Vehicle ordinances pass unanimously

City enacts guidelines for residential, abandoned vehicles in neighborhoods

MOSES LAKE — The city council passed two ordinances to regulate residential vehicles as well as abandoned vehicles and junk Tuesday night.

City leaders have called these ordinances a work in progress, given that they are the first guidelines of its kind the city has ever had.

Two weeks ago, the ordinances had been approved on their first reading before the council. However, they needed two readings to become official. They both passed unanimously, although certain aspects of the residential vehicles ordinance concerned a few of the citizens present at the city council meeting.

The ordinance regulating abandoned vehicles and junk passed unanimously and without changes from the first reading. The way it stands now, it is illegal for any person to accumulate, keep or store any junk on any privately owned property within the city, or to permit any other person to do it.

It is also illegal to keep, store or accumulate any junk in a building that is not wholly enclosed, except for doors to get in and out.

Under this regulation, junk means all abandoned and disabled motor vehicles, all old discarded appliances or parts of them.

An abandoned motor vehicle is any motor vehicle that has been abandoned and is unclaimed by its owner.

A disabled motor vehicle is any motor vehicle that is incapable of being operated or which has been permitted to remain without being operated and in disrepair for more than 30 days. This includes any and all automotive parts, the guidelines state.

This ordinance describes junk material as old iron or other metal, glass, paper, cardboard, old lumber, old wood, old mattresses, discarded furniture and all other waste or discarded material.

The other ordinance, meant to regulate residential vehicles, stated that storage of vehicles on residential properties will be allowed under certain circumstances.

First, vehicles kept under buildings such as a garage, a shed or an enclosed and licensed trailer are okay. Those vehicles in a trailer have to follow guidelines on how and where to park trailers.

Vehicles such as cars, pick-up trucks, motorcycles, recreational vehicles including boats on trailers, which are currently licensed for use on public roads are okay, as long as they are parked in a front yard only on an approved designated driveway.

A designated driveway is described as a clearly defined roadway leading from the street, surfaced by asphalt, concrete, gravel, bricks, pavers or similar material.

The guidelines state that these vehicles can also park on a city-approved surface parallel to a designated driveway. A city-approved surface includes asphalt, concrete, bricks pavers or other similar surfaces.

Vehicles parked in a side yard or in rear yard will have to park on an approved parking surface, described by the ordinance as concrete, asphalt, paving stones, brick and the like. Gravel or crushed rock can be used in the side or rear yards but not the front yard.

"It needed to be done," said Pete Staudenraus, who still expressed concerns about the limitations placed by the ordinance on people with gravel parking spots.

"Lots of people in Moses Lake have gravel parking areas," he said.

The way the ordinance will work with gravel parking areas, city manager Joe Gavinski said, is, gravel will not be accepted for parking on a front yard, unless it exists as part of an old construction.

If a person wants to build a driveway next to an existing gravel driveway, the new driveway cannot be gravel, but made of an approved surface instead.

Wanting to describe the old and the new driveway as one whole wide driveway will not work, Gavinski warned, given that the old driveway is already defined by the curb cut.