City working on revamp of the nuisance laws

Carson City is trying to revamp and standardize enforcement of a host of nuisance laws that have accumulated over the years.

City Manager Linda Ritter said some of the changes will eliminate archaic laws which have been on the books for decades such as the ordinance barring people from walking their mule on a city sidewalk. She said too many of those rules have been law for 40 years or more with no updates.

But she said the most important change will be to create a central place for people to take questions and complaints and create a consistent approach to enforcing violations.

"What we're doing is assembling a code enforcement operation," she said. "We want to put all our code enforcement people in one place."

Ritter said, at present, there are code enforcement officers in the treasurer's office, planning and the health departments. She said with that and different public nuisance ordinances, the answer a resident gets to a question too often depends on who they called.

"And sometimes, (receptionists) don't even know where to send a call," she said.

Also on the list is what should be the schedule of fines for different violations.

One consideration before the committee studying the nuisance ordinances is whether noise complaints should be included at all.

"One of the big sticking points is noise," she said. "Those activities are difficult to enforce as a nuisance so maybe they should just be called disturbing the peace."

That way, she said, it would be up to the sheriff's office to handle complaints - which it must do in most cases now since it does little good to send a compliance officer to deal with a noise complaint the next day.

On the list are such things as multi-day garage sales, how long RVs can be parked on the street, handling garbage, disposal of dead plant material and such things as construction rubble in a neighbor's yard and animal noise.

Ritter said public hearings will be held to get comments before new ordinances are enacted.

Contact Geoff Dornan at nevadaappeal@sbcglobal.net or at 687-8750.