Elberta councilmember raises concerns over upkeep of private properties

By Jessica Vaughn
Posted 9/7/21

ELBERTA - During multiple councils in 2021, Elberta councilmember Teresa Newton has voiced her desire to see unkept properties brought under the town’s nuisance ordinance. Likewise, community …

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Elberta councilmember raises concerns over upkeep of private properties

Posted

ELBERTA - During multiple councils in 2021, Elberta councilmember Teresa Newton has voiced her desire to see unkept properties brought under the town’s nuisance ordinance. Likewise, community members have attended various meetings to voice concerns over different properties in town. During the August meeting, Newton called for action in enforcing town ordinances.

“We’ve got to do something about the look of this town,” said Newton. “I’ve had calls and talked to people, and they are tired of the town being so rundown overall, not all of it, but overall. We have ordinances, I don’t care who has a problem with anything, we are required to fulfil ordinances of this town. Part of that is getting these empty places lettered or whatever we have to do. We’re not talking about anything but just enforcing, it’s not going into anybody’s home, it’s sending letters and saying, ‘you’ve got 90 days to get this cleaned up according to this ordinance.’”

Newton said she’s referring to a multitude of things when she talks about cleaning up the town, including empty houses, overgrown grass and abandoned vehicles, to name a few. In order to go forward with determining potential nuisance properties, Town Attorney Josh Myrick says the town would need to designate a code enforcement officer, most likely a member of Public Works. He also said the nuisance ordinance would likely need to be revisited.

“I think it may be the best thing to do to see how the ordinance can be updated,” he said. “I don’t think the nuisance ordinance is specific enough to cover what I understand [Councilmember Newton] is talking about, I think that maybe some more specificity would be required before we even want to think about trying to enforce the nuisance ordinance, because it is rather vague. We can come up with some examples of things that could potentially be done to get the ordinance some more teeth.”

Mayor Pro-Tem Steve Kirkpatrick asked Myrick to review the town’s current nuisance ordinance and to bring recommendations to the council at a later meeting for discussion. Myrick is also going to look into specific duties and requirements for a code enforcement officer and potential liabilities to the town when dealing with nuisances. Currently, most nuisances are handled on a complaint basis from community members.

“To the code enforcement officer, you would probably have a public works officer designated to, as they do their work, in addition to that drive around and view different properties and the public works officer or other designees on the council would have to be the ones that personally view the property and make the determination that, frankly, in their opinion, does it meet or not meet the definition of the ordinance and what’s required,” Myrick said.

Once the determination was made by the code enforcement officer, the process would then begin of handling the nuisance in the methods outlined in the town’s ordinance. Myrick said he will check with other municipalities to see how they handle nuisance situations. It was also suggested a new nuisance ordinance may be more beneficial than simply attempting to force the current ordinance to work.

Another concern held by some councilmembers is the distinction between private and public nuisances, and how the cases are handled. Myrick said he would confirm the difference between public and private nuisances in his recommendation to the council.

“You’re all looking at this from a negative standpoint, everything that you’re arguing,” Newton said to the other councilmembers. “We cannot get different people here if our town is going to look like it is, this is not me personally, I’m thinking about all my neighbors. This is the reason the town council is here, to make improvements for the betterment of everybody in this town … I hope we can go forward with this, because like I said it’s for all of us. There’s other towns that do it so it can be done, we just need to come up with an ordinance.”

Myrick hopes to bring some nuisance ordinance recommendations and enforcement information to the council during the September meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 21.