MOUNT VERNON — City officials went back to the drawing board after residents pushed back on parking restrictions for RVs, boats, and campers.
When the city amended its vehicle ordinance last summer, it combined trailers, vehicles, and RVs into one. Assistant City Inspector Brian Marvin said it was fairly restrictive, but what the city thought it wanted at the time.
However, as he started enforcing the regulations, the public started calling.
“A lot of them have had their campers in their driveways for a very long time in violation of the previous ordinance, but the gist of it was basically that they were miffed that they couldn’t have their campers and their boats in their driveway,” he told city council members on Monday.
Marvin said residents did not push back much on utility trailers because they are unattractive and not used as frequently.
However, residents said they use their campers and boats all summer long. They questioned why they had to keep them in the back yard or in storage.
Marvin said the goal was to find a balance between allowing flexibility for residents who maintain their vehicles and giving code enforcement the authority to remove unsightly or junk vehicles.
“We considered that, we got some info, and we looked around at some other ordinances. What you see before you is a lot of input from the community, what they want,” he told the council.
“We left the authority for the city to intervene in those bad situations and keep the city clean and safe for our community.”
(Below is a PDF of the revised ordinance.)
Enclosed trailers allowed, compliance time extended
The revised ordinance also loosens restrictions on utility trailers. It now allows enclosed utility trailers that are well maintained as long as they do not have business logos or are unattractive to the public.
“As long as they’re maintaining them, we have some allowances for those. The only thing that stays pretty restrictive are your open-bed, brush-hauler or trash-hauler types of trailers,” Marvin said.
“We still have that those be maintained to the rear of the property, like they always have been in the previous ordinance.”
Residents still cannot park trailers, campers, or boats in their front yard on the grass. However, they can park them on an improved surface.
“It has to go through zoning, get an approval, and they can offshoot off the driveway a side parking, just so we don’t have people parking in their lawns and their side yards and such,” Marvin said.
“That part was already approved under the previous ordinance last year, so that’s really not a change.”
The city has the authority to remove unregistered and dilapidated vehicles when the owners do not comply with city code.
However, the city extended the response time from five to 10 days.
“We felt like we were being too restrictive and not giving people sufficient time to react to what we’re asking them to do. So we’ve given them a longer amount of time,” Marvin said.
City Inspector Scott Zimmerman said, “We’re not reinventing the wheel here. We actually are lightening up what you can have, just so it’s on an improved surface. The penalties have always been in there.”
Council removes emergency clause
Both Marvin and Zimmerman said they have not received calls from residents merely complaining about a boat or camper in their neighbor’s driveway.
In each instance, the vehicles are inoperable, dilapidated, or someone is living in the camper.
“We put some size restrictions in there and things to kind of keep it under control while also maintaining people’s desire to have a camper and a boat out there,” Marvin said.
“But I honestly have not had any complaints other than the few yucky ones we’ve had to deal with, people living in a camper and that sort of thing.”
As far as leaving the vehicles in the driveway through the winter when not in use, Marvin said the people who spoke to him were willing to lay down a pull-off surface alongside their driveway.
“I do believe that many of them will put them still in storage for the winter. But I think that there will be many as well that will probably want to have them stored on their improved surfaces, all year round, and we kind of allowed for that,” he said.
Marvin does not foresee a lot of change with the revised ordinance.
“The beauty of our system is if for some reason we start getting feedback from the public this is a horrible thing, we can always revisit it and figure it out and make the adjustments we need to make,” he said.
“But right now, based on what we are told, this is where the general public was as far as the campers and the boats went.”
City council members amended the revised ordinance to remove the emergency clause, and then gave it its second reading on Monday. Councilman Mel Severns voted against removing the emergency clause.
