The Brown County Area Plan Commission has decided to hold off on creating any new rules about junked and abandoned vehicles in the county.
Concerns audience members raised included the county not having enough money to enforce a possible ordinance or deal with potential lawsuits, and lack of a definition of what is considered “junk.”
Before comments were taken at the June 25 meeting, definitions from the Dubois County property maintenance ordinance were read. In that county, an abandoned or junked vehicle is any vehicle that “has remained on private property without the consent of the owner or person in control of that property for more than 48 hours.” It also includes a vehicle that is not running and is not going to be repaired in the next 20 days, and any vehicle without a current state registration and license that is left on a property in a location visible from public property for more than 20 days.
Dubois County definitions were brought up as examples of what other Indiana counties are doing.
Discussion about junked and abandoned vehicles in Brown County had started in April. About three years ago — when the APC had different members — the group had made a list of topics in Brown County’s zoning ordinances that needed to be revisited, and this was the next topic on the list, said Planning Director Chris Ritzmann.
The same week of April, the Brown County Redevelopment Commission started a parallel discussion in a separate meeting. It was about how to help local people legally dispose of all household items and how to define “salvage yards, blight and squalor.”
The RDC is creating a coalition that includes board members from groups such as the APC, solid waste management district, Keep Brown County Beautiful and others that have an interest in this topic.
Even though the APC has decided not to do anything about abandoned or junked vehicles, the RDC coalition plans to keep them in its discussion.
The RDC is interested in the environmental condition of the county because of its responsibility to improve the “top line” of the county budget — revenue, mostly from taxes, President Jim Kemp said. The RDC doesn’t want to see taxes raised on residents; it wants to improve the housing inventory and retain and bring in more residents and businesses, which can all contribute to keeping the county financially healthy.
Brown County currently does not have a place for people to take abandoned or junked vehicles, though some local auto businesses or individuals may come pick up vehicles for parts or scrap for a fee, APC Chair Carol Bowden said.
Residents speak
Resident Doug Cauble said people have rights when it comes to what is on their property. “If someone wants to live in a yard full of old toilets, they have a right to do that. If a person wants to buy brand-new Cadillacs and stack them up like Stonehenge, they have the right to do that,” he said.
“I just feel it would be a very slippery slope, very difficult to enforce if the commission went down this road. There are plenty of things in people’s yards that other people find objectionable besides cars and motorcycles and trucks and school buses.”
Brown County Council member Darren Byrd said he was troubled by the definition that abandoned vehicles are ones that are not licensed. “It’s still private property. The purpose of the license is to pay for the roads that are used. A vehicle sitting on private property costs the county no money,” he said.
He said people often run into financial problems, then a vehicle decides to quit working on them in the meantime. “You have no timeline for fixing it, you can’t get rid of it and you don’t want to get rid of it because it’s too costly to get another one. Until you can figure out something to do with it, that it is still your private property on your private property,” he said.
Mark Donaldson said he went through a similar process in Hendricks County, and that county had trouble enforcing junked vehicle ordinances especially when it came to demolition derby vehicles. “They ran into a lot of difficulty with people who collect cars, spare cars as a ‘parts car,’” he said.
Byrd and resident Sherrie Mitchell both told the APC that the county government does not have money to pay for an ordinance enforcement officer or any potential lawsuit as a result of the enforcement.
“It gives me a headache thinking about the enforcement required to do something like this. I don’t believe most of it is enforceable just because it would be so widespread,” Byrd said.
He added that an ordinance like this “is too subjective” to do on a county level — and anyway, a state ordinance already is in place that does some of the same things. “If a neighbor is being affected by another neighbor and it can be proven, they have a civil case,” he said.
Mitchell said the county’s health department currently is dealing with 291 complaints about properties in various states of disrepair or disarray. Only three property owners have replied to the department’s enforcement letters, she said.
“They can’t do a darn thing about it because they can’t enforce it because they don’t have the money. We are a declining population. We can’t continue to add employees on to our payroll. We don’t have the money,” she said. “If you go passing ordinances like this, you’re going to have to consider the consequences of litigation and you don’t have the money.”
Ritzmann said the plan commission has $10,000 in its litigation fund, then another $10,000 in it budget to pay for APC attorney David Schilling to be at meetings.
Help wanted
Other residents want a solution for abandoned vehicles they see near their homes.
