Chapter 8.12
PUBLIC NUISANCES1
Sections:
8.12.010 Purpose.
8.12.020 Nuisances affecting public health and safety.
8.12.030 Reserved.
8.12.040 Attractive nuisances.
8.12.050 Reserved.
8.12.060 Structures and buildings as nuisances.
8.12.070 Maintaining or permitting nuisance.
8.12.080 Abatement by city – Costs liability.
8.12.090 Abatement order.
8.12.010 Purpose.
The purpose of this chapter is to define what constitutes a public nuisance and how a public nuisance will be abated. The intended result of abating a public nuisance is to protect public health and property values by reducing visual blight, reducing the opportunity for harboring of rodents and pests, providing for safer pedestrian and automobile traffic flow, and reducing impacts to the environment by preventing the indiscriminate storage of inoperable vehicles. Public nuisances will be abated in all areas of the city with emphasis in the residential neighborhoods. (Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; Ord. 2967 § 1, 1976; 1957 code § 7.04.270.)
8.12.020 Nuisances affecting public health and safety.
Acts or omissions, places, conditions and things or uses that injure or endanger the safety, health, welfare, comfort or general well being of the general public or the environment, are declared to be public nuisances. Public nuisances include, but are not limited to, the following:
A. The erecting, maintaining, using, placing, depositing, causing, allowing, leaving, or permitting to be or remain in or upon any private lot, building, structure, or premises, or in or upon any street, avenue, alley, park, parkway, or other public or private place in the city, any one or more of the following places, conditions, things or acts to the prejudice, danger, or annoyance of others or that interfere with safe travel;
B. Privies, vaults, cesspools, sumps, pits, wells or cisterns or like places which are not securely protected from insects, rodents, or other pests;
C. Filthy, littered or trash-covered premises, including all buildings and structures thereon and areas adjacent thereto;
D. Tin cans, bottles, glass, cans, ashes, small pieces of scrap iron, wire, metal, articles, bric-a-brac, broken stone or cement, broken crockery, broken glass, broken plaster and all other trash or abandoned material unless the same are kept in covered bins or metal receptacles approved by the city; provided, that any such receptacles approved by the King County or Pierce County health officer or designee shall be deemed approved by the city;
E. Trash, litter, rags, debris, accumulations of empty barrels, boxes, crates, packing cases, mattresses, bedding, excelsior, packing hay, straw, or other packing material, lumber not neatly piled, or other material, which provides harborage for insects, rodents, or other pests;
F. Any unsightly and dangerous building, billboard or structure, as determined by the city building official;
G. All places used or maintained as junkyards or dumping grounds, or for the wrecking, disassembling, repair or rebuilding of automobiles, trucks, tractors or machinery of any kind, or for the storing or leaving of worn out wrecked or abandoned automobiles, trucks, tractors or machinery of any kind or of any of the parts thereof, or for the storing or leaving of any machinery or equipment used by contractors or builders or by other persons, which places are kept or maintained so as to provide harborage for insects, rodents or other pests, excluding properly zoned and licensed wrecking yards, junkyards or machinery being used;
H. Garbage disposed of in any manner other than provided in the solid waste code (Chapter 8.08 ACC);
I. Garbage cans which are not impervious to rodent gnawing or do not have tight-fitting lids;
J. Any putrid, unsound or unwholesome bones, meat, hides, skins or the whole or any part of any dead animal, fish or fowl, butchers’ trimmings or offal, or any waste, vegetable or animal matter in any quantity, garbage, human excreta or other offensive substance; provided, nothing in this subsection shall prevent the temporary retention of waste in a manner approved by the mayor or designee;
K. Blackberry vines or any tall grass or weeds which are infested with insects, rodent or other pests;
L. Grass clippings, cut brush or cut weeds which may create an insect or rodent harborage;
M. Nests, colonies, hives or apiaries of bees, Africanized honey bees, yellow jacket, hornets or wasps which are not in full compliance with Chapter 15.60 RCW or Chapter 16-602 WAC, or which are not in full compliance with the city’s zoning and land use codes or with the city’s business licensing and registration codes;
N. Any accumulation of combustible, explosive or flammable substances which are stored in a way that poses a threat or danger to life or property;
O. Ditches, holes, pits, accumulations of debris, dirt or construction materials or other materials, or breaks in impervious surface in any public right-of-way, or any other condition that obstructs or interferes with safe pedestrian or vehicular travel on or along said right-of-way; and
P. Failure, after reasonable notice, to restore a city street, sidewalk or related infrastructure facility to city standards after having destroyed, disrupted or adversely impacted such street, sidewalk or related infrastructure facility from its use for safe public travel;
Q. It is also a public nuisance to store, keep or allow junk to accumulate unless within a building or outdoor storage yard; provided further, that the building and/or outdoor storage yard must otherwise meet all other applicable requirements of the city including allowing for the storage of junk. For the purposes hereof, “junk” means old, unusable or discarded appliances, furniture, scrap wood, paper, cardboard, glass, demolition debris, rubber, metal, equipment, tires, machinery, toys, building materials (except for materials being used for an immediate construction project on the premises), woody debris, batteries, barrels, cans, motor vehicle parts, rags or similar items. The term junk also includes travel trailers, boats and boat trailers, truck campers, utility trailers, tent trailers or similar vehicles that are in disrepair, in an obvious state of abandonment, or that cannot legally be operated on public streets, roads or highways. The term junk does not include recyclable items that are associated with a permitted recycling industry; provided, that the indiscriminate storage of recyclables in areas not otherwise allowed for storage will be considered junk and a public nuisance. (Ord. 5837 § 5, 2004; Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; Ord. 2904 § 1, 1976; 1957 code § 7.04.280.)
