3rd place, Interpretive Story/Series, Iowa Associated Press Managing Editors, 2008
PART ONE: CITY NUISANCE OFFICER FACES MOUNTING CHALLENGES
MUSCATINE, Iowa — One bad habit helps Muscatine’s nuisance officer handle the stress from dealing with the bad habits of many of the city’s residents.
Ken Rogers smoked cigarettes before he was hired in 2000, but says one reason he doesn’t quit — even though he knows he should — is because they help him relax from a job where “all you get to see is bad.”
The longest any of his predecessors worked the job was three years, Rogers said, and he credits his training in law enforcement for lasting eight.
He has been hit, spit on and threatened, and nuisances often begin to form again as soon as he leaves the property.
In 2007, his office received 1,793 nuisance reports — complaints ranging from junk vehicles to overgrown weeds and unmowed lawns, to scattered debris, piles of garbage and pest and rodent infestations.
“The majority is with the same people, but those same people have the biggest messes,” Rogers said.
“It’s real bad when I know most of the people’s names, I know their home addresses, and I know where they receive their mail.”
Complaints in 2008 are expected to top 2007 figures, which dipped slightly from 1,826 in 2006 but continued a rising trend over the past few years.
Rogers said he has to travel “with blinders on” to drive down Muscatine’s alleys. He is the only person who responds to nuisance complaints, and also conducts health and rental housing inspections.
The city responds to nuisances on a complaint basis, because being proactive requires “extra time we don’t have,” he said.
A day on the job
On Monday, Rogers parked the sports utility vehicle the city purchased in November 2007 near a Buick Skylark next to the alley behind 209 W. Sixth St. He climbed out and checked the registration tags, then uses a cell phone to call police to impound the car.
Vehicles must be operable and have valid registration, Rogers said. In 2007, he towed and impounded 87 junk vehicles — almost three times as many as the 32 recorded for 2004.
A woman stuck her head out the back door of the duplex to ask, “Do they know that you’re taking it?” as Hyink’s Standard Service of Muscatine prepared to tow the car.
“Good,” she’s glad to see it go, she told Rogers when he explained he had sent the property owner a 10-day notice by certified mail.
Rogers may be back in that alley soon. He sent a notice to owners of property across the alley, where a red Chevrolet was parked without license plates next to an overturned trash can, and surrounded by debris.
“This is where I spend a lot of my days — these alleys — and they’re so depressing because nobody wants to take care of them,” Rogers said.
‘No excuse’
Muscatine police officer Mike Yocom and a tow truck followed Rogers the short distance to another duplex at 702 and 704 Walnut St. Hyink’s also had a flatbed truck waiting to tow the white Chevy Caprice and brown pickup parked in the driveway.
The Caprice had a flat tire and was parked on a jack. The headlights on the pickup dangled from twisted wires and blue and purple tape. Tires, a brown cardboard box and a child’s pedal toy filled the bed.
At the end of the driveway, old boards piled haphazardly sat near a bathroom or kitchen sink cabinet, and dried weeds covered a fence.
Rogers knocked at the door of 702 Walnut St. He has talked before with the man who lives there, and knows that the 704 half of the duplex is vacant.
“This stuff has been here for a long time, there’s absolutely no excuse,” Rogers said when the man argues with him.
The man identified himself as Dave, but would not tell his last name to the Muscatine Journal. The Muscatine Geographic Information Consortium lists a contract with David M. Waldron Jr. and Valarie L. Cookson of 702 Walnut St. for sale of rented or leased property to a tenant.
Dave, who appears about age 40, said he is “just a struggling guy trying to get by” with two children at home and a job in construction. He lived in a motel, he said, before he had the opportunity to purchase the duplex over a year ago without a loan and with no money down.
“Everything I’ve been asked to do, I’ve tried to do to the best of my ability. I don’t purposely sit around looking for fights with the police or city,” Dave said.
He told Rogers he was confused about what was expected of him from the 10-day notice, and planned to paint when the weather was warmer.
“I understand it’s not the prettiest property in the neighborhood,” Dave said. “But you can drive around, it’s not the only one and it’s not the worst.”
Rogers called a contractor to clean up the yard later that day. It’s the next step when landowners do not respond to the 10-day notice.
