MASON CITY – Police and city officials in Mason City are teaming up at this time on a “city-wide cleanup” with dozens of notices being served about town to alleged lawbreakers.
Starting with the observations of patrol officers and other city employees, the city is acting to bring code violations under control.
According to Pat Otto of the Neighborhood Services department, city employees “have been doing a drive through with police officers this week addressing concerns that patrol officers have seen over the past several months.”
NIT was notified by citizens in Central Heights that there were a number of notices served there Wednesday. Pat Otto confirmed this, telling NIT that “they were in Central Heights late Wednesday afternoon and part of the day on Thursday… several Notices to Abate Nuisance were issued.” She says, more specifically, 15 notices were served out there.
Mason City police also confirm they are involved in this effort.
“Yes this is underway,” a Mason City police spokesman told NIT Friday morning. “We have done this periodically over the last few years. It partners the beat driver (police) with a city code enforcement officer to address (civil) property code violations. Some violations may overlap with our duties or there may be criminal violations as well. We started doing this around 2010 to increase communication and effectiveness while reducing redundancy between city departments.”
NIT is told common violations include: junk, junk vehicles, brush piles, parking, zoning violations, unregistered rentals, rental code violations.
One Mason City citizen who was served a notice reached out to Mayor Eric Bookmeyer early Friday morning, asking him why he was given notice to clean up his yard “in two weeks … right before a huge snowstorm and bitter cold weather moves in? How come nobody first talked to me before putting a yellow paper on my door? How come several other junky yards near me were passed by when they came straight to my place?”
Bookmeyer responded to the citizen, saying “I am not in position to understand the background here.”
“We don’t issue citations until all avenues towards compliance have been exhausted,” Mrs. Otto explained. “Two weeks is the normal time allowed for cleanup before the second inspection. At that point whether a citation or time extension is issued depends on the amount of effort expended towards the clean-up.”
NIT is told this is a city-wide cleanup effort and will probably go on for several weeks.
Are the citations available someplace as part of the public record? I would like to know if a neighbor of mine was notified as per this story. If not I will continue to report concerns as I have done for the last 3 years with no results.
Better yet would NIT be willing to publish names and addresses??
The property i just cleaned up on 4th and mass had notices stapled to each entrance to the house. Id keep an eye out for a notice, or just call city hall to ask if they will compensate you for the drop in your property value due to your neighbors yard garbage. I doubt notices are public information until they turn into citations of non compliance.
What happened to the avenue of approach of first talking to people before passing out paperwork? Always thought public agencies and employees were work with everyone before condemning them? Perhaps dome ha zero idea about their places before all this took place. The timing before a snowstorm suggests demanding and punishing to enforce their agenda.
The Russians are dumping their garbage on us ! Quote hitlery/obungle/and the swamp rat democrats. Must be true the swamp rat washinton post says so and also the mexican owned new yorker times .
What a ignorant, paranoid Dumb Ass you are.
@Mr Delete-Thanks for the unique and well thought out comment using that great mind and talented wit you have.
Mr. TROLL-who do you think I was talking about when I said make it simple for STUPID TROLLS. Damn you really are dumb aren’t you fart blossom.
Notice how Mr. Delete is now obsessed with farts. Its because he is really Mr. Depends….. the north end prophet who craps on others with his cowardly keyboard throughout the day.
L oves V irgin S heep
@Mr. Delete- thank you for being so considerate, I’ll bet they really appreciate that, you go over and above to help out everyone. ”Tis the season Merry Christmas my friend .
So glad I could help clear up your confused little pea bran. Keep on farting and I will keep on deleting.
Hey LVS what is a pea bran? Something you eat for breakfast to keep yourself regular?
Is figuring out a typo to tough for your limited intelligence troll? Every time I take Dumb Ass I wipe my troll. From the smell of your stinky farts you never wipe your Dumb Ass.
