Lewis “Rabbit” Pippin is tired of looking at the burned-out, vacant mobile home next to his property.
The empty home, in the 12000 block of Pleasant Heights Road off Hwy. CC south of Festus, was left uninhabitable after a fire seriously damaged it on July 7. Even before the fire, the home was mostly abandoned by the owner, becoming “a drug harbor” for squatters, with strangers showing up at all hours of the night, Pippin said.
The home has broken windows, warped siding and missing skirting because of the fire and lack of upkeep.
Pippin called the property a “very serious nuisance” and a danger for the neighborhood children who wait for their school bus at a stop approximately 50 feet away from the mobile home.
Pippin is especially worried for his neighbor who has a young daughter.
“Kids are curious, and they see a burnt-out trailer,” he said. “While she’s waiting at the bus stop, she sees the older kids go to the driveway and pick up syringes. (The girl) would take the syringes from them.”
Pippin said he began calling Jefferson County Services in August to complain about the property, but feels little has been done about it since.
“They say, ‘It’s been reported. We’ll go out and check it,’ but there’s been no action,” he said.
Mitch Bair, director of County Services and Code Enforcement, said the county began the process of declaring the property a public nuisance after the Festus Fire Department notified the county of the fire. However, the county must attempt to contact property owners and allow them to abate any nuisances themselves before it steps in.
According to property records from the county Assessor’s Office, Jimmie Gentry owns the mobile home.
He could not be reached for comment.
Bair said after attempting and failing to reach Gentry for months, the final notice of appeal was posted on the mobile home last week, and today, Feb. 13, the county will seize the property if an appeal is not submitted.
The county’s contractor for public nuisance abatement, Precision Lawncare & Landscaping in Dittmer, will then be allowed to demolish and haul away the mobile home; grade the land; and lay down seed and straw.
“At each stage of the game, the owner always has the opportunity to either come into compliance or get (the property) cleaned up,” Bair said. “It’s not cut and dried, and people always get frustrated because when you’re talking about dealing with somebody’s personal property rights, it’s a very fine constitutional line there that we have to afford (property owners) a certain extra deference on due process.”
Brittney Garvey lives down the street from the nuisance property and said she and the rest of the parents on the street don’t allow their children near the property.
She said people squatting on the property seems to get worse in the summer months.
“I’m glad something is being done, but at the same time, it took this long to get to this point,” Garvey said. “I hope they don’t drag it out all summer before the squatters come back. I would love for the kids to be able to ride their bikes up and down the street this summer.”
Big picture
Bair said County Services has a list of about 30 or 40 public nuisance properties that the department is trying to deal with, not including the 100 or so properties that require extensive lawn care services to cut back tall grass.
Bair said it costs the county about $20,000 to $30,000 to take care of a house deemed a public nuisance, including demolishing, hauling away junk and grading the land.
With a budget of $200,000 this year, Bair said County Services will most likely run out of money by May or June and won’t get to all the properties on the list. Then, they’ll be rolled over to deal with the next budget period.
The public nuisance abatement services are being funded with American Rescue Plan Act funding. The county received a total of $43.7 million in ARPA funds, part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill Congress passed in March 2021 to help the U.S. recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The county allocated $27 million in ARPA funds to be used during the current budget, year.
“It’s a big county; it is tough to keep up,” Bair said. “If the County gave me a million dollars, I would spend it in a year, and we would have a lot still left to do. I don’t know what it’s going to be next year because we’re no longer going to have access to ARPA funds.”
The county’s handling of derelict properties is entirely complaint-driven because it doesn’t have the staff to search for nuisance properties, he said.
“The administration and county executive have done everything they can to get us resources,” Bair said. “We’re also a victim of our success. As people say, ‘Oh, they got this property cleaned up,’ we have a lot more people coming up and giving us complaints. That’s one of the frustrations.”
Finding balance
In discussions leading up to the passage of the 2025 budget in December, County Councilman Charles Groeteke (District 4, Barnhart) introduced an amendment to the proposed budget that would have eliminated a $180,000 expenditure to have engineering plans for the possible replacement of the High Ridge Civic Center and then reallocated those funds to public nuisance abatement.
The amendment ultimately failed to pass, but Councilman Bob Tullock (District 7, House Springs) voted no on the budget’s final passage, citing the greater need for nuisance abatement funding.
“We were (planning on) spending $180,000 just for engineering plans,” Tullock said. “I saw a better allocation of funds, or at least better budgeting for funds. In my district, about half the calls I get (from constituents) are about derelict properties, mobile home parks that are dilapidated and drug areas.”
When developing a budget, Bair said, county officials work to strike a balance between a lot of needs, including funding for cleaning up derelict private properties and funding for the county’s public buildings and community services.
“We have so few opportunities for things like the High Ridge Civic Center in unincorporated areas for those people,” Bair said. “It would be nice to be able to focus those resources on that, but it’s also not fair to people in these areas who are impacted by people who do not keep up their stuff. It’s always good to not have to spend the money on cleaning people’s property up and putting that into something really positive for the residents of this county.”