SOUTH PORTLAND – The City Council will consider new rules that would give officials some leverage in dealing with public nuisance properties, where owners fail to clean up junk from their yards, fix faulty sewage systems, or take other needed steps.

The rules include a provision for fines of up to $2,500 a day for those who continue to ignore orders to take care of problems.

South Portland’s action follows the lead of other communities in southern Maine cracking down on properties where junk accumulates or health and safety problems are not addressed. Last year, for instance, Portland decided to start levying fines if an owner fails to make repairs or clean up property within 24 hours of getting a notice from the city.

In South Portland, the council is taking up the issue after some residents complained that the lack of action on problems is hurting the value of properties near the nuisance parcels.

Under the proposal going before the council Monday, either a city official or residents themselves could initiate a complaint alleging a property constitutes a nuisance. The amendment requires at least 10 property owners living within 500 feet of the nuisance property to petition the City Council to take action.

After the issue is raised either way, the city would send a notice to the property owner and schedule a public hearing. After the hearing, if the council agrees that a nuisance exists, it would issue an abatement order, giving the property owner 15 days to take care of the problem.

If the problem isn’t fixed, the city could levy fines of $100 to $2,500 a day until the nuisance is addressed.

On Monday, the council is also expected to resolve a long-running dispute over angled parking in front of businesses along a block of Ocean Street in the Knightville section of the city.

The council originally decided that a redesign of the section between D and E streets, including wider sidewalks, should be accompanied by a change of the parking from angled to parallel spots along the street.

But business owners protested, saying that the change would curtail the available number of spaces in front of their stores. They also said their customers would find parallel parking much more difficult to navigate than angled parking.

Over the summer, the council relented, but because the street would no longer have the state-mandated width to accommodate both angled parking and two-way traffic, the council is changing the traffic flow to one-way along that stretch of Ocean Street.

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com

 

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