They’re baaaaaaaack! The bugaboo that vexed former mayor Lonnie McCollum throughout his 13 months in office has reemerged in Greensburg, though in a nature-altered form—nuisance properties, dilapidated or debris-strewn lots in town that owners are slow to clean up in timely fashion.
   While McCollum had made it a priority to address unsightly residences before the tornado, the public hearings and other sundry steps of condemning a property required by city code make the progress slow and tedious.  Three weeks after the storm McCollum was gone, resigning his post and returning to Pratt, where he now works as building inspector, going after nuisances in that town being among his various duties.  Gone as well were Greensburg’s offending properties, at least in their familiar form.
   The storm’s wrath, however, has left behind dozens of residential lots holding uninhabitable shells of former houses, which now pose health and safety risks in the form of fire hazards and shelters for such pests as rats, snakes and skunks.  Some include open basements needing to be filled in.
    What was McCollum’s cross to bear has now been taken up by Greensburg’s community development director, Mike Gurnee, who announced at last week’s city council meeting he’s already mailed letters asking property owners to address the nuisances they own.
   Gurnee, in fact, told The Signal Friday morning he sent out a total of 28 letters April 9 to owners of residential nuisance properties.  Calling this first draft an informal “customer friendly” request for compliance, the letter reminds recipients the city’s code “does not permit weeds and debris to remain on city lots,” and asks the property in question “be cleaned from the curb to the alley.”
   The letter goes on to state the City “has the ultimate authority to enter private property to remedy the problem, bill the land owner and attach a lien on the lot.”  It makes clear, however, the City prefers  “voluntary compliance” over the City taking the initiative.
   Gurnee said all but one of the 28 properties addressed are uninhabited—that one is a “matter of weeds needing to be taken care of by the person living there.”
   With no deadline for compliance mentioned in the letter, Gurnee said it will likely be time within a week “for a more formal letter, to step up the pressure to improve the look of our neighborhoods.”
    Also on the agenda for this week is a letter Gurnee is planning to mail addressing the problem of open basements, which will carry of a deadline of 30 days for compliance.  He estimates there being at least 50 properties within town holding an open basement—seven of which are part of the 28 properties already addressed.
   “With the heavy rain we’ve just had these open basements are a real problem,” Gurnee said.  “We’ve got flooding and overflow of the sewage system.  This needs to be addressed by property owners soon.”
    Gurnee said he’s spent recent days “trying to figure out a strategy to identify who owns the various open-basement properties, and how to start notification,” noting addressing all 50 or so at once is impractical.
   “I’m thinking of starting at one end of town and working my way to the other,” he said, “probably with a four-block area at a time.  But I need to have all the owners within that section identified before I do.  I can’t just warn two or thee on one street and let another two or three go until later.  They all need to be treated the same.”
   Notifying the owners of a handful of abandoned or commercial properties around town is also on Gurnee’s to-do list.  Calling them “abandoned business interests,” Gurnee said at least a couple involve loosened sheet metal that could became hazardous in the event of high winds once they’ve broken free from the structure.
   “We want to give owners of commercial properties as much time as possible to decide if they’re going to reopen or shut down,” he said, “but we can’t wait forever.  Those (commercial properties) I’d like to deal with owners face to face whenever I can.”
   Citing the leveling of pre-tornado nuisance properties by the storm a “slight blessing,” Gurnee said dealing with nuisance properties in the aftermath of May 4, 2007, should be easier than before.
   “These should be easier to resolve now since we’re not involved with possibly kicking someone out of their home (for noncompliance),” he said.  “We won’t have people telling us ‘I can’t afford to fix this up.’ So we won’t have to deal with the personalities of people who want to continue living in a certain way that runs against city code. This time around we’re just dealing with land, and not the people who live on it.”