SIMI VALLEY : Pastor Protests Bill for Clearing Weeds

The pastor of a small Simi Valley church is steaming over a $2,487 bill that county officials issued him for weed removal after the church missed a deadline for getting it done.

Paul Werfelmann, pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, called the bill “absolute robbery” in a letter to the County Board of Supervisors. He will appeal the bill to the board at its March 19 meeting.

“The only income we have is what our people generously donate as tithe, and I find it grossly unfair to use that money for a charge that is so completely out of line,” he wrote.

County fire officials notified Werfelmann on March 28, 1990, that the church property at 9 W. Bonita Drive had to be cleared of weeds and brush in six weeks.

The county sends out more than 20,000 such notices a year to property owners whose weeds are causing fire hazards, said Bill Wright, coordinator of the county’s weed abatement program.

Werfelmann planned to rent a tractor and get the job done. But when he learned that the man who was to do the work would be out of town, he called the fire station to ask for a week extension on the deadline. “The shift captain said he would see what he could do about holding off on our property,” Werfelmann wrote to the supervisors.

However, on May 25, crews called in by the Fire Department arrived and cleared weeds and brush from about 1.2 acres. Wright estimated that a crew of five to seven people spent three or four hours on the job.

He said the county’s weed abatement ordinance allows fire officials to hire brush cutters to do the work when property owners fail to do it. Then the cutter’s bill, plus a $221 administrative fee, is tacked onto the landowner’s property tax bill.

Werfelmann said his congregation of 60 families has always pitched in to clear the property, and last year was no different. In fact, they had done it weeks before the notice arrived, but the weeds had grown back. Although the deadline had passed, given one more day, the parishioners would have done the work, he said.

“It’s the size of the bill for the amount of work done that’s troublesome,” he said. “I find it outrageous that it costs five times as much for the crews to clear less of our property than we would have done ourselves.”

Wright, who declined to comment on Werfelmann’s bill, said cutting contractors bid for the work and their charges are competitive with other private contractors.