When Auburn’s code enforcement officers direct people who fall afoul of the aesthetic and public health rules to “get rid of the rusted cars,” “cut the grass,” or “trash the trash,” a few find ugly things to say.

Like the woman asked to clean her carport who concluded: “I already know Auburn is the most corrupt city in Washington. … All Auburn does is corrupt, everything is corrupt.”

Or the fellow who larded Code Enforcement Officer Chris Barak’s voice mail with so many curses and naked threats that whatever the man was trying to say melted into screaming gibberish.

As Barak and his fellow code enforcement officers, Tami Kapule and Jason Arborgast, told City leaders Monday at City Hall, most of the commentators are appreciative, even downright thankful, but certainly not everyone.

“Trying to portray the process in as nice and respectful a way as possible is difficult at times because they don’t want to hear it,” Barak said.

Before 2015, Arborgast said, Auburn did not have an abatement budget, and the fact that there is one now has led to shining successes, and has helped take care of many problematic properties that presented life-safety problems to the community.

Among these, an infamous house on 9th Street Southeast that had been occupied at one time by as many as 15 people, without running water. This property called for the deployment of specialists in hazmat suits to clean up.

From another property, code enforcement and its clean up partners carted away 8.5 tons of garbage.

One garage took the guys in hazmat suits two days to clean up.

“It’s been awesome to have the financial means to get these taken care of,” Arborgast said.

City leaders were also treated to screen images of some of the worst problems turned success stories.

Of one property, which finally called for abatement action and code enforcement action, Barak had this to say: “It was a horrible, horrible property. But you can see that they fixed it up very nice, and it sold and it’s back on the market.”

Next up, two single-family residences on a single parcel on 331st Street. The elderly resident had recently moved into a care facility and left the property in a bad condition.

“It took a year or so to get compliance … but an investor finally bought it and fixed it up, and it’s actually very, very nice,” Barak said.

Barak talked about another property on 28th Street South that went through numerous infractions, notices of penalties and abatement after its tenant left. Today, under new ownership, it is being cleaned up.

“(The original owner) was very, very difficult to deal with. He’d clean up bits and pieces at a time, enough to kind of get us off his back, but then he’d go back to the way it was a couple days later,” Barak said.

Having an abatement budget has also helped the officers to conduct a public education campaign aimed at increasing awareness of the various City codes, Kapule said, success manifested in postcards, brochures and direct mailings, even a frequently-asked-questions section on the City’s website.

“We have just done some preliminary work, but it’s focusing on the impression corridors. What kind of message are people receiving as they drive through our community? Maybe they don’t live here but are just driving through and are going to stop and go shopping. I’m going to be working closely in 2016 with one of your urban design planners,” Kapule said.

“… Not only will we be using (a checklist) with businesses and residences along the primary and secondary corridors (starting on Lea Hill), but we also are going to implement it at the multiple-family apartment complexes, partnering with law enforcement, trying to find creative ways to get increased compliance not only with code violations but also to improve the safety of the neighborhoods at our multi-family apartment complexes,” Kapule said.