Unsightly properties: Officials address problems with enforcing ordinances

By Emilie Rusch, Journal staff

Driving down the alleys of North Rapid, Dale Schumacher can only sigh.

Junk cars, their driving days behind them, grow slowly into grass. Boats run aground far from shore. Abandoned appliances, old tires, piles of building materials, weeds and grass in jungle-like proportion — they’re all there.

And shouldn’t be, according to city ordinance.

“It just gets worse every day,” the longtime North Rapid resident said. “It degrades a neighborhood to the point where it’s a cancer.”

The city’s enforcement of public nuisance codes — the rules that prohibit junk and junk cars, tall weeds and snowy sidewalks on public and private property — has long been a sore spot for Rapid City residents. It’s not just a North Rapid problem, either.

Rapid City’s three code enforcement officers respond to thousands of complaints every year — 2,225 by Sept. 16 this year — from residents citywide, pointing out dead trees, unlicensed vehicles and other possible code violations. Some residents would say officers should be doing even more.

But code enforcement is a touchy line of work, requiring balance and a case-by-case approach, Community Resources Director Kevin Thom said.

A set of proposed changes, scheduled for a final council vote Monday, could make that work easier, especially when it comes to repeat offenders who let the junk pile or grass grow over and over again.

City officials — and even Schumacher — are optimistic the changes, including the possibility of fines for frequent violators, will meet the challenge.

“It’s our obligation to ensure we have safe, clean neighborhoods, but if you have one property owner who devalues the entire neighborhood because of his lack of maintenance, quite honestly, it’s damaging the neighbors,” Mayor Alan Hanks said. “They should be able to look to the city to step up and say: ‘We’re abiding by the rules. We maintain our properties. But here we have this neighbor that’s not willing to do the same.’”

Changes to code

Chief among the changes is the citation, which City Attorney Jason Green said was modeled off the uniform traffic citation.

Seventh Circuit Court Presiding Judge Jeff Davis will set the bond schedule for the tickets; Thom expects it will be about $80, including court costs. Police officers — not code enforcement officers — could issue the tickets to property owners or tenants.

Ordinance changes would also shorten the window those chronic offenders have to clean up a violation before abatement.

When property owners take no action, the city has the legal authority to abate code violations — whether it be mowing grass or hauling off junk — and then assess the cost back to the owner.

Under current ordinance, property owners have the same amount of time to fix problems regardless of how many times they’ve been contacted about the issue.

The change would give repeat offenders three days to clean up junk or long grass, instead of the regular 14 and 10 days, respectively.

“It’s not like we’re going to run out and start writing citations when the grass is nine inches tall instead of eight inches, out there with a ruler measuring it,” Thom said. “But it does give us the ability if there is somebody who just won’t comply, we have the tools we need. If you get a ticket every day for your violation, you’re probably more inclined to get it cleaned up.”

Tom Kurtenbach and Andy Chlebek, two of the city’s code enforcement officers, hope that is the case. They’ve already made mental note of a few tickets they want written as soon as Davis sets the fine schedule.

On typical complaints, officers respond first by going out to investigate and trying to make contact with the property owner. They explain the code violation and try to come to a voluntary solution.

“Some of the people are so down and out, they just don’t know where to go, and they start opening up,” Kurtenbach said.

“We deal with it on a case-by-case basis,” Chlebek said. “Somebody who has extenuating circumstances — they’re older, they don’t have the funds — we’ll give them time. We’ll work with them. But ultimately, the issue needs to be resolved.”

Most of the time, officers get voluntary compliance, but not every complaint resolves itself so simply, Thom said.

“You can have one case where you go out and talk to a person and they comply. Fine, you’re done with it. But you can have one case where you go back 10, 15 times and have contact with the person,” Thom said. “It’s not as simple as going out and noticing them, and then it’s cleaned up, and it’s done and you go on to the next one.”

Some property owners who won’t mow or clean up junk can require multiple visits — or abatements — every year.

