Niles Charter Township’s building department manager, Jeff Dunlap, will be pulling double duty.

On Monday, the township board approved making Dunlap the township’s official code enforcement officer by a vote of 6 to 1. Trustee Richard Noble was the only dissenting vote.

Dunlap, who retains his building department manager status, has been acting as the interim code enforcement officer since November, said Supervisor Jim Stover.

Dunlap will assume the administrative and field inspection duties required of a code enforcement officer.

Treasurer Jim Ringler said Dunlap would have the time to do both jobs because of the decline in the housing market.

“When we hired him (Dunlap) as a building official, we were busy building 30 houses a year,” Ringler said. “Now we are building about three or four a year. There is more time in his office to do that (code enforcement), for now. We hope to go back to building 40 houses a year, but that may never happen.”

Ringler added that having Dunlap doing code enforcement would be less expensive than hiring someone else to do the job.

Stover provided statistics showing the building department has been operating in a deficit the past two years.

In 2011, building department expenses totaled $104,255 with revenues at $72,674. That’s a deficit of $104,255.

Pre-audit numbers for 2012 show building department expenses at $157,144 with revenues at $80,580. That’s a pre-audit deficit of $76,564.

Stover said the township’s general fund is used to subsidize the deficits.