A bill for the cleanup is mailed twice, then the costs are assessed to the property. The city will recoup that money when the property is sold or the taxes are paid.
The same billing procedure is repeated for vehicle impounds and property demolitions.
Last year, the city assessed more than $26,000 to property owners for nuisance abatement work. The figure also includes an administrative fee.
There are procedures to follow, Rogers said, and “sometimes you just can’t do as much as people think you can.”
But like most rules, there are exceptions. At his next stop at 209 E. Eighth St., he ordered contractors to pick up a pile of trash without 10 days notice.
He knocked on the door, but when no one answered, Rogers said the situation was “way too much of a health hazard” to wait.
Experience told him the couple that owns the home, Michael W. Hayes Jr., 39, and Lyndsay Hayes, 29, will not accept a certified letter. He had to call a contractor to the property about four months ago to remove 172 bags of trash outside the back door and crammed into a child’s playhouse.
Now the pile was returning — about 70 bags, Rogers estimated — next door to where Beth Nietzel’s customers enter her beauty shop. She and her husband, Jon, live in a house on the other side of the shop.
The Nietzels said they don’t have a personal problem with the Hayes family, but “we’re concerned neighbors, and we want our neighborhood to be cleaned up,” Jon said.
Beth said her husband mowed the grassy right-of-way last year, and removed snow from in front of their neighbors’ house.
The Nietzels say they are willing to help out more, “all they have to do is come ask me,” Jon said.
Improvements
At Rogers’ next stops, work was progressing to replace a toppled limestone retaining wall on Spruce Street, and a resident put up a fence around an above-ground pool as required by code. Rogers said the man had been piling items against a hole in the fence that his dog climbed through to bite a neighbor’s child.
“The notice went out and he took care of it,” Rogers said. “So that’s one we can mark off the list.”
In the No. 7 alley behind 111 W. Seventh St., trash from a renter who moved out covered the ground last week. On Monday, the trash was back in bags after Rogers sent a notice to the landlord to pick it up and haul it away.
“It’s better than it was, but it still shouldn’t be there,” Rogers said.
At noon, Rogers didn’t break for lunch. He usually doesn’t, he said, because “that hour means a lot to me, so I work right through it.”
Holy smokes
Checking on complaints at 1301 and 1303 Kansas St., Rogers said “holy smokes” as he drove up to the two houses.
As he raised his camera to take digital photos of toys, debris and trash in the yard at 1301 Kansas St., two men from the house approached Rogers. One man said the yard was picked up until children played there recently and his puppy got into the trash.
No one answered the door at 1303 Kansas St., where piled building materials and trash partially obscured one side and front of the house. Rogers previously ordered demolition of the home’s detached garage, but didn’t know if the same people own the property.
Nuisances are more frequent in the Southend, but “these problems are everywhere,” Rogers said.
Driving around the Southend, it’s hard to go a block without seeing at least one property where Rogers has worked. Some have been resolved, some have returned to nuisances, and some have ended in demolition.
Rogers said demolition is the city’s last resort to get owners to take responsibility for their property.
Worst of the worst
A list of the top 10 candidates for demolition was presented to the City Council last fall. Rogers said he plans to ask the Council, perhaps yet this month, to move forward with tearing down three of the properties: 1119 E. Fourth St.; 616 Jackson St.; and 704 Clay St.
“I used to take a big sigh of relief when I got rid of one of those properties,” Rogers said, “but there will be two or three that take its place.”
As the afternoon winded down, Rogers checked on a property with repeat complaints at 1825 Bryan Ave.
Cans and bottles litter the small front yard, with a plastic swimming pool and piles of feces from two large dogs behind a fence.
“I get constant complaints about those dogs,” Rogers said. “He just refuses to clean up after them.”
Two cars were parked in the driveway, but nobody answers the door when Rogers wraps on a window. He takes photos of the yard behind a fallen fence, containing an older model camper, multiple ladders, another pool, tipped wheel-barrels, pieces of siding, a pet taxi, windows, hoses, a bicycle and lawn chairs.
A block away, a “no dumping” sign posted last summer in the alley behind 1712 Bryan Ave. isn’t having its intended effect. Junk from the yard is spilling into the dead-end alley owned by the city.
Rogers said the city cleaned up the property, and “in less than a year you come back, and look at what’s here.”
