By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

The town of Van Buren is saying goodbye to overgrown grass, junky cars and other unsightly objects and saying hello to new property maintenance codes.

After a year of fine-tuning — interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic — the Van Buren Land Use Committee is ready to reveal its proposed changes governing the tidiness of yards and homes. The Van Buren Town Board was set to review the proposal at its Aug. 18 meeting and schedule a public hearing on the topic for Sept. 1.

While the Messenger went to press before the new code language was made available, Deputy Supervisor Mary Frances Sabin outlined the aim behind the proposed changes. Sabin is also chair of the Land Use Committee.

“We’ve been meeting since last August and took a little break during the first part of COVID, as did everybody,” Sabin said of the Land Use Committee’s work. “We’ve been going at it probably since late April.”

The town is not looking to impose restrictions on residents from the top down, Sabin said. These changes were sparked by resident complaints about neighbors’ leggy lawns and piles of construction debris.

“The town has complaints year after year after year,” Sabin said. “This is all complaint-driven from the bottom up.”

In anticipation of the proposed code changes, the town published a PowerPoint on its website showing examples of what is and what is not acceptable. Boats, recreational vehicles and cars would be allowed in driveways and front yards if properly covered, for instance. The PowerPoint shows photos of potential code violations: mounds of brush and bags of yard waste; stacks of windows, pallets and bricks; front yards turned graveyards for broken-down vehicles.

“What we tried to do is show representative pictures of what the various categories are of problems throughout the town,” Sabin said. “This is not to focus on one portion of the town … this is town-wide.”

Maintenance complaints often come up on Grievance Day, generally the fourth Tuesday in May, when property owners can challenge their assessments.

“They’re complaining that their property values are going up when they know they can’t get the sale price or assessment price because of messy properties in their neighborhood,” Sabin said.

This leads to an overall “downward slide” in property values in the town, she said.

Sabin said there are repeat offenders in the town when it comes to keeping yards neat.

“I don’t have an exact number. We probably have 15 or 20 regular complaints regarding yard, grass and weeds being overgrown. I can think of eight or nine different ones on junky yards,” she said.

Under the proposed local law, homeowners would be given a warning that their property is in violation of the maintenance code. They would have 15 days to address the complaint before an official code violation is issued.

“What the homeowners want isn’t to have a property owner fined hundreds or thousands of dollars. It’s to clean up the property,” Sabin said.

The town is not looking to act as a homeowners association or infringe on residents’ decor choices, Sabin said.

“Nobody is trying to turn Van Buren into Radisson. That is in no way, shape or form the intent of this,” she said. “We’re not telling you what color house you can paint or how high your fence can be. This is simply if you have a pile of grass or weeds or trees or bags that’s eight feet high on your lawn, we don’t know what kind of critters are in there. … Once they get in there they don’t just stop at one house.”

Visit townofvanburen.com to see the PowerPoint of examples and read the proposed amendment to the code. Contact [email protected] with your feedback about the proposed law.

“We want to hear from residents about these changes to help us draft a law that works for everyone,” reads the PowerPoint’s concluding slide.