Oct. 9, 2012 — In what may have been the first ever repeat performance by the Susanville City Council, Wednesday, Oct. 3, a brief discussion was held regarding the increasing number of complaints the city is receiving about neighbors and their adjoining properties. The complaints comprised of people storing vehicles, junk and other miscellaneous items on private property in such a way as to detract from the value of the neighborhood.

Jared Hancock, city administrator, addressed the council and said, “We had a discussion about our code as it reads right now and the potential for us to fine tune it so that the expectations are a little more clear.”

He said they plan to focus on making sure they are respecting individual property rights and their ability to freely use their property.

Hancock continued, saying they plan to balance that “With limiting negative impacts to their neighbors and into the surrounding neighborhood and property values.”

Based on staff recommendations for possible code modifications, Hancock said he would bring some of these ideas back in a future report to the council.

“We identified a few minor ways that would give us better tools to address the very few people in the community who won’t work with us to mitigate the issues and move forward,” he said

He concluded by saying the overall mission of the code modifications was simply to improve the quality of life for residents and help people to be happy with their neighbors.