Code violation fines

I wish I had been able to attend last night's council workshop, which focused on fines for city code violations.  From the KDH article and the little bit Mayor Corbin posted, it sounds like the emphasis was on the level of financial penalty.  That is a consideration, of course; the penalty needs to be higher than the cost of non-compliance.  But there is much more to consider (though not necessarily to change):

• Does the city give fair warning of violations?
• Do we make allowances for special circumstances?  If so, how?
• Can a citizen apply for an exception to the code, and, if so, how?
• Is the code applied uniformly across the city?
• Can the code be used punitively, and if so how does the punished party recover parity?
• What is the history of code violation citations?  Is there anything we can learn from the pattern?

If we're going to talk about the level of fines, it seems a fine time to open the entire can of worms.