Need Advise ,going to Trial over Junk in Backyard in OKC.

[71buickfreak]

JB doesnt answer pms on legal. Ive tried.

Research the rules, plan your defence, expect to lose. City wants their money. that is what it boils down to.

 

[David2012]

You probably need to be prepared to pay a fine when you go to court. Judge may not be too understanding after having already given you time extensions to clean it up. My town, they sometimes give you 2 extensions.. then you get fined and charged several hundred $'s to pay for the city crews cleaning up the yard. If the house is in disrepair and declared dilapidated.. after say 1 yr, if not repaired.. the city condems the house and demolishes it at the owners expense.

Junky yards / dilapidated houses bring down the property values of surrounding houses. Also makes surrounding houses hard to sell. Your neighbors may not complain directly to you because they don't want a enemy next door holding a grudge against them. But apparently someone did complain to code enforcement.

 

[ronny]

You don't need advice. You need to clean your yard up. Get 'er done.

 

[ripnbst]

I would take pictures of your 3 "junk sheds" and show you are making an effort to clean it up. Even better, if you can get it cleaned up by your trial date I would take pics of a clean yard and make the argument that you got the extensions, cleaned your crap out (and have photo evidence of this fact) and you aren't sure why all you nice and I'm sure very busy people wanted to have this meeting in court for me to show this to you?

 

[Brandi]

Chances are you are going to get tagged by the judge. Considering you've requested and received several extensions and still not done what they want you to it's going to irritate the hell out of the judge. You need to do what they told you to do to avoid being fined heavily, having the city dispose of it and charge you the costs or even potentially serving jail time. People think housing codes aren't that big of a deal but the city takes them very seriously. You need to retain a lawyer if you don't plan to do what the city is demanding because you're going to need one. I agree about the codes need to be followed, it's not just your direct neighbors that are impacted it's everyone in the area whose property value sinks because of your junk.

I can understand collecting stuff (junk), the whole one man's trash is another's treasure thing, but you can't do it in the city limits and expect it's going to fly. Maybe consider moving out into the county where you have much more freedom on what you can or can't do on your property.

Either way, good luck to you.

 

[Backstrap]

You don't need advice. You need to clean your yard up. Get 'er done.

+1,000! Clean up the mess, then the city's off your back. You'll spend more on an attorney fighting it, then you'll lose and have to clean it up anyway.

 

[POSITIVE DISCONTENT]

Chances are the one with the gripe is trying to sell their home or a realtor with a listing in your area. A house with a trashed yard close by is going to drop values by multiple thousands of dollars. Fix it and forget it.

 

[Spata]

i do junk haulin ,scrap metal,yard work ,moving,and and had some scrap metal and a couple piles of stuff in my backyard and it was visable from street ,so city puts notice gives me 90 days to cleanup and fix windows on house too. well i kept gettin extensions from city by going to court in front of judge and asking for another 90 day extenstion and now city is taking me to trial over this , judge said come prepared for trial aug 3, well damn , i know this is my own fault but geeze its just trash, any one ever have to do this, ??any advise greatly needed.i keep calling code enforement and always get voicemail never a call back .thanks.

clean your junk up your neighbors dont want to see it. i turn my neighbors in all the time for junk and broken down pos cars that dont move.

 

[71buickfreak]

By the way, I would tell the city to go screw themselves and move the country, that's what I did.

 

[flatwins]

Good advice in this thread. The city has you over a barrel but they're not to blame.

My neighbor has a tree service business and consequently a yard full of huge wood piles. He's really lucky since his house is at the end of a dead-end road that runs beside my house. There's no way he could get by with it if he lived on a main neighborhood street. We're outside the city limits so I'm not sure if there is any code enforcement there (doubtful) but his mess is somewhat hidden and doesn't bother me.

As others have said, the junk will get cleaned up one way or another but the city's way isn't going to be cheap.