Story - The Meade County Messenger


Vol. 117, No. 38	September 23, 2009

Nuisance Ordinance nears?

Scenic vistas of green grace those who live in Meade County for its rural character. That is, until your next-door neighbor fills it with rusting automobiles or abandons their property – and the green turns into a jungle of potential health hazards.

An independent streak also greets those who live in Meade County for its freedom. “My land is my land, and don’t tell me what to do with it. I don’t want some bureaucrat measuring my grass with a ruler...” they say.

Somewhere between is a long-time-in-coming compromise that county officials have finally taken up. Maybe...

By ROBYN GREGORY
Messenger Staff

After 14 years of staring out her window at an abandoned house and overgrown mess across the street, Brenda Morris, woke up on Sept. 8, angry enough to attend the Meade County Fiscal Court’s regularly scheduled meeting.

At the Court’s last regular session on Aug. 11, Luther and Vivian Grinder rose to support a noise and nuisance ordinance. Their neighbors play loud music nightly until 2 or 3 a.m. When asked to turn the music down, they say they were greeted with vulgar remarks and the neighbor turned the music up louder. Their neighbors have also urinated in front of them. They tearfully told the Court they have no recourse unless the ordinance is passed.

A proposed nuisance ordinance is nearing completion.

Photos by Robyn Gregory
For 14 years this Flaherty residence has sat vacant, prompting neighbors to question the county’s abandoned property ordinance.

According to Judge Executive Harry Craycroft, any final adjustments from magistrates to the latest proposed nuisance ordinance were due Sept. 15. The next step is for the Fiscal Court to schedule a public hearing. The county also must hire a code enforcement officer, which is already budgeted for.

“I’m very hopeful this will pass soon,” said Craycroft. “If you really want to clean your county up, you’ve got to have it.”

Notice of the public hearing must be published in local newspapers seven to t21 days in advance, be given first and second readings in Fiscal Court, and the final approved ordinance must be published in the Meade County Messenger prior to enforcement.

If approved, Meade County Planning and Zoning Coordinator Charles “Tony” Coletta estimates the earliest the ordinance could be in effect would be by Thanksgiving.

The “Wee Care Daycare” dilemma
Fourteen years ago, Brenda Morris watched the neighbor across the street pull out with a loaded car, Christmas tree and all. They have never returned. The Army family behind her left in April, and their property is now also becoming overgrown. It is affecting her business– Wee Care Daycare – she said.

“I feel like a piece of bologna in between two pieces of bread because I have it in the front of me and now in the back. By golly, when this property behind me got out of control, I became mad because it affects my kids,” said Morris.

Morris has restricted the children under her ward from playing ball near the property.

“There are chiggers, snakes, mosquitoes and who knows what else out there,” she explained. “It’s not fair. If I let my daycare look like that I’d be turned in.”

According to Morris, the Army family does not have a contract with their property management company, which was slow to pay the last time the property was mowed on their behalf.

“The property across the street is an eyesore. The property behind her does constitute a safety/health issue because there are kids,” said Coletta. “I have the guy’s name, number, e-mail and the last time I contacted him, it took about two weeks to get it cleaned up. Grass grows back and now we have to do it again.”

The abandoned house is a different matter.

Children at Wee Care Daycare can no longer play on the grass due to the neighboring tangle of weeds.

“There were numerous people that wanted at one time to buy the house, but not now. It was cleared once about seven or eight years ago and was big news. It made the front page of the Meade County Messenger. I think it was Hank Schaffner who got that done. It hasn’t been cleared since,” said Morris.

Coletta has been working on the issue for over 18 months and explained there is a list of liens which already exceeds the value of the property to begin with.

“One bank has a lien on it, and another bank bought the tax liens on it,” said Coletta. “The liens get bigger and bigger. We, as a county, have to have the gusto to deal with it.”

Coletta has obtained a bid of $2,500 to deal with the property and “make it fresh as the day it was born.”

“If Fiscal Court paid for that, they could send the owner a bill and if the owner didn’t pay, they could slap a lien on it. After a certain length of time the county could file a motion in circuit court for judgement sale just like a foreclosure and that’s how the county gets their money back. But they have to have the willingness to do that,” he said. “On April 3, I filed the documents and affidavits with the county attorney’s office requesting that a petition be filed in circuit court to do just that and it’s being worked on.”

