By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Your neighbor has trash piled up around his yard, grass up to your knees.
In most incorporated cities, local governments have nuisance abatement ordinances on the books that require property owners to keep their properties cleaned up and vegetation under control.
If property owners don't comply with requests to clean up properties, cities can usually have the cleanup done and charge the property owners for the expense.
However, if you live in an unincorporated area of Kansas under the jurisdiction of your local county, you can't get such relief.
A group of neighbors in Walker, which is an unincorporated community in Ellis County, recently came to the Ellis County Commission complaining about a couple of properties that they said had trash and clutter on them.
Bill Jeter, longtime county counselor, told the residents the county had conducted nuisance abatements for years — until a 2012 appellate court ruling involving a Cowley County case.
A Kansas appellate court in 2012 ruled counties don't have the power to enforce nuisance ordinances based on a case in Cowley County, Barnes V. Cowley County Board of Commissioners.
Jeter explained, at this point, there was little the county could do.
Nuisance abatements can be quite costly, depending on the size of the property and the extent of the cleanup. In the Barnes case, Cowley County billed the Barnes' $11,740 for the cleanup of a 14-acre tract.
The county filed a tax lien against the Barnes' property for the cleanup expenses.
The court ruled counties could only enforce resolutions through injunction, fine, confinement in jail, or both fine and confinement.
Jeter told the commission property owners could be held liable for violating health and safety regulations, which would be a misdemeanor crime that would be filed by the county attorney's office. However, there's nothing a county commission can do to clean up properties.
The Walker residents were concerned about fire risk, as one of the properties had a recent fire.
Van Froelich, neighbor, said he was also concerned about rodents.
Commissioner Neal Younger urged the neighbors to try to document rodent activity, including skunks, and to contact the Kansas Department of Health and Environment for possible relief under health codes.
Froelich said he was aware of the Cowley County case.
"We feel it's a nuisance. It's a hazard. I don't know where we can fall under to get it cleaned up," he said.
Walker is served by volunteer rural fire out of Gorham, and firefighters have a much slower response time than city departments.
Darin Myers, county administrator and Ellis County fire chief, said danger of fire in rural areas of the county are significant. Firefighters would likely have at least a 10-minute response time to Walker.
If the wind was strong and blowing in an unfavorable direction, fire could spread quickly and threaten homes, he said.
Myers said he would write a letter to the property owners and pay them a visit in person. He said he was unsure if that would do any good.
Commission Chairman Butch Schlyer added, "We can't do a lot. That's the predicament we're in. We had a very nice nuisance abatement policy. It was very specific with what we could and couldn't do. We just tore it up in 2012 as Jeter referred to."
Myers said in a follow-up interview some members of the Kansas Association of Counties had expressed interest in lobbying for legislation that would grant counties home rule. That would allow Kansas counties to again enforce nuisance regulations.
However, he said the association received much pushback from the owners of agriculture properties and owners of land being used for oil production. They expressed concerns about being unable to upkeep their properties to county standards.
Myers said the pushback was intense enough that the association took the home rule issue off of its legislative agenda within the last year.
Small communities such as Walker have the option to incorporate, but both Froelich and Younger, who also lives in an unincorporated community, Munjor, said that can be an uphill battle.
Froelich said, "The good guy has no justice at all. It's the bad people who can do anything."
Myers said the property owners in question in Walker had voluntarily made some progress in cleanup since the county meeting on Aug. 15.
Cover photo courtesy of Pixabay