8.12.030 Reserved.
(Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; Ord. 4305 § 1, 1988; 1957 code § 7.04.290.)
8.12.040 Attractive nuisances.
A. An “attractive nuisance” means the circumstance or condition which may reasonably be expected to attract young children and which constitutes a danger to such children.
B. Attractive nuisances include but are not limited to unused or abandoned refrigerators, freezers, or other large appliances or equipment or any parts thereof; any structurally unsound or unsafe fence or building edifice; any unsecured or abandoned excavation, pit, well, cistern, storage tank or shaft; and any sizeable collection of scrap lumber, trash, debris vegetation, or other similar items. (Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; 1957 code § 7.04.300.)
8.12.050 Reserved.
(Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; 1957 code § 7.04.310.)
8.12.060 Structures and buildings as nuisances.
A. It is a public nuisance to have a fence or similar structure with any barbed wire, razor wire or similar wire located within five feet of any public sidewalk unless the barbed wire, razor wire or similar wire is located at a height greater than eight feet above the ground. It is provided, however, that any fence legally constructed and installed before April 12, 2003, shall be exempt from the provisions hereof, so long as any barbed wire, razor wire or similar wire on or affixed to the fence is located at a height of not less than six feet, and so long as no barbed wire, razor wire or similar wire on the fence projects beyond or intrudes past the boundary of the property on which the fence or similar structure is located. It is also a public nuisance to have any fence charged with electricity in any amount whatsoever; provided, that electric fences may be permitted in the R-R rural residential zones where the electrical charge of such electric fences is noncontinuous and the electric fence controller has been approved by the Underwriter Laboratories (U.L.) or meets the testing standards of the Underwriter Laboratories. It is further provided that electric fences in such R-R rural residential zones which abut any public street or right-of-way shall include signs of not less than 30 square inches in size posted at least every 50 feet on the fence, stating that the fence is charged with electricity.
B. It is a public nuisance for any vacant, unused, or unoccupied building or structure within the city to have any broken, missing, or open doors, windows, or other openings, allows access by unauthorized persons or the general public.
C. A building or structure, whether occupied or not, will also be considered a public nuisance if it has exterior elements that are defective, decayed or will in any way contribute to the significant degradation of the building, and; if those exterior elements are not repaired or otherwise abated, the building, within a relatively short period of time, will become unsafe or make the building or structure uninhabitable. (Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; 1957 code § 7.04.320.)
8.12.070 Maintaining or permitting nuisance.
Every person who commits or maintains a public nuisance, for which no special punishment is prescribed, or who willfully omits or refuses to perform any legal duty relating to the removal of such nuisance, and every person who lets or permits to be used any building or boat or portion thereof, knowing that it is intended to be or is being used for committing or maintaining any such nuisance, is guilty of a violation of this code. (Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; 1957 code § 7.04.340.)
8.12.080 Abatement by city – Costs liability.
If within three days after receiving a proper notice in writing for the abatement of any nuisance detrimental to health and welfare of the public, or source of filth as hereinabove defined, such notice to be signed by the mayor or designee, the person owning, occupying or controlling such premises fails, neglects or refuses to remove the same, such nuisance may be removed or abated by order of the mayor or designee, and the person on whom such notice for the removal of same was served, in addition to incurring the penalty provided, shall become indebted to the city for the damages, costs and charges incurred by the city in the removal of such nuisance. Such costs and charges are to be recovered by a civil action brought by the city against the person so served with such notice, which action the mayor or designee is authorized to bring for and on behalf of the city. The mayor or designee is also authorized to file a lien against the property on which the nuisance was abated, or on the adjacent property where the nuisance was located on public property or on public right-of-way and where the nuisance was caused by or on behalf of the owner of the adjacent property, which lien shall be in the amount of the city’s costs in abating the nuisance, and in enforcing the lien. In any such abatement by the city, the city shall also be entitled to interest accruing at the rate of 12 percent per annum from the time of the expenditure of funds by the city for such abatement. (Ord. 5837 § 6, 2004; Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; 1957 code § 7.04.330.)
8.12.090 Abatement order.
The magistrate before whom there may be pending any proceeding for a violation of maintaining or permitting a nuisance, except as defined hereinabove, shall, in addition to any fine or other punishment which it may impose for such violation, order such nuisance abated and all property unlawfully used in the maintenance thereof destroyed by the chief of police at the cost of the defendant. (Ord. 5747 § 1, 2003; 1957 code § 7.04.350.)
For statutory provisions authorizing second-class cities to declare nuisances, see RCW 35.23.331; for provisions granting a code city all powers of any city of any class, see RCW 35A.21.160.