Looking for advice on Cleveland housing codes.

[Dmitri K.]

I am a fairly recent investor in the Cleveland area. A few months ago i bought a nice house in the Kams corner area, and as usual, we did some cosmetic repairs to it and pulled a plumbing permit to address a plumbing issue. 

This past saturday i received a notice from the city saying that my garage is a public nuance and has to be repaired or will be demolished. (The front siding of the garage does look crooked, but the overall structure is in a very good shape. has new roof and new trusses ) I only had a week from the date of receipt of the notice to comply. (not sure why it took them 3 weeks to mail it).

Today i receive another letter that summons me to a criminal court for code violation - stating that i've not pulled plumbing, and electrical permits. However i did pull a plumbing permit and had an inspector approve it. No electrical work has been done, so i am not sure why they are requiring that.

Anyway, looks like i can get away from a court visit by paying a $95 fine. But in addition to that they want me to pull all the permits in order for an inspector to inspect the house. Plus they want to have a new slab for the garage (apparently some garages in Cleveland were not built on slabs - i had not idea.) And, they also want me to cement my private driveway, because it has gravel. At this point i don't know what to do. As i have not budgeted for anything near this extensive.

I guess my questions to anyone experienced in this area are:

- can they require permits on stuff that worked had not been performed on?

- can they make me forcefully pave my driveway?

- anyone has a non-slabbed garage? Is that illegal?  

- what should i do?

I am just looking at this from a san francisco point of view. Here , they are very serious about the code, but they won't make you update your 100 year old building to the modern code requirements unless you are specifically touching that area.

Thank you