Recently, while visiting Iola from out of state, my elderly mother received a rather blunt and, I considered, threatening letter signed by the assistant code enforcement officer of Iola telling her that if she didn’t clean up some loose trash on a small strip of grass next to her alley, she may be charged in Municipal Court and fined accordingly. Ac-cording to the letter from the city, this small strip of grass was “declared a nuisance.”
This summer, my mother will have owned this home for 38 years and will have been an Iola resident for 39 years. This is the first letter of its kind ever received.
Within a block of her home there are four fast food restaurants, two liquor stores and a 24-hour convenience store, not all of which were there (or were the size they are now) when the home was purchased. The alley behind her home (and the rest of her yard, for that matter) has been cleaned multiple times over the years and is a continual source of frustration due to the littering that occurs.
A few years ago the city of Iola even paved this alley, I assume because of the significant daily automobile and foot traffic. The litter on my mother’s property regularly consists of liquor and beer bottles, cigarette packaging, Styrofoam cups and straws from the multiple businesses in the area, candy wrappers, etc., none of which come from her home. I cannot fault these businesses for this litter, but I do take exception to the way the city of Iola handled this problem. Instead of dealing with the source of the problem and fining the people doing the littering (or even dealing with the existing homeowners in a kinder and gentler fashion befitting this small city), they found it much easier to threaten the homeowners for not picking up the daily litter.
I met with the assistant city administrator and the Iola code enforcement officer on March 15 at the main city offices and was told in so many words that even though littering was against city ordinances, they couldn’t do anything about it.
Quoting from the Iola code enforcement officer, “we don’t know where this trash is coming from” and therefore my elderly mother, as the homeowner, needed to clean it up or potentially be fined. Hmmm… I, again, picked up the trash in the alley on my mother’s property and her neighbor’s property, and I guess from the nature of the trash collected, my elderly mother and her elderly neighbor must be drinking beer, liquor and soft drinks and smoking constantly and throwing the trash out their back windows.
Yes, the litter can be a problem, but shame on the city of Iola for the way they have handled this issue. Instead of sending a letter kindly enlisting and engendering the support of the homeowners affected, they chose rather to send an accusatory, harsh letter with no consideration or apparent investigation of the obvious source of the problem. Many of these homeowners have little, if any, control over the problem and, in the case of the elderly residents, are physically unable to pick up the daily litter themselves. (By the way, I can think of a number of much larger eyesores in this city that have been around for decades. Where is the Iola code enforcement in these cases? But a few pieces of litter … watch out!)
And to the patrons of the businesses that are littering, I ask you kindly to please respect the homeowners and our fair city by please disposing of your trash properly. There are trash receptacles available in the area. Thank you.
Jeff Summers
on behalf of
Wanda Summers,
Iola, Kan.