Those who received notices should make sure to take video and photos of before and after. I have had issues with things like this in the past. My dad owns the property on the corner of 4th and mass next to the old kansas city steak house lot. The lot next to his is owned by the same chodur who was trying to build the hotel next to city hall. He lives in california and has the lawn mowed once every two months, and didnt have the snow removed from his part of the sidewalk at all last year. Which ended in my dad getting a ticket for the full length of sidewalk. I went to city hall to discuss property lines, and was told i was wrong. My dad had to pay a fine for someone elses property. If mr chodur ever gets a chance to read this, know im keeping detailed video evidence of everytime i have to deal with your vacant property. Ill take the property from you in court if im going to keep having to deal with your lack of responsibility. The city wants that whole area cleaned up, so i will comply. The only issue is we will never sell that property. I will have the house torn down, and allow people to use the property for a community garden before ill be fear mongered into compliance. Im tired of having to spend money coming back from Arizona to deal with this nonsense.
I hope and pray the the law enforcement cleans up all the HUMAN trash also. Makes me sick we have let this drug trash take over our city. Lets start our own enforcement and I do believe there are places in this town to dispose of our trash. Send an AMEN BROTHER to this and lests see how many feel as I do. Thank You
AMEN BROTHER
Agree that the clean up needs to be done with the garbage and junk sitting around some of these houses.
Agree that it is the wrong time of year to do this “sting” operation as winter/cold weather is here. Why not 3 months ago and some service groups could have helped the elderly/infirm take care of this problem if they were unable to do it themselves.
What does the city deem to be junk/trash? Is there a list of items? One mans junk is another man’s treasure. Just look at Weaver’s “collection” up by Good Shepherd, If I had car parts laying in my yard I bet the city would be after me. Some of the sculptures downtown are, in my opinion, piles of scrap metal that people call art.
Also, maybe they had their trash set out at 7:00am but when the sanitation workers start at 6:30am the pick up wasn’t made. Oh, I forgot, they want to get an early start so they can be done by noon and get paid for 10 hours and only work 6.
The timing does seem strange. It was warm until just a week or so ago, wonder why this wasn’t done then?
An administration of poor losers after the runoff election. Retribution.
That’s some great hours, who in their right mind wouldn’t take a job like that, I sure would, where do I sign up. If that is the case, their employer must be OK with it. That’s got to be a cushy job.
The city of Mason City is their employer.
A few years ago I was a safety specialists at my employer.
I happened to be following a sanitation truck on one of my days off and noticed the worker would hang off the back, bend down (not knowing how heavy the bag was), and pick up the bag and throw it in the back of the truck. All while the truck was moving. Made my back ache just watching them. Called city hall and they agreed it was unsafe to do it this way but they are in a hurry because they get paid for 10 hours even if they work 6-8. I was talking to a city employee about this (not sanitation) and he said if they make them do the job “right” they will slow down on purpose and it will take them 12 hours to do a supposed 10 hour job.
If their employer doesn’t stop them from picking up garbage this way, it must be acceptable. I asked around about the hours that they work, and was told that it is called, incentive. Incentive to get the job done as quick as possible, because, for whatever reason, nobody wants garbage setting in front of their house all day long. The incentive was agreed to by their employer over 50 years ago, so it’s something that didn’t just start. I still like the hours, and would even get some good exercise, in this blue zone city.
So it is an incentive for the employees to get hurt due to improper lifting and insurance rates that we the people pay for go up due to the increase in injuries. The city worker I talked to said the sanitation workers have the highest injury rate of all the city employees.
Just a thought, how about they clean up city government.
Its about time. Hit them now and then fine them. F them hoarders. You don’t like the weather now wait till next week when its a high of 5 degrees. Don’t use weather as a excuse. There’s a lot of people that work outside in a lot worse conditions than this. This is long over due .Good job city. You want to live in the city live by the rules.
Matt ! This sight with the comments is great . By the way Alex Jones video (info wars) says the pope eats poop .
Obama after a line of – It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhooood — Won.t you be mine .
Problem solved ! 12 inches of snow by sundown and everything will look like Alice in Wonderland – PS kick a demorat ! — Oppps I made a hillary mistake – I meant keep kicking the can down the road till Jan. 20th.