Tom and Carol Roberts attended the APC meeting to ask for help on how to handle an abandoned school bus on a neighbor’s property. They said that people live in the bus and that drug paraphernalia has been found inside.
The bus is on land that was inherited by a woman who lives out of state and does not have the money to pay for its removal, Carol Roberts said. A renter is living in a home on the property with the bus. He was told by police to put up security cameras to catch the people staying in the bus, she said.
“He did that, but with no luck. The other situation about it is we live on a street with homes with small children. They could very easily go down there to play in this bus,” she said.
Resident Tim Hyland said he was disappointed that the APC wasn’t going to be pursuing an ordinance. He said there are “eyesores” near where he lives, including a home with moving vans and old trucks in its yard.
Abandoned or junked vehicles are “ecologically a disaster” that leak gas and oil into the soil, he said.
Hyland said he understood people wanting to keep cars on their property as “parts cars,” but that there are some homes in the county that are “nothing short of a junkyard.”
At the APC meeting, Kemp offered to help the Robertses find a solution to the school bus issue. At the RDC meeting two days later, he asked that board for permission to look into the situation as a “case study” for what the RDC can legally do with laws already in place.
Kemp said if the health department or planning and zoning department receive complaints about abandoned vehicles, like the school bus, the RDC could be the group to investigate the issue and organize a way to remove the vehicle.
Byrd encouraged the RDC to make the process “amicable and voluntary,” and not to put a lien on someone’s property for the cost of cleaning it up.
“You can’t go on someone’s private property and say, ‘We think that’s ugly. Let’s haul it away,’” resident Tim Clark said.
Board says
Since putting abandoned and junked vehicles on the APC’s list of possible ordinances to revisit, Ritzmann said her office has only received about a half-dozen phone calls with mostly questions about junked vehicles.
An ordinance would be “generally complaint-driven,” she said.
The county has a definition for junkyards in the current zoning ordinance, but nothing specific to abandoned vehicles, Ritzmann said. However, Indiana Code Title 9 defines “abandoned vehicle” and the process law enforcement must follow to tag them.
APC member Ric Fox said he, too, has had a vehicle sitting in his driveway for about 10 years which he had hoped to rebuild and sell.
“I kept moving it around so it didn’t look like it was abandoned. … There’s a lot of us that do that. We have good intentions of, ‘Well, that vehicle I had in high school, I am going to hang on to that and I am going to preserve it, then someday I am going to pull it back out and fix it all up and drive it around town.’ I didn’t get an opportunity to do that; now I have an abandoned vehicle,” he said. “I haven’t licensed it in 15 or 20 years. I don’t want to make it to where you can’t do that.”
He said a lot of people in Brown County are “conscious” about not piling up junked cars on their property for the public to see. “If you drive around this country, you see this in so many places everywhere. I’m not saying it’s right, but I think people police themselves when it comes to that,” he said.
During the APC meeting, Kemp said he personally did not have any issues with people who own vehicles that are titled in their name. He said he was concerned about people using vehicles on their property without an automotive salvage recycle license.
APC member Kara Hammes used to work as a part of state government. She said in her experience, even though a board might feel strongly about an issue, if they don’t have the mechanism to enforce it, it may not be the best idea.
“You really need to think about the real-world ramifications. What are you going to do if you make this rule? It’s silly and a waste of all of our time if you’re making rules with no intention or mechanism to enforce,” she said.
“I do not think we are anywhere near ready to do any kind of vote, especially with no money,” said APC member Jane Gore. We have bigger fish to fry.”
The next APC work session on Tuesday, July 23 will focus on home-based businesses.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”What other counties are doing” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Definitions from the Dubois County property maintenance ordinance were read before the start of the Brown County Area Plan Commission work session on June 25. The definitions were being looked at as examples of what the county could implement if the APC chose to draft a local ordinance related to junked or abandoned vehicles on private property.
Dubois County defines a “motor vehicle graveyard” as property used to store more than two “non-operating, wrecked, scrapped, ruined or dismantled motor vehicles or parts thereof.”
Under the Dubois County ordinance, it is unlawful for anyone to store any junked or abandoned vehicles on public or private property. A vehicle is not considered abandoned or junked if it is stored in a garage or within a fenced area that blocks view of the vehicle.
