Des Moines County considers ordinance to address dangerous and abandoned properties

Somewhere in Des Moines County is a property occupied by the charred remains of a home, its yard filled with trash bags and old appliances that have been dumped there by persons unknown.

"It's uninhabitable," Des Moines County Supervisor Shane McCampbell said of the site he visited this week. "People are coming there and they're dropping off trash."

Along another county road is a burned-out property, its unboarded windows shedding shards of broken glass onto the ground below and its siding vulnerable to gusts of wind.

"Every time the wind blows, some of the siding shingles come off of it and blow in (the neighbors') yard," Des Moines County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jim Cary said, explaining that a neighbor of the property is concerned for the safety of her small children when they play outside.

The properties have been the grounds of at least three of several complaints made to the county about abandoned and potentially dangerous properties in recent weeks, prompting the Supervisors to embark on crafting an ordinance to address such properties.

"You've got a house fire and stuff exposed and glass falling down and somebody could get hurt, situations like that. We have to find a way where something can be done while at the same time giving them what they moved out to the country for, which is a little autonomy," McCampbell said. "We all respect that people live out in the country for a reason. They want that sanctity."

McCampbell, Cary and Supervisor Tom Broeker met Tuesday with other county officials, as well as a representative from Rural Utility Service Systems, which carries out Jefferson County's nuisance ordinance and is contracted by Des Moines County Public Health for work related to sanitary permits and wells, to discuss how a so-called nuisance ordinance could look in Des Moines County.

The ordinance will be crafted in accordance with the state's nuisance laws, as outlined in Iowa Code Chapter 657, but with a narrower scope.

"When we get this ordinance out, I want the definition of 'nuisance' to be pretty tight," Broeker said. "Public safety hazard or abandoned, those sort of things, so it isn't just somebody unhappy with the way somebody's keeping their property."

Cary explained that the word "nuisance" will need to be defined so that there is no room for confusion about whether a county property meets the criteria. Still, he expressed concerns.

"If we do this, it's going to open up a can of worms," he said, explaining he fears it could open the door for myriad complaints about things as minor as a tire in someone's yard or a car parked in a field, neither of which would be considered a nuisance under the county's policy as it was discussed. "We just want to be fair to the people. We don't want to chastise anybody for what their neighbor thinks is a nuisance."

How Des Moines County's nuisance policy might look

Iowa Code gives municipalities the authority to take possession of a nuisance property if the owner fails to properly abate the nuisance, though the Supervisors made clear this is not a route they want to pursue.

Instead, they prefer to work with property owners.

Cary indicated that the ordinance likely will give property owners 60 days to respond to a nuisance notice. If they do not respond within the first 30 days of the initial letter, they will be sent a certified letter notifying them that they need to respond within 30 days.

"Then, if they don't respond there, we would have to leave our options open for other actions," Cary said.

Assistant county attorney Trent Henkelvig told the Supervisors that the county could do one of three things with an abandoned property at this point: it could abate the property itself; abate the property and then sell it; or sell it to someone else with a list of work that, if not done within a certain time frame, would result in the property being relinquished back to the county, much like Burlington does.

"Do we really want to take possession of anything, because ultimately we don't want to cause the taxpayers of Des Moines County the burden of tearing something down that's an eyesore, taking it off the tax rolls and then putting it back on to somebody else who might not clean it up," Cary said. "If you took it and then sold it to somebody and they didn't clean it up, you're right back to step one where you started out."

Most of the properties the county has spent thousands of dollars to clean up end up right back where they started

Broeker indicated he would only be in favor of the county taking possession of a property in the case of abandonment and, even then, only as a last resort.

McCampbell said he does not believe the ordinance will need to be used often due to the relatively few complaints the county has received, but that it will come in handy to make residents safer.

"We don't feel like it's going to be a huge issue, but when we do have to deal with it, we want something in place where we can," McCambell said. "I don't personally expect us to see more than one or two a year, if that."

Broeker said he anticipates the Supervisors will hold another work session in about three weeks after Henkelvig has crafted a draft ordinance. Once the language is decided upon, the board will hold a public hearing before any action can be taken.

Michaele Niehaus covers business, development, environment and agriculture for The Hawk Eye. She can be reached at mniehaus@thehawkeye.com.

This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: What a new nuisance ordinance could mean for Des Moines County