Unbelieveable ! Clintons satanic crowd saying the bitch lost because there was garbage in Trump voter’s lawns.. BTW Merry Christmas ! – a phase which was not muslim or politically correct under the liberal demorat reign of corruption.
Thanks for the laugh you pcyco
its not like anyone who is in violation, isn’t aware that their yard looks like crap. This is not a new thing catching them off guard. people need to stop being victims and start helping make our town better.
Go to North Ohio in Mason city. It’s a shit hole area owned by one person. A slum Lord. This stuff makes the whole city look bad. City needs to clean they’re act up to. There are parks that need to be taken care of. The ugly fenced lot by the north side yes way.
Oh no, there was over 150 notices on the north end alone.
It is about time Pat Otto did something before she retires at the end of December. I have dealt with her over the past couple of years regarding a property on N. Rhode Island. She always had an excuse why the property could not be cleaned up.
I for one am in favor of this clean up. It’s called consideration of your neighbors & neighborhood.
Why should it take “notice” to get off your rear ends and “take care” of your own property?
Also provides breeding/nesting grounds for varmints.
And yes, I agree, we have a lot of slum properties that it would be AWESOME if the City would put the bite on also.
It is about time they made the slobs clean up their yards. They had all summer to do it but wouldn’t make a move until forced to.
Cute! Their worrying about a few sacks of garbage in someones lawn and overhead the nwo is spraying poison on them. Oh well not everyone can make a tin foil hat.
Their just pizzed because their chief crook lost the election – You know! The tin foil party hats lost – now they wear the soro’s purple – thats sort of like blue balls if you know what I mean.
That’s pretty funny because two of the slobs that got notices had Trump for president signs in their yard.
7 years as mayor Bookie sure as hell cleaned up his neighborhood. The rest of us all can kick rocks
Why don’t you start with the abandoned and burned out propertys in town. How long can you let a eye sore like the Rose Bowl sit without doing something. That is a great 1st thing people see when coming into town. There is probably 50 more dead rentals in town that look the same way
One of my favorites is, the boarded up crime scene next to the Globe Gazette.
Better those abandonded than filled with mooozies
Want to clean up Mason? Haul the greyhound buses to Van Horns that are bring in crap from Deadtroit and obummers chitcago.
@Mr Delete-Thanks for the Idea
Nice try, but not me.
The big mouth troll is gone again just like the stinky fart in the wind. I try to keep my comment simple so Dumb Ass like the TROLL can understand them. Of course the coward who refuses to put his name on here will fart again and I will take them out again. With any luck at all the TROLL will suffocate on his own stinky farts.
Hey NIT how about giving us the full context of the Mayor’s conversation with the citizen who was given notice. Because the way you have portrayed it shows your continued and tedious bias against the Mayor.
The “context” is clear. The citizen went to the mayor with a problem, and the mayor said he did not understand (a direct quote). I’m no mind-reader, but where I come from (MC) this means he either was not intelligent enough to comprehend the problem, didn’t know what his own staff was up to, or flat out didn’t care (I’ll wager the latter). Maybe if you see him in the bars, you can ask him yourself, yes?
Which quote is the real one? The one in the story or your comment.
Hey Matt, what about all of those junk yards alone Monroe Avenue, from State street north to 4th North. Is that Russ baby’s mess?
They are owned by Russ and Joann Hardy. They don’t care just want their hud money and get rich off the citizens of MC
They did this to my dad 20 years ago – had 2 old current plated cars in his 2 acres of ground on the edge of the city limits – 10 below a copper comes to the door and said he must start the vehicles to make sure they are in running order – he told them to come back when it was 32 degrees or above and he would start them – half the cars in town would not have started that day – are these people pukes or just stupid – wait until its nice weather .
Woe is me. I ignored all the complaints for the last 15 years.
Central heights seriously does need to clean up their yards. It’s pitiful out there. Most houses are abandoned and need to be removed
Well maybe since the illustrious Councilperson Janet Solberg lives in Central Heights she could get off her lazy arse and do something useful for a change