ARGOS — The Argos Town Council approved Ordinance 2023-07, an ordinance concerning junk vehicles.
“If you’ll see in the ordinance, it’s a pretty brief description. Our current junk vehicle statute is very, very generic. It doesn’t list much of anything,” said Economic Development Director Mark VanDerWeele.
VanDerWeele went on to say that he worked with Derek Jones, town attorney, through a couple of versions of the ordinance.
“Basically, all this ordinance does is we’re adopting the statute for a junk and abandoned vehicle. And then along with that statute, we’re actually adopting a secondary statute which will give the meanings of what a junk or abandoned vehicle is. Obviously a junk vehicle is an inoperable vehicle. It has to sit on public property for 24 hours before it can be removed. If a vehicle is on private property for longer than 20 days in public view, it is a junk or abandoned vehicle,” said VanDerWeele.
He told the council that this will give the town the ability to try to remove those types of vehicles. “We’re not doing this because somebody has a vehicle in their driveway that’s been there for three months…This, I think, just gives us more ability to try to take care of those.”
The statute also states that once a vehicle is tagged, it has to be moved by 72 hours. If it is not, then it can be towed.
Council President Charles Randy Snead asked if this was a State statute. VanDerWeele replied that was correct. “We’re adopting the statute as our ordinance,” VanDerWeele said.
The town council approved the ordinance on all three readings.
The next ordinance considered by the council was Ordinance 2023-06, an ordinance that involves the cemetery.
“We’ve never really made the cemetery part of the town code and so this kind of does that for us. There’s never been any fees for violations of the cemetery rules. There’s never been a set fee schedule, which this provides for that. So any time that we want to change fees for the cemetery in the future, we’ll just amend exhibit A of this town code,” explained Clerk-Treasurer Lisa Mullaney.
The ordinance lays out the rules and regulations for the cemetery, puts a copy of the bylaws in there, sets the space limit for how big a space can be, it states that you have to place your headstone the same direction as the neighboring headstones.
The council also approved this ordinance.