In the worst cases, abatement is really just a temporary fix, Kurtenbach said as he looked out over one such home on North Street. That day — the day he served another 14-day notice of abatement — cars, bikes and a boat were among the debris strewn in the yard.

“We start over every time,” Kurtenbach said.

Plus, abatements aren’t a particularly expedient way to get things done. Officers must mail or hand-deliver official notices and then wait the 10 to 14 days before moving in. In the case of junk vehicles, residents also have the right of appeal.

“We’ve never had the appropriate methods to get compliance other than the abatement process that takes so long,” Hanks said. “If you abate someone’s property because they’ve not mowed their yard, it takes a month and a half to fix it. That’s silly.”

It’s not just North Rapid with problems, either. The city’s three officers each cover one section of town (Kurtenbach has the north side, Chlebek covers west of Interstate 190, and Jim Martz handles the southeast side), and they all stay plenty busy.

Just in the past few weeks, Chlebek issued an abatement notice on the new condominiums in Founders Park, where developers have left piles of loose debris and the grass to grow wild.

What can differ, though, are residents’ expectations of what is and is not acceptable behavior. On the west side, for example, folks are more apt to call code enforcement immediately, Chlebek said.

“That’s a key word: expectations,” Kurtenbach said. “Some folks’ expectations actually exceed what the ordinance reads. We can only bring properties up to compliance with the ordinance.”

“We can take things away. We don’t put things back,” Chlebek said. “We’re not going to tell you plant flowers, but we’ll make sure you cut down your grass and weeds and take the junk out of your yard.”

Both are confident, though, the ordinance changes and citations will go far in making their job a little easier. A new courtesy notice door hanger should help, too. The bright yellow cards notify property owners of violations and explain the relevant public nuisance codes without being confrontational.

The goal, ultimately, is “curbside compliance,” Thom said.

“There are some people in the community that think we should do even more code enforcement than we are, but there’s a balance between working with people, as opposed to being heavy-handed,” Thom said.

“Law enforcement has that same balance. You could sit out on the street corner and write every single person the minute you see every

violation, and you’d probably have an outcry from the community about heavy-handed law enforcement.”

City council supportThe mayor and council are, by and large, behind the changes. Aldermen already unanimously approved a resolution lifting an eight-hour-a-week cap on proactive enforcement.

What the ordinance changes and citations will do, Alderman Ron Kroeger said, is put pressure on the property owners who need it most: chronic offenders.

In his 12 years representing North Rapid, Kroeger has received his share of calls from residents with code enforcement complaints, many regarding the same properties.

“As it stands today, there are a lot of repeat offenders that know the system. They milk it to the very end,” Kroeger said. “This certainly will help solve that problem ... instead of letting them go back to the previous condition and wait for someone to send them a letter, and on and on and on.”

“It doesn’t cost money to keep junk cars out of your yard or mow your yard, the things that everyone should have the responsibility of doing.”

Alderman Aaron Costello, who worked with city staff on the changes, said cleaning up can be a tough sell to property owners. But if the city is serious about proactive enforcement, it’ll be education, not tickets, that make the difference.

“The only way to be proactive is to educate people before they’re in violation,” Costello said. “It’s almost a misnomer if you use ‘proactive’ and ‘enforcement’ in talking about these ordinances. It really falls back on the education part.”

Hanks said in an ideal world, they’d never write a single code enforcement ticket.

“We believe we can get 90 to 95 percent in

compliance just by letting them know and educating them of their responsibilities,” Hanks said. “It’s the five percent that are chronic violators that have a disregard for the impact they’re having on their neighborhood.”

And it’s that five percent that gets Schumacher so riled up as he drives through his neighborhood. He can’t wait for $80 tickets to start reaching repeat offenders’ pocketbooks.

“We need to put some teeth in code enforcement,” Schumacher said. “It’s been a long time coming.”

Contact Emilie Rusch at 394-8453 or emilie.rusch@rapidcityjournal.com.

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