Coletta has put on his detective hat in this specific case.

“I know every hand that has touched that property in the last 14 years,” he said. “I know every lien, I have the title search. But we, as a county, if we’re not willing to follow through, then you’re wasting your time to start,” said Coletta. “I have tried desperately to do what I can do, but for me, zoning has to come first.”

Morris believes Coletta is doing all he can.

“I believe he doesn’t have the law he needs. I believe he tries very hard. I believe he is genuine, and sincere and takes it to heart,” said Morris. “But he is one man. I’m governed by laws. What is wrong with having Planning and Zoning? What is wrong with having a nice-looking county? What is wrong with making people keep their junky cars out of sight? What is wrong with that?” she asked.

Backyard motocross anyone?
Just down the manicured residential street from Morris, Mark and Julie Williams have a different dilemma.

Their neighbors constructed a full-fledged motorcycle course on the 2+ acres they own, complete with lights, excavated jumps and visitors that come to use it. The noise, dirt and dust were unbearable, said Morris.

According to Williams, they have been waiting for a nuisance ordinance for two years.

“We pay taxes and for what?” asked her husband.

“Back on Sept. 9, 2008, we collected over 100 signatures just in two days supporting a nuisance ordinance,” she described. “We submitted them to Fiscal Court and nothing ever happened.”
She e-mailed the Fiscal Court in January 2009, requesting an update.

The reply she received said, “I am working on an ordinance to present to the Fiscal Court on noise. The abandoned houses and junk cars; we are in the process of hiring a code enforcement officer, and once they are in place, they can begin to work on these issues.”

Williams gave up checking on the progress, though she still welcomes a nuisance ordinance because it could lessen animosity between neighbors.

“A nuisance ordinance would take away controversy because it would be the law, not you trying to deal with your neighbors,” she said. “It would help eliminate confrontation.”

A cumbersome ordinance
Determining why in 2009 there is no enforceable nuisance ordinance, or abandoned property ordinance for that matter, isn’t easy.

Many don’t recall one at all, but Coletta says the seven Fiscal Court members who were sitting prior to the present Court repealed it “in favor of this thing they call the abandoned property ordinance, which just doesn’t do the job.”

“Right now we have an ordinance (abandoned property) that’s ineffective. It’s vague. It’s convoluted. It’s not a good document,” said Coletta. “From an enforcement standpoint, it requires circuit court action. Circuit court is generally where they prosecute felonies and higher-dollar figure lawsuits. It wasn’t meant for simple misdemeanors. What we have right now and the way it is written it requires restraining orders to be obtained through circuit court which writes the county attorney’s office out of the picture, except for filing documents.”

Getting on the circuit docket alone takes months. Though not in his job description, Coletta has gone to the extraordinary step of tracking down property owners and also trying to resolve nuisance complaints concerning property.

“My job is I am the director of the Planning and Zoning commission. I have a legal obligation under KRS 100 to administer and enforce zoning regulations. When I report to the Fiscal Court I list ‘nonzoning’ actions because I want to make it clear that these are not zoning issues. The only reason I’m doing it is because there was no one here to do it, and it needed to be done. There was a need and I told the judge I would do the best I could to try to fix some of the problems.”

Recently, a magistrate inquired about more specific details of the open “nonzoning” cases summarized in
Coletta’s reports to the Fiscal Court. County Attorney Margaret Matney advised that it would be illegal to give specific details.

“They had the best of intentions in asking for specifics because they want to keep track of what’s going on in their districts,” explained Coletta. “But there are exceptions to the Kentucky Open Records Act. Investigations of an administrative and adjudicative enforcement agency that could potentially result in Court action are excepted. That is not releasable information. You can’t put personal information out there for God and everybody to see for things that haven’t been submitted to Court. That is an unwarranted invasion of privacy.”

Coletta has solved some of the nonzoning cases and said it often involves diplomacy.

“You know when you’re not being a good neighbor. You know when your place isn’t kept to the same standard as those around you. Nuisance type complaints are almost always a lapse in judgement. Sometimes things get out of control and the problem is so big they can’t fix it on their own. We’ve taken care of a lot of problems simply by finding a way to help them,” said Coletta.

He has, for example, coordinated with solid waste to put an unused dumpster on the property for a week.

‘“If you’re willing to work on it, here’s a dumpster, fill it,’ I tell them. That’s been very effective in a number of really bad cases,” said Coletta. “Once they got it under control, they kept it under control.”
After Coletta and his staff of one person find the owners of abandoned property; however, the process drags on or comes to a dead-end.

“If I am able to find the owners, we have to go to circuit court and get an order directing us to correct the problems at the owner’s expense,” said Coletta. “Then we have to go to Fiscal Court and ask for the money to correct the problem. If we were to get the money and do the work, then I’d have to go back and get a lien against the property owner for money we may never see again and that’s taxpayer’s dollars.”

Large banks constitute the majority of abandoned property problems, said Coletta.

“A lot of these properties are foreclosures,” said Coletta. “A judge issues the order, a bank buys it on the courthouse steps ,but they never transfer property into their name. So the property is still in the original owner’s name and he doesn’t care because it just got taken away from him. Most of the problems are with banks and we don’t have an ordinance in place to deal with them. The document itself – the abandoned property ordinance – is cumbersome,” said Coletta.

An unenforceable ordinance
“The other side of that ordinance was supposed to be the nuisance ordinance which deals with junk cars and things like that. “The nuisance ordinance on the books now isn’t enforceable, though, said Coletta.

“The way it is written now if you get a flat tire and it sits in your driveway overnight, you’re in violation. I can’t enforce something like that,” said Coletta. “The county attorney is perfectly justified in saying if we went to court with this ordinance we’d be laughed out of the room. You have to have quantifiable standards of performance and that document doesn’t have them.”

Coletta also points out another problem with the existing ordinances and the proposed nuisance ordinance.

“Muldraugh just passed one based on the International Property Maintenance standards which is very good. It has a provision for specifically dealing with existing structures. In order to deal with an existing structure, occupied or otherwise, we have nothing. The ordinance says ‘dilapidated’ for example. You can’t declare something dilapidated unless you inspect it. And you can’t inspect it unless you have a provision of law to do so or you’re trespassing. I can’t send my licensed building inspector into a structure unless it’s new construction or I have consent from the person in control of the property.”
The provision would allow a court order from district court to inspect the property, and issue “repair or destroy” orders.

“If I had a repair or destroy order, I could go to a bank and say ‘okay fine. You’ve got 30 days and if you don’t comply, guess what? You’d better have your lawyer standing by because he’s going to be representing you in court.’ But we don’t have anything in place that allows us to get firm.”

Who will enforce the new ordinance?
Coletta has limped along trying to solve nuisance and abandoned property problems without enforceable ordinances and without a code enforcement officer.

Hank Schaffner was fired by the Fiscal Court following a 4-3 vote Dec. 18, 2008, to terminate him if he continued to carry a weapon while on duty. Schaffner, a retired law enforcement officer, was certified to carry a weapon.

“That’s not what we do. If you work for me and I find out you’re carrying a weapon, you’re fired,” Coletta said. “We’re not talking about penal code or criminal charges. These are minor infractions of a misdemeanor.”

According to an anonymous source, Schaffner was told he was citing people too much and someone at the county feared making citizens mad. “He believed in what he was doing, but when you try to make changes in this county, you get nowhere.” they said.

The post remains vacant.

“A code enforcement officer is approved in my budget. I asked for permission to fill that vacancy last month (August) in Fiscal Court and I was denied,” said Coletta. “I don’t have the time or the means or the resources to drive around looking for problems, but I do the best I can to help citizens who call in complaints.”

The Meade County Sheriff’s office often ends up with the nuisance calls as well, according to Dan McCubbin, chief deputy.

“If they were to pass this, we would have something to charge people with,” said McCubbin. “Right now I can think of a few repeat offenders and we basically can only tell them to knock it off. The disorderly conduct law is kind of vague, to be honest, in many of these situations.”

The magistrates are also contemplating the establishment of a code enforcement board which would process the citations issued by a code enforcement officer.

For more information on the proposed Nuisance Ordinace, pick up a copy of this week's Messenger.

Click Here to Go Back