Fairbanks North Star Borough amps up enforcement against ‘junkyard’ properties

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTUU/KTVF) - The Fairbanks North Star Borough is finishing cleaning a property in the Badger Road area this week, representing what is expected to be the start of an increased effort to enforce the borough’s code against what are known as “junkyard” properties.

According to Mayor Grier Hopkins, there are 20-30 of these properties, also known as illegal landfills, spread across the borough.

“It’s been a growing problem here in the borough,” he said.

Hopkins said the particular property being cleaned has been a thorn in the borough’s side for the last eight years.

“It has over a hundred tons of trash, not junk, not cars, there’s a few cars there, but actual trash on this property and it kept growing and growing,” he explained, later adding that in places the trash was stacked eight feet tall.

After representatives from the borough came out to the property 35 times to talk with the owner about the issue, Hopkins said the borough filed an injunction eight or nine months ago, and a court ruled in July that the borough could enter the owner’s property to clean it up.

The actual cleanup, according to the mayor, took about 10 days, after which the borough will hold a $60,000 lien on the property to recoup its cleaning expenses.

While the borough is working with the City of Fairbanks to waive tipping fees so they can clean up properties in their purview at less expense, Hopkins said the borough does not have the same powers as the city and has more steps to follow before they can go to the courts.

Meanwhile, Hopkins said the borough plans to move forward with code compliance on other properties around the borough, some of which he called “real crime concerns as well as neighborhood nuisances.”

“We’ve been pretty close communication with the Alaska State Troopers on some of these properties that they stop at day after day after day and want to see us doing our part to clean up the community to make it safer,” he added.

These efforts come at the hands of two code enforcement officers and one code enforcement technician, not enough people, according to the mayor.

“Mat-Su [Matanuska-Susitna] Borough, similar size, similar population, has eight people doing this amount of work that we’ve got three doing,” he said.

However, Hopkins hopes the culture of increased enforcement leads to more voluntary compliance from property owners.

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