At a meeting June 12, the Sandoval County Commission ordered the cleanup of several properties filled with rubbish and debris to restore public health and safety.
The county’s Planning and Zoning Department was tasked with enforcing the cleanup of six properties. Five of the properties are adjacent to each other, situated on the same block of 12th Avenue in Rio Rancho. The sixth property is in Placitas.
“The reason for this action is to restore the public comfort, health, peace and safety,” said Daniel Beaman, director of the Sandoval County Planning and Zoning Department.
According to Beaman, with the support of the sheriff’s office, the Planning and Zoning Department will deliver a notice to the property owners, directing them to clean up their property. Owners will be given a 10-day window to complete the cleanup. If no action is taken within this timeframe, the county will step in and place a lien on the property to cover the debris and trash removal costs.
Michael Eshleman, the county attorney, said the county would likely seek an injunction in court and obtain court orders, similar to restraining individuals or evicting someone who is objecting. He added that the property owners have the option to appeal the notice.
“If they don’t (appeal), it’s essentially a default judgment against them,” Eshleman said. “The other route of filing criminal charges is a lengthy, inefficient process and in the end, even with a criminal conviction that still doesn’t clean the property and that’s all we want is to clean the property up.”
Chairman David Heil said he expects to see other debris code enforcement in front of the commission in the future because the fully staffed code enforcement department can go out and issue citations when people are violating. If they do not respond, county attorneys are prepared to move forward with legal action to get serious code violations corrected.
The clean-up process is a spinoff of the “Preserve Sandoval County’s Beauty” program. According to Heil, the initiative identifies trash sites through code enforcement and posts them on the county’s website under Preserve Sandoval County for public awareness. The county would then hire contractors or individuals with pickup trucks to clean up the sites, compensating them for their work and transporting the debris to the landfill.
“We lost a few code enforcement people, so it was on pause for a while but now with good code enforcement people back, that program is back and it has spread from just Rio Rancho Estates to countywide,” said Heil.
Get involved
The next county commission meeting is at 6 p.m. June 26 at the Administrative Building Commission Chambers, 1500 Idalia Road, Building D in Bernalillo.