T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Two North 4th Avenue residents, Allan Kent and Jimmy Lee Landt, spoke during the public comment period of Monday night’s city council meeting to express their frustrations with what they felt was a lack of action from the city in addressing the “junkyard” behind their properties.

During the early portions of a meeting that ran nearly 2 ½ hours on Monday evening, a pair of public commenters pressed members of the Marshalltown city council about what they felt was a lack of action to address nuisance properties in the First Ward, which covers roughly the northeast quadrant of the community.

Allan Kent spoke first and said he wasn’t there to pick on any individual councilor but all of them collectively, describing the scene behind his house on North 4th Avenue as “a junkyard.”

“All these cars, I’ve been told it was gonna be taken care of and all this and that. It’s been six years,” he said.

He added that “nothing” has been done, and the number of cars just keeps growing. Kent urged the council to take action through fines or other forms of nuisance enforcement and questioned whether they were doing their jobs.

Kent’s neighbor Jimmy Lee Landt spoke later during the public comment period and expressed similar frustration, indicating that he was tired of the cars and referenced a message he received from then First Ward Councilor (and current State Representative) Sue Cahill back in 2018 about the same issue. Citing a past situation where he was nearly ticketed while restoring a vehicle, he said he followed the nuisance law and quickly corrected the problem.

Landt indicated that he has invited his First Ward Councilor, Mike Ladehoff, to the property to observe the situation on more than one occasion.

“I counted them before I came up here. I counted over 50 some cars between Marion Street and Riverside, and I bet 40 of them don’t have license plates on them,” he said. “Why do we write these ordinances if we don’t wanna enforce them? The city’s got all the opportunities in the world to make some money by ticketing these people, but they don’t wanna do their job every day. If I’m out of line, mayor, tell me. You wouldn’t wanna live next to that, would you? I don’t… It’s just getting out of hand.”

As he wrapped up his remarks, Landt said he was simply tired of the inaction to address the problem and considered himself a tax paying citizen who followed the law and city codes.

“I just wanna live like you guys live on the south side. You guys don’t have a bunch of cars out there. We’re on the north side. We’re north siders, and I’d like to see something get done about it,” he said. “I know Mike (Ladehoff’s) been down there two or three times to look at it, and he agrees with me. They’re out of hand, but evidently, he can’t get no support.”

He noted that he had raised concerns with Police Chief Mike Tupper about parking on the sidewalk, which Tupper affirmed, and Landt wondered when something would change. He asked the council for its response, but Mayor Joel Greer reminded him that they could not discuss or take action on items raised during the public comment period. Greer instead recommended that Landt reach out to his ward councilor (Ladehoff) or one of the at-large councilors to put the item on the agenda at a future meeting.

Before he stepped away, Landt said City Nuisance Abatement Officer Joe Trowbridge “never comes around” and highlighted his own background as a Vietnam combat veteran fighting for freedom of speech, and after he had gone more than two minutes over the usual three minute public speaking limit, Greer instructed him to return to his seat.

During mayor and council comments, Second Ward Councilor Mark Mitchell alluded to the fact that he ran for office on a “roads and codes” platform and urged the council to listen to constituents who want to see action taken on nuisance properties.

“I know for a fact that our city codes (officer) is way behind on what he’s supposed to be doing, and if he needs help, we need to get him help,” Mitchell said. “If he can’t do the job, then we need to have somebody oversee him to get the jobs done. He’s multiple months behind in what he should’ve had done. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

Greer, who lives on the north side, acknowledged that he had had problems with nuisances both in his own neighborhood and around his former law office.

“It’s one that takes money, time and work. I know that a recent former city administrator was working very carefully on trying to figure out how to adjust budgets and adjust personnel to deal with (this) and provide more help in that department,” he said.

In a subsequent interview, Ladehoff explained some of the complications associated with nuisance properties and said the property owner must be provided adequate notice and a certain amount of time to address the issue. The city can then continue to send reminders until the matter ends up in municipal court.

“That process is just way too long, in my opinion,” Ladehoff said. “I think, looking at it for three years now, it took us over a year there along 3rd Avenue with all the cars stowed in the back to get into court. And then we had court delays and rescheduling of the court kind of things, and it was expensive to have our lawyers going after people with cars in their backyard.”

The councilor and mayor pro tem believes the codes should be looked at and potentially rewritten to ensure that quicker action can be taken to address complaints, and he said the three problem properties are repeat offenders.

“Al and Jimmy were right. We’ve been dealing with this since, like, 2018, but after we finally got to court and they actually cleaned up, got rid of the cars and that, then it’s just slowly filled back in,” Ladehoff said. “They know they’re not supposed to do it, so then we just start our whole process all over again… I think we’ve been down this road three times with them, at least twice.”

He added that if the property owners can afford to hire lawyers to defend them in court, they can afford to keep their yards and driveways clean, but in Ladehoff’s view, they simply don’t want to do so.

“I think, actually, Ward 1 has done a pretty good job getting a lot of houses down and gone and cleaned up and stuff like that, but we’ve got these issues with these cars we need to deal with,” he said. “I don’t blame Jimmy or Al one bit for being frustrated… We’re gonna have to put more teeth in (our ordinances) and get after it.”

Public Works Director Heather Thomas, who oversees Trowbridge in her position, offered her assessment of the situation Friday, indicating that city staff are looking into the complaints mentioned Monday night and what options the city has to address them.

“These specific complaints stem around several properties which the city has made an effort to address in the past, and (we) will continue those efforts. Several of these properties were turned over to City Attorneys in 2021 for assistance in resolving the nuisances, specifically in reference to Junk & Abandoned Vehicles in accordance with Chapter 95 of our City Code,” Thomas said.

After the council meeting, Thomas added, the Marshalltown Police Department (MPD) patrolled the area to review specifically for parking violations, but at that time, none were found.

“We have set up a multi-department meeting for next week to review the situation and determine what is the best next step. City staff acknowledge that there is a fine line in addressing what is a nuisance/junk vehicle issue to some and allowing free enterprise where businesses that work on or sell used vehicles can do so,” Thomas said. “This area is particularly challenging in that it has parcels zoned General Commercial, Medium-Density Residential, and General Industrial all located adjacent to each other. We may need to reevaluate areas of our city code to help better balance the mixed uses and better assist city staff in responding to these complaints.”

Kent and Landt did not refer to specific properties in their comments, but Thomas confirmed that the city attorney corresponded with the owners of 701A, 613-315, and 611 N. 3rd Ave. back in 2021, all of which are zoned commercial. Ladehoff added that the city took the matter to court over the fact that none of them possessed a valid vehicle recycler’s license, which is required for “storing more than six vehicles not currently registered or storing damaged vehicles, except where such storing of damaged vehicle is incidental to the primary purpose of the repair of vehicles for others.”

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.