The City of Nome will begin the abatement process on specific properties that have been deemed unsafe, for various reasons. At Monday night’s Nome City Council meeting, a resolution was passed to specifically authorize the City Clerk, Bryant Hammond, to begin abatement proceedings.
In the past, the Council has not had to take this extra step, but City Manager Tom Moran says the Clerk must now be authorized first to give more advance warning to citizens whose properties might be on the abatement list.
Moran recalled, “what we have done in the past is just begun the process ourselves. It was legal, and we met all the statutory and ordinance timeline requirements, but this was to give people one more advance notice that it’s coming down the pipe.”
Five properties are currently on the abatement list. One of the properties under consideration was fought for last night by one of the deed owners, David Csiki. Csiki stated that his plans for construction on 209 West 2nd Avenue were delayed for multiple reasons, including frozen fecal matter. Csiki, along with John Handeland, had already acquired the deed from the previous owner, and now, Csiki is using this property as a garage.
“I believe I’m in compliance with my permitting and the way we are storing our material. There’s no encroachment, my taxes are current, so I hope you reconsider this,” said Csiki.
The council voted to remove Csiki’s property from the abatement list during Monday night’s meeting, and another property – 209 East 4th Avenue – took its place in the amended resolution. A public hearing for those whose properties are on the abatement list will be held on August 22nd.
Also brought for discussion during Monday night’s session was the neighborhood surrounding Nome’s Lester Bench Road, located on the edge of city limits, and the struggles its residents say they face in accessing a clean and potable water source. Jim Adams, a resident from Lester Bench Road, says those residents pay city taxes and property taxes, so “it would be nice to get water out there.”
Another resident of Lester Bench, Kenny Hughes, also remarked on the poor water quality currently available.
“It’s just barely adequate. We finally got a reverse osmosis that gives us a little bit of drinking water that still nobody really likes. I can sort of get the wife to drink it when we run out of water we’ve hauled. So if the city came out there with water, we’d sign up for it right away,” Hughes said.
In other business Monday evening, a Historic Preservation Commission has been created under the Nome Planning Commission. It’s now tasked with duties such as developing a historic preservation plan and reviewing nominations of properties to the National Register of Historic Places.
And a new ordinance could address the issue of burning trash within city limits. Currently, it is legal to burn trash within the city limits of Nome, which resident Tom Okleasik says seems outdated. Okleasik remembers people burning trash when he was a kid in the ’70s, but not so much anymore.
When he spoke to Alaska State Troopers about the issue, “they said it is legal to burn trash in the city of Nome limits, although it’s not legal to burn trash at the landfill.” So, Okleasik says, “I think it’s a pretty common sense request to amend our ordinances, so people can’t burn trash within the city limits.”
The future of the ordinance is now in City Manager Tom Moran’s hands. The Nome City Council meets next on August 8th.
