oregon State University-Cascades Campus prompted the update, all of Bend will benefit, assuming enforcement is vigorous throughout the city.

The city’s nuisance ordinance, which covers everything from disembodied cars to uncollected garbage to the presence of dead trees, serves a couple of purposes.

With enforcement, it helps keep properties presentable. Properties overgrown with weeds, driveways filled with broken-down vehicles and yards strewn with litter do nothing to enhance any neighborhood.

By the same token, uncollected garbage, standing dirty water and the like are health hazards, whether buildings are occupied by college students or editorial writers. And invasive noxious weeds such as knapweed spread more easily if residents make no effort to control them, no matter who those residents are.

Among specifics, Goff told Bulletin reporter Hillary Borrud he’s considering asking to have the code regarding garbage pickup changed to require rental property owners to pay for weekly garbage pickup. Going that far is unnecessary.

City code already requires that garbage be removed from property at least weekly, either by a commercial garbage company or some other way. It shouldn’t be necessary to have one rule regarding garbage for the 60 percent of dwellings in Bend that are owner-occupied homes and a second one for the dwellings that are rental units. Rather, strict enforcement of the existing law should be enough to get the job done.

Yet code enforcement has been a hit-or-miss proposition in recent years, through no fault of the city. Plummeting revenues in the wake of the recent recession left the city scrambling to keep critical services such as police and fire well staffed. Less critical ones rightly took a back seat.

Even if OSU-Cascades had no plans to expand in Bend, updating nuisance and other codes makes sense. So, too, does rigorous enforcement of those codes throughout the city, no matter if a neighborhood is filled with rentals or owner-occupied homes.