The Tooele City Council has approved a revamped nuisance abatement ordinance aimed at making the mayor’s call to “clean up the community” easier on both the city and the public.
The ordinance does not change the city code’s definition of what a nuisance is — weeds exceeding six inches, inoperable vehicles, and large quantities of garbage or junk may still be deemed violations of the city code — but rather gives the city new options for dealing with the removal of violations.
In the past, the ordinance called for a graduated fee schedule culminating, potentially, in a trip to court. However, such legal proceedings were inefficient and not always fruitful, said Tooele City Mayor Patrick Dunlavy.
“Part of the process that’s been in effect for a long time has been cumbersome,” he said. “It’s created some issues for us and we’ve just streamlined the whole thing.”
About a year ago, after the city launched a campaign to more aggressively enforce the city code — an effort that came about in response to multiple residents’ complaints — and revamp the nuisance abatement ordinance, said Jim Bolser, director of community development and public works for Tooele City.
Instead of court proceedings, the new ordinance calls for the city to involve a hearing officer, with options for the resident to appeal nuisance citations as well, Bolser said.
Additionally, the ordinance expands a previously passed measure that tied business licenses to nuisance issues — making it impossible for a business to renew its license before nuisance complaints were addressed — to prevent individuals with outstanding nuisance violations from applying for city permits.
The new ordinance also solidifies a previously hazy mechanism that allows the city, in some extreme circumstances, to send city staff to clean up a nuisance in cases where a resident either cannot address it, or won’t.
To make this possible, the city has created a special revolving fund from which it may draw to address nuisances. The fund will be replenished by nuisance abatement-related fees, and should over time come to pay for itself, Bolser said.
Additionally, he said, when the city must use the fund to address a nuisance, the city plans to send the resident in question a bill for city services.
“This is not something where the city is going to go mow your lawn,” he said. “But if it comes right down to it, yeah, we will mow your lawn and bill you for it.”
But Bolser said the city hopes to work out issues with residents before it comes down to that provision, which he said the city views as a last resort.
To make the abatement process more workable for residents, the new ordinance also creates a fee-forgiveness option for first-time offenders. From now on, when a fee is issued for the first time, a resident may opt to have the city waive the fee in exchange for an agreement that the resident will clean up the source of the complaint and will have no further violations of the nuisance ordinance for the rest of the year.
If a second violation does occur, the resident will have to pay back both the new and the original fee.
Dunlavy said it was his belief that the new ordinance would not only make the nuisance abatement process more workable for residents, but would also make the city more capable of enforcing the city code, just as residents have requested.
“We believe that it will be much more efficient, and will get the results that the community wants,” he said.