Any vehicle covered by a tarp or any other material is still considered “visible.”
The Dubois County ordinance does not apply to farm equipment unless it is mechanically inoperable and is not being held for repair or is under repair within six months or “within such extended period as may be determined by the authorized enforcement agent.”
Vehicles “screened by natural objects or plantings (excluding weeds), fences or other appropriate means so as not to be visible” are not considered to be junked or abandoned by the Dubois County ordinance.
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”What is the RDC doing?” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Brown County Redevelopment Commission is still studying “salvage yards, blight and squalor” in the county. “We can look at it, define it then begin to be able to go in and quantify, is it really an issue within the county?” said RDC President Jim Kemp.
If salvage yards and blight are a problem, Kemp said the RDC could work to create public programs to help people who have the resources to deal with these issues.
“If we’re going to enforce it, our county code enforcement should be an objective, well-written document with policies and procedures. We’re going to start this process and we’re going to take however long it takes to go through it,” he said.
The RDC plans to host a meeting with a panel discussion in August at the Brown County Playhouse to discuss blight. The RDC is also is working to define “blight.”
Randy Jones, who sits on the Brown County Area Plan Commission, attended the RDC meeting on June 27 as a resident. He encouraged the board to avoid using the term “squalor.”
Under Indiana Code, nuisances fall under three categories: Public health nuisance, property nuisance and public nuisance, Jones said. “You should focus on public nuisance and property nuisance. If the county was going to come up with their own ordinance, then probably that’s the headings the new definitions could fall under as well as public health nuisance,” he said.
“Squalor … I am not saying some of that don’t qualify for that under a dictionary definition, but it’s not in state code.”
Brown County Council member Darren Byrd attended the RDC meeting and said “squalor” could be offensive. “‘We’re here to help you clean up your squalor conditions.’ They’re like, ‘Whoa, what did you call me? We’re done,'” he said.
Byrd said it’s also important to build trust between people and the government so that they will come a department like solid waste for help in getting rid of trash or hazardous materials, “(so the government) is not going to come after you, take your property,” he said.
Brown County Solid Waste and Keep Brown County Beautiful recently offered free, voluntary Dumpster Days where people could haul in almost anything to be disposed of for free. Brown County residents filled eight 30-square-yard Dumpsters. Kemp encouraged the county to host more of those opportunities.
Dan Catt has gone around the county cleaning up properties for the health department and zoning boards.
Catt considers himself to be a “car guy” who has collected pieces of scrap for his retirement over the years. “I finally get to play with my retirement. My pieces are not abandoned and are not junk. Every one of them has a purpose, whether they’re parts or I’m going to drive it and sell it,” he said.
“Some may say, ‘That’s a piece of crap; you can’t drive it.’ … I’ve gathered up my retirement treasures; now I will start selling to supplement my income.”
Catt said other people do worse to the environment than people have vehicles on their property, like his neighbor who sprays pesticides, or the man he watched throw a McDonald’s cup and beer can into a nearby creek while mowing his grass.
Catt drinks groundwater at his home, so he said he makes sure all of his vehicles are drained of oils and other hazardous materials.
At the June 27 RDC meeting, Catt said their definition of blight could “hammer the hell out of me.”
Catt will also go around the county collecting vehicles people do not want anymore to scrap or use for parts. Kemp asked how much of that is going on in the county.
“A lot, man. It’s a way of life, man. That’s one of the reasons why I live here. We each do our own little thing. It makes us happy. We don’t bother one another; we help each other,” he said.
“I don’t see the harm. I’m not endangering the environment. I’m not endangering the people. I’m not doing nothing illegal.”
According to the Indiana Secretary of State’s office, a person is legally allowed to sell up to 12 vehicles in a year as long as the vehicles are registered in the person’s name and are used primarily for personal, family or household use. Anything in excess of that would require an automotive salvage recycler license, Kemp said at the APC meeting on June 25.
That license is required for people who want to do things like sell a used major component of a vehicle; wreck, dismantle, shred, compact, crush or destroy a vehicle to sell major component parts or scrap material; rebuild a wrecked or dismantled motor vehicle for resale; possess more than two inoperable vehicles for more than 30 days; and engage in the business of storing, disposing, salvaging or recycling of motor vehicles, vehicle hulks or parts of motor vehicles.
[sc:pullout-text-end]