The same can’t be said for the home across the street at 1627 Woodward Ave., where the grass and weeds tower, hiding rodents and snakes.
“When I open my front door, this is the first thing I look at,” Westmoreland said. “It’s ugly ... It’s a nuisance really, just a nuisance.”
Every summer for about the past five years, Westmoreland calls the city of Springfield’s Code Enforcement Division every few weeks to file a complaint.
She isn’t alone.
Last year, the city of Springfield’s contractors cut overgrown weeds and grass nearly 3,900 times after the property owners ignored orders to mow. That cost the city more than $135,000, paid for mostly by its federal Community Development Block Grant.
That totaled more than 24.2 million square feet — equivalent to mowing 429 football fields.
And it’s time-consuming. The city’s four code enforcement officers together performed more than 11,750 weed inspections last year, which average 15 minutes each. That totals up to each of them spending a solid 18 work weeks doing nothing but weed inspections.
It’s necessary, Community Development Director Shannon Meadows said.
High grass and noxious weeds create allergens, harbor pests and rodents, and create a sense of unease and insecurity.
“It’s not just about aesthetics,” Meadows said. “It’s about actual health, safety and welfare.”
Long process
When neighbors don’t keep their homes and yards up, Westmoreland said it depreciates the value of her home and makes people think poorly of her street. Her son will even mow multiple yards when he works on her lawn.
Westmoreland said she wished the city mowed more often.
“It should be faster,” she said.
From the time a neighbor calls the city to complain about high weeds to the time it is cut by a contractor typically takes three to five weeks.
That’s due to the notification process and the volume of cases, Code Enforcement Manager Joshua Harmon said.
“That’s why it’s so important people call as quickly as possible,” Harmon said. “Don’t wait until it reaches the four-foot mark.”
Once the city receives the call, a code enforcement officer first inspects the property to make sure the weeds are more than 10 inches high. Then it sends the property owner notice that they must mow the yard in five days or the city will cut it and charge them.
Officers do another inspection to see if the owner complied with the orders. If not, the address is sent to one of several contractors to mow. Officers do a final check to make sure it was cut, then send the case to revenue collections.
Harmon said the city legally has to give owners a chance to correct the problem themselves. And last year, 60 percent of property owners who received orders complied and mowed their yards, which remains significantly cheaper than if the city does it.
“We would much rather you mow your grass before you get that notification than having us show up,” Meadows said.
She understands residents may get frustrated waiting for the problem to be corrected. She also gets calls from property owners criticizing the city for moving too quickly to cite and fine them.
High weeds and grass is a top concern Mayor Warren Copeland hears from residents, particularly in the spring. He often will report a handful of properties himself.
The city would rather spend the money elsewhere, Copeland said, but it’s critical because of the message overgrown lots sends.
“It’s a really negative factor for keeping our neighborhoods livable,” he said.
Abandoned lots
In addition to the complaints called in by residents, the city also cuts vacant lots it has determined are abandoned.
In an attempt to be proactive, the city created a list of abandoned properties in 1996 and routinely mows them every six to eight weeks from April to November. To be listed, a lot must have no structures on it, no owner can be found and property taxes must be delinquent.
“We don’t take ownership of them, we just take care of them out of a sense of community pride,” Harmon said.
At least once a year the city goes through the list again to try to find owners or see if any lots sold, Harmon said, but typically the owners are deceased or can’t be located.
It costs about $10,000 to mow all of the abandoned lots once, Harmon said, money rarely recouped because there’s no active owner.
The abandoned lot list has nearly tripled in the past decade, growing to more than 360 properties.
The city has the power to take ownership of abandoned property. But it doesn’t benefit the city or make sense to own land it doesn’t have a proper public use for, Meadows said.
The biggest complaint she hears from residents is why the city doesn’t mow abandoned lots more often.
“Though we would love to maintain every yard the way that responsible property owners do, we can’t ... To mow every six to eight weeks, that’s the best that can practically be done, both economically and with the time we have,” she said.
Habitual offenders
Harmon has compiled a list of habitual offenders from last year.
It consists of 310 properties that were cut a total of 756 times last year. Code enforcement officers are keeping a closer eye on the 19 locations the city mowed four times or more last year, looking into why the same properties keep coming up and researching possible solutions.
The house at 1627 Woodward Ave. across the street from Westmoreland is on the list. It was mowed four times last year. That didn’t surprise her. The home has been vacant for several years, she said, and routinely looks like a hay field.
“It makes everything look bad around you,” she said. “I mean, come on. I like things to look nice around me. I don’t like to look at all this.”
The Springfield News-Sun couldn’t locate Ronald L. Applin, the owner listed in county property records. The city has had 17 code enforcement cases against the property since 2007, a dozen of them for high grass. He owes the city nearly $2,300 for violations.
A vacant lot at 917 Innisfallen Ave. also is on the habitual offender list. Contractors mowed it four times last year and it has had 23 weed violations since 2001.
Pamela Journey of Indianapolis is the owner listed in county property records. She didn’t return phone calls from the Springfield News-Sun. The city has collected more than $1,000 from her but is still owed more than $2,100.
When a contractor mowed it earlier this month, the weeds had grown so high a passerby could barely be seen walking on the sidewalk.
Kris Moss has lived next door to the vacant lot on Innisfallen Avenue for two years. He keeps his property well-maintained and his lawn trim.
He doesn’t like the unkempt yard next door.
“Even if we have our grass clean and cut, it makes our yard look bad,” he said. “I wish it could be done weekly.”
Collection rate
The city doesn’t attempt to collect on the abandoned properties because it’s already determined it can’t find an owner. It does fine owners of properties mowed through the complaint process.
If the city cuts the lawn on a complaint, it’s a minimum $118 assessment, which includes a $100 administrative fee and $18 per hour it takes to mow the property.
If the fines aren’t paid, the city’s revenue collections department aggressively pursues the owners, Harmon said, including working with outside collection companies and reporting to credit agencies.
Still, it recoups only about a third of what it spends on weeds. For the past decade, it has consistently collected about $30,000 a year for weed, junk and trash violations.
“A lot of it is absentee owners or quite often people going through bankruptcies or foreclosures who just aren’t able to pay and aren’t going to respond to a collection notice, regardless if it’s from us or their car company,” Harmon said.
The city could seek court orders to place assessments on properties or garnish wages, which it does when someone has accumulated multiple fines or is delinquent on taxes.
But when their only violation is for weeds, Harmon said it’s rarely worth it to take those steps because the $150 court filing fees are higher than the $118 violation, not to mention the time to write up the court cases.
One recent trend is bank-held properties, which can create an issue both on the complaint side and on the collections end, particularly with national and international banks involved.
“Banks are not very good property maintenance managers,” Meadows said.
Neither Meadows nor Harmon could say how many of the violations are attributable to bank-owned properties. It’s a sizeable number that has grown as foreclosures picked up pace in recent years, she estimated, but remains a minority of cases.
Some banks hire maintenance companies, which then may not do the work, Harmon said, and others transfer properties so many times its difficult to track who is responsible for upkeep and violations.
“When we do our searches, we see (it’s owned by) Bank A, and by the time they actually do the work, it’s been transferred to Bank F,” he said.
Often mortgage companies will pay any accumulated fines when they sell the property, Harmon said.
Overall Meadows isn’t satisfied with a 30 percent collection rate on weeds violations but doesn’t know what else the city could do to recapture more money.
“You’re never going to get 100 percent collection,” she said. “You just don’t.”
About the Author