For the purpose of this chapter, the following definitions shall apply unless the context clearly indicates or requires a different meaning.
CHIEF OF POLICE. Includes any authorized law enforcement officer of the city.
COSTS. The expense of removing, storing, restoring, selling, or investigating a discarded vehicle or other nuisance.
DISCARDED VEHICLE.
(1) Any vehicle which does not have lawfully affixed thereto a valid license plate and is in one or more of the following conditions for over 30 days:
(a) Inoperative;
(b) Wrecked;
(c) Dismantled or partially dismantled;
(d) Abandoned; and/or
(e) Junked.
(2) DISCARDED VEHICLES may be deemed to include major parts, including, but not limited to, automobile bodies, automobile body parts, engines and engine components, transmissions, and other drive train parts.
GARBAGE. Putrescible animal and vegetable wastes resulting from the handling, preparing, cooking, or consumption of food.
NUISANCE.
(1) Anything which is injurious to the health or morals, or is indecent or offensive to the senses, or is an obstruction to the free use of property, so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property.
(2) Further, the open accumulation and storage of a discarded vehicle is hereby found to create a condition tending to reduce the value of private property, to invite plundering and vandalism, to create fire hazards, to constitute an attractive nuisance creating a hazard to the health and safety of minors, to create a harborage for rodents and insects and to be injurious to the health, safety, and general welfare of the public.
PERSON. A natural person, firm, partnership, association, or corporation.
PERSON IN CHARGE OF PROPERTY. Any agent, occupant, lessee, contract purchaser, owner, or person having possession, control, or title of property or of property where a vehicle or other nuisance is located.
PUBLIC PLACE. A building, way, place, or accommodation, whether publicly or privately owned, open and available to the general public.
REFUSE. All putrescible and nonputrescible solid wastes (except body wastes), including garbage, rubbish, ashes, street cleanings, dead animals, and solid market and industrial wastes.
RESPONSIBLE PERSON. The person responsible for abating a nuisance, and shall include:
(1) The person in charge of property, as defined in this section; and
(2) The person who caused to come into or continue in existence a nuisance, as defined in this section or in any other ordinance of this city.
RUBBISH. Nonputrescible solid waste consisting of both combustible and noncombustible wastes, including, but not limited to, paper, wrappings, cardboard, tin or aluminum cans, yard clippings, leaves, dirt (other than the natural soil in place), wood, glass, bedding, crockery, remnants of wood, decayed, weathered, or broken construction materials which may no longer be suitable for safe or approved construction, worthless and useless articles which are in such a state or such a quantity as to be unsightly, against the general welfare, unhealthful, dangerous to persons or property, or so as to interfere with the abatement of weeds and similar materials.
VEHICLE. Every device in, upon, or by which any person or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway, except devices moved by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails or tracks.
VEHICLE OWNER. Any individual, firm, corporation, or association with a claim, either individually or jointly, of ownership or any interest, legal or equitable, in a vehicle.
(Prior Code, § 4-1-1) (Ord. 95-04, passed 5-30-1995)