County board amends abandoned vehicle ordinance

The Shawano County Board of Supervisors voted March 23 to amend an ordinance relating to vehicle abandonment in the county.

The ordinance previously stated that any vehicle left unattended on a public road for 48 hours or more will be considered abandoned. The county board voted to include a $75 administrative fee, as well as increase the $25 daily storage fee to $50 a day, to help offset costs to the sheriff’s department.

“It is a simple ordinance in my mind,” said Supervisor Jerry Erdmann. “It is simple in my mind to help take care of the abandonment issues that the county has. It will give maybe a little bit to the sheriff’s department, but in the long run, will hopefully cut down on the number of vehicles if people will have to pay more for them.”

Supervisor Deb Noffke said that the county cannot have abandoned vehicles sitting on the side of the road due to safety concerns.

“But on the flip side, I don’t think anyone wakes up on in the morning and decides that I hate this car so much that I am going to leave it on the side of the road,” said Noffke. “It would be nice if there was some kind of incentive for them to get that car out of the storage yard.”

Shawano County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy George Lenzer clarified the amendment.

“This abandonment ordinance — it doesn’t have anything to do with vehicles abandoned on the side of the road,” said Lenzer. “These are vehicles that are sitting in our storage. We can’t get rid of them and we don’t have room. The owners won’t pick them up.”

Lenzer said that the sheriff’s department sends a certified letter to the owner after the vehicle has sat in storage for 10 days.

“In that certified letter, we tell them at this point, you are going to start getting charged,” said Lenzer. “We have been charging $25 and now we are raising that to $50. We are also charging an administrative fee of $75. We usually have to clean all of the garbage out and try to salvage the car. We usually lose money on them.”

Lenzer added that this is just a way to make a little revenue for the sheriff’s department.

“Right now, we have 14 vehicles in the storage building,” said Lenzer. “Out of those 14, 12 are evidence that we are waiting to go through court. We can’t charge any fees for those.”

He finished by saying the owner of the other two vehicles will start to get charged after the vehicles go through a search and are released.

In regards to vehicles that are abandoned on the highways, Lenzer said that most of the vehicles are picked up by towing companies, who are in charge of the fees associated with them.

“These are vehicles that we have stuck in our evidence, because we need room for our own vehicles or stuff that is waiting for court or needs to be processed,” said Lenzer. “I don’t think that we are going to get into the business of towing vehicles on a public highway.”

lreimer@newmedia-wi.com