MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) - A little more than a year ago, when Mason City Council members and city staff met to hone in on top priorities for the year ahead there was a bit of a refrain during the brainstorming session. The need to address blight issues came up early and often. Out of that, city officials set a goal of addressing at least 40 properties with blight concerns before the end of 2020.
Midway through September, the city’s close to that goal.
According to a monthly report read by City Administrator Aaron Burnett at Tuesday night’s city council meeting, since that September 2019 meeting the city has overseen the demolition or renovation of what it calls 10 “chronically blighted properties” and is working with 10 more to reach compliance while 15 others are starting the compliance process. The report went on to say that many properties didn’t need to go through any kind of court proceedings because the owners of those properties were “proactive in addressing the properties through renovation work or selling to another owner willing to make the needed investments.”
One of the main departments in Mason City working on the issue is Development Services. According to its director, Steven Van Steenhuyse, there are a few main compliance issues that qualify a property as blighted and in need of compliance.
“The first obviously is abandonment. There’s no one taking care of it and people can go in and out. It could attract various forms of crime and things we want to avoid,” Van Steenhuyse told the Globe Gazette. “The second thing is a lack of maintenance. That devalues the neighborhood. Also if it can be a harbor for vermin.”
Van Steenhuyse said a particularly tough case of abandonment the city had to get involved with was a pair of houses on adjacent lots under the same ownership that had been vacant for a long time. The owner had passed away and that person’s heirs didn’t have an interest in the property. So that one took some time.
“We had to find anyone with interest in the property…We couldn’t find the responsible party… We got a lot of assistance from attorneys,” Van Steenhuyse said.
He acknowledged that his department and others in the city still have work to do on the matter.
“There are a few more. Some are worse than others and we want to prioritize getting the bad ones out of the way first.”
Even with that, the way that Van Steenhuyse sees it, the city’s been successful with what it had to do this year. It’s made a dent in the number of properties that it needed to address in some way.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” he said. “I do think that some of the worst of the worst we’ve taken care. And I feel good about that.”
And beyond just the material benefits of blight enforcement, Van Steenhuyse thinks the work’s important for immaterial reasons as well.
“We’re really trying to work on perception that no one cares about the neighborhoods anymore and we’ve made great strides toward that.”
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