CLEARLAKE >> Once upon a time, the pictured vehicle — or what’s left of it — was a Volkswagen Jetta. It rolled off a German production line over a decade ago looking shiny, new, and ready to roll.
But now it has no wheels. Or engine. Or any unshattered pane of glass. It has some original parts, but they’re scattered along the roadside or sitting in the back seat. Regardless of its origins, the car was apparently destined to slump on an otherwise attractive stretch of Sulphur Bank Road without an owner, a license, or any hope of even crawling to the junkyard.
The Volkswagen represents only one of many abandoned vehicles found in Lake County, which have accumulated at an alarming rate in past years. Lake County and the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport have struggled to clean up the forgotten cars, trucks, trailers, and motorhomes.
“We haul away one or two vehicles some weeks, and between five and six on a bad week,” said Lake County Code Enforcement Officer Kathy Freeman.
However, due to a motion carried on last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, the poor Volkswagen and all other abandoned vehicles in Lake County have hope — at least, hopes of being dragged away, dismantled, and crushed.
In Tuesday’s meeting, the supervisors considered and passed a motion that would continue the effective use of the Abandoned Vehicle Abatement Authority in Lake County. A statewide abatement, the AVA gathers funds for the sole purpose of cleaning up abandoned vehicles and responsibly discarding them.
If community members complain of inoperable and unlicensed vehicles in private or public spaces, the city has the authority to flag them, giving the owner ten days to move or otherwise clean the vehicle up. After that grace period, the city has the authority to haul that vehicle to the junkyard.
This is good news for Clearlake resident Ryan Schwab, who once had an abandoned vehicle outside his house for just over two months. Like the VW, it had no tags, license, or wheels. Granted, it DID have a graffiti message directing an obscene message to the city of Clearlake painted on the side.
“I’ve got kids,” Schwab said, whose family moved to Clearlake from Lucerne a few months ago. “I didn’t want to look at it anymore.”
Schwab said he made several formal complaints to Clearlake City Hall and Lake County, but the vehicle remained. After posting a complaint on Facebook with a photo of the car, the city flagged the vehicle and eventually took it away.
“It took a lot of complaints to finally get it taken away,” Schwab said. “I don’t see how the city can let these cars sit there and rot.”
The AVA took effect in 1991, but several legislative and structural issues have impeded its effect in recent years, such as Proposition 26, or the “Stop Hidden Taxes” initiative. This amendment passed in 2010 and tested the AVA fund gathering, which consists of a $1 fee added to every renewed vehicle registration in the state of California.
Proposition 26 claimed this fee could be considered a tax, and therefore subject to different approaches by different state jurisdictions. According to the official memorandum prepared by County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson, most jurisdictions handle the issue by placing it on a ballot, but many counties have considered the process of placing on the ballot more expensive than the worth of the program itself. Confusion over the perhaps ambiguous Proposition has kept the commission apart since 2012.
Lake County District 3 Supervisor Jim Steele said Proposition 26 calls for a seven-point check: based on certain criteria such as how the money is gathered and how it’s implemented, some income could be considered a tax or a fee.
“We looked at the criteria very carefully,” Steele said. He mentioned that the proper processing of batteries and mattresses uses a fee system; the AVA seemed to most resemble that method of collecting funds. “We looked at it that way and decided it was a fee, not a tax.”
Since then, Lake County has been paying for the removal of vehicles without funding from the AVA. Based on experience, Freeman estimates the out-of-pocket cost to clean up a small abandoned vehicle costs upward of $100, Larger vehicles, such as motorhomes and heavy trailers can cost up to $2,000 to effectively remove and discard.
Freeman said code enforcement offices of Lake County, as well as the city of Clearlake were recently rebuilt after over a year of being dismantled. This added to the hardship of getting junked cars off the streets.
“Clearlake has very little funds to do anything about abandoned vehicles,” Freeman said.
The Supervisors’ decision has deemed the AVA fee as ungoverned by Proposition 26. This means the county’s funds gathered from the DMV, which currently sit in a trust fund of over $356,000, can be reapplied to the cleanup of abandoned vehicles.
Huchingson’s memorandum reads: “… it seems imprudent to let the existing funds remain unexpended for the long-standing purpose they were intended.”
Before the county can take full advantage of the AVA, the action must pass approval by a committee meeting and the proposed movement of funds must undergo an official audit.
Steele said abandoned vehicles are usually stripped down to keep other cars alive.
“They get stolen, stripped, pushed down the side of the hill,” he said. “We find cars in the back hills we don’t even know existed.”
