The city council met to have a work meeting for Ordinance No 20021-1, Community Decay Ordinance. Besides the city council members, five residences attended and expressed their opinions about having such an ordinance. The next action the council is taking is sending the ordinance one last time to the Chouteau County attorney, Steve Gannon, and to the town of Big Sandy’s attorney, Jennifer Forsyth, in Havre.

The ordinance itself is five pages long, and it will not be published in its entirety. It is also crucial that you understand the words printed here are not final and may be changed. There will be two town meetings to discuss the ramifications of passing this ordinance.

This article is to give you a brief concept of the ordinance. You will need to attend the meetings to understand the ordinance and the enforcement of the ordinance as they go forward.

There are five sections to the Community Decay Ordinance. Definitions, Administration, enforcement and civil penalty, Community decay standards, Junk vehicle nuisance, and Shielding.

“Community decay means a nuisance created by allowing rubble, debris, junk or refuse to accumulate resulting in conditions that are injurious to health, indecent offensive to the senses or obstructive to the free use of property so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property.”

“Junk vehicle means a discarded ruined, wrecked or dismantled motor vehicle, including component parts, that is not lawfully and validly licensed and remains inoperative incapable of being driven.”

“Public view is any point six feet above the surface of the center of any public street, road or alley from which the community decay can be seen.”

“Shielding means fencing or other barriers to conceal community decay from public view”.

Any erected shielding must conform to all zoning, planning, building, and protective covenant provisions.

“Junk means any metal, glass, paper, rags, wood, machinery parts, appliance, or equipment parts, cloth or other waste or discarded material of any nature or substance whatsoever, or any scrap or salvage materials.”

There are more definitions, but these or the main ones. The ordinance will go into effect after it is returned from the lawyers, the city has two meetings, and the council votes to approve it.

The town will enforce this ordinance. Citizens may make a written complaint to the town. However, the council will also be sending out notices to property owners who are out of compliance. At first, they would like to have a soft opening to the ordinances with letters going out to those who need to clean up their property. It is hoped that this can be a benefit to building good relations as individuals are willing to help clean up. The city would also like to have property owners develop a plan themselves to fix the issues. However, they are prepared to charge the property owners $300 for each violation. If the fee is not paid, further civil penalties will be added.

There are six standards concerning Shielding. Primarily it needs to be “sufficient height and density to conceal any violation on the premises from public view. No more than one of the approved shielding materials shall be used on anyone side of the property. Plastics, tarps, or other materials placed over junk vehicles are not acceptable, except that reasonably attractive car covers specifically designed to attach tightly to and cover motor vehicles are acceptable for shielding up to two junk vehicles or a single residential location.”