A request to rezone 1.3 acres off Coffelt Road for a single-wide mobile home at Monday’s planning commission meeting turned into a debate about whether the property’s owners are already living in a storage building on the property and whether they are defecating in their neighbor’s yard.
James Carl Wilson said he bought the land and originally planned to build a house there, while living out of a camper.
But something changed, he couldn’t get permits to go-ahead with construction and then lost his septic and sewer permits, he said Monday.
Now, he just wants to put a single-wide on the property.
But Joan Farrell, a neighbor of Wilson’s land, said he and others already are living illegally out of a storage shed on the property used to store tools.
And she said that since Wilson’s land doesn’t have plumbing, the folks allegedly living in the building are defecating on her property.
“Last summer while I was mowing my grass, there was an extreme amount of feces in my yard,” she said.
Farrell also said she has found soiled toilet paper in her mulch.
She said Wilson at one point ran a power cord to her mobile home – without her knowledge – and “tried to steal electricity.”
She pleaded with planning commissioners to deny Wilson’s request for a special permit to put a single-wide mobile home on his property, because “it would just be a blank check for him to continue to camp out. He’s been urban camping.”
“I’m begging you to deny it,” she said, and relieve her of “ongoing intimidation by feces.”
Another neighbor said folks have been seen at Wilson’s property showering with a water hose outside.
But Wilson said the accusations are either lies, or the work of someone else.
“We don’t live there,” he said.
He said he lives with his aunt nearby.
“We come up there and work and do stuff up there,” he said. “We don’t have a septic tank hooked up because we can’t get no permits. They took away all our permits.”
And “we don’t use the bathroom there,” he said, of Farrell’s yard.
If someone saw him spraying off with a water hose, it was last summer, when it was hot and Wilson was cutting trees on the property, and the cold water offered a respite from the heat.
Jason Farmer, planning commissioner, warned the commission about getting caught up in a squabble between neighbors, and said from a zoning standpoint, there was good reason to go ahead with a single-wide permit.
“I think there’s a lot of precedent to rezone,” he said. “I think the neighbors are not against the rezoning, they’re against the neighbor.”
Barry Payne, planning commissioner, agreed.
“This is a zoning issue, really, and we’re bantering about whether he’s a good neighbor,” he said. “And I don’t know how you fix that.”
The planning commission ultimately decided to allow the single-wide permit, while warning Wilson that he’s breaking the law as long as he has a storage building on his property without a residential structure.
Mary Kay Hyatt, planning commissioner, told Wilson’s disgruntled neighbors that their concerns lay outside the planning commission’s authority.
“I feel like you are looking for a remedy that we cannot provide you today,” she said.
Planning commissioners had the final say on the matter, though Wilson must now apply for a building permit for his property.
Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.