CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- There were no long lines of landlords waiting outside the city collector's office Thursday to register their apartments under the first day of Charleston's new landlord ordinance.

And it was business as usual at the Building Department, whose employees will be inspecting apartments to make sure they meet all city building and zoning codes.

To the casual observer, there was little sign of the controversial measure that City Council members passed in April over the heated objections of area landlords. Behind the scenes, though, city officials have been gearing up for months.

The ordinance requires landlords to register all apartments in the city once a year, starting this month. It also calls for the Building Department to conduct random inspections of those apartments, or whenever requested as it currently does.

The collector's office has been working with other departments to develop an online registration system, but the system is not quite ready, city Finance Director Joe Estep said.

"The ordinance requires a lot of pieces of information," Estep said. "To make it as easy as possible for landlords and the city collector, we wanted an online system.

"I'm well aware the ordinance takes effect today. Hopefully, by the end of August, we'll have significantly registered all the known landlords."

The city is considering two online systems, Estep said. "Once we have that nailed down, we'll have an education process with the landlords. We've kicked around ways to do it, such as the city website or getting on the agenda of one of their meetings."

The systems will have three tiers of data, he said. The first has information about the owner/landlord. The second has information about the location of rental properties, including multiple sites. The third has data about individual apartments.

For each location, landlords will need to enter the county tax number from the sheriff's tax statement, plus a valid street address that matches one in a city database of addresses, Estep said.

One goal of the ordinance is to identify all city landlords and apartments -- something folks can only guess at today. "I've heard estimates, anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 housing units," Estep said. "I don't think anybody knows."

To help make sure landlords register their properties, the collector's office has compliance officers, he said. "We have one in the construction industry, to make sure contractors who come into the city are registered, and another in the rental business.

"That's already in place. We're set up to search out. What I'd do is I'd check out the ads in your paper, call the number and check the address. But we do have a clear set of requirements now, with fines and penalties, an ordinance in place."

Next door to the collector's office in the City Service Center, Building Commissioner Tony Harmon said there are plans to update his computer system. "We'll put a module in our permitting system for the landlord/tenant inspection.

"We're ready to start doing inspections," he said. "We'll do it like we've been doing for years."

If an inspector finds a problem, he or she will document it through photographs and a verbal description. "We'll write up a violation letter on the computer and send it out."

Harmon is ready to hire three more inspectors, as authorized in the city budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which started Thursday. Training them, however, will take up to six months. New inspectors have to learn all the building codes, legal procedures and notification laws.

While the budget called for two of the new inspectors to be devoted full-time to landlord/tenant inspections, Harmon is considering another plan. "We're considering whether to use all six inspectors, divide the city into sections and, if a landlord/tenant inspection comes up in their section, they'll take care of it."

Unless a tenant or someone else specifically asks for an inspection, apartments will be chosen at random from lists sent over from the collector's office, he said.

"We could possibly do four or five a day. There's a lot of paperwork involved."

Judging by comments made at public meetings this spring, some landlords will not be eager to open their apartments for inspection. "We'll have to deal with that as we go along," Harmon said.

Others might welcome a passing grade as a marketing tool. "It would be to their advantage to say that.

"We have a lot of good landlords, maybe a majority," he said. "I would hope the others would want to get their apartments up to code. I hope, eventually, they'll see the value in it"

@tag:Reach Jim Balow at ba...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5102.