City Council considers vicious dogs, nuisances
By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com
A chronic nuisance ordinance was discussed during a Charles City Council planning session Wednesday evening.
This was not the first time this ordinance has been discussed during a planning session, and Charles City Assistant Attorney Brad Sloter and Charles City Police Chief Hugh Anderson have worked together to review it.
The ordinance is based on similar ordinances in Waterloo and Mason City.
In a previous session the council had discussed the time period that would constitute a chronic nuisance. Council member Keith Starr stated that 18 months would be more effective than 12 months at catching chronic nuisance violated.
Sloter said he considered 12 months more feasible.
If it’s a chronic nuisance property it won’t matter whether it’s 12 or 18 months, Sloter said.
Sloter noted that with an 18-month period, a property could get a one nuisance complaint every six months and be considered a chronic offender.
In researching other city’s chronic nuisance ordinances Sloter couldn’t find any that extended beyond 12 months.
“The properties that are generating calls are going to have more than three calls in a year,” Sloter said.
Starr didn’t think that Charles City has very many properties generating calls, he said, listing Casa Apartments as the place where he said most complaints were coming from.
Starr felt that extending the time frame to 18 months would strengthen Charles City’s ability to enforce the ordinance.
“This doesn’t give us any more teeth than what we have today,” Starr said about a 12-month period. “Why not make it tougher?”
The landlord’s responsibility is based on their knowledge of the nuisance, Sloter said.
Starr was also unhappy with the definition of common spaces as currently defined in the proposed ordinance, he said.
Currently the ordinance uses the following language:
“For property consisting of more than one unit, the term Property shall refer to a particular unit and associated common areas or vacant land.”
“If we can’t control the residents we can control the landlord,” Starr said.
Council member DeLaine Freeseman noted that the ordinance needs to be citywide.
“We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” Freeseman said.
Casa Apartments were primarilty singled out in the discussion.
“If they throw it (the ordinance) out in court, Casa still pays a $500 penalty in lawyers fees,” Starr said. “Our fine is not tremendous, but a fine is a fine.”
City properties would be exempt from the ordinance.
The ordinance would assess charges to owners of properties that have chronically received nuisance violations, not tenants that occupy those properties if they are rentals.
The ordinance wouldn’t base the number of violations on the residents, but on the units of properties themselves.
Vicious Dogs
The council also discussed an ordinance to deal with dogs that become vicious.
“It’s just to fill gap,” Sloter said.
The ordinance comes after some dogs at PAWs were considered vicious, but there were no procedures in place to get rid of them.
Charles City Administrator Steven Diers suggested that the vicious dog ordinance and the nuisance ordinance could possibly be combined.
Library
The Charles City Council also heard a yearly report for Charles City Library Director Kim Jones.
The library reported that 73,535 physical items were check out this year alone, and that there were 77 class visits, with 1,501 students.
Charles City Mayor James Erb said that the tours were a good possibility for the growth.
There are currently nine programs for teens with 98 teenagers attending.
“A personal goal of mine is to push for a teen area,” Jones said.
Teenage students come to the library after school and stay in the lobby, Jones said, adding she would like to see a place where they can talk and do their homework.
Theater Crosswalk
The council considered putting a crosswalk in by the Charles City Theater.
A member of the Charles City community brought the idea to the attention of Starr.
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