Bartow cracks down on unsightly properties in effort to make city cleaner, safer
BARTOW, Fla. - The city of Bartow is cracking down on homes with overgrown lots, abandoned cars and ones that are just uninhabitable. Officials created a targeted neighborhood enforcement plan to address these code violations.
Tray Towles, the Bartow Police Department's code enforcement manager, has been on the job for three months.
"We have been going around and hitting select areas of the city. Going out and finding major violations we identified during the city-wide survey," said Towles.
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The survey, which was done in January, found nearly 600 residential properties had code violations and nearly 200 had two or more. The violations with the highest numbers were motor vehicle violations, overgrowth and sanitation.
"A lot of times you see a boat that hasn't been on the water in years, and we're seeing vegetation growing out of the boat," said Towles.
The city formulated the "Capitol City Cleanup Plan" to address these violations. Every month, they'll provide dumpsters to a select community and will put them in public areas such as parks, so people can dispose of their trash and debris.
They'll also be prepared to demolish structures that don't satisfy building code.
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"We're wanting to get our city to where it's cleaner and safer," said Mike Herr, Bartow's city manager. "It has a lot to do with image building and being to recruit new businesses to the community. Whether it's light manufacturing or whether or not it's a new business to downtown."
According to Herr, the city has been lax on enforcing these violations in the past, which is why they're cracking down so strongly now as the city grows in population.
"We prefer to start with a warning," said Towles. "If the warning after the time period expires, if it hasn't been brought into compliance, then we will go to an official warning."
For Towles, he hopes homeowners participate voluntarily, because there's value in keeping their neighborhood clean and beautiful.
"We want to be that shining city on the hill," he said.
Starting in June, the city will be sending out a letter to homeowners about the clean-up initiative. They are pulling money out of their general fund to do this and the city manager believes this whole cleanup effort could take up to a year to complete.
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