One of his last stops of the day was a foreclosed property at 1603 Mulberry Ave.
The national mortgage crisis hit home with Rogers’ office by leaving more homes that need maintaining, and no one willing to take responsibility. About half of the 52 properties the city assessed with cleanup costs in 2007 had been foreclosed.
The other effect of foreclosures, Rogers said, is that contractors that mortgage companies hire to secure the property throw trash into the yard for the city to clean up.
“Who do they think they are?” Rogers said, finding the situation at the Mulberry home.
Before ending his work day, Rogers drives past the duplex on Walnut Street, where contractors are almost done with their work.
Over the course of the day, Rogers conducted three inspections and checked 13 nuisance complaints that were not resolved and eight that were, but didn’t have time to post about 10 homes for no occupancy.
“Overall,” he said. “That’s a pretty full day.”
PART TWO: PEER PRESSURE CAN BE A GOOD THING WHEN IT COMES TO CLEANING UP
MUSCATINE, Iowa — Being neighborly is a two-way street, even when some neighbors allow their street to become littered.
That is the philosophy behind the Peer-to-Peer Program that Safe Streets, an alliance of 16 neighborhood organizations in Muscatine, uses to find neighborhood solutions to nuisance and other issues before involving city officials.
“I would say, without exaggeration, we’ve had 95 percent success or more with the Peer-to-Peer Program,” said Kas Kelly, executive director of Safe Street.
Usually about once a week during the warmer months, Kelly said she knocks on residents’ doors where issues have been reported and shares pamphlets containing city code information and maps with trash zone pickup days.
“I don’t go in a threatening manner at all,” Kelly sad. “I just say to be aware.”
Often, she said residents don’t even realize they’re in violation with the nuisance code, and “as soon as they’re aware, they’ll remedy the problem,” Kelly said.
Residents have the option of calling the city’s building safety department immediately with nuisance problems, but, Kelly said, the Peer-to-Peer Program offers a friendly alternative first step. If residents are unresponsive, she calls nuisance officer Ken Rogers to begin the formal abatement process.
“That’s unfortunate because it’s their neighbors that really suffer,” Kelly said.
She said the benefits of a tidy neighborhood go beyond health and aesthetics.
“If you keep your home maintained, you will have less drug activity and less gang activity because those people know you pay attention,” Kelly said.
Steve Boka, director of Planning, Zoning and Building Safety, said nuisance properties “not only affect the quality of life in these neighborhoods, but the value of property in that neighborhood.”
Safe Streets’ mission is to “empower neighborhood members to improve the quality of their lives,” Kelly said.
“It just takes one or two people to make it not as pleasant of a place to live,” she said.
But Marlene Garrison, president of the Southend United Neighbors neighborhood group, said, “It only takes one person to make everything around you look beautiful.”
Nuisances are reported throughout the city, “but there are more than their fair share in the Southend,” Boka said.
“That’s because of neighborhood activity; they’re active in their neighborhoods and they call it in,” he said.
For many years, the Southend United Neighbors has held a monthly competition for home, trailer and business yards of the month. A sign is displayed in the yard to advertise the honor.
“It’s very, very helpful. We’re trying to get people to keep their yards up,” said Garrison, who became involved in the neighborhood group after she was selected to receive yard of the month six years ago.
Garrison said when one neighbor receives the award, surrounding neighbors often clean up their property.
During her time with Safe Streets, Kelly said, “It has been amazing to watch over the past 10 years, where if one property on a block cleans up, it really starts an epidemic.”
PART THREE: 261 TIRES, 47 APPLIANCES AND 50 TONS OF GARBAGE
MUSCATINE, Iowa — Muscatine neighborhoods have a problem and it weights as much as 12 African elephants.
A contractor hired by city officials to handle nuisance abatement hauled more than 50 tons to the Muscatine Transfer Station in 2007.
“And that’s after weekly pickup and cleanup week,” said Steve Boka, director of Planning, Zoning and Building Safety.
The contractor also removed 261 tires and 47 appliances from private property. The city dispatches a contractor when property owners are unresponsive to a notice to clean up a nuisance.
“The city has a good service for picking up trash and there is ... in my opinion no good reason we should be moving this much trash by private contractor to the transfer station,” said Ken Rogers, the city’s nuisance officer.
Solid Waste Manager Laura Liegois said residents have several options for disposing of their trash. In addition to weekly curbside pickups, Liegois said residents are offered three free pickups per year, and the opportunity to dispose of items such as appliances and furniture during Spring Clean Up week.
Spring Clean Up
The 2008 Spring Clean Up will be held Monday, April 21, through Friday, April, 28, in conjunction with Keep America Beautiful Month.
Residents should place items on their curbs the night before their regular trash day.
Items accepted include:
- Furniture, dismantled swing sets, small amounts of building materials and other large items
- Up to eight tires
- Up to four appliances (remove doors from refrigerators and freezers)
- Televisions, computers and monitors, printers and other electronic waste
- Yard waste in city bags.
- Brush tied in bundles no larger than 18 inches in diameter and 4 feet in length
Items that will not be accepted include:
- Car bodies
- Large trees
- Excessive amounts of concrete and building materials
- Paint and other hazardous chemicals (accepted at transfer station)
- Lead acid batteries (accepted at transfer station)
- Motor oil (accepted at transfer station)
- Camper refrigerators and air conditioners
Year-round cleanup
Liegois said the city offers services throughout the year, in addition to Spring Clean Up, to help residents dispose of different kinds of waste.
“Some of them are already built into your garbage fees; some aren’t,” she said.
Curbside pickup
The city offers residents three free curbside pickups per calendar year of many items accepted during Springs Clean Up, on top of the pickup during cleanup week.
“Most cities don’t have that; you’re on your own,” Liegois said. “That allows for if they have that old couch.”
Tires and appliances are excluded from the pickup, unless they are paid for in advance.
Residents must call or stop in at the transfer station at least one day in advance to order the pickup with their regular garbage collection.
Drop-off/pay in advance
Appliances and tires can be dropped off or picked up curbside by paying in advance.
The cost to dispose of large home appliances is $10 each for stoves, refrigerators, water heaters, washing machines, fryers, freezers, microwave ovens, air conditioners, trash compactors, dehumidifiers and dishwashers.
Car tires cost $2 each to dispose of, and truck tires cost from $2.50 to $5 each.
Electronic waste
Residents can drop off computer scanners, digital cameras, VCRs, DVD players, cell phones, stereos and radios at the transfer station at no charge.
Monitors up to 18 inches in height, laptops and computer printers cost $5 for disposal; large printers, copiers and televisions up to 18 inches cost $10; and televisions and computer monitors larger than 18 inches cost $15.
Recycling electronic waste prevents harmful chemicals from impacting the environment.
Hazardous waste
Cleaners, paint products, garden and pool chemicals, oil-base and latex paint, varnishes, automotive products, batteries, light bulbs and medical sharps are accepted without charge at the transfer station after filling out a form.
Yard waste
Residents can dispose of leaves, grass clippings, brush and trees for no fee at the compost site at the transfer station.
Recycling
No. 1-7 plastic food containers, tin cans, glass food jars, aluminum cans, foil and pans, newspaper and magazines, and cardboard are accepted at the recycling center, and processed by City Carton.
Containers for recycling are also located at Muscatine Mall, Fareway, Walmart, WFO, and the corners of Lucas Street and Knott Avenue and Fifth Street and Mulberry Avenue.
SIDEBAR: HOW NUISANCE COMPLAINTS WORK
- Most nuisance complaints are reported to the building safety department anonymously by phone.
- Nuisance officer Ken Rogers confirms there is a code violation by driving past the house.
- If a violation exists, a notice — usually 10 days — is issued to the deed holder by certified mail. If the report is unfounded, no further action is taken.
- Rogers said residents with questions or concerns should immediately contact the building safety office. He said
- After the notice period, Rogers checks back to see if the nuisance has been abated by the owner. In most cases, owners will correct the problem, he said. If not, the city dispatches a contractor to abate the problem, or calls the police department to impound junk vehicles.
- The city will send a bill to the deed holder two times.
- If the bill goes unpaid, the City Council will assess the costs to the property. A red sticker is placed on the door of homes that the city is maintaining to alert potential buyers of an assessment the city may have against the property. The assessments attach to the property, not the deed holder at the time of nuisance abatement.
- The cleanup costs are recovered when the taxes are paid or the property is sold.
Copyright 2008, by the Muscatine Journal
