LAFAYETTE, La. ( KLFY )– Himbola Manor Apartments was fined over $30,000 for violations to the city’s code of ordinances at an adjudication hearing Wednesday.

During inspections on July 30, the city found 132 violations at the apartment complex, giving the complex until a hearing on Aug. 28 to make repairs. In that hearing, the city said 123 violations remain after their follow-up inspections. Himbola was given more time to make those repairs because they were waiting on mold and plumbing test results.

Officials said the mold report, which was around 500 pages, said 26% of units have elevated levels of mold.

Himbola’s attorney, Eric Pullen said he “wasn’t terribly surprised by the report.”

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“Unfortunately, those things just take a long time to put together,” Pullen said. “Certainly, the recommendations that are in there, we think are very standard, and we will follow those and get that work done.”

At Wednesday’s hearing, Kathy Trahan with LCG said that of the 132 original violations, 103 remain, 29 violations were completely cured and 17 were partially cured.

Partially cured violations include screen doors. Himbola’s representative said they installed new ones, but as of yesterday’s inspection, some already have holes in them. Other partially cured violations include smoke detectors. Pullen said they replaced smoke detectors, but they noticed in yesterday’s inspection that tenants were removing the batteries.

Because the complex did not have all repairs fixed by today’s hearing, they were fined $32,296.

Pullen said Himbola cannot move forward repairing the rest of the violations until they receive a bid from a local plumbing company, which they expect to have by the end of next week.

Another hearing is scheduled for Oct. 2 to go over how long it is estimated to take to repair plumbing issues before they can tackle the other violations. They will also discuss additional fines per violation per day at the next hearing.

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