Charles City will create new list of nuisance properties

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Charles City is creating a new list of nuisance properties.

“It’s a tricky thing, a nuisance,” said Charles City Administrator Steven Diers.

The Charles City nuisance ordinance has 12 categories ranging from having dense weed and brush to “houses of ill fame.”

The nuisance ordinance is in place for the safety of the adjacent property owners and the overall health and well being of the community, Diers said.

The possible collapse of a property and rodents are examples of threats to nearby properties that the nuisance ordinance hopes to abate.

In the fall of 2015 Charles City put together a list of 15 nuisance properties.

Of those, six buildings have been taken down, while the city has been in contact with the property owners of the remaining nine to solve whatever the problems the properties had.

Charles City has taken down nuisance properties in a number of different ways. On March 5, the Charles City fire department executed a controlled burn on 301 S. Johnson St. for a training exercise.

After properties are given a notice the owners have 10 days or a reasonable time to abate a nuisance.

“You can do just enough to keep it from being a nuisance,” Diers said. “We always try to work with homeowners and renters.”

This will be the second time the city has come up with a nuisance list, Diers said.

“Basically we brainstorm about it a little bit with our work sessions with staff,” Diers said. “Typically our code enforcement department will come up with a top list and we’ll go around and look at those and see which ones are in pretty bad shape, and prioritize from there.”

On the previous list, 301 S. Johnson St. was thought to have been dealt with after weeds and brush had been removed, Diers said.

“Then the next year came and all the weeds and stuff grew back,” Diers said.

A house can look good on the outside and still be a nuisance house, and look bad on the outside and not be breaking any nuisance ordinance, Diers said.

“Just because something looks ugly doesn’t mean it’s a nuisance,” Diers said. “It might look bad, but technically its not a nuisance.”

Iowa Code Chapter 657A allows Charles City to take ownership of abandoned nuisance homes.

Nuisances in Charles City are defined as “Whatever is injurious to health, indecent, or unreasonably offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property so as essentially to interfere unreasonably with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property is a nuisance.”

Nuisances include:

• Offensive smells.

• Filth or noisome substances

• Impeding passage of navigable river.

• Water pollution.

• Blocking public and private ways.

• Billboards interfering with the view.

• Storing of flammable junk.

• Air pollution.

• Weeds and brush.

• Dutch elm disease.

• Airport air space encroachment.

• Houses of ill fame.