Sean C. Morgan
Northside Park Caretaker Tina Lint will have to move after receiving an eviction notice from the City of Sweet Home in November.
She asked the City Council Dec. 12 to find a way she can stay, but the council declined.
Since 2009, Lint and her husband have lived at Northside Park in a park model recreational vehicle that she said isn’t designed to move around like a regular RV.
She has been the caretaker at the park since 2009, when the Planning Commission approved a conditional use permit for caretaker housing at Northside and Sankey parks. Working five hours per week, Lint used her wages as caretaker to pay space rent there.
In May, City Manager Ray Towry began an eviction process. He put it on hold after meeting with Lint and many neighbors, who protested, in June to further consider the arrangement.
Towry moved forward with the eviction process in November.
Lint said she must move by April.
Towry said that she may continue as caretaker at the park, but she won’t be able to live there.
The city has already evicted the occupant of the manufactured home at Sankey Park, and the City Council has sold it.
Numerous neighbors told Towry in June that Lint’s presence is a key factor in cleaning up Northside Park, which had problems with drugs, crime and negative behavior.
Two residents said similar things to the City Council during its regular meeting on Dec. 12.
“I worked with the community development director to try and find ways in which we could make you compliant with code, and there is not a way to do that with your structure, nor is there a way to do that with the structure that we’re removing from Sankey Park,” Towry said last week. “As far as asking you to move out, it’s just not a general practice to have people in the park.”
Councilor Dave Trask asked if it was a violation of the code in 2009.
“That’s why you have a conditional use permit,” Towry said. “It was not code at that time.”
“We have, in my opinion, not enforced some of our code like we should in the past,” Trask said.
“We ask the community to meet certain standards and goals,” said Councilor Lisa Gourley. “We ourselves can’t be violating the standards and goals. You’re caught up in the middle of that, but it’s not fair to hold them to a higher standard than we’re doing ourselves.
“We have to be willing to do the same thing we’re asking everybody else to do, and I’m so sorry about that, but that’s the reality of it. “
“We just have to go with the code,” Trask said. “I’m sorry. It’s sad. It’s not nice necessarily. I’m a firm believer in the code. We’ve let things slide in the past, and I think we just have to draw a line.”
“The park will go downhill,” said Colleen Maynard, a resident of the Northside area. “It will be bad because it was before.”
The Lints watch over the park and the neighborhood, and they call the police, she said. It won’t be 24-7 any more.
“This was a solution to a pretty major problem,” said resident Gerritt Schaffer. “It was a lot of sleepless nights, and it was pretty ugly down there prior to them moving in there. Now that park is a clean place. It’s nice. You see little kids down there playing. It’s what a park should be, and it has a lot to do with these folks here just reminding people of the rules.
An audience member warned it would become “another Sankey Park.”
“It’s strictly a code issue we’re addressing,” said Mayor Greg Mahler. “We follow the books. You can’t deviate. Your concerns are our concerns. Trust me when I say that. I think that they’re going to be addressed.”
City ordinance does, in fact, allow the use of RVs and for parks caretakers as a conditional use, a process the city followed when the city applied for conditional use permits for caretakers at Northside and Sankey Park. It is one of the exceptions to rules that prohibit living in RVs. The rules allow the temporary use of RVs during construction, temporary use by visitors for no more than seven days and up to 60 days by permit. They also may be used in certified residential trailer parks.
Community and Economic Development Director Jerry Sorte clarified the city’s position to The New Era.
“There’s a desire to have a consistency with how we permit people to live in RVs in the city,” Sorte said. That means not allowing the city itself to have an exception to the rule. “It’s not a best practice to have on-site live-in hosts.”
“We want to lead by example,” Towry told The New Era. “It’s not fair for us to grant ourselves an exception.”
It is allowed in the code, he said, but “you have to lead by example. Having a person living in a neighborhood park is not a normal practice.”
The city has received complaints about it, Towry said. “It’s nothing against them or their performance. It’s not a best practice. It’s not conducive to carrying out our long-term plans. Again, why should we just get an exception because we want one?”