ANTIGO — At a common council meeting Monday night, a housing ordinance was amended to restrict the number of vehicles city residents can store in their yards.
The change prohibits more than four recreational vehicles and structures from being stored outside, other than in a driveway, at a single residence. Included in the category of “recreational vehicles and structures” are buildings for ice fishing, campers, recreational vehicles, snowmobiles, boats, ATVs, personal watercraft, off-road bikes, go-carts, and lawn mowers. In addition, a single residence would only be allowed to store one camper, and other than in the driveway, no storage would be allowed in front or side yards adjacent to streets.
According to the last portion of the amendment, machinery and heavy equipment — including tractors, farm equipment, logging equipment, skisteers, bulldozers, backhoes, bucket trucks, commercial/industrial equipment trailers, lifts, forklifts, amusement rides, and other similar vehicles — cannot be stored outside at all.
City of Antigo Building Inspector and Zoning Administrator Beth McCarthy said the ordinance change was first proposed because citizens often called and requested it, and that the issue is largely confined to some in the city who are essentially hoarding.
“This stemmed from citizens calling with complaints about this and us really having no way to enforce it,” McCarthy said. “This is public-driven. It isn’t something that came directly from our office — it’s from feedback from the public.”
The proposal was unanimously approved despite some past comments at the committee level about the possibility of the ordinance being difficult to enforce for the police.
McCarthy said she has yet to receive serious pushback about the change.
“I’ve had a couple council people express concerns with people in their wards, but I have never had anybody call me personally to express concerns about it,” she said. “We’ve had way more public feedback from people that would like to see this in place than we had people who were worried about it.”
Some council members did ask for further clarification about the revised ordinance’s scope. Fifth Ward Alderman Mark Edwards also suggested altering the proposal’s wording to contain more specificity. He mentioned tractors, which under the new amendment, cannot remain parked anywhere outside.
“It talks about tractors,” Edwards said. “I know a couple people that have smaller tractors. They use them to clean their yard, take care of their yard. But it’s still a tractor. I was hoping we could maybe put a source power limit on it perhaps… You don’t want to have a hundred-horse tractor sitting in your yard. If you just have a 30-horse, it’s different.”
McCarthy and others responded by suggesting that, in certain borderline cases, common sense likely will be used to determine whether individuals are in compliance. She also suggested city officials will attempt to deal with residents reasonably.
“Anytime we have an ordinance violation, people get notified. We work with them. They have time to comply with it,” she said. “Also, it has to be continuous negligence to warrant citation. If people want to work with us, we’re always willing to work with people.”
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