Spring kicks off city’s lawn maintenance code enforcement
In 2024, the City of Bellefontaine sent out 1,092 notices to property owners notifying them that they were in violation of city ordinances for failure to mow their grass or by allowing junk – appliances, furniture, cars, trash and the like – to accumulate on their properties.
“Most of these — I’d say 85 to 90 percent — are resolved after we send them a first notice,” said Bellefontaine Code Enforcement Officer Amber Palmer last week.
But the remaining 10 to 15 percent of those notices go unheeded or are simply ignored. That’s when the city can step in, at least as far as getting the grass mowed, hauling off bags of rubbish or removing an ancient couch or mattress from a front yard.
Understandably, many of the complaints about untended lawns and houses come from neighbors of the offender, neighbors who routinely to keep their grass mowed and don’t want to live next to a house or business that doesn’t do the same. No one wants to spend hours planting flowers, spreading mulch and trimming foliage on their own lawn only to have to live next to a house where the grass is at safari-level height and there are a couple of rusty appliances or vehicles in the side yard.
Tenants of multi-family houses also make up a sizable number of complaints, with the property owners in these cases likely being absentee and not keen to spend the money to spruce up the property.
One city ordinance directs that grass on city lawns must be kept under eight inches in length. Anything over that, the city can send a notice to the owner have it mowed, giving them five days to do so. Bulk item notices give the owners 10 days to remove offending item or items, Palmer further explained.
Should those who let the grass grow fail to comply with the notice, the city contracts a local lawn care business to mow the lawn. For the bulk-item blight, crews are dispatched to remove the junk items. In both cases, the city bills the owners for the service, Palmer noted.
While removing a 50-year-old dishwasher or a half-ton of stuffed Hefty bags from any given front yard is generally a one-time occurrence, keeping the grass mowed during the spring, summer and fall months is an ongoing process, the city’s code enforcement officer noted.
Should a landowner continue to fail to keep their lawn mowed and leave it to the city to keep it trimmed, in addition to billing the landowner for the mowing contract, the city code allows for adding administrative fines on the property owner for each occurrence — fines that can end up costing the landowner from $650 to $750 per incident. Failure to pay these fines can further result the city putting in a lien on the property.
While most never reach this level, there are always exceptions.
“We have one property that we have to mow every week during the summer,” Palmer said. “The owner lives in Florida, and we send him the bill. He just writes us a check.”
There are a couple of other repeat offenders, Palmer said, but the vast majority of those who received the notices take care of the problem well before the city takes action.
Palmer routinely makes rounds in the city to check on the properties that have received notices and to take a look at properties on which her office has received new complaints.
When she made the circuit early last week, there were about 25 properties on her list. Most of the property owners had complied with the notices, but there were still a few that needed attention, again with failure to mow the grass or allowing junk and refuse to pile up in the yard for all to see.
These owners can expect to get more notices, along with some healthy fines to motivate them into taking action.
She also checked out the back yard of a property near downtown that is on its way to resembling a junk yard, complete with old appliances, rusty vehicles and a beat-up recreational vehicle that appeared someone was using as a home, which is yet another code violation.
Palmer understands that oftentimes there can be extenuating circumstances on why a lawn hasn’t been cut – the owner died with no heirs, the property is tied up in probate, or the owner is too ill or elderly to maintain the property. She is quite willing to work with these owners to find some sort of equitable solution, rather than leave the problem dumped in the city’s lap.
“Most of the time we can get it cleared up with a couple of phone calls,” Palmer said.
But, as again noted above, there are exceptions.
“I get yelled at a lot on the phone,” Palmer said with a half-grin, “but I can take it.”