Sedgwick County asks Legislature for power to clean up eyesores and stinky nuisances
This could be the year that Sedgwick County gets the authority to go in and clean up neighborhood nuisances that have persisted for years, including an unsightly pile of debris near west Wichita and a stinky house in Oaklawn south of the city.
Nuisance abatement is high on this year’s Sedgwick County legislative agenda, an annual wish list of laws and funding policies the county wants to see enacted when the Legislature returns to session next month.
While cities have fairly broad authority to force a cleanup of local eyesores and health hazards, that power largely stops at the city limits.
In the unincorporated areas, it’s pretty much anything goes and it can require multiple court hearings over a matter of years to deal with unsightly or dangerous properties.
“I love property rights, I stand on the side of property rights most of the time,” said Commissioner Jim Howell. “But I understand the neighbors also have property rights . . . This (proposed legislation) is giving us a little tiny tool in the tool box to do some things when things get really bad.”
County officials say they’re asking for a fraction of the power cities have.
In this year’s session, they almost got it.
A bill to grant the county limited authority over public nuisances passed the Senate by a comfortable margin, 30-7 in March.
But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the lawmakers went home before the bill could be voted on in the House of Representatives, where it died in committee.
One of the county’s most noxious nuisance cases is in Howell’s district, at a house in the 4500 block of Hemlock Avenue in the residential suburb of Oaklawn.
“The back yard has, I don’t know, 20 refrigerators, stoves and plywood and cars, hot water tanks,” Howell said. “I don’t even know what all is back there. It’s all kinds of stuff.”
But the worst part is the smell that emanates from the property, which is home to an uncounted but large colony of stray cats, he said.
“It’s unoccupied by humans,” Howell said. “There’s apparently a lot of cats that live there still. The person apparently comes and they take care of their cats every day. The windows are boarded up so you can’t tell what’s going on inside the house.”
On calm summer nights or after a rain storm, the acrid odor of cat feces permeates the neighborhood for blocks around, he said.
“It has a particularly strong, foul odor,” Howell said. “I went over there one day and got as close to the property as I could legally. As I drove home, I could smell the stench on my clothes.”
Howell said he and the neighborhood association have tried for years to get the situation resolved, without success.
“Right now, the line is drawn so far to one side (in favor of the homeowner), the county doesn’t have any real teeth, ever, to solve a problem like this,” Howell said.
Commissioner David Dennis has had a similar lack of success trying for the past six years to get a pile of road debris and garbage removed from alongside 135th Street West south of 21st Street.
A contractor who rebuilt 135th between Maple and Central just dumped the debris there.
“We’ve had a big pile of rubble there for six or eight years,” Dennis said. “And then people started dumping trash on top of that and we can’t get it cleaned up.”
It’s been an exercise in futility and frustration, he said.
“We have to go to a judge and he has to issue a requirement (for the property owner) to do something and we’ve done that,” Dennis said. “And then nothing happens and we’ve got to go back to the judge and he issues more guidance and then nothing happens.”
When a situation like that arises within the city limits, the city can do something about it. But the debris and trash pile is just outside the Wichita boundary, Dennis said.
“The city can actually go in and abate it if they need to and then put it on your tax bill,” he said. “We’re not looking at that drastic a measure, but we have to have something more than what we’ve got now. All five districts have nuisances like that in them that we can’t get cleaned up.
“Our MABCD (Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department) goes out and issues citations, they’re just kind of disregarded. We don’t have authority to do anything about it.”
Dennis said he’s somewhat hopeful because the property changed hands recently and the new owner put up a dirt berm that mostly shields the 50-yard-long pile from public view, abating the eyesore somewhat.
The bill that died in the House this year would allow the county to send in crews to clean up messes like the debris pile in Dennis’ district or the smelly house in Howell’s, after a hearing process.
And the county could assess the cost of the cleanup to the property owner, minus the value of any removed property.
To gain support of — or at least avoid opposition from — rural legislators, the bill would apply to Sedgwick County only.
To head off potential opposition from the farm lobby, agricultural lands, buildings and equipment would be exempt.
“This is a very, very, very narrow bill,” said Howell, who served in the state House before becoming a commissioner. “If we have time this year, I’m pretty sure it will pass.”
