Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health in process of updating county’s nuisance ordinance

MASON CITY — The Cerro Gordo County Department of Public Health is in the process of updating the county’s nuisance ordinance that has not been updated since 2008.

The department’s Environmental Health & Preparedness Manager Jodi Willemsen and the Public Health Director Kara Vogelson say one of the issues that needs to be addressed is the process on how complaints are handled.  Willemsen says, “Our old ordinance, it just seemed a little hard to follow with like steps basically, how do we handle it?” Vogelson says, “In the meantime, between 2008 and when we started to review this, many cities implemented their own ordinance, and so deciding who had jurisdiction, that became a little bit cumbersome because they don’t have the staff necessarily to enforce it, so they wanted us to enforce their nuisance ordinance, which was a little difficult.”

Willemsen says the county will deal with complaints when they are filed.   “It’s basically complaint based. We don’t have the staffing to go out and look ourselves to catch everything to enforce it all, but if somebody would call in and have an issue, we’d definitely get there. We’d send a first letter out, and then a second letter, and then it would go into a fine or penalty for their things not moving. If it’s an abandoned property, that’s a whole other thing where we work with an attorney in Cedar Rapids to take care of the issue that way.”

The ordinance would cover the unincorporated areas of the county as well as the communities of Swaledale, Rock Falls, Dougherty, Burchinal and Hanford. Mason City, Clear Lake, Plymouth, Meservey, Rockwell, Thornton and Ventura already have nuisance ordinances in place.

Willemsen and Vogelson recently briefed the Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors on the proposed changes. The county’s Board of Health will consider the changes at